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Irregular   Listen
adjective
Irregular  adj.  Not regular; not conforming to a law, method, or usage recognized as the general rule; not according to common form; not conformable to nature, to the rules of moral rectitude, or to established principles; not normal; unnatural; immethodical; unsymmetrical; erratic; no straight; not uniform; as, an irregular line; an irregular figure; an irregular verse; an irregular physician; an irregular proceeding; irregular motion; irregular conduct, etc. Cf. Regular. "Mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular Then most when most irregular they seem." "Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight Against the irregular and wild Glendower." "A flowery meadow through which a clear stream murmured in many irregular meanders."
Synonyms: Immethodical; unsystematic; abnormal; unnatural; anomalous; erratic; devious; crooked; eccentric; unsettled; uneven; variable; changeable; mutable; desultory; disorderly; wild; immoderate; intemperate; inordinate; vicious.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Irregular" Quotes from Famous Books



... the night in gun pits along the road side, bordering the town. This particular battery of heavies was engaged on a night long programme of interdiction fire laid down with irregular intensity on cross roads and communication points in the enemy's back areas. Under screens of camouflage netting, these howitzers with mottled bores squatting frog-like on their carriages, intermittently ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... than any fear. At length, with a sudden turn, the road left the trees behind, and what a scene opened before me! I stood on the verge of a large space of greensward, smooth and well-kept as a lawn, but somewhat irregular in surface. From all sides it rose towards the centre. There a broad, low rock seemed to grow out of it, and upon the rock stood the lordliest house my childish eyes had ever beheld. Take situation and all, and I have scarcely yet beheld one to equal ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... lay sprawled about, the close formation having been more or less broken following the morning fight. The five speeding monsters were upon them almost before they realized it. As the cars approached the first irregular line of troopers, the British in the machines opened fire. In spite of their terrific speed, their aim was good. Germans tumbled right and left, or fell back as they ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... reached the basaltic rock at an elevation of 16,805 feet, and with exhausting labor we traveled upon it until toward evening, when we came to that immense yawning abyss, the crater. The mouth was about three miles in circumference, of a very irregular form. Into this we entered, and soon arrived at the house which was to be our lodging for the night. This house was a curiosity in its way; as it was not built like any other house, and could not be, on account of the rarity of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... my dreaming. I am on the parapet of a huge circular tower, hollow like a well, and pierced with windows at irregular intervals. The parapet is broad, and slabbed with red Verona marble. Around me are athletic men, all naked, in the strangest attitudes of studied rest, down-gazing, as I do, into the depths below. There comes a confused murmur of voices, and the tower is threaded and rethreaded with great ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... a soul or other self, capable of going away from the body and returning to it, receives decisive confirmation from the phenomena of fainting, trance, catalepsy, and ecstasy, [162] which occur less rarely among savages, owing to their irregular mode of life, than among civilized men. "Further verification," observes Mr. Spencer, "is afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body, during the absence of the other self, some enemy has entered; for how else does it happen that the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... but a brother of his just wrote word that he was coming back from the Hejaz where he had been with the troops in which he is serving his time; I was very sorry to lose his company. Fancy how dreadfully irregular for one of the Ulema and a heretical woman to travel together. What would our bishops say to a parson who did such a thing? We had a lovely time on the river for three days, such moonlight nights, so soft and lovely; and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... the bullet into the second pistol; "it is quite irregular and—er—illegal, I believe. Perhaps I shall go to jail with whichever of the duelists survives; but you see it is a point of honor with us all. Molly Sizer has seemingly been grossly maligned in your paper, and the editor is responsible. Are you a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... friend impatiently, trying to steal a glance at the worn-out sheet, which was covered with Polly's irregular, childish writing. But ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... Gilbert and I climbed the hill back of our camp in hopes of catching a first glimpse of Seal Lake, but we could not see it. What we did see was very fine, and I stood watching it for some time after the others had gone back to camp. Eastward the great hills rose rugged and irregular, and farther away in the blue distance the range lying beyond Seal Lake, all touched to beauty ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... over the tops of low cliffs covered with dry yellow grasses. Now and then it dipped down to strips of shingle beach, or skirted little coves with boundaries of bushes and brambles edging the sand. Miles are not easy to reckon when people are following the ins and outs of an irregular coast. Half a dozen times Eyebright clambered to the water's edge and peeped round the shoulder of a great rock, thinking that she must have got to the cave at last. Yet nothing met her eyes but more rocks, and ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge

... eleventh century there had been a strong movement for reform in the church. The election of the Popes, thus far, had been a most irregular affair. It was to the advantage of the Holy Roman Emperors to have a well-disposed priest elected to the Holy See. They frequently came to Rome at the time of election and used their influence for the benefit ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... alas! we have all forgotten the perils of the road at nightfall, and in the sudden darkness, deepened by the shadowy trees, a false step might precipitate cart and passengers into the deep water. Any advance becomes dangerous on the winding way, which follows every curve of the irregular shore, so a halt is called, while the boy rides on towards some twinkling lights denoting a lakeside campong. After a long wait, he returns in triumph with three matches and a piece of flaming tow in a bottle. By observing due precaution, we can now follow his guidance, while he ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... The room, of irregular conformation, held upward of two hundred guests and habitues seated at tables large and small and so closely set together that waiters with difficulty navigated narrow and tortuous channels of communication. In the middle, upon a small dancing floor, rudely octagonal in ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... informed companions. They will eagerly read any book which promises any hint on the mysterious subject, and will embrace every opportunity, proper or improper—and most likely to be the latter—of obtaining the coveted information. Knowledge obtained in this uncertain and irregular way must of necessity be very unreliable. Many times—generally, in fact—it is of a most corrupting character, and the clandestine manner in which it is obtained is itself corrupting and demoralizing. A child ought to be taught to expect all such information from its parents, and ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... new Duke of Burgundy. The eclat of his literary renown, the political sense of which he had given proof in the Spanish war, the popularity that surrounded him, were certainly arguments in his favor. But looking at things coolly, it was clear that an irregular genius was not suited for the part of Mentor, when he still had all the wayward impulses ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... (hiccup) happy new year to us all!' exclaimed Sir Harry, drinking off his wine. 'H-o-o-ray!' exclaimed the company in irregular order, as they drank ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... succeeding years—is suddenly to be suspended—to have no more employment—to do no more work—guide no more states—make no more melodies! Nay, the pang would be scarcely less to believe that a fair intellect like that of Alfred Stevens, or a wild, irregular genius, like that of Margaret Cooper—because of its erring, either through perversity or blindness, is wholly to become defunct, so far as employment is concerned—that they are to be deprived of all privilege of working ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... or crimson-tipped on the edges of their flakes, like the edges of a Hazel-Nut burr; some are wholly brilliant scarlet, raying out regularly and finely every way, bilaterally, like the veins of a leaf; others, of more irregular form, when I turn my head slightly, emptying out some of its earthiness and concealing the trunk of the tree, seem to rest heavily flake on flake, like yellow and scarlet clouds, wreath upon wreath, or like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... understood, and could also perceive that the girls would have liked the street which sloped up the hill, and thought the lilac and green insulted by being conducted up the steep, irregular, and not very clean bye-lane that led directly up the ascent, between houses, some meanly modern, some picturesquely ancient, with stone steps outside to the upper story, but all with far too much of pig-stye about them for beauty or fragrance. Lucy held up her skirts, and daintily picked her ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... would do himself the honour of asking for the fraulein's decision on his return from the town-hall at five P.M. on the morrow, apologising at the same time for the fact that he would then be driven to intrude on an irregular day, Madame Staubach merely answered by an assenting motion of her head, and by the utterance of her usual benison, "God in His mercy be with you, Peter Steinmarc." "And with you too, Madame Staubach." Then Peter marched forth with great dignity, holding his pipe as high ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... monsoon (December to February), moderate temperatures in north and hot in south; southwest monsoon (May to October), torrid in the north and hot in the south, irregular rainfall, hot and humid ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... colour of the old leaf, made an ignorant gardiner of mine erradicate what I had brought up with much care, as dead; let this therefore be a warning: The leaves are thin, pretty long and bristly; the cones small, grow irregular, as do the branches, like the cypress, a very beautiful tree, the pondrous branches bending a little, which makes it differ from the Libanus cedar, to which some would have it ally'd, nor are any found in Syria. Of the deep ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... irregularly to Shoulder-blade creek, but even irregular deliveries may bring bad news. Halloway received a letter, one day, containing a summons which he could not disregard. He had spoken contemptuously to Brent of money-grubbing, but his inflated wealth carried certain responsibilities ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... unmarked from the land above, lying unsuspected until one chances directly upon it. It was much like a furrow of Nature's ploughing, cut out to serve as a drainage for the surrounding plains. It wound its irregular course away east and west, a maze of undergrowth, larger bluff, low red-sand cut-banks and crumbling gravel cliffs, all scattered by a prodigal hand, with a profusion that seemed wanton amidst ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... There is the same irregular antithesis between [Greek: allon agei] and [Greek: ta de (ta de) pyrphorei]; as in Soph. Ant. 138, [Greek: eiche d' alla ta men, ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus

... be imagined than Mackinac, from the water. As we steamed away from the shore, the view came full upon us—the sloping beach with the scattered wigwams, and canoes drawn up here and there—the irregular, quaint-looking houses—the white walls of the fort, and, beyond, one eminence still more lofty crowned with the remains of old Fort Holmes. The whole picture completed, showed the perfect outline that had given the island its original Indian ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... could discern an irregular pink crescent, with the concave side downwards, somewhere in the blackness beyond the bows. He rubbed his eyes, and said nothing, believing that the unaccustomed strain of gazing into the dark had affected his sight. But ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... things hellish. The magnificent turn of its short upper lip, and the soft voluptuous line of its under lip; its sportive dimples and ripe red colour; its even rows of dazzling, pearly teeth were adorable; but they appealed to the senses, and in no sense or shape to the soul. Her brows, slightly irregular in outline, met over the nose; her eyelashes were of great length, and her eyes—slightly, ever so slightly, obliquely set, and larger than those of living human beings—were black, black as her hair; and the pupils sparkled and shone with the most damnable ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... solution of the difficulty, too, most readers will say. I should not dispute it if dramatic poets really were what English public opinion generally assumes them to be during their lifetime: that is, a licentiously irregular group to be kept in order in a rough and ready way by a magistrate who will stand no nonsense from them. But I cannot admit that the class represented by Eschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Shakespear, Goethe, Ibsen, and ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... the law of this great State of Illinois, and I'll expose the infernal rascal." Then, with a dark, knowing look at me, he hissed (though none of his preceding words had been audible across the street), "An 'Irregular,' sir—cursed sugar-and-water quack—a figure 9 with the tail rubbed off. Why, sir" (in a more conversational but still emphatic tone), "I have given sixty grains of calomel at a dose, and I have given a tenth of a ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... down the hill, he got his guns into action. After a few shells had been fired, the enemy advanced in full force. Four thousand men were extended in the shape of a crescent, advancing in fairly good order; while behind was an irregular mob, of some ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... however, for the most part fell short, while those of the besieged rained down upon them with effect. They were therefore withdrawn a short distance, and contracting their ranks a vast number of footmen poured through, and in irregular order ran forward to the foot of the rock, where they were sheltered from the arrows of those ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... the impression of dynamical monotony [Footnote: i.e., a power of tone the degree of which remains unchanged.] (if I may risk such an apparently senseless expression for a difficult phenomenon) together with the unusually varied and ever irregular movement of intervals in the ascending figure entering on the prolonged G flat to be sung with such infinite delicacy, to which the G natural answers with equal delicacy, initiated me as by magic to the incomparable ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)

... Stone—on a low ledge of which, nearly concealed from public view, our lovers had been sitting—was, in point of size, a very large rock of irregular size. After the last words, alluding to the murder, had been uttered, an old man, very neatly but plainly dressed, and bearing a pedlar's pack, came round from behind a projection of it, and approached them. From his position, it was all but certain that he must have overheard ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... asserted, and render all attempts to enforce such claims merely attempts at usurpation. Again, could such claims from extraneous sources be regarded as legitimate, the effort to resist or evade them, by protest or denial, would be as irregular and unmeaning as it would be futile. It could in no wise affect the question of superior right. For the position here combatted, no respectable authority has been, and none it is thought can be adduced. It is certainly irreconcilable with the doctrines ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... his choice. Though now forty-four, he succeeded in winning the heart of a most estimable and charming young lady with a fortune of L5,000. She must indeed have loved or admired the widower very much to consent to be the wife of a man so notoriously irregular, to use a mild term, in his life. But Sheridan fascinated wherever he went, and young ladies like 'a little wildness.' His heart was always good, and where he gave it, he gave it warmly, richly, fully. His second wife was Miss ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... can, at any time, be separated into forty-seven parts, by simply turning screws and opening springs. Most of these parts are struck in dies, and then finished by milling and filing. The process of this manufacture is called swaging,—the forming of irregular shapes in iron by means of dies, one of which is inserted in an anvil in a cavity made for the purpose, and the other placed above it, in a trip-hammer, or in a machine operated in a manner analogous to that of a pile-driver, called a drop. Cavities are cut in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... had platted the points for the second night. A line drawn through these points made a figure quite irregular in form, which was, ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell

