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More "Grumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... colorless as water; they savor not of Milton, Socrates, or Menu; seem not drawn from any private cistern, but rain-drops out of the pure sky. Whim and conceit are tare and tret. It matters little whether a man whine with Coleridge, or boast with Ben Jonson, or sneer with Byron, or grumble with Carlyle, if every thought is one-sided and warped. The oddity relieves our commonplace, and pricks the dull palate; but we soon tire of exaggeration, and detest the trick. It is egotism, self-sickness, jaundice, adulteration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the shore on the side whence the wind ought to come, if it had any spirit in it; tie the coracle to a stone, light your cigar, lie down on your back upon the grass, grumble, and finally fall asleep. In the meanwhile, probably, the breeze has come on, and there has been half-an-hour's lively fishing curl; and you wake just in time to see the last ripple of it sneaking off at the other side of the lake, leaving all ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... snow. There we tarried for a long half-hour (told on my watch by a fusee-light), and still no signs of our companions. Symonds (the cousin), who abode with us still, began to mutter doubts, and the Alabama man to grumble curses (he had ever a fatal facility in blasphemy), and I own to having entertained divers disagreeable misgivings, though I carefully avoided expressing them. At last our guide thought it best that ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... hate: Each blames the place he lives in: but the mind Is most in fault, which ne'er leaves self behind. A town-house drudge, for farms you used to sigh; Now towns and shows and baths are all your cry: But I'm consistent with myself: you know I grumble, when to Rome I'm forced to go. Truth is, our standards differ: what your taste Condemns, forsooth, as so much savage waste, The man who thinks with Horace thinks divine, And hates the things which you believe so fine. I know your secret: 'tis the cook-shop ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... that I wasent mad with Jim Allcorn, as sum peepul supposed; but it do illustrate the onsertainty of human kalkulashuns in this subloonery world. The disappintments of life are amazin', and if a man wants to fret and grumble at his luck he can find a reesunable oppertunity to do so every day that he lives. Them sort of constitutional grumblers ain't much cumpany to me. I'd rather be Jim Perkins with a bullit hole through me and take my chances. Jim, you know, was shot down at Gains' Mill, and the ball went ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... very unlike his hearty, boisterous, independent self. He moped, and he suffered too. Eleanor could not help thinking he would have suffered less, as he certainly would have moped less, at home; and an unintelligible grunt and grumble now and then seemed to confirm her view of the case; but there they were, fixed in London, and Eleanor was called upon to enter into all sorts of London gaieties, of which always Mr. Carlisle made ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... risky game, and I lost. And I shall now take the consequences. With luck I should have won. I did not have luck, and I am not going to grumble about it. But I am grateful to you for letting me explain. I should not have liked you to go on thinking that I played practical jokes on my friends. That is all I have to say, I think. It was kind of you ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... if you want anything, let us know, and if it can be had you know enough of us to know you shall not want it. We have not much to spare certainly, but necessaries we will try to procure; and so long as we need not groan about the present it is not my way to grumble about the future. We shall ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... hospital; I tend the poor, and some die who afford me a livelihood either by what they leave me, or by what I find among their rags, through the great care I always take to examine them well. I say but few prayers, and only in public, but grumble a good deal in secret. It is better for me to be a hypocrite than an open sinner; for my present good works efface from the memory of those who know me the bad ones of my past life. After all, pretended sanctity ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... while we were talking, having got through my grumble, Kolgrim came along the shore with some Saxon noble whom he had met; and this stranger was asking questions about each ship that he passed. I suppose that Kolgrim had answered many such curious folk already; for when he came near and we could hear what ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... along toward the middle of the afternoon. Far off in the distance somewhere, an action was certainly going on, for the grumble of heavy cannonading came ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... have come down from towns and villages higher up, for they say that the troops are under no control and, when the boats come in after a night's fishing, they come down and help themselves and, if a man ventures to grumble, he gets a musket ball to pay him for his fish. The men here, at first, were against their fishing between this place and the sea; but the authorities stepped in, and said that the more food, the better ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... influence of the night air, he was coughing, and the next night found him breathless. His anger had at first vented itself against his mother, whom he refused to see, and thus the whole labour of nursing him was thrown on Kate. She didn't grumble at this, but it was terrible to have ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... she was monst'ous cross 'n' crabbed, but she warn't never cross ter me. I mind me of er Sat'day, 'n' I'd be spectin' of yer pappy home. I'd git up at th' fust cock-crow, 'n' go wake Melindy, 'n' she'd grumble 'n' laff all in er breath, 'n' say: 'Ann Elisabeth Tyler, ye're th' most onreasonablest creeter that I ever seed! What in natur' do ye want ter git up 'fore day fer? Jest ter make th' time that much longer 'fore Jim Tyler comes? I know ef I was ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... gloating,[14] and hanging down his head in a sullen, pouching manner; a body might read, as we used to say, the picture of ill-luck in his face; and when his father did demand his answer to such questions concerning his villainy, he would grumble and mutter at him, and that should be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... grumble in our Fatherland; every stupid thing, every contrary trifle, vexes us there; like boys, we are always longing to rush forth into the wide world, and, when we finally find ourselves there, we find it too wide, and often yearn in secret for the narrow stupidities and contrarieties of home. Yes, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... on the camp-stool in the centre, where she was to remain clapping her hands, to show she was not producing the manifestations. The gas was put out and darkness prevailed—darkness, but not silence. The disappointed and rejected committee men—and women—first began to grumble in the freedom which the darkness secured. The committee was a packed one. They were Spiritualists. This was vigorously denied by somebody, who said he saw a Press man in the circle, and therefore (such was his logic) he could not be a Spiritualist. All this time the Indescribable Phenomenon was ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... why they should get a meal ready merely because a timepiece says twelve o'clock. Let them wait until a man's hungry," he would grumble. Then, arrived at the cabin, he would be all ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... looked rather blankly at each other, and then the spokesman smiled. "Oh, well," he said, "if you have prohibited both of them, I don't see that we have anything to grumble at." ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... I ain't one o' them blokes as grumble cause a feller's 'ungry. Wot d'yer say to a bit o' cold meat and some ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... perhaps from habit, and then, as might have been expected, the same thing happened that occurs with the competitors for a university position, who openly exalt the qualifications and superiority of their opponents, later giving to understand that just the contrary was meant, and who murmur and grumble when they do not receive ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of an imaginary dialogue between Cato and Laelius. We found the first portion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refreshment (pocula quoedam vini).—All want to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it; therefore they are donkeys.—The lecturer will allow us to say that he is the donkey; we know we shall grumble at old age, but we want to live through youth and manhood, in spite of the troubles we shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... morning, as Cardo drove off to Caer Madoc to catch the train at the nearest station, "I mustn't grumble at losing him so soon; he is doing the right thing, poor fellow, and I hope in my heart he may find his wife and bring her home. What a happy party we shall be! The only thorn in my flesh will be Essec Powell; I don't think I can ever get over ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... again, "I dare say you ain't; but if she's willing, you ain't no occasion to grumble, 's I see. She ain't a-going to hear of your starting out hot-foot, 's if she wouldn't keep you. It'd look bad for the ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... the captain, Gallant Kid, commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapped in, Some to grumble, some to spew. "Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why, 'tis hardly three feet square; Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbor there?" "Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill."— "Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! Would to God they did so still; Then ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... looked over the long ridges that lay stretched in rows before him, he was vexed, and began to grumble, and say, "The harvest would be backward, and all things would go wrong." At the mere thought of which he frowned more and more, and uttered words of complaint against the heavens, because there was no rain; against the earth, because it was so dry and unyielding; ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... darkly when informed by his children that they had given shelter to a couple of travelers, one of whom had been wounded in a fight with a brigand, but he said nothing and appeared disposed to accept the situation without even a grumble. He did not, however, enter the chamber in which Giovanni lay and avoided coming in contact with Esperance, who caught but a passing glimpse of him ere he departed again on another expedition, which he did after a stay of only half an hour ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... Barwyke died without making a will, as you know," said Tom. "And all the folk round were sorry; that is to say, sir, as sorry as folk will be for an old man that has seen a long tale of years, and has no right to grumble that death has knocked an hour too soon at his door. The Squire was well liked; he was never in a passion, or said a hard word; and he would not hurt a fly; and that made what happened after his decease ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... parish wi' bastards, to see what ye'll mak o' that,' and away he went. He read Hooke's Pantheon, and made great use of the heathen deities. He railed sadly at the taxes; some one observed that he need not grumble at them as he had none to pay. 'Hae I no'?' he replied, 'I can neither get a pickle snuff to my neb, nor a pickle tea to my mouth, but they maun tax 't.' His sister and he were on very unfriendly terms. She was ill on one ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... mademoiselle; but can you say that these proofs are not in my hands? Should you, however, desire to buy them, you are at liberty to do so. I give you the first option, and yet you grumble." ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... destitute, that necessity forces them to steal whatever comes in their way; and the assistants are as much implicated as the prisoners. You'll fare hard; but just do as we do in a calm, wait for the wind to blow, and pray for the best. If you say any thing, or grumble about it, the sheriff will order you locked, up on the third story, and that's worse than death itself. The first thing you do, make preparations for something to eat. We pay for it here, but don't get it; and you'd starve ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... began to grumble at the length of these preparations: 'Do they expect us to dine here?' ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... under the heels of the new race. Mankind will be swamped and drowned in things of its own begetting! And all for nothing! Size! Mere size! Enlargement and da capo. Already we go picking our way among the first beginnings of the coming time. And all we do is to say 'How inconvenient!' To grumble ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... in succession declaring, with many "whews" and "ughs," that it was by all odds the coldest night yet. Undeniably we all felt proud of it, too. A spirited man rather welcomes ten or fifteen degrees extra, if so be they make the temperature superlatively low; while he would very likely grumble at a much less positive chilliness coupled with the disheartening feeling that he was enduring nothing extraordinary. The general exaltation of spirit and suspension of the conventionalities for the time being, which an extraordinarily, ...
— The Cold Snap - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... "Ef I begin to grumble I am lost," she said stoutly to herself. "Well, now, it seems to me a fine airy room," she said. "It is all as it strikes a body, o' course," she added, very politely; "but the room ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... riders on horseback began to grumble; for by police regulation they were not allowed to pass the hindmost of the cyclists; and they were kept back by my presence from following up their special champions. 'Give it up, Fraeulein, give it up!' they cried. 'You're beaten. Let us pass and get forward.' But at ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... disarmed Mr. Hamilton, and deprived him of his Englishman's right to grumble to his womankind: so he said, quite amiably, that they would wait for Parker's pleasure a little longer, and then relapsed ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... than it is now. Then there were no Acts of Parliament to control its affairs, and it regulated its own conduct much to its own satisfaction, without any outside interference. Of course, sometimes things were managed badly; but the village knew it had only itself to blame, and therefore could not grumble at the Government, or the fickleness of members of Parliament, or the unreasonable conduct of Local Government Boards. Was not the lord of the manor quite capable of trying all criminals? and did not the rector and the vestry ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... patience. First he began to annoy her with words, pretending to be disturbed, and saying that his men were very discontented with her low condition, and especially when they saw that she had children; and of the daughter, that she was born most unfortunately; and he did nothing but grumble. But the lady, hearing these words, without changing countenance or her demeanor in any way, said, "My lord, do with me what you think your honor and your comfort demand, and I shall be satisfied with everything, as I know that I am less than they, and that I was not worthy of this honor ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... it, Penhallow. I have personal memories of that young roast pig, I think your man called it a shoat. Your corps must have caught it hard these last days. I suppose we are in for something unusual. You are the only man I know who doesn't grumble. Francis says it's as natural to the beast called an army as barking is ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... and Jem Richards were now never getting any better. Melanctha now more and more needed to be with Rose Johnson. Rose still liked to have Melanctha come to her house and do things for her, and Rose liked to grumble to her and to scold her and to tell Melanctha what was the way Melanctha always should be doing so she could make things come out better and not always be so much in trouble. Sam Johnson in these days was always very good and gentle to Melanctha. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... terms one by one, shook hands all round, and vowed on the hilt of Amyas's sword to make fools of themselves no more, at least by jealousy: but to stand by each other and by their lady-love, and neither grudge nor grumble, let her dance with, flirt with, or marry with whom she would; and in order that the honor of their peerless dame, and the brotherhood which was named after her, might be spread through all lands, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... one should never practice any technical difficulty too long at a stretch. Young players sometimes forget this. I know that staccato playing was not easy for me at one time. I believe a real staccato is inborn; a knack. I used to grumble about it to Joachim and he told me once that musically staccato did not have much value. His own, by the way, was very labored and heavy. He admitted that he had none. Wieniawski had such a wonderful staccato that one finds much of it in his music. When I first began to ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... overcame her prudence, and being unable to conceal the jewels any longer, she one day said to me, "Bourrienne, there is to be a large party here to-morrow, and I absolutely must wear my pearls. But you know he will grumble if he notices them. I beg, Bourrienne, that you will keep near me. If he asks me where I got my pearls I must tell him, without hesitation, that I have had them a ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... or "redheads," who sing their sweet, merry tunes all summer, and if they do take a cherry or two the farmer should not grumble. They destroy many bugs and caterpillars and eat weed-seeds that might trouble the fruit-grower more than the missing cherries. The yellow warbler, sometimes called the wild canary, flits through bush and tree and trills its gay notes in town and country. ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... with bank bills drawn through their fingers, who are prepared to receive your 50c. It is not unusual to hear a great deal of indignation expressed by travellers on such occasions. No man has a right to grumble at the fare which hospitality sets before him. But when he buys a dinner at a liberal price, in a country where provisions are abundant, he has a right to expect something which will sustain life and health. Those individuals who have the privilege of furnishing meals to railroad travellers ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... bleak early spring with snow on the uplands of Thrace. For those who travel from Paris to Constantinople on that Western moving shuttle, the Orient Express, there would be nothing to trouble the mind unpleasantly—except in that the more comfortable we are, the more we demand and the more we grumble. But if you travel by the ordinary unheated train, where even the first-class carriages are more or less bereft of glass and have the windows loosely boarded up with bits of old packing-cases, you taste something of the persistent northern wind which blows down sleet ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... Lord willed it so, I do not grumble, your Excellency. That's what you should have said, or something in this spirit. Governors, my dear, are very fond of ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... custards and nibble the cake the gallants cram the cake and gulp the punch. The fiddler-improvisator disappears, reappears, and with crumbs on his breast and pan-gravy and punch on his breath remounts his seat; and the couples are again on the floor. The departing thunders grumble as they go, the rain falls more and more sparingly, and now it is a waltz, and now a quadrille, and now it's a reel again, with Miss Sallie or Louise or Laura or Lucille or Miss Flora "a-comin' ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Time flies because we fain would fly, It is such ardent souls as you and I, Greedy of living, give his wings to him— And now we grumble that ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... Clematis started to grumble again, but when she looked into the mirror above the wash stand, there was the river, smiling at ...
— Clematis • Bertha B. Cobb
... can grumble at the farmers, acause you deals with them first-hand; but you be too stupid to do aught but hunt by sight. I be an old dog, and I hunts cunning. I sees farther than my nose, I does, I larnt politics to London when I was a prentice; and I ain't forgotten the plans of it. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... she cried, "He's been behind my back long enough. If he never did no worse things behind my back than I do behind his, he wouldn't have cause to grumble. You read me what ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... people at home. As to the law that the colony shall trade only with the mother country, my husband says that this is the rule in the colonies of Spain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands, and that the people here, who can obtain what land they choose and till it without rent, should not grumble at paying this small tax to the mother country. However it be, I fear that troubles will come, and, this place being the head and focus of the party hostile to England, my husband, feeling himself out of accord with all his neighbors, saying a few ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... it is no worse. He that leaps into a volcano, counting it but a puddle, shall not find it a puddle, but a volcano. You have played with firebrands, Mr Louvaine, and must not marvel nor grumble to feel the ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of the Wapshot girls had not the preference in the marriage, and the remaining baronets of the county were indignant at their comrade's misalliance. Never mind the commoners, whom we will leave to grumble anonymously. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... paying; there were ways and means. He sent up country, and the team came down, six thin, overworked creatures, with new scars upon their slack and baggy hides, and hollow flanks, and ribs that showed painfully. Smoots Beste was about to grumble, but he changed his mind, and took the letter, buttoning it up in the flapped pocket of his tan-cord jacket, and the long whip cracked like a revolver as the lash hissed out over the backs of the wincing oxen, and the white tilt rocked ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... twinkle, there is implied a frequency, or iteration of small acts. And the same frequency of acts, but less subtile by reason of the clearer vowel a, is indicated in jangle, tangle, spangle, mangle, wrangle, brangle, dangle; as also in mumble, grumble, jumble. But at the same time the close u implies something obscure or obtunded; and a congeries of consonants mbl, denotes a confused kind of rolling or tumbling, as in ramble, scamble, scramble, wamble, amble; but in these there is ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... danger of being carried away; and I have more than once seen deputations of this sort sent about their business, followed by a wrathful flow of well-selected oaths that are only used by persons who have a very resourceful vocabulary. It is not an uncommon thing for men to grumble and refuse to go aloft and furl a royal or topgallant sail when it has been carried too long; and I have seen the captain spring up the rigging and appeal to their manliness to follow him. This challenge rarely fails to bring forth volunteers, and those ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... It almost seemed that their meager allowance of a pint and a half each for the twenty-four hours did little more than increase their thirst. They could not safely alter their unpleasant situation, however, and they wisely made the best of it and did not grumble. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... for weeks upon the bare stone floor," mused Raymond, as he sat down again upon his bed. "Sure I need not grumble that I have such a ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the matter a dignity and importance really startling to the waif. If he and what happened to him were worth mentioning to the Lord he had no right to grumble about them; and, during that few moments upon his knees, there was born in the boy's heart a self-respect that was never after ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... the attractive riddle of what they look like. And there are, of course, certain superfine persons who, in the case of a famous artist, think very like the sitter, and are satisfied so long as they get an ornamental picture, or one well up to date. But the truly human grumble, and are more than justified in doing so. Their cravings have been disappointed; they had expected the impossible, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... even the most well-beaten paths new at the thousandth time of traversing them is our ignorance of what may be waiting round the next turn of the road. The veil that hangs before and hides the future is a blessing, though we sometimes grumble at it, and sometimes petulantly try to make pinholes through it, and peep in to see a little of what is behind it. It brings freshness into our lives, and a possibility of anticipation, and even ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... will were forcing him to carry out his design. And his sister seemed almost hard-hearted to him, as if she were thrusting him away to get rid of him. He did not, indeed, dare to say this openly, but he began to grumble and complain a good deal about it, and Barefoot looked upon this as suppressed grief over parting—the feeling that would gladly take advantage of little obstacles and represent them as hindrances to the fulfilment of a purpose one ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... thing—Or, let me rather say it myself: These poets are turning everything upside down; nobody dares to grumble. An author might owe in unsecured debts his twenty thousand—what of it? He is unable to pay, that is all. What if a business man should act in this manner? What if he were to obtain wine or clothes on false ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... principle, and partly from necessity, he ceased to grumble, and from that time forth it was wonderful how much less unpleasant even external things appeared, and how much his health benefited by the tranquillity of spirits thus produced. He was willing to be pleased with all that was done with that intent; and as he grew better, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... old hombogs! He sall growl and grumble But he vill pay ven it come to ze pinches; I know him, ze cantankerous vieux chappie. Ze German yonder, vy he take ze inches, And get ze Hel-igoland! Now he quite happy. I do ze same. Pom! Pom! Zat blast vos thunder! How he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... wedding present. This separated my wife from her mother, and also from several other dear friends. But the incessant cruelty of her old mistress made the change of owners or treatment so desirable, that she did not grumble much ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... they grumble, Having not got all they want; Neither are they longer humble, Which but ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... out of your compass, To encroach on his art by writing of bombast; And has taken just now a firm resolution To answer your style without circumlocution. Lady Betty[2] presents you her service most humble, And is not afraid your worship will grumble, That she make of your verses a hoop for Miss Tam.