... or respectable-looking. If they had been so once they had outgrown them all. The woman certainly had what is called the remains of a fine woman about her, but her face had so many marks of care, of evil passions, and of irregular living, that it was perhaps more repulsive than if it had been absolutely plain in features; her dress was slatternly and ill-fitting, her gray hair untidily gathered under a dingy black cap, with bright, though ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... have been evil days—days of violence, tyranny, misrule, war, invasion, when men are too apt, for want of settled law, to take the law into their own hands; and the land is full of robbers, outlaws, bands of partizans and irregular soldiers—wild times, in which wild ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... grand mustering of all the powers of the Republic to the long contested battle-grounds along the Potomac. Their life on the Mexican frontier was full of interest, novelty, and adventure. The First Artillery was often engaged in repulsing the irregular and roving bands of Cortinas, who rode over the narrow boundary river in frequent raids and stealing expeditions into Texas. When in camp, Mrs. Ricketts greatly endeared herself to the men in her husband's ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... Gardens, which lie a short distance from the city of Kabul. A light table stood before him, and round the table in the open air were grouped generals and finance ministers according to their degree. The Court and the long tail of feudal chiefs—men of blood, fed and cowed by blood—stood in an irregular semicircle round the table, and the wind from the Kabul orchards blew among them. All day long sweating couriers dashed in with letters from the outlying districts with rumours of rebellion, intrigue, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... Palace walls is a Mongolian Superintendency, where the Mongol hordes still grazing their herds and their flocks on the grassy plains of high Asia, as they have done for countless centuries, are divided up into Banners, or military divisions, showing the enormous strength in irregular cavalry they possessed two hundred and fifty years ago. Round the Forbidden City are the Six Boards and the Nine Ministries, the outward signs of those bonds of etiquette and procedure which bind the Manchu Throne to the eighteen ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... filched from a saucer—same old black sand used in the last century—cut a section of the page with a pair of shears, tossed the coin in the air, listened to its ring on the desk with a satisfied look, slipped the whole twenty-franc piece into his pocket—regular fare, fifteen francs, irregular swindle, five francs—and handed me the billet. Then he added, with a trace of ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... it, to freely abuse their position. As the Malay proverb has it, they carry their master's work upon their heads, and their own under their arms, and woe betide those who are not themselves under the immediate protection of the King, that chance throws in their way. Sometimes they act as a kind of irregular police force, levying chantage from those whom they detect in the commission of an offence; and, when crime is scarce, they often exact blackmail from wholly innocent people by threatening to accuse them of some ill-deed, unless their goodwill is purchased at their own price. They are known ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... unconscious humour: "The Utopist needs no knowledge of facts. Indeed such a knowledge is a hindrance. For him the laws of social evolution do not exist. He is a law unto himself; and his men are not the wayward, spasmodic, irregular organisms of daily life, but automata obeying the strings he pulls. In a word, he creates, he does not construct. He makes alike his materials and the laws within which they work, adapting them all to an ideal end. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... along the quays from the river mouth to the first bridge, and one light also on that bridge, so that steamers could enter the river after sunset if desired. The wharfage is wholly occupied by steamers and sailing-craft trading within the Archipelago. The tides are very irregular. The rise and fall at springs may be taken to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... bales and barrels. The dun river slipped along among the shipping with an oily gurgle. Far down toward Chalmette he could see the great bend in the stream, outlined by the row of electric lights. Across the river Algiers lay, a long, irregular blot, made darker by the dawn which lightened the sky beyond. An industrious tug or two, coming for some early sailing ship, gave a few appalling toots, that seemed to be the signal for breaking ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... With irregular steps the forest-master paced the arbour backwards and forwards; he stood for a moment before me, looked into the paper which he held, and said with a most penetrating glance, "Count, and do you indeed ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso

... wherry" now passed under the lofty elevation of the centre arch; and our observers were struck with the contrast between the object of their admiration and its ancient neighbour, London Bridge, that "nameless, shapeless bulk of stone and lime," with its irregular narrow arches, through which the pent-up stream ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... grace, a judgment in proportions of all kinds, and a general good taste in most of those subjects which make the amusement and delight of the ingenious people of the world. Let such gentlemen as these be as extravagant as they please, or as irregular in their morals, they must at the same time discover their inconsistency, live at variance with themselves, and in contradiction to that principle on which they ground their highest pleasure and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... and as the centres of population changed, towns and cities were deserted and fell into ruins. Although no longer inhabited, their sites are by no means unknown or forgotten, but in many localities where now appear only irregular heaps of earth and stones to which the archaeologist sometimes finds difficulty in attributing an artificial origin there linger among the common people tales of the city that once stood on the spot; ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... second, and third years at college, these were his only vices. His constitution, though strong, was gradually undermined; and, at the end of his junior year, he showed unmistakable signs of bloating, became very irregular in his attendance on recitations, and had sunk to be the fifteenth in his class. I had hopes that he would pass through his fourth year safely, and get a diploma. But, at the very beginning of that year, he kept drunk, and absented himself from recitations for a fortnight, and, when called before ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... he mused as he examined it. "Colorless, friable, and cleaving in irregular planes. What in thunder can it be? Have you ever seen anything like ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... except Cooper's Leatherstocking and Jane Andrews's Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball That Floats in the Air, a book which has been translated into the languages of remote nations of the globe, I myself having seen the Chinese and Japanese versions. Thus irregular is the award of time and we must accept it. Meanwhile this new book is organized on a better plan than any dreamed of at that former period, the books being arranged not merely by classes alone, but according to the age of the proposed readers and stretching in regular order from two years old ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... whole proceeding is most irregular, to put it mildly. The young man was so deeply interested in your perilous adventure of yesterday, and so desirous of felicitating you upon your escape, that I yielded to his importunities and promised to ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... thin bloom, roughened; nodes enlarged, slightly flattened; tendrils continuous, or intermittent, bifid. Leaves large, thick; upper surface light green; lower surface light bronze, heavily pubescent; lobes wanting or faint; petiolar sinus shallow, very wide; teeth irregular. Flowers self-fertile, open ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... old. There is every probability that Columbus entered the harbor in 1494, and perhaps no less probability that Ocampo entered in 1508, on his voyage around the island. The harbor extends inland for several miles, with an irregular shore line, behind which rises a border line of hills. The city itself is some four or five miles from the entrance to the harbor. It came into existence, and still exists, chiefly by reason of the sugar business. It is an important outlet for that industry, ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... emblems with their offerings of golden marigold, and bearing upon each corner, carved in dark grey stone, Siva's recumbent bull. Here millet fields, with hedges of blue aloe or euphorbias like seven-branched candlesticks, announced a place of habitation; soon the village itself appeared, a long irregular line of white-walled houses roofed with thatch or tile, and here and there greater dwellings with carved balconies and barred verandahs, behind which impassive white-robed figures sat and seemed to ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... downward to the Lake of Constance, which now shimmered afar through the gaps, were left behind us, and we passed westward along a broken, irregular valley. The vivid turf was sown with all the flowers of spring,—primrose, violet, buttercup, anemone, and veronica,—faint, but sweetest-odored, and the heralds of spring in all lands. So I gave little heed to the weird lines of cloud, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... by close hollow Geometricall figures (Regular and Irregular) the straunge properties (in motion or stay) of the Water, Ayre, Smoke, and Fire, in their Continuitie, and as they are ioyned ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee

... kindly with Vandon itself, had taken the straggling village in hand too. Nothing could be more picturesque than the crazy black-and-white houses, with lichen on their broken-in thatch, and the plaster peeling off from between the irregular beams of black wood; nothing more picturesque—and nothing ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... green and the white, salted them, and put them in that cunning hoop, and then set the hoop in the cheese-press, turned a crank, and weighed it down with a flatiron. There, that is the way to make a cheese. When it came out of the press it was a perfect little beauty, white, with irregular spots of green, like the streaks in marble cake. I knew then how that greedy Harry felt, in the story, when his mother sent him a plum cake, and he couldn't wait for a knife, but "gnawed ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May

... up the river, but almost opposite to the huge mass of the Houses of Parliament, lies a broken, irregular pile of buildings, at whose angle, looking out over the Thames, is one grey weatherbeaten tower. The broken pile is the archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth; the grey weatherbeaten building is its Lollards' Tower. From this tower the mansion ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... turban worn by the Northern Arabs and shown in old prints. In modern Egypt the term is applied to the tall sugar-loaf caps of felt affected mostly by regular Dervishes. Burckhardt (Proverbs 194 and 398) makes it the high cap of felt or fur proper to the irregular cavalry called Dely or Delaty. In Dar For (Darfour) "Tartur" is a conical cap adorned with beads and cowries worn by the Manghwah or buffoon who corresponds with the Egyptian "Khalbus" or "Maskharah" and the Turkish "Sutari." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... July 21, 1804 by a boiling motion or ebolition of it's waters occasioned no doubt by the roling and irregular motion of the sand of which its bed is entirely composed. the particles of this sand being remarkably small and light it is easily boied up and is hurried by this impetuous torrent in large masses from place to place in with irristable ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... full of children, and sad enough is the average child of poverty. What makes the tenement district of the great city so terrible to you as you go into it is the sight of the throngs of children, who know little of home as you know it, have irregular and scanty meals, and surroundings of intemperance, dirt, foul atmosphere and speech, disease and vice. No wonder the police in these districts say that their worst trouble arises from the boys and the gangs of young ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... sound. Yet, as I argued, they could not be far distant; and I pushed forward with heart elate at the prospect of trumping Marmont's card, for I remembered the staff officer's words, "on the marshal's return." I knew that Marmont had been in Sabugal no longer ago than mid-day; and irregular and almost derogatory as it might be thought for a marshal of France to be conducting a night surprise against a half-disciplined horde of militia, I would have wagered my month's pay that ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... admiration must be hopeless, for Syrilla must earn a salary in keeping with her size, and his income was too irregular and small to ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... strange school, Edgar Allan lived and studied for five years. The schoolroom was long, narrow, and low; it was ceiled with dark oak, and had Gothic windows. The desks were black and irregular, covered with the names and initials which the boys had cut with their jackknives. In the corners were what might be called boxes, where sat the masters—one of them Eugene Aram, the criminal made famous in one of Bulwer's romances. ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... Assembly—afterward called the Constituent Assembly—he was one of the earliest of his order to join them and was elected one of the vice-presidents. On July 14th the Bastille was taken by the mob, and on the following day Lafayette was chosen commandant of the National Guard of Paris; an irregular body, partly military, partly police, having no connection with the royal army and in full sympathy with the people, from which its ranks were filled. On the 17th King Louis XVI. came into the city, where he was received by the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... was sitting in my chamber and thinking on a subject for my next Spectator, I heard two or three irregular bounces at my landlady's door, and upon the opening of it, a loud cheerful voice enquiring whether the Philosopher was at home. The child who went to the door answered very innocently, that he did not lodge there. I immediately recollected that it was my good friend Sir ROGER's ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... anticipate. At the time of which I speak the children were growing and developing, each according to its nature, in full freedom. Those who felt a vocation seized on the wing—rather than they received from irregular lessons—some fragments of that great art which was ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... desired a free and general election of a Constitutional Government throughout the province, in place of that which, of necessity, had been confined to the city only. To put down what they considered disaffection—towards themselves—the Junta brought into the city a large body of irregular troops, intending, by means of these, to gratify their resentment against the resident Portuguese, who, having taken the oaths of allegiance to the Imperial Government, were entitled to protection. It appeared, moreover, that the Junta and their friends owed large ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... Brede left when Paul began to live a most irregular life again. More and more all roads were closed to him; he saw no way out and therefore preferred to make himself blind, which gave him an excuse for not seeing. Seven of our permanent guests now left together: the telephone operators, Tradesman Batt, ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... plan, no such supporters would be necessary, no such dependants could exist, and no such relatives could be disappointed. Beside, the conflicts of their opponents must be periodical, weak, and irregular. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... ruler of men below! How arrayed in terrors is God, With many things irregular in his ordinations. Heaven gave birth to the multitudes of the people, But the nature it confers is not to be depended on. All are (good) at first, But few prove themselves to ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... (Fig. 2), one of which bundles is shown crushed in Fig. J. Sometimes these crystals are coarser and less needle-like, as in Fig. K. Fig. C shows a transverse section through the leaf-bearing portion of the rhizome (at a), and is rather irregular on account of the fibrovascular bundles diverging into the base of the leaves of flower-stalks. A more regular appearance is seen in Fig. D, which is a section through the internode (b). In it we see the nuclear sheath, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... young Hercules obeyed, Madame de la Grenouillere regarded the creature she had rescued. It was a true type of the street-cat. His natural hideousness was increased by the accidents of a long and irregular career; his short hair was soiled with mud; one could scarcely distinguish beneath the various splashes his gray fur robe striped with black. He was so thin as to be nearly transparent, so shrunken that one could count his ribs, and so dispirited that a ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire

... but he occupied an important place in their home and in their lives. He had been the pride and the hope of the family from early youth. He was possessed of brilliant talents, and was full of noble impulses, but was very fond of pleasure, and soon formed irregular habits, which were the ruin of his life and the source of unmeasured grief to his whole family. They had desired to send him to study at the Royal Academy, as he had the family's fondness for drawing, and they fancied he would develop great talent as an artist. Had his habits been good, their ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... to the light; and, though the chink admitted only a few slender rays, I began to perceive the forms of objects that were near. I soon made out that the empty space did not extend far. It was a little pit, of an irregular, circular form—a sort of amphitheatre, shut in on all sides by the huge packages of merchandise that were piled around it. It was, in fact, a space that had been left under the hatchway, after the cargo ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... the greatest avidity, and for several years was looked upon as the coming man of the mission. Suddenly he again changed; his moral conduct remained free from reproach, but his faculty for serious study appeared to have left him. He brooded deeply, taught the junior pupils in an irregular and, on the whole, very perfunctory manner, and seemed to be consumed by a deep and abiding sadness. It was afterwards noticed that this change dated from about a year after Miss Blake had taken up her ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... Kabul-Kandahar Field Force to execute the extended movement entrusted to him. He crossed the Arghandab, and pushed round to get in front of the line of the enemy's retreat towards Khakrez. Some ghazis and Irregular Afghan troops were overtaken, but no Regular regiments were met with, the soldiers having, as is their custom, quickly divested themselves of their uniform and assumed the garb ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... her appearance was commonplace: witness her flaxen hair, tending to whiteness; her flat forehead, from which the light did not reflect; and her dull complexion, with gray, almost leaden, tones. The lower part of the face, more triangular than oval, ended irregularly the otherwise irregular outline of her face. Her voice had a rather pretty range of intonation, from sharp to sweet. Elisabeth was a perfect specimen of the second-rate little bourgeoisie who lectures her husband behind the curtains; obtains no credit for her ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... to dispute the matter with you, Sir Gervaise Oakes; but I solemnly protest against this irregular and most extraordinary manner of making a will. Let all who hear me, remember this, and be ready to testify to it when called on in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... their sides by way of completing the original arrangement of no arrangement at all. It always seemed to me as if the buildings in Nuremberg had, like the furniture in Irving's tale, been indulging over night in a very irregular dance, and suddenly stopped in the most complicated part of a confusion worse confounded. Galleries, quaint staircases, and towers with projecting upper stories, as well as eccentric chimneys, demented door-ways, insane weather-vanes, and highly original steeples, form the most common-place ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... Chevalier informed his friends of the affair on hand. At the approach of each term, funds were passed between the principal towns of the department; from Alencon, Saint-Lo and Evreux money was sent to Caen, but these shipments took place at irregular dates, and were generally accompanied by an escort of gendarmes. As the carriage which took the funds to Alencon usually changed horses at Argentan, it was sufficient to know the time of its arrival in that town to deduce therefrom ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... running from front to back of the house. Here, too, was another elaborate candelabrum, somewhat smaller than the first, queer, spindle-legged, fiddle-backed chairs, beautiful cabinets and tables, and an old, square piano, still open. The chairs stood in irregular groups of twos and threes, chumming cozily together as their occupants had doubtless done, and over the piano had been carelessly thrown a long, filmy silk scarf, one end hanging to the floor. Upon everything ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... this must prevent my classes from forming as frequently as was an- nounced in the October number of the Journal, and necessitates receiving but a select number of students. [15] To meet the old impediment, lack of time, that has oc- casioned the irregular intervals between my class terms, I shall continue to send to each applicant a notice from one to two weeks previous to the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... bishop's worst apprehensions. He was a lean, lank, dark young man with long black hair and irregular, rather prolonged features; his chin was right over to the left; he looked constantly at the bishop's face with a distinctly sceptical grey eye; he could not have looked harder if he had been a photographer or a portrait painter. And his voice was harsh, and the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... latter almost overhung the valley in which the city lay below, and commanded a magnificent view of the flat country beyond, thridded by a shining winding ribbon of river. The hill was wooded on that side to the top, and the castle crowned it, rising above the trees in irregular outline against the sky imposingly. The old duke sat in the oriel often, looking down at the wonderful prospect, but thinking less of his own vast possessions than of the great cathedral of Morningquest, which he ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... a piazza, twenty-feet in width, and extending across the entire front of the house. At its south-easterly angle, the roof is truncated, and made again to form a covering for the piazza, which there extends along a line of irregular buildings for sixty yards. A portion of the verandah on this side being enclosed, forms a bowling-alley and smoking-room, two essential appendages to a planter's residence. The whole structure is covered with yellow-pine weather boarding, which in some former age ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... I was in my own room, stretched upon my pallet. I looked around in a dazed way and saw the Brother Director and a young gendarme by the closed door. Something black and irregular in the outline of the bed at my side attracted my eyes. I saw that it was Edouard's head buried in the drapery. As in a dream I laid my numb hand upon those crisp curls. I was an old man, she was a weak, wretched girl. She raised her ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... Building, the broad panorama of Panama and her bay; below, the city of closely packed roofs and three-topped plazas compressed in a scallop of the sun-gleaming Pacific, with its peaked and wooded islands to far Taboga tilting motionless away to the curve of the earth; behind, the low, irregular jungled hills stretching hazily off into South America. On the third-story landing I paused to wipe the light sweat from forehead and hatband, then pushed open the screen door of the passageway that ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... external debility which characterized the reigns of the second Charles and James. With William of Orange the government again placed itself at the head of the national aspirations, as their natural leader; and the irregular operations of the freebooters were merged in a settled national policy. This, although for a moment diverted from its course by temporary exigencies, was clearly formulated in the avowed objects with which, in 1702, the ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan

... if a repetition of the old miracle had turned it to wine. Then innumerable night-hawks uttered their four musical notes in endless succession, upon the heights, down in the woods, from the mainland mountain. The north star became discernible almost overhead. Then, with slow and irregular strokes, Adam pulled away from the cliff, and brought his keel to grate the sand in front ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... decline of Feudalism, this substitution of strong centralized governments in place of the feeble, irregular, and conflicting authorities of the feudal nobles, was a very great gain to the cause of law and good order. It paved the way ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... within the limits of a short story-life to give even a brief description of the composer's chief works, or to convey more than an idea of how much work, despite his irregular habits, Beethoven accomplished. His untiring industry in developing the rough jottings which formed the foundations of his compositions has been mentioned; but without following his life from year to year we can have only a very imperfect conception of the ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... south-east of Montrose. His head was preserved at Scone in a silver casket, his arm in a silver casket at Aberdeen, and his staff, baculus or bachul, at S. Fergus, in Buchan. In 721, Fergustus Epis. Scotiae Pictus signed at Rome canons as to irregular marriages. He belonged to the party that conformed to Rome as distinguished from the strict adherents of the ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... wisdom and activity of the Supreme Being in overcoming darkness with light. But the boundless intoxication into which the priests threw themselves by the excessive drinking of the Haoma, the wild and irregular acts of frenzy by which they expressed their religious fervour when under the influence of the subtle drink, were adjuncts to the simple purity of the bloodless sacrifice which disgusted the king, and he hesitated long as to some reform in these ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... Susan Islip. 1650', within ornamental border. Address to the reader in French, signed 'R. S. de Londres'. Address and note to the reader in English, the former signed. At the end, forms of address, irregular verbs, vocabularies etc. The original edition of Cotgrave's dictionary appeared in 1611. The present appears to be the third edition. Sherwood's portion first appeared in the ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg

... deliverance, tried to take the last two steps at once, tripped and tumbled ignominiously against the garret-door, which flew back and let her fall into the room with a crash. The pitcher shivered into fragments under her aching little bosom, the odorous soup spread itself in an irregular pool over the boards, and flowed under the two beds and dripped down the crevices into the room beneath. Esther burst into tears; her frock was wet and greased, her hands were cut and bleeding. Little Sarah checked her sobs at the disaster. Moses Ansell was not yet returned from ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... this to be an irregular space, about two hundred feet in length and width, surrounded by walls, under which were arched cells, that were used for storage or magazines, and might also serve as casemates in time of siege. There were barracks at one end, and ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille

... lace in the world—odd nooks and corners and narrow ways where it was easy to lose one's self, small as the town really was; innumerable little toy bridges over toy canals one could have leaped at a bound, overlooked by quaint, irregular little dwellings, of colors that had once been as those of the rainbow, but which time had mellowed into divine harmonies, as it does all it touches—from grand old masters to oak palings round English parks; from Venice to Mechelen and its lace; ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... all—dates of battles, maxims, memorabilia of all sorts, a heterogeneous mess. He's full to the brim, I tell you, and ready to explode. Suppose he did! How would you like to be hit in the midriff by an apothegm of Cicero, or be hamstrung by the subjunctive pluperfect of an irregular ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... lat. 23 degrees 44 minutes, long. 128 degrees 52 minutes. On May 22nd we continued our journey, marching South over irregular sandhills, forcing our way through scrubs, until, on the evening of the 23rd, we were in the latitude of the centre of Lake Amadeus, as it was formerly marked by Giles. I was anxious to see if Tietkens had ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... 10 1/2 years old. The memory now flashes across me of the pleasure I had in the evening on a blowy day walking along the beach by myself and seeing the gulls and cormorants wending their way home in a wild and irregular course. Such poetic pleasures, felt so keenly in after years, I should not have expected ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... by whom he had two sons and three daughters. John, the eldest, and the father of the poet, was born in 1751, educated at Westminster School, and afterwards placed in the Guards, where his conduct became so irregular and profligate that his father, the admiral, though a good-natured man, discarded him long before his death. In 1778 he acquired extraordinary eclat by the seduction of the Marchioness of Caermarthen, under circumstances ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... could not certainly be more concerned, if you had lost all you had. I know you have lived very extravagantly, and believe all your money is spent; you have still, however, a good estate; and the reason that I did not so much oppose your irregular way of living was, that I knew the wise precaution you had taken to preserve half your property. I do not, therefore, see why you should plunge yourself into this ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... I remonstratively, "her home at the time I carried her off was destroyed—indeed, most of the village was a smoking ruin, and liable at any moment to be replundered by the irregular troops of both sides, while Ivanka's parents were reported ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... despatch rider was about as irregular as any proceeding could be; but it was within his province to find out how far the Khyber jezailchis could be trusted and within his power more than to make up the lost time. So that the irregularity did not ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... at all events, it takes time to learn, is to cut the interstices neat, and each like the other. But is there any reason, do you suppose, for their being neat, and each like the other? So far from it, they would be twenty times prettier if they were irregular, and each different from the other. And an old wood-cutter, instead of taking pride in cutting these interstices smooth and alike, resolutely cuts them rough and irregular; taking care, at the same time, never to ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... they found her a good conversationalist, a clever woman of the world, becomingly dressed. After all, she had been a third wrangler at Cambridge, almost a guarantee that her subsequent life could not be irregular, according to a man's standard in England of what an unmarried woman's life should be. She deprecated the violence of the militants in ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... husband had had another paralytic stroke: whether he, too, had been alarmed by that eldritch scream no one could ever know. By the faint light of the rush candle burning at the bedside, his wife perceived that a great change had taken place in his aspect on her return: the irregular breathing came almost like snorts—the end was drawing near. The family were roused, and all help given that either the doctor or experience could suggest. But before the late November morning light, all was ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... settled sections the land was laid out in lots, often in a very irregular manner, although in some cases within a given tract the area was more or less regular. In these cases, the land must be described minutely and carefully by metes and bounds. In some of the southern and western states, also, where there were Spanish grants, much ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... of Flatland 2. Of the Climate and Houses in Flatland 3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland 4. Concerning the Women 5. Of our Methods of Recognizing one another 6. Of Recognition by Sight 7. Concerning Irregular Figures 8. Of the Ancient Practice of Painting 9. Of the Universal Colour Bill 10. Of the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition 11. Concerning our Priests 12. Of the ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott

... and far from level. After two hours of riding on a small and wiry horse with no built-in springs, Hoddan hurt in a great many places he'd never known he owned. He and Thal rode in an indeterminate direction with an irregular scarp of low mountains silhouetted against the unfamiliar stars. A vagrant night-wind blew. Thal had said it was a three-hour ride to Don Loris' castle. After something over two of them, ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster

... who are accustomed to look upon living in tents as so exclusively an irregular and temporary expedient, to learn how completely this mode of life was reduced to a system in those days, and how perfect and complete all the arrangements relating to it were made. In this case, in the centre of the encampment, a space of two leagues in length was regularly laid out ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... what was a mere physical fact into a legal right, give it the sanction of society, and principally aim at the substitution of public and organized means of asserting and protecting these rights, instead of the irregular and lawless conflict of physical strength. Those who had already been compelled to obedience became in this manner legally bound to it. Slavery, from being a mere affair of force between the master and the slave, became regularized and a matter of ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... says the Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is the Arctic Sea. The maps make the eastern shore of Cuba terminate as sharply as a needle's point, but it proved to be very blunt in reality, as it forms the gateway to the Caribbean Sea, where the irregular coast line runs due north and south for the distance of many leagues. It is a low, rocky shore for the most part, but rises gradually as it recedes inland, until it assumes the form of hills so lofty as to ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... merry as they could under the circumstances in an alcove at the top of the hall. Round dances were in vogue,—round dances interspersed with flirtations and fire-water; round dances that grew oblong and irregular before sunrise—and yet it was sunrise at the unearthly hour of 3.30 a. m., or thereabout. We all felt as if we had been cheated out of something when we saw his coming; but perhaps it was only the summer siesta that had been cut short,—the summer siesta that here passes for the more wholesome ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... irregular and very high building, with walls of great thickness, having a great tower, called Cumming's Tower, projecting from the west end of the front of the house, which faces the north. This tower could be defended by ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... organism. This new ingredient is most apparent in the towns, it is frequently spoken of as the Urban Poor, but its characteristic traits are to be found also in the rural districts. For the most part its individuals are either criminal, immoral, parasitic in more or less irregular ways upon the more successful classes, or labouring, at something less than a regular bare subsistence wage, in a finally hopeless competition against machinery that is as yet not so cheap as their toil. It is, to borrow a popular phrase, the "submerged" portion of the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... he was speaking the line ran out and the regular undulations of the passing seas drove the boat away from the brig. Carter turned a little in his seat to look at the land. It loomed up dead to leeward like a lofty and irregular cone only a mile or a mile and a half distant. The noise of the surf beating upon its base was heard against the wind in measured detonations. The fatigue of many days spent in the boat asserted itself above the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... of the police sergeant who was a brother of the district leader was so gloriously decked out as old Mrs. Walsh's when she started on her last journey. The children stood in the passageway with their arms full of daisies, and gave the old soul a departing cheer; and though it was quite irregular, it was all right, for it was well meant, and ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... fields of waving corn. There are also plenty of trees; poplar, ash, and elm; and one flourishing specimen of the latter species, which we see from the windows in front of the house, was brought here by Mr. Poinsett. The hacienda, which is about three leagues from Mexico, is a large irregular building in rather a low situation, surrounded by dark blue hills. It belongs to the Senoras de F—-a, of the family of the Marquis de A—-o; millionaires—being rich in haciendas and silver-mines; very religious, very charitable, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... control board. The Med Ship was only planetary diameters from Orede, now, and the electron telescope showed shining stars in leisurely motion across its screen. Then a huge, gibbous shining shape appeared, and there were irregular patches of that muddy color which is seabottom, and varicolored areas which were plains and forests. Also there were mountains. Calhoun steadied the image, and ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... morning, and I don't like this course," stated Rupert, sombrely definite, through the roar and rattle of irregular reports from the cut-down motor. "But I guess I've got to stand for them. Anyhow, I couldn't have a classier Friday-the-thirteenth emotion equipment if I had been to a voodoo fortune teller who had a grudge against me. What are ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... six now, the robots were pushing through the doors into the silent streets. They joined the crowd moving out, Jon slowing his stride so his shorter friends could keep pace. Dik Dryer moved with a jerking, irregular motion, his voice as uneven as the motion ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison

... he had not intended to make any event of this. His idea had been that, after the commissioners authorized traffic, he would merely arrange a time-table instead of the irregular service of the construction days, and would start his trains, observing the care that had been ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... by no judicatory but supreme, or one equal to that which incorporated it, that is the Continental Congress; that unless they can prove that the fee of those lands was not in reality in the king when the charter thereof was given to the College and the grant made to the grantees (however irregular and unkind the steps taken may have been), they will find it difficult, if not impracticable, to recover it. However, to prevent any expense in that matter, quiet the minds of people and facilitate the settlement, as well as exercise proper regard to those ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... relieved that his irregular confidence had resulted in the conventional decision, and that he had not brought on himself a responsibility shared with her. "You had best step into the office. You can do ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... to give their children what they themselves did not have than are American fathers. The man who is most eager that his son should have a college education is not the man who has two or three academic degrees, but the man who never went to college at all. The father whose boys are allowed to be irregular in their church attendance is the father who, as a boy, was compelled to go to church, rain or shine, twice on ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken

... is potatoes champed with butter. Anything in a loose, broken, and irregular state, is said to be in brutheen—that is in disorder ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... sociological discrimination he may be, that the forces of Protestantism, still dividing and differentiating as they are, no longer to any great extent create new self-sufficing communities. They create only associations of irregular geographical dispersion, of more or less unstable or shifting membership. In a word, the conflicting-idea forces, which in our colonial days tended to create community groups as well as sects, tend now to create sectarian bodies ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... with the brightness of day. For the last hour we had not seen a single vehicle, foot-passenger, or horseman; we had heard that all the neighboring population had assembled in Babylon to celebrate your birthday, gaze with wonder at the splendor of your court, and enjoy your liberality. At last the irregular beat of horses' hoofs, and the sound of bells struck my ear, and a few minutes later I distinctly heard cries of distress. My resolve was taken at once; I made my Persian servant dismount, sprang into his saddle, told the driver of the cart in which my slaves were sitting not to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... view of the British stage as represented by the irregular drama, the regular having (ere the date of the events to which this narrative is restricted) disappeared from ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... have not heard from what family he was descended, nor in what year he was born. He has written upwards of thirty plays, with various success, but had a genius better turned to a ballad, and little irregular odes, than for dramatic poetry. He soon forsook the profession of the law, and threw himself upon the public, by writing for the stage.——That D'Urfey was a man of some abilities, and, enjoyed the esteem and friendship of men of the greatest ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... Christ that alone will give the persistency that makes systematic, continuous efforts for Him possible, and yet will keep systematic work from degenerating, as it ever tends to do, into mechanical work. There is no greater virtue in irregular desultory service than in systematised labour. The one is not freer from besetting temptations than the other, only the temptations are of different sorts. Machinery saves manual toil, and multiplies force. But we may have too heavy machinery for what engineers ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... weeks after the irregular multitude which followed Peter the Hermit, and was really the first Crusading army, for Peter's undisciplined throng could hardly be ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren

... same remark will apply to his abnormally toothed hares and rheumatic monkeys, which might, nevertheless, get on very well under favourable conditions. The struggle for existence, under which all animals and plants have been developed, is intermittent, and exceedingly irregular in its incidence and severity. It is most severe and fatal to the young; but when an animal has once reached maturity, and especially when it has gained experience by several years of an eventful ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... her age had she not been hindered, as well as aided, by her self-love. She had the shrewdness which prognosticates as well as discerns, and saw the inevitableness of the ultimatum of all irregularities in a world which, however irregular it is in practice, still holds regularity as its model of conduct and progression. Ida Edgham would, in the desperate state of the earth before the flood, have made herself famous. As it was, her irregular ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... last he felt justified in preferring before the Bar Association charges of irregular practice against James Ware, Bernard Black, and—to his great regret—Calhoun Bennett. He conceived he had enough evidence to convict these men legally, but he as yet shrank from asking for an indictment against them, preferring ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... irregular; it is only when seen from the valley that any graces and harmony can be found in it. Above two rows of pointed roofs and old houses, it stands out alone against the sky and gazes upon the valley in the distance; two bell-turrets project from the front toward ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... bandaging them. A more humane process has lately been introduced: a horsehair is tied round the neck of the scrotum and tightened by slow degrees till the circulation of the part stops and the bag drops off without pain. This has been adopted in sundry Indian regiments of Irregular Cavalry, and it succeeded admirably: the animals rarely required a day's rest. The practice was known to the ancients. See notes on Kadsah in Mirabeau. The Eunuchata virgo was invented by the Lydians, according to their historian ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... law, so essential to the quiet and harmony of a people, and so necessary in defining the title and securing the tenure of property, by this system was so greatly disturbed, that it led to the informal assembling of the judges at irregular periods, and upon their own responsibility, to reconcile these discrepancies. This in some degree obviated the necessity of a supreme court for the correction of errors; but was very unsatisfactory to the Bar, who were almost universal in their desire for the establishment of a tribunal for this ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... the ceiling at the end of a roped-up cluster of fine brass chains. The rich, stupefying odor of opium tainted the heavy air. The orange flame, motionless as if it were carved from solid metal, showed the room to be bare except for a few grass mats scattered about in the irregular round ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... book. What he read during these two years he told me, was not works of mere amusement, 'not voyages and travels, but all literature, Sir, all ancient writers, all manly: though but little Greek, only some of Anacreon and Hesiod; but in this irregular manner (added he) I had looked into a great many books, which were not commonly known at the Universities, where they seldom read any books but what are put into their hands by their tutors; so that when I came to Oxford, Dr. Adams, now master of Pembroke College, told me I was the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... needs of the modern country community that improvement is inadequate. The one-room country school is an institution which in itself cannot be made to minister to modern community life. It is simple and modern life is complete. It is casual and irregular while the forces with which it has to deal are steady-going and cumulative in their power. It is inexpert and served by no specialized professional class, while modern life calls for the service of experts in every direction. It has no ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... assize town of County Leitrim, though an assize town, is a very poor place. It consists of one long narrow, irregular street, lying along the Shannon, in which slated houses and thatched cabins delightfully relieve each other, and prevent the eye from being annoyed with sameness or monotony. The houses are mostly all shops, and even the cabins profess to ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... various applications were made, and several grants obtained previous to the year 1779, though they are not clearly stated, from the irregular manner in which the books of the Secret Committee, and the Committee of Foreign Affairs were formerly kept. It appears, that the whole sum obtained from France previous to the year 1780, exclusive of one million obtained on a contract for tobacco ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... walked along, towards the brow of the cliffs. Soon he could distinguish the irregular heap of chalk against which Adam had stood, whilst he had held the lantern in one hand and gripped ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... features. Nearly every nationality has its representative in trade, but numerically the unspeakable Turk is very much in evidence. On landing one of the guards, numerous and whose charges are fixed by law, took us in charge to show us the city. The streets generally were unimproved and irregular, both in architecture and location. Through several dingy and untidy streets he led us to the public park, which made considerable pretension to order and neatness. The turban, the wrap, the sandals and other Oriental costumes, which made up the dress, were not more varied than the complexion ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... hastened onwards. Not one of us uttered a word. It was as if we had agreed to be silent at these moments. We felt as though wrapped in the heavy veil of dark-ness, and no sound was heard but the short, irregular breathing of the porters, and the cadence of their quick, nervous footsteps upon the stony soil of the path. One felt sick at heart and ashamed of belonging to that human race, one part of which makes of the other ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... nevertheless, the nearest point towards the South Pole, 39 degrees, nearly answering to the situation of Naples in the northern hemisphere, cannot be otherwise than a mild and warm climate. The shape of New Holland is very irregular, its coast being much broken and indented by various great bays and smaller inlets; but it has been estimated to have a width from E. to W. of 3000 miles, and a breadth from N. to S. of 2000, containing altogether not less than three millions of square miles. Of course, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... to meet her, and whilst I was beside myself with joy, the Baron de Thaller requested me to assist him, by means of certain irregular entries, to conceal a deficit arising from unsuccessful speculations. How could I refuse a man, whom, as I thought, I was about to deceive grossly! I did as he wished. The next day Mme. de Thaller became my mistress; and I ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... evidently travelling the same road. His legs, which had been extremely muscular, instead of being as round and smooth in their surface as they formerly were, each appeared to be covered with innumerable nodes; that formed irregular figures, and angles. What they were swathed with I cannot imagine: but I conjecture there must have been stiff brown paper next to the smooth silk stocking, which produced the irregularities of the surface. The dullness of his ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... able, the two boys gazed around them. The hole was irregular in form, but about fifteen feet in diameter. One side was of rough rocks and the other dirt and tree roots. At the top the treacherous bushes overhung all sides of the opening, partly ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)

... his eyes but not quick enough to hide the mistiness which had rushed into them. His breathing was irregular and heavy, its sound being the only sound in the dugout. He did not put out his hand. Finally, his voice steadier than it had ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory

... bewailed that he was massacred, she would not a moment out-live him, and wildly declared her last remains should moulder in his hearse! And thus, though naturally and commonly of a silent and quiet disposition, she was now not a moment still, for the irregular starts of a terrified and disordered imagination, were changed into the ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... perfection of the average Cotswold manor. Being a one-storied building it occupied a large superficial area, and its tumbling irregular roofs of freestone, the outlines of which were blurred by the encroaching mist of vegetation that overhung them, gave the effect of water, as if the atmosphere of this dank valley had wrought upon the substance of the building and as if the architects themselves had been confused ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... his neighbours, and proceeded with them to the godown, the Englishmen following to ensure that no time was lost. In half-an-hour the necessary supplies of petrol and lubricating oil were being wheeled up on trucks towards Mr. Martin's house. On the way Smith noticed a number of reddish lights at irregular intervals, moving in the same direction, and there were more people in the streets than when he had come down, all hurrying ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... personal history, almost as full of risk and adventure as that of its own heroes. The writer himself calls the piece a cantefable, a tale told in prose, but with its incidents and sentiment helped forward by songs, inserted at irregular intervals. In the junctions of the story itself there are signs of roughness and want of skill, which make one suspect that the prose was only put together to connect a series of songs—a series of songs so moving and attractive that people wished to heighten ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater



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