[3] Which is all at present; and ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... right," persisted Tommy. "You give me my grub and a shake-down and, say, sixpence a week, and I'll grumble less than ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... absolute dominion in our streets and lanes. We have suffered; we shall suffer; but our suffering is nought and less than nought weighed against the suffering on the Continent. Why, in the midst of a war of unparalleled horror, we grumble if a train is late! We can talk calmly of fighting Germany to a stand-still, even if the job takes two years, and it behooves us to talk so, and to prepare for the task; and for myself I am convinced ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... painter, and a friend of Henry's. When he comes here, as he does very often, he puts us all in a good-humor; even my father-in-law forgets to grumble at the reduced price of stocks and the increased rate of exchange. His picture of Circe charming the pigs is very pretty. Helen and I are both in it; he wanted her ear and hair and my eyes and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... kept faithfully at his task—a pleasant one possibly, but just a thought too much like hard work to be quite entertaining in a novel. Apart from all this and an occasional obscure sentence there is nothing much to grumble at in a story that tells how David, the sailor, unlearned in the ways of ladies, became engaged for insufficient reasons to one Theo, only to fall promptly in love with another, certainly much nicer, called Nancy; and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... very soon they had completed the work necessary for the protection of all. The tools of the enemy "casualties," the spades and picks left behind in deserted villages, were all gladly piled on to the French soldiers' knapsacks, to be carried willingly by the very men who used to grumble at being loaded with even the smallest regulation tool. As soon as night had set in on the occasion of a lull in the fighting, the digging of the trenches was begun. Sometimes, in the darkness, the men of each fighting nation—less than 500 yards away from their enemy—would ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... havin' the willin' hands that can turn to a'most anything. If ye'd seen me diggin' for goold, bad luck to it, ye'd belaive what I tell ye. Ah!" he added with a sigh, "it's a rich man I'd have been this day if that ship had only kep' afloat a few hours longer. Well, well, I needn't grumble, when me own comrades, that thought it so safe in the Blankow Bank, are about as badly off as me. When was it they began to suspec' the bank ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... from the South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... a hundred," answered Noah, snapping his fingers, "and make no bones of it. And harkee, my worthy—lay out every farthing of them in the fare. Let there be good cheer, and no one will grumble at the bill. I am ready to buy the inn, and all ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the same house as before; the only change is a different place for the summer holiday, and, perhaps, the dress-circle instead of the stalls at a theatre. To a man with L200 a week the loss of L20 a week hardly makes any difference at all. He may grumble; he may drop a motor, or a yacht, but in his ordinary daily life he feels no change. To a docker making twenty shillings a week the difference of two shillings is not merely important, it is vital. The addition of it may mean three ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... they must check speed or perhaps stop. This was a species of insult to the "Flying Dutchman," whose way ought to have been kept perfectly clear, for even a check of speed would inevitably cause the loss of several minutes. With an indignant grumble John Marrot cut off steam, but immediately the signals were lowered and he was allowed to go on. Again, in a few minutes, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... a part of the larry! We've been found to be the greatest gentlefolk in the whole county—reaching all back long before Oliver Grumble's time—to the days of the Pagan Turks—with monuments, and vaults, and crests, and 'scutcheons, and the Lord knows what all. In Saint Charles's days we was made Knights o' the Royal Oak, our real name being d'Urberville! ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... he answered, "and I am not going to grumble at the change, seeing that this is holiday time. Berthun came to me last evening, and called me aside, and said that it was the king's wont to dress his folk anew at the time of the Witan, and then wanted ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... in the afterglow. In the colonnade of the Palais Royal the shadows were deepening and growing colder. A steady stream of people poured in and out of the Metro. Green buses stuffed with people kept passing. The roar of the traffic and the clatter of footsteps and the grumble of voices swirled like dance music about Andrews's head. He noticed all at once that the rabbit man stood in front of him, a rabbit dangling forgotten at the end of ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... after day and through the nights, and still there was nothing to be seen but water. The men had several times given vent to their discontent, and now began to grumble again. Columbus soothed them and reminded them of the reward that awaited them when they had attained their goal. "Besides, their complaints were useless, for I have sailed out to reach India, and intend to prolong my voyage until, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... which 'CANNING'S SELF' might have envied! This occasional cleanliness is not the thing that an English or an American husband wants: he wants it always; indoors as well as out; by night as well as by day; on the floor as well as on the table; and, however he may grumble about the 'fuss' and the 'expense' of it, he would grumble more if he had it not. I once saw a picture representing the amusements of Portuguese Lovers; that is to say, three or four young men, dressed in gold or silver laced clothes, each having a young ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... age there were blossoming, side by side, the meekness of Hooker, the subtlety of Bacon, the platonic dream of Spenser, the imperturbable wisdom of Shakespeare. Raleigh had no part in any of these, and to complain of that would be to grumble because a hollyhock is neither a violet nor a rose. He had his enemies during his life and his detractors ever since, and we may go so far as to admit that he deserves them. He was a typical man of that heroic age in ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... often to wonder why the Sydney people hadn't managed to have something like them all these years, instead of the miserable cockatoo things at Homebush that we'd often heard the drovers and squatters grumble about. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... sir knight, it is a marvel to myself. But I am a man who may grutch and grumble, but when I have set my face to do a thing I will not turn my back upon it until it be done. There is one, Francois Villet, at Cahors, who will send me wine-casks for my cloth-bales, so to Cahors I will go, though all the robber-knights of Christendom were ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... eerie, that he should be there at all, a part of Mr. Jermyn's plan, fitting into it exactly, though undreamed of by me. Would indeed that all Mr. Jermyn's plans had carried through so well. But it was not to be. One ought not to grumble. ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... it, underneath birches and hemlocks, I improvised my hearthstone. In sleeping on the ground it is a great advantage to have a back-log; it braces and supports you, and it is a bedfellow that will not grumble when, in the middle of the night, you crowd sharply up against it. It serves to keep in the warmth, also. A heavy stone or other point DE RÉSISTANCE at your feet is also a help. Or, better still, scoop out a little place in the earth, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... almost a walk over. Still, though it was certain that we should have a hard time whenever war came, we have been hoping for years that England would at last interfere to obtain redress for us, and we must not grumble now that what we have been so long expecting has at last come to pass. I believe there will be some stern fighting. The Boers are no cowards; courage is, indeed, as far as I know, the only virtue they possess. In ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... non-existent. Their rifles lay on the saturated mound in front. They were all wet through and through, with a great deal of their equipment below the water at the bottom of the trench. There they were, taking it all as a necessary part of the great game; not a grumble ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... kept very fashionable hours, and always waited dinner for himself till nine o'clock, there was still plenty of time; so, with a loud grumble about the trouble, he seized a large basket in his hand, and set off at a rapid pace towards the fairy Teach-all's garden. It was very seldom that Snap-'em-up ventured to think of foraging in this direction, as he never once succeeded ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... her breakfast, and had withdrawn her thoughts from the engrossing subject of her dream sufficiently to grumble about the aching void where the chops should have been, she sprang up from the table and ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... Lincoln sent for Senator Zack Chandler of Michigan, and proposed a compromise. "General Rosecrans," said he, "has a great many friends; he fought the battle of Stone River and won a brilliant victory, and his advocates begin to grumble about his treatment. Now, I will tell you what I have been thinking about. If you will confirm Schofield in the Senate, I will remove him from the command in Missouri and send him down to Sherman. That will satisfy the radicals. Then I will send Rosecrans ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... not grumble, little wife," he said, cheerily, "but be thankful that things are no worse. And, do you know, I trust it will prove to have been a good providence; inasmuch as it gives us an opportunity to make an effort to rescue these poor ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... Byronic spirit of indifference to events and scorn of trifles,—we say it is "melodramatic," completely forgetting that our attitude towards ourselves and things in general is one of most pitiable bathos. We cannot write Childe Harold, but we can grumble at both bed and board in every hotel under the sun; we can discover teasing midges in the air and questionable insects in the rooms; and we can discuss each bill presented to us with an industrious persistence ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... respects a hard life, and at all times is attended with a fair amount of risk, but you cannot make omelets without breaking eggs, and if any one chooses to spend his life running to earth men who are waging war against Society, well, he must not grumble if he receives ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... those kind of puddings, especially when they are made with strawberry jam. Oh dear, how I envy Alexander Selkirk on his desert island! I am sure he never had any nasty old lessons to learn, and I think he was very stupid to grumble over his solitude when he could do every day simply what he pleased. Well, if I must study, I must; so, here goes," and, drawing the despised grammar towards her once more, Winnie set herself steadily to master part of ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... certain celebrated character, (not "Quintus Curtius," but Geoffrey Crayon, I believe,) that the time we spend in journeying is just so much subtracted from our little span of days, what a fearful loss of life must have resulted from our old modes of locomotion! And yet we inconsiderately grumble at an occasional smash-up! So easily are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... quarantine. The officers of a ship are generally taciturn, surly, and exacting; and the crew are unhappy, discontented, disposed to grumble, and ready to quarrel and fight on the most trivial occasions, and often without any occasion whatever. At the expiration of ten protracted days after we let go our anchor in the outer harbor of Gottenburg, we were again honored with a visit from the health officer. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... A grumble came from the hall without. Evidently his charge, if we may so designate the fellow he had brought there, had his own ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... the order with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him with a ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... earnestly that she liked it better every day. "You must come and see me," said the curly-haired little girl, whose name was Arline Thayer. "We recite Livy in the same section, so we have something in common to grumble about. Isn't the lesson for to-morrow ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... piecemeal destruction, went on till sickness and the lateness of the season put the English in a sorry fix. The sack of the city had yielded much less than that of San Domingo; and the men, who were all volunteers, to be paid out of plunder, began to grumble at their ill-success. Many had been wounded, several killed—big, faithful Tom Moone among them. A hundred died. More were ill. Two councils of war were held, one naval, the other military. The military officers agreed ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... "Bah! you always grumble. One would think you were one of your own subjects. Let me hear, Henriquet, how you have governed this kingdom ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble and rumble and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan twenty miles away. And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horizon's bar, And louder yet into Winchester rolled The roar of that red sea uncontrolled, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... saying much the same thing regularly every year. Before it is delivered, my speech (like the Queen's) is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out not to be the novelty anticipated, though they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen—that's the moral of it. After breakfast, Mr. Franklin and I had a private conference on ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... my brother, to one who, like myself, is old and sickly and not far from his eternal habitation. Yet why should I grumble at it who need no such reminder of that which awaits me and all of us?" and he leaned back in his chair and sighed, while ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... prudent never have large hours; nor should you, if you want to be comfortable. And you get your reward, I am told, in living longer; in having, that is, a few more of those years that cluster round the end, during which you are fed and carried and washed by persons who generally grumble. Who wants to be a flame, doomed to be blown out by the same gust of wind that has first fanned it to its very brightest? If you are not a flame you cannot, of course, be blown out. Gusts no longer shake you. Tempests ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... rush. We might get good rain now, and, anyway, it wouldn't cost much to put the potatoes in. If they came on well, it would be a few pounds in my pocket; if the crop was a failure, I'd have a better show with Mary next time she was struck by an idea outside housekeeping, and have something to grumble about when I ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... his old post at the russet apple, and went up the meadow to the horse-chestnut trees that he himself had planted, and there, in peace and quietness and soft cool shadow, waded about in the dew, without any one to grumble ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... dear, I can't say as I don't prefer the summer; but there!—the Almighty sends it, and it must be right, and I don't think folks have a right to grumble and go rushing off to them foreign parts, a-leaving their own country and the weather God gives them, because they say they must have sunshine. I allays thinks they've no sunshine in their hearts, or they wouldn't be so up and down ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... daresay you'll miss them when you are away, for all your scolding when you are with them. No, no, I don't mean that you are unkind to them, but you do grumble a lot! All the same I won't be unjust, and I know that you ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... he had hardly left his lodgings before their hush was interrupted by the grumble of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... slunk back to his fellows. There was a grumble that died away in a minute or two, and Terence, turning on the other side, ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... when he became more absorbed in reflectiveness, and seemed to have less taste for conversation. However, he was perfectly cheerful; there were no further symptoms to excite alarm. Nor did the brooding period last very long. The only permanent change was that he ceased to grumble at his hard lot, and appeared to find his ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... o'clock when they returned to the theater. The rehearsal of the day's performance was in full swing. Cabinski was about to grumble at them for coming late, but Majkowska gave him such a crushing look that he merely ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... power gradually diminishes in the same way as it increased—the peals become less loud and less frequent, the lightning feebler and less brilliant, until at length it seems to take another course, and after a few exhausted volleys it dies away with a hoarse grumble in the distance. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Mrs. Day, who did not grumble, but who nevertheless knew herself to be a martyr, would rise from her delicious rest in her chair over the fire, accompanied by Deleah to hold the candle, would descend to the cellar to cut the cheese—both ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... spot six hundred feet higher, where I halted for a while on a rocky island fairly clear of snow. As coolie after coolie arrived, breathing convulsively, he dropped his load and sat quietly by the side of it. There was not a grumble, not a word of reproach for the hard work they were made to endure. Sleet was falling, and the wet and cold increased the discomfort. There was now a very steep pull before us. To the left, we had a glacier beginning in a precipitous fall of ice, about one hundred feet in height. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... steak, and ham, and eggs, and cold chickens, and fish balls, and hot rolls, and corn cakes, and brown bread-all prepared so nice and delicately, that even the most fastidious could have found nothing to grumble at. Indeed it was said of the the landlord of the "Independent Temperance," that he spared neither pains nor expense in the management of his house, which had gained much fame over the country, though it had thrice made him a bankrupt with three score of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the cook's sleeve was ever above the elbow. Countrymen came down from distant villages into towns and cities, to see perverters whom they had never heard of, and to learn the righteousness of hatred. When heretics waxed fewer the religious began to grumble that God, in losing his enemies, had ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... though he lived at Strassburg up to 1521, did not join the standard of the Reformation. He had learned to grumble, to find fault, to abuse, and to condemn; but his time was gone when the moment for action arrived. And yet he helped toward the success of the Reformation in Germany. He had been one of the first, after the discovery of printing, to use the German language for political purposes. His fly-sheets, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Jew than with a Christian. The former will "jew" me perhaps, but his commercial cleverness will induce him to allow me some gain in order that I may not be quite disheartened: the latter will strip me of my skin and will grumble because ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Clod. Never grumble, Nor fling a discontent upon my pleasure, It must and shall be done: give me some wine, And fill it till it leap upon my lips: [wine Here's to the foolish maidenhead you wot of, The toy ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... them all. Poor Shanks; he was a peculiar mortal. He would laugh at men in pain, and think it sympathy. If we could get no food or drink on the march, after having wearily toiled away for hours, he would not be disposed to grumble—he would laugh. Such tragic incidents as the pony jumping over the precipice ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... as well as before, and better—for I was frank with him and knowledgeable. He couldn't understand missionaries, real or sham: but he understood a square deal, and didn't charge interest on bowels of mercy. His only grumble was, 'I'll put you on your honour. Tell me, please, there's no more of you hereabouts. It's a long passage to and fro: and if you're a man, you'll see that I'm almost as crowded as you are lonesome. Don't start me beating all this brush ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of industrial economy is, that there is hardly any amount of business which may not be done, if people will be content to do it on small profits; and this all active and intelligent persons in business perfectly well know: but even those who comply with the necessities of their time grumble at what they comply with, and wish that there were less capital,(257) or, as they express it, less competition, in order that there might be greater profits. Low profits, however, are a different thing from deficiency of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... prized by the winter sportsman more than any other bird in the bag. In the first place, there is its scarcity. Half a dozen to every hundred pheasants would in most parts of the country be considered a proportion at which none could grumble, and there are many days on which not one is either seen or shot. Again, there is the bird's twisting flight, which, particularly inside the covert, makes it anything but an easy target. Third and last, it is better to eat than any other of our ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... which lay somewhere at its bottom. But the man was stout in heart and full of hope. He set his seamen to work to drag along the coast, and for weeks they went on fishing up sea-weed, shingle, and bits of rock. No occupation could be more trying to seamen, and they began to grumble one to another, and to whisper that the man in command had brought them on a ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... and continued at it for near two years together, felling Timber, and fetching it out of the Woods, laying Foundations, hewing Stone, till they were almost killed with labour. And being wrought quite tyred, they began to accuse and grumble at one another for having been the occasion of all this toil. After they had laboured thus a long while, and were all discouraged, and the People quiet, the King sent word to them to leave off. And now it ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... subject to French dictation. Being himself generally an old Cavalier, or the son of an old Cavalier, he reflected with bitter resentment on the ingratitude with which the Stuarts had requited their best friends. Those who heard him grumble at the neglect with which he was treated, and at the profusion with which wealth was lavished on the bastards of Nell Gwynn and Madam Carwell, would have supposed him ripe for rebellion. But all this ill humour lasted only till the throne was really in danger. It was precisely when ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hold bonds and mortgages as her own. In our State she has a right to her own property. She can not sell it, though, if it is real estate, simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time right. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies owning real estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third, which is called the widow's dower. Now I think the man ought to have the rental value of one-third of the woman's maiden ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... and said that he could not carry his new cousin any farther. The miller glanced beneath him at the great waste of waters and begged him to make an effort to reach the land on the other side. Giving vent to a deep-throated grumble, February obeyed, and at last set him down outside the walls of the town where the castle of the Princess Starbright was situated. The miller entered the town and came to an inn, and, having ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... times. Folks are passing through, one way or the other, all day. It is not for us innkeepers to grumble, but peace and quiet are all we want, about here. These constant wars and troubles are our ruin. The growers are all afraid to send their wine to market; for many of these armed bands are no better than brigands, and think much more of robbing, and ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... were asked to sit for their portraits to Phillips. Though Byron was willing, and even thought it an honour, Southey pretended to grumble. To Miss Barker he wrote (November ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... referring to the appointment of Dr. Michaelis, says "there is no chance of his clubbing together with the big industrialists and misguided agitators." So long however as they are clubbed separately we shall not grumble. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... /n./ Designed by Bjarne Stroustrup of AT&T Bell Labs as a successor to {C}. Now one of the {languages of choice}, although many hackers still grumble that it is the successor to either Algol 68 or {Ada} (depending on generation), and a prime example of {second-system effect}. Almost anything that can be done in any language can be done in C, but it requires a {language lawyer} to know what ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the men, had breakfasted. A species of sullen discontent pervaded the ship, and the recent kind feelings toward Raoul Yvard had nearly vanished in disappointment. Some began to grumble about the chances of the other ships falling in with the lugger, while others swore "that it mattered not who saw her; catch her none could, who had not an illicit understanding with the Father of Lies. She was well named the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Peters replied. "Our claims are pegged out by Government, so why should we grumble at others having a look in ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... would!" said Enid laughing. "Much too nice for us. They choose the driest books possible for schools. Patty, why don't you grumble too? It's quite aggravating to see you looking ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... not to afford even the pleasure of laughing at them,' said Bertha. 'Nay, just worthy enough'—she said it spitefully—'not even to give the relief of a good grumble.' ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Marthy'd say, 'Ain't everything predestined? Warn't this drought app'inted before the foundation of the world? What's the sense in grumblin' over the decrees of God?' And it got so that if Amos wanted to grumble over anything, he had to git away from home first, and that must 'a' been mighty wearin' on him; for, as a rule, a man never does any grumblin' except at home; but pore Amos didn't have that privilege. Sam Amos used to say—-Sam wasn't a ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... to know he had hardly left his lodgings before their hush was interrupted by the grumble of the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... "I dare say you ain't; but if she's willing, you ain't no occasion to grumble, 's I see. She ain't a-going to hear of your starting out hot-foot, 's if she wouldn't keep you. It'd look bad for the reputation of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... state of industrial economy is, that there is hardly any amount of business which may not be done, if people will be content to do it on small profits; and this all active and intelligent persons in business perfectly well know: but even those who comply with the necessities of their time grumble at what they comply with, and wish that there were less capital,(257) or, as they express it, less competition, in order that there might be greater profits. Low profits, however, are a different thing from deficiency ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... intolerable. The sun shone in on the left through the high windows, imparting to the vapor opaline tints—the palest rose and tender blue, fading into soft grays. When the women began to grumble the boy Charles went from one window to the other, drawing down the heavy linen shades. Then he crossed to the other side, the shady side, and opened the blinds. There was a general exclamation of ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... ordinary, common people our teeth would chatter naturally with cold when we have to go to bed without fires in our rooms in December; but we pretend we like sleeping in "well-aired rooms"—at least I have to. Grandmamma simply says we are obliged to make these small economies, and to grumble would be to ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... things they make to those who do nothing, and that they should be very thankful to God and to the idlers for being allowed to have even the very worst food to eat and the rags, and broken boots to wear. He also tells them that they mustn't grumble, or be discontented because they're poor in this world, but that they must wait till they're dead, and then God will reward them by letting them go to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... flayed them alive. I should like above everything to find out the writers of these letters, in order to have them flogged; but they have taken good care to put no signatures. I regard it as a very great impertinence for those who caused these disturbances to grumble and express their disapproval at my efforts to bring them to an end." After this speech, M, de Baville saw there was nothing for him to do but to let ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... agreed the good woman. "But, there! how the baggage men do grumble at having to lug up big trunks like yours and ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... temptation to value manners above morals, and pleasantness above honesty, is one that all of us have to guard against. And when we have held to a custom merely because it is old, have refused to consider fairly the reasons for its change, and are inclined to grumble when the change is carried out, we shall be none the worse for thinking of the people, young and old, who, in the time of Harrison and Shakspere, the "Forgotten Worthies"[82] and Raleigh, no doubt 'hated those nasty new oak houses and chimnies,' ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... Melanctha and Jem Richards were now never getting any better. Melanctha now more and more needed to be with Rose Johnson. Rose still liked to have Melanctha come to her house and do things for her, and Rose liked to grumble to her and to scold her and to tell Melanctha what was the way Melanctha always should be doing so she could make things come out better and not always be so much in trouble. Sam Johnson in these days was always very good and gentle to Melanctha. Sam was ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... head—medicine, charged ten and six; firing and broken windows, two pounds; &c.:—what most unlucky things turn up on a Friday! I much wish I had not advertised Albert to-day—no one will come." With these observations, and a consolatory grumble about Christmas coming but once a year, Mr. Brown seeks repose beside his consort; whilst the Waits make the lowing wind, the frigid vegetation, and the rattling shutters, dance again to ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... good terms, but not familiar, with his messmates, and very respectful to the captain. There was no other officer in the service who would have suited Captain Delmar so well as Mr Hippesley, who, although he might occasionally grumble at not being promoted, appeared on the whole to be very indifferent ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... was to have little peace that night! Hardly had Dick finished his grumble and sauntered away, before her husband's step was ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... of vital importance to the success of the company. To manage a business with greatest advantage quite as much ready cash is needed as is invested in the plant, otherwise the banker's discount becomes a heavy lien on the profits, and the stockholders grumble at small dividends. ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... march try the courage of the brave man more than the din of battle, and robs the military career of much of its boasted enthusiasm. The stalwart son of Mars, who forgets there are such things as danger and fatigue in the exciting hour of battle, will grumble his discontent at the inconveniences of the hour of peace. We will leave it to the imagination of the reader to conceive the feelings, the regrets and misgivings, of our young heroines as their little vessel set sail from the town of Spezzia for the fortress of Messina. Although ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... unreasonable to grumble at the overheating of the "Sleeper" after abusing the under-heating of our British railways. Surely, though, there is a golden mean? I wish neither to be frozen nor boiled, and there can be no doubt but that the heating of most Continental trains is excellent, the power of application being left ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... though that saucy, stubborn generation, the Jews, were forbidden it; for what would they have done, well pamper'd with fat pork, that durst murmur at their Maker out of garlick and onions? 'Slight! fed with it, the whoreson strummel-patch'd, goggle-eyed grumble-dories, would have gigantomachised — RE-ENTER GEORGE WITH WINE. Well said, my sweet ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... thing for governments to compel all those who travel by ships, to provide themselves with a life-preserver. By this cheap and simple contrivance, I am prepared to show that thousands of lives would be annually saved; and no one would grumble at either the cost or inconvenience of carrying so ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... perfectly satisfactory, Evelyn. If I am satisfied, who should have the right to grumble? The pain of losing you is better than the pleasure of winning anybody else.... So you think, Evelyn, you will never return ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Annie; nay, as the doctor and Miss Danesbury both declared that, however culpable Annie might have been in causing the accident, she had saved little Nan's life by her wonderful skill in soothing her to sleep on the first night of her illness, Hester had felt obliged to grumble something which might have been ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... are compelled to give up the ideal of radical cure, our best advice to syphilitic patients, as to those with old tuberculosis, is that after they have had two years of good treatment, they should submit to examination once or twice a year, and not grumble if they are called upon to carry life insurance in the form of occasional short courses of treatment for the ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... the lonely pleasureless life of a Mussulman woman. As a worthy representative of persons of her age and country, she never for a moment ceased scolding her grandson from under her blanket, and to grumble to herself. "Kess," (be quiet,) she cried at length, yet more angrily, "or I will give you to the ghaouls, (devils!) Do you hear how they are scratching at the roof, and knocking at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... think you were a rabid Protectionist who reads your howls about imported plays. Art is universal, not local—I read that in some real high-toned book—and if a play is good, don't worry whether its author is French or German or American. You don't grumble if he is Norwegian. Why not? Do be consistent even if you cannot be broad-minded. And, lastly, let the Censor alone; you have flung enough mud at him; I am tired of reading energetic attacks which you know quite well are mere beating of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... should be peevish and cry out; some men did so from their hearts, admiring the Duke of Marlborough's prodigious talents, and deploring the disgrace of the greatest general the world ever knew: 'twas the stomach that caused other patriots to grumble, and such men cried out because they were poor, and paid to do so. Against these my Lord Bolingbroke never showed the slightest mercy, whipping a dozen into prison or into the pillory without ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... flogging which they thought he so richly deserved; for Michael was a great favorite among them, and they could not bear to see him abused. But I believe they contented themselves with letting off ever so many vials of wrath, in the shape of words; and Jake Grumble, finding how ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... as he leaned against the rudder, "There's nothing to grumble at; Timar knows what to do." With the courage of despair Trikaliss drew his dagger out of his girdle in order to cut the rope himself; but the steersman pointed toward the stern, and what Trikaliss saw there ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... the want of propriety In forming our city so crooked and long; Our ancestors, bless them, were fond of variety— 'Tis naughty to say that they ever were wrong! Tho' strangers may grumble, and thro' the streets and stumble, Take care they don't tumble through crevices small, For trap-doors we've plenty, on sidewalk and entry, And no one stands sentry to ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... behaved as an American People's Club knows so well how to behave; dispersed quietly, without a grumble, or a recollection of the half value of the tickets lost. Miss Kent's carriage drove rapidly from a side door. In two hours, she was on board the night train ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the officer abusing you? The orders are for all to advance!' Whereupon the rest of them marched right past their captain and up to me. [8] Of course the captain called them back, and they began to grumble and growl: 'Which of the two are we to obey? One tells us to advance, the ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... many as twenty thousand men, besides donkeys, working on the roads at one time. Unaccustomed to public improvements of this nature, and, no doubt, failing to see their advantages in a country practically without vehicles, the people have sometimes ventured to grumble at the rather arbitrary proceeding of making them work for nothing, and board themselves; and it has been found expedient to make them believe that they were doing the preliminary grading for a railway that was shortly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of coming back again where it is possible to do as we please, I won't grumble about what we are obliged to eat," Neal said, with a ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... But notwithstanding our philosopher's grumble, he enjoyed his shore leave to the utmost, and he and Dennis came back on the evening boat hilarious as could be and reciprocally dependent upon one another ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... to grumble that she was more interested in her work than she was in him, which was probably true, because her development had been a slow one, and it could not be said that she was greatly in love with anything in the world save her ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... the banks of the tank and sat down by the well to eat some of the food which she had with her. In the fields below the tank were some twenty ploughmen in the service of the Raja of that country, driving their ploughs; and when it got past noon these men began to grumble, because; no one had brought them their dinner; as it got later and later they became more and more violent, and vowed that when anyone did come they would give him a good beating for his laziness. At last one of the maid-servants ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... and I did so, according to the previous practice. I might have pocketed 30 by that transaction; but if I had done so, the fishermen would have thought I had treated them dishonestly.' '10,010. Were they going to grumble?-I have no doubt some of them would have grumbled if they had not got the additional price. I would not say that all of them would have grumbled, because there are some of our fishermen who are very intelligent and very reasonable men, and who would have understood ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... him unintelligible bellowings, that he was to wait in that narrow damp lobby for the coming of his fellow- Commissioner, the grating on his feelings was even more discordant. He had not pluck enough left to grumble: but he grunted his displeasure. He grunted, however, in vain; for in about a quarter of an hour Alaric was close to him, shoulder to shoulder. He also wore a white jacket, &c., with a nightcap of mud and candle ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... can believe it might, from those huge hands. The man wrenched himself about with an oath of inquiry and pain. I could hear one side of what followed. The captain's high-pitched tones carried clearly; but the grumble and growl of the mate were indistinguishable ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... all go from him to his enemies! And the things themselves were to himself of so very little value! Living alone at Scumberg's was not a pleasant life. Even going out in his brougham at nights was not very pleasant to him. He could do as he liked at Como, and people wouldn't grumble;—but what was there even at Como that he really liked to do? He had a half worn out taste for scenery which he had no longer energy to gratify by variation. It had been the resolution of his life to live without control, and now, at four and forty, he found that the life he had chosen was utterly ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Charlie's deep voice. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she heard Aunt Isabel's voice, no louder than uncle Charlie's but more penetrating; it had a queer note in it—almost as if she were crying. Suddenly she did cry out!—And then Uncle Charlie's deep grumble again. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... success. The world's benefactors are the world's hard workers. "Tickle the earth with a hoe, and it will laugh at you with a harvest." But it closes its fists against those who extend to it an idle hand. Many people contend that the world owes them a living, and grumble that it does not pay the debt. What have they done for the world to bring it into their debt? The world owes every man a living when he earns it by honest toil, and not before. Those who sow with a stingy hand may expect ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... Malcolm said; "but in any case I am sure your wit would have come to the rescue, and you would have said that you had in fact bought them from your savings; but that thinking your husband might grumble at your little economies you had thought it best to say that they ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... especially to marry, if the lady was of a degree entitled to be a king's ward. Jane, fortunately, had no estate, the king's father having stolen it from her when she was an infant; so all the king could do about our marriage was to grumble, which I let him ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... she suggested unkindly. "Anyway, you've nothing to grumble at. We didn't win anything. We weren't ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... two days ago I wasn't going to await no remittances. You can't grumble if your breakfast waits a bit, if my bill's been waiting ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... to believe that he would have gained still greater advantages. The Roman generals were incompetent; they were at variance among themselves; and they were unable to control the troops under their command. The soldiers were insubordinate, without confidence in their officers, and inclined to grumble at such an unwonted hardship as a campaign prolonged into the winter. Thus all the conditions of the war were in favor of Persia. But unfortunately for Kobad, it happened that, at the moment when his prospects were the fairest, a danger in another quarter demanded his presence, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... now changed, and not for the better. Still, if any one has no right to grumble, it is the archaeologist, because the building of these suburban quarters has placed more knowledge at his disposal than could have been gathered before in the lapse of a century. I quote only one instance. Famous in the annals of Roman excavations are those made between 1695 and 1741 in the vineyard ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... never pointed it out—that the old man never failed to take advantage of the electric warmth of the house when the short days came and the snow blew across the country like fine white sand. And he never complained about the lights or the television or the hot water, except to grumble occasionally that they were a little old and out of date and that the mail-order catalog showed that better ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... wait until they are full of freight and passengers. The latter are boarded on them from the time they take passage, if they wish,—often a week or ten days. Berths are often engaged by "loafers," who eat and sleep on board, and grumble at the detention, but who suddenly decamp when the ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... a good officer, an able tactician and a resolute leader. He had hardly, however, realised as yet that the movements of a brigade must be subordinated to those of the whole army, and he was wont to grumble if his troops were held back, or were not allowed to pursue some local success. Steuart was also a West Pointer, but with much to learn. Taylor and his Louisianians played so important a part in the ensuing ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... exertion. "If there's one class of folk I detest more than another, it is those all-possessed people who find life unsuited to their fancies. Nobody asked them to come into it—nobody would miss them if they went out of it. Being in it, it's barely civil to grumble at the Deity who sent them along here. I never do it myself if ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... about to leave him he at first looked greatly pleased, but he suddenly recollected that nothing ought to please him and so began to grumble about ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... is easy to grumble, and especially in a cheerful, open, light, and smiling city, crammed with works Of art, ancient and modern, its architecture a study of all styles, and its foaming beer, said by antiquarians to be a good deal better than the mead drunk in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ranch industry, but rather an incidental by-product. Rolling R Ranch was the place Sudden Selmer called home, although there was a bungalow out in the Wilshire District in Los Angeles about which Sudden would grumble when the tax notice came in his mail. There was a big touring car in the garage on the back of the lot, and there was a colored couple who lived in two rooms of the bungalow for sake of the fire insurance and as a precaution against ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... Linnaeus. French, "Mesange Charbonniere."—The Paridae are by no means well represented in the Islands, either individually or as to number of species; and the Guernsey gardeners can have very little cause to grumble at damage done to the buds by the Tits. The Great Tit is moderately common and resident in Guernsey, but by no means so common as in England. During the whole two months I was in the Island this last summer, 1878, I only saw two or three Great Tits, and this quite agrees with my ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... handful YOU'D be, Master Cyril,' said old Nurse, 'if I wasn't to bring your meals up to time. Don't you begin grumbling now, fear you get something to grumble AT.' ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... you have to grumble about," said Lord Dunseverick. "We've got what we came for, and we've got our clearance papers. What more do you want? You expected trouble about those papers, and there wasn't any. ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... the floor was packed, the corridors were thronged with eager shining revellers, dancing and strolling and chattering to beat the band, which was flooding every corner of the enormous building with an air of gaiety so infectious that even the staid Jonah began to grumble that the dance would be over before the girls ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... and singing, and never a sign of a white man. They are guaranteed possession of their land. They'll sometimes complain faintly of 'taxation'—a small head-tax the Government exacts, which compels the individual to some four or five days' work a year. The English inhabitants themselves have had no grumble against the Germans except that they incline to be 'too kind to the natives'—an admirable testimonial. And traders in the Pacific say they always get far better treatment from the customs and harbour authorities at Apia than at the British ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... change is a different place for the summer holiday, and, perhaps, the dress-circle instead of the stalls at a theatre. To a man with L200 a week the loss of L20 a week hardly makes any difference at all. He may grumble; he may drop a motor, or a yacht, but in his ordinary daily life he feels no change. To a docker making twenty shillings a week the difference of two shillings is not merely important, it is vital. The addition of it may mean three rooms ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... spring morning—not a living soul is near, Far, far away there is the faint grumble of the guns; The battle has passed long since— All is Peace. At times there is the faint drone of aeroplanes as They pass overhead, amber specks, high up in the blue; Occasionally there is the movement of a rat in the Old battered trench on which I sit, ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... great wish to keep Maggie at home, though she liked to grumble at her going. Still she felt that it was best, in every way, to keep on good terms with such valuable friends; and she appreciated, in some small degree, the advantage which her intimacy at the house was to Maggie. But yet she could not restrain a few complaints, nor ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... made his report as cheerful as he could, but he could not make it a particularly brilliant one, although he did his best. He was one of those men who grumble at trifles, but are unusually bright and cheerful in the presence of a great emergency. The sneer had left his face, the cynical accent had disappeared from his voice; he employed all his social gifts, which were ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... her, lo! the captain, Gallant Kidd, commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew, 'Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why 'tis hardly three feet square; Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?' 'Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... Where they are exposed to difficulties, he does not hesitate to employ all the means in his power to aid them. In return, the soldier professes for his officer an affection, a devotion, a sort of filial respect. Discipline, he knows, must be severe, and he does not grumble at its penalties. In battle, he does not abandon his chief; he watches over him, will die for his safety, will not let him fall into the hands of the enemy if wounded. At the bivouac he makes the officer's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... fellow-travellers at an hotel to which he had convoyed them from the West, he hastened to the Chambers in Lamb Court, which were basking in as much sun as chose to visit that dreary but not altogether comfortless building. Freedom stands in lieu of sunshine in chambers; and Templars grumble, but take their ease in their Inn. Pen's domestic announced to him that Warrington was in Chambers too, and, of course, Arthur ran up to his friend's room straightway, and found it, as of old, perfumed with the pipe, and George once more at work with ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... afield. At the objections stage, as at every other step in the selling process, you should dominate the other man. Tactfully keep him concentrated on the subject and on your application. If he starts to grumble that some man he has engaged previously was "no good," you can smile and reply, "You would not give me credit for anybody else's fine work, and of course you do not blame me ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... camp, one or two of us usually go off to hunt, more as a matter of necessity than of pleasure, for the men, as well as ourselves, must have meat. We prefer to take a man with us to carry home the game, or lead the others to where it lies; but as they frequently grumble and complain of being tired, we do not particularly object to going alone, except that it involves the extra labour of our making a second trip to show the men where the animal that has been shot is to be found. When it is a couple of miles off it is rather ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... rolled up, crawling under the car and getting exceedingly oily and dusty in the process, the rest of the party set off to explore the neighbourhood on foot. The village was so charming that they could really hardly grumble at being held up there. Each cottage seemed a picture, with its thatched or red-tiled roof, black-and-white walls, creeper-covered porch, and gay little garden. So luxuriant were the flowers that they even strayed ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and the most curious part of it is the Church. While he stayed we grumbled at him. Now he leaves we grumble ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... Everything in this world is but temporary: why should temporary help be undervalued? Would you not pull out a drowning bather because he will bathe again to-morrow? The only question is—DOES IT HELP? Jonah might grumble at the withering of his gourd, but if it had not grown at all, would he ever have preached to Nineveh? It set the laird on a Pisgah-rock, whence he gazed into the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... matter; the British Army, colloquially speaking, knew its way about. Thus when the shades of night were falling, the general disposition was one of willingness to wait. The food, to be sure, lacked something of its wonted excellence; but it served (in the summer), and we did not grumble. The shelling, too, had fallen somewhat flat. Mafeking was more out of the way and in a worse plight than Kimberley. Reflections of this kind begot condescension and a noble ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... so bad? At Retby Lady Theodosia won't touch anything unless it is absolutely perfect. She sent a dish away yesterday just because a whiff of some flavouring she does not like came to her, but at the "Red Lion" she did not grumble at all; it must be for the same reason that wetting their feet doesn't give French people cold if it is at a national sport, that made her put up with the lunch because it was English and had ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... as a natural consequence of the higher cost of living, and, under the guidance of a native demagogue, the working classes, for the first time in Philippine history, collectively began to grumble at the idea of labour-pay having a limit. It was one of the abuses of that liberty of speech suddenly acquired under the new dominion. On February 2, 1902, this person organized the malcontents under the title of a "Labour Union," of which he became the first president. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... her sight after their first meeting, and the ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband's family was, she feared he would be kidnapped and made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather. As if the age were the injury! He seemed to think it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found him on the grounds ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... we had room to grumble about discomforts within, we could only admire unceasingly without the very lovely road along which we were rapidly passing. The country consisted of undulating hills and slopes, prettily wooded, while bright white wooden houses and ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... weariness of our journey, and the vexation of the misadventures which had succeeded one another unsparingly ever since we left home, we found ourselves far on the way to Genoa before we thought to grumble at the distance. There was with us, besides the bridal party, a lady travelling from Bologna to Turin, who had learned English in London, and spoke it much better than most Londoners. It is surprising ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... tiff, she sets the "Voice from Eden" at me; if she chooses to consider herself ill-used, I am treated to a preserved echo of our marriage vows, and the Bishop's address; when she is in the sulks, I get the congratulations in the vestry; and if ever I grumble at the weekly bills, it's drowned in the "Wedding March!" As for your precious bells, I can't dine with a man at the Club without hearing the confounded things pealing out the moment I let myself in. That infernal phonograph, which ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... all over. No one can stand such work long. Won't the shearers growl! No shearing to-day, and perhaps none tomorrow either." Truth to tell, Mr Bowles' sentiments are not confined to his ingenuous bosom. Some of the shearers grumble at being stopped "just as a man was earning a few shillings." Those who are in top pace and condition don't like it. But to many of the rank and file—working up to and a little beyond their strength—with whom swelled wrists and other protests of nature are becoming ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... is only a pipe for Omnipotence to sound through, he is not so apt to worry. Besides, these last weeks God has been very good to me and I've been given a kind of assurance. I know the country will grumble a bit about my ways of doing things, but will follow me in the end. I know that we shall win a clean victory. Jordan has been a hard road to travel, but I feel that in spite of all our frailties we'll be dumped on the right side ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... me," he interrupted, leading me out of the room to a corridor. "You see it is this way. We of the palace have so frequently set the law at defiance of late that the citizens are beginning to grumble. In this instance I should like to make a great show of compliance. We'll make it easy for your cousin by going with her. And Clyde, if you will say to the duchess for me that I should deem it a favor if she and one or more of her ladies will accompany us, I doubt ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... former days, alluding to those happy days in which another love was paramount. Camilla could not endure this with an equal mind. "Bella, dear," she said, "we know what all that means. He has made his choice, and if I am satisfied with what he does now, surely you need not grumble." Miss Stanbury's illness had undoubtedly been a great source of contentment to the family at Heavitree, as they had all been able to argue that her impending demise was the natural consequence of her great sin in the matter of Dorothy's proposed marriage. When, however, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... you think the men in Shetland, generally speaking, would be inclined to consent to a bargain of that sort? Would they not grumble very much if the price rose considerably before the end of the season?-It would only be parties who were dull of apprehension that would be likely to grumble. It would not be the intelligent men. For my part, and so far ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... is delivered, my speech (like the Queen's) is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out not to be the novelty anticipated, though they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen—that's the moral of it. After breakfast, Mr. Franklin and I had a private conference on the subject of the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... eight blue skies in as many midsummer weeks, saving, sometimes, early in the morning; when, looking out to sea, the water and the firmament were one world of deep and brilliant blue. At other times, there were clouds and haze enough to make an Englishman grumble in his own climate. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... myself," he answered, "and I am not going to grumble at the change, seeing that this is holiday time. Berthun came to me last evening, and called me aside, and said that it was the king's wont to dress his folk anew at the time of the Witan, and then wanted to know if my vow prevented me from wearing aught but fisher's clothes. ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... thought dangerous; but who, notwithstanding, had pretensions that he seldom showed any signs of, except of ill—humors, a good share of which he bestowed on me; though I was pleased to hear him play the flute, on which he was a tolerable musician. This second Egistus was sure to grumble whenever he saw me go into his mistress' apartment, treating me with a degree of disdain which she took care to repay him with interest; seeming pleased to caress me in his presence, on purpose to torment him. This kind of revenge, though perfectly to my taste, would have been ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... drop. I was conscious that my hands and face were whitened all over; the sponge had rolled away into a corner; and the noise of Nicola's operations was fast getting on my nerves. I had a feeling as though I wanted to fly into a temper and grumble at some one, so I threw down chalk and "Algebra" alike, and began to pace the room. Then suddenly I remembered that to-day we were to go to confession, and that therefore I must refrain from doing anything wrong. Next, with equal suddenness I relapsed into an extraordinarily goodhumoured frame ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... he holds power, upon whom he depends for his success, and who, in turn, depend upon his initiative and capital for their bread and butter, is turned into an armed camp of plotting enemies, who, while they work, grumble, and who, while they receive their wages, scheme for the overthrow of the entire concern! His mills, instead of being shelters for his brothers and sisters, are nests of scratching eagles—ready ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... not," said her mamma; and her papa added, "I won't hear of it." So Amelia went up-stairs to grumble to Nurse; but Nurse only said, "Now, my dear Miss Amelia, do go quietly to bed, like a dear love. The field is all wet with dew. Besides, it's a moonlight night, and who knows what's abroad? You might see the fairies—bless us and sain us!—and what not. There's ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... train being in advance they must check speed or perhaps stop. This was a species of insult to the "Flying Dutchman," whose way ought to have been kept perfectly clear, for even a check of speed would inevitably cause the loss of several minutes. With an indignant grumble John Marrot cut off steam, but immediately the signals were lowered and he was allowed to go on. Again, in a few minutes, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... rogues have good dinners; even Bois l'Hery has his meals sent in to the prison from the Cafe Anglais, and poor old Passajon is reduced to live on scraps picked up in the kitchen. Still we must not grumble too much. There are others more wretched than we are—witness M. Francis, who came in this morning to the Territorial, thin, pale, with dirty linen and frayed cuffs, which he still pulled down by force ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... fancy I'll keep the old course, There or thereabout. But I've a notion! They'll grumble perhaps, with some force, But they're not going to flurry G. GOSCHEN. Of this havresack there have been some smart carriers— I'll make 'em sit ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... 'od, lad, I'se plenish your parish wi' bastards, to see what ye'll mak o' that,' and away he went. He read Hooke's Pantheon, and made great use of the heathen deities. He railed sadly at the taxes; some one observed that he need not grumble at them as he had none to pay. 'Hae I no'?' he replied, 'I can neither get a pickle snuff to my neb, nor a pickle tea to my mouth, but they maun tax 't.' His sister and he were on very unfriendly terms. She was ill on one occasion; Miss Ballantyne asked how she ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... poetic diction into which we have now fallen, after all our abuse of the far more manly and sincere "poetic diction" of the eighteenth century; they will find no loitering by the way to argue and moralise, and grumble at Providence, and show off the author's own genius and sensibility; they will find, in short, two real works of art, earnest, melodious, self-forgetful, knowing clearly what they want to say, and saying it in the shortest, the simplest, the calmest, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... hullabaloo, chorus, clamor, hue and cry, plaint; lungs; stentor. V. cry, roar, shout, bawl, brawl, halloo, halloa, hoop, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, screech, screak[obs3], shriek, shrill, squeak, squeal, squall, whine, pule, pipe, yaup[obs3]. cheer; hoot; grumble, moan, groan. snore, snort; grunt &c. (animal sounds) 412. vociferate; raise up the voice, lift up the voice; call out, sing out, cry out; exclaim; rend the air; thunder at the top of one's voice, shout at the top of one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was good to her brother and sister, and almost invariably kind to her parents. She would not, Breckon saw, have brooked much meddling with her flirtations from them, but as they did not offer to meddle, she had no occasion to grumble on that score. She grumbled when they asked her to do things for Ellen, but she did them, and though she never did them without grumbling, she sometimes did them without being asked. She was really very watchful of Ellen ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her discomfort in a monotonous grumble; the cheery little milliner, who knew the road of old, kept up a hopeful prophesying that we should come out all right; as for myself, I was young enough to enjoy anything in the shape of an adventure, although this part of our experience began after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... helplessly watched their captain being carried off, bleeding and insensible, and dumped with a sickening thud into the Russian launch. The incident encouraged them so much that they worked without complaint throughout the day, and they did not even grumble at the rations which their taskmasters served out to them. Shortly before dusk the breeze that had been blowing died away, and the Russians took advantage of the calm to warp the vessels together. After that the business in hand proceeded at such a pace that ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... him also, and that'll put an end to his enmity. He's a fine fellow. He's on my track, but you'll see how enchantment will put him off it. Now, don't grumble. I'll be as tender and sweet with the boy as a siren. You will come in only when I feel that the spell doesn't work. Rely on me to do the ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... know—and among them is Mr. Balch himself—say that Jethro has never conducted a more masterly campaign than this, and that all the others have been mere childish trials of strength compared to it. So he sits there through those twelve weeks while the session slips by, while his opponents grumble, and while even his supporters, eager for the charge, complain. The truth is that in all the years of his activity be has never had such an antagonist as Mr. Flint. Victory hangs in the balance, and a false move will throw it to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... If you want to keep your stomach and whole digestive apparatus in good order, you must care for it, and not overtax it. If you have a pretty good stomach it will bear a good deal of abuse, but in the end it will grumble, and a dyspeptic nurse is not an attractive object. As to your night suppers, which you should always have, should your case require constant watching, I would recommend plenty of coffee, tea, or cold milk, if you can drink it, bread and butter, cold ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... to this year of grace it is the very devil of a business to find out, from Bradshaw, how to get to Durdlebury, and, having found, to get there. As for getting away, God help you! But whoever wanted to get away from Durdlebury, except the Bishop? In pre-motor days he used to grumble tremendously and threaten the House of Lords with Railway Bills and try to blackmail the Government with dark hints of resignation, and so he lived and threatened and made his wearisome diocesan round of visits and died. But now ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... Unnoticeably to themselves and altogether unnoticeably, of course, to the casual glance, they cautiously right themselves; or, more correctly, fade until they grow a belly unto themselves, and acquire podagra and diseases of the liver. Then they grumble at the whole world; say that they were not understood, that their time was the time of sacred ideals. While in the family they are despots and not infrequently give ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and by scorning all instruction in the use of arms, declaring this to be, in his case, a silly waste of effort. Such an attitude very naturally aroused resentment among the other men; it was not long before they began to grumble at the liberty allowed this headstrong weakling. But upon the occasion of the very first fight this ill-will disappeared as if by magic, for, although Branch deliberately disobeyed orders, he nevertheless displayed such amazing audacity in the face of the enemy, such a theatrical contempt ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... and brushed the dirt off his knees. "If there's anything that stirs my temper, it's this mumble-grumble, whiffle-and-hint business. Out and open, that's my style." He was reflecting testily on the peculiar reticence of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... would grumble, and admire. Look at this," showing her the tassels of the inner window curtains done up in little bags. "And the glass is pinned up with nice yellow paper; and here is a damask napkin fastened to the wall behind the washstand. And everything ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... years, more or less, they give us paying returns for our investments. But that food will not always last; it is gradually exhausted, and we fail to feed them again, or in that proportion their necessities require. They languish and die; a disease seizes them, and we complain and grumble at the ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... ways, Robert. How wicked and wrong in us to grumble! I was foolish enough to fret over that mark on the darling's neck, and now the thought of it is my greatest comfort. If it should be God's will that months or years should pass over, before we find him, there is a sign by which we shall always know him. No other child can ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... 'confab' with Lance, one or both were sure to come strolling in and hang round, jerking out aimless remarks. When he wanted a still quieter 'confab' with his maturing novel, their voices and footsteps echoed too clearly in the verandahs and the scantily furnished rooms. But did he venture to grumble at these minor drawbacks, Lance would declare he was demoralised by floating loose in an Earthly Paradise and becoming a mere ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... favorable. 'We can besiege Dunkirk at any rate, cannot we, your High Mightinesses? Dunkirk, which, by all the Treaties in existence, ought to need no besieging; but which, in spite of treatyings innumerable, always does?' The High Mightinesses answer nothing articulate, languidly grumble something in OPTATIVE tone;—'meaning assent,' thinks the sanguine mind. 'Dutch hoistable, after all!' thinks he; 'Dutch will co-operate, if they saw example set!' And, in England, the work of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... than any other bird in the bag. In the first place, there is its scarcity. Half a dozen to every hundred pheasants would in most parts of the country be considered a proportion at which none could grumble, and there are many days on which not one is either seen or shot. Again, there is the bird's twisting flight, which, particularly inside the covert, makes it anything but an easy target. Third and ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... the South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble and rumble and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... h-h-hope well of you; for you can respect an old man. I'm very glad to see you. I hope you've brought an appetite with you. Sit down. Always respect old age, Mr Forbes. You'll be old yourself some day—and you won't like it any more than I do. I've had my young days, though, and I mustn't grumble." ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... seem to think it quite so funny now as when they started in. They say they can't see where the pay is going to come in, and have begun to grumble," whispered the other. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... and there was nothing for him but to snuggle down with a buzz and a grumble among the wet bluebells and wait for daybreak, for sobriety and with it a ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... inferred that Martin's spirits had not improved, as indeed they had not; for while he and Mr Pinch stood waiting under a hedge, looking at the rain, the gig, the cart, and its reeking driver, he did nothing but grumble; and, but that it is indispensable to any dispute that there should be two parties to it, he would certainly have picked a quarrel ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... had finished her breakfast, and had withdrawn her thoughts from the engrossing subject of her dream sufficiently to grumble about the aching void where the chops should have been, she sprang up from the table and loudly tinkled the ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... am I taking you home to get well in peace and quiet, and Ellen has filled the house up with half a dozen girls, more or less. Writes me to come home and be 'made a lion of;' as sensible as most women!' And the grumble subsided. He broke out again shortly: 'Louise Meller—Lois Berkeley—Susy—' the other names were drowned in the rattle of the starting train. The captain finished his letters, and Clement Moore took up his broken dreams, but this time ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... said the other after a slight pause, and speaking with a certain concealed grumble in his voice, 'that if theyor anybodyneglects the world, the world will neglect them. Concourse ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... have no grumblers?" I asked Elder Frederick Evans at Mount Lebanon; and he replied, "Yes, of course—and they grumble at the elder. That is what he is for. It is necessary to have some one man to grumble at, for ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... seemed that their meager allowance of a pint and a half each for the twenty-four hours did little more than increase their thirst. They could not safely alter their unpleasant situation, however, and they wisely made the best of it and did not grumble. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the deals!" he yelled in a voice that pierced the din. It was not five seconds ere every one in the mill seemed to know what had happened. Two men sprang on the slides and checked the stream of deals. Then the great turbines ceased to grumble, and all the clamor of the saws was hushed. The unexpected silence was like a blow, and sickened ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... be a fine thing for a' of us. Women and men wull be comrades more; there'll be fewer helpless lassies who canna find their way aboot without a man to guide them. But men wull like that—I can tell ye so, though they may grumble ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... straw. Mutiny had long been smouldering. The hardships of the voyage, the terrific Atlantic storms, the prospect of a long Antarctic winter of inaction on that wild Patagonian coast—these alone caused officers and men to grumble and to demand an immediate return ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... was also received with shouts of laughter by those assembled, and even while Pat was paying over his dust he continued to grumble and threaten; and when we got clear of him he bade us adieu with a mocking smile, perfectly satisfied to think that he had delayed us all that he was able to, and that if he did ultimately have to pay over the money, he afforded sport enough for ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... little weaknesses—of which evil tongues, said Mrs. Turpin, of course made the most. He might be irregular in payment; he might come home 'at all hours,' and make unnecessary noise in going upstairs; he might at times grumble when his chop was ill-cooked; and, to tell the truth, he might occasionally be 'a little too free' with the young ladies—that is to say, with Mabel and Lily Turpin; but all these things were forgiven him because he was 'a real gentleman,' and spent just as little ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... a square offer, and you can't grumble much because Probyn hired your men. Cartner is hard and I allow he'd like to break you, but I haven't known him ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... didn't know the plans—they were only privates in the ranks, but they exercised their prerogatives to criticize, and while working to assist, did right royally disparage and condemn. Like sailors who love their ship, and grumble at grub and grog, yet on shore will allow no word of disparagement to be said, so did these Athenians love their city, and still condemn its rulers—they exercised the laborer's right to damn the man ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... there are many sons of knights, of good repute and standing, who would be glad, indeed, that their sons should obtain a post in Hotspur's personal following; and who might grumble, were they passed over in favour of one who, by his appearance, was of ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... he will not grumble because too much sugar is used in the house. So let him take it then, let ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... food, we grumble at times, just as people at home are grumbling at the Savoy, or Lockhart's. It is the Briton's habit so to do. But in moments of repletion we are fain to confess that the organisation of our commissariat is wonderful. Of course the quality of the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... princes there live. I have known him for some years. He is one of the foremost men in the city; he has broad and liberal ideas, and none of the jealousy of us Flemings that is so common among the citizens, although my countrymen more directly rival him in his trade than they do many others who grumble at us, though they are in no ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... know that I am not blaming you in earnest, my foster-sister, because I grumble a little when I cannot see my way out of the tangle." He bent over Kark to make sure that he was really as unconscious as he seemed; then he lowered his voice nervously. "What makes it a great mishap ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... miss them when you are away, for all your scolding when you are with them. No, no, I don't mean that you are unkind to them, but you do grumble a lot! All the same I won't be unjust, and I know that ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... the man who had assumed and by his ability and astuteness maintained for thirty years the highest position in the country. There was, no doubt, a large amount of latent rebellion against this "one-man government," but those who were the most ready to grumble in private were in public, perhaps, the most servile of any. It is conceded that in many ways the Prime Minister was an able ruler, and compared with those who went before him was deserving of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... no troubles to confide?" said Mr Wentworth; "a man and a boy are very different things. Come, aunt Dora, I'll see you safe to your inn. What should I have to grumble about? I have plenty to do, and it is Easter; and few men can ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... resort. If he wants a "norther" continuing for days, he must move on. If he is accustomed to various insect pests, he will miss them here. If there comes a day warmer than usual, it will not be damp or soggy. So far as nature is concerned there is very little to grumble at, and one resource of the traveller ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... night is the only time for cooking. The decrees of an order for a detail are inexorable. A soldier must take it as it comes, for none ever know but what the next duties may be even worse than the present. As a general rule, soldiers rarely ever grumble at any detail on the eve of an engagement, for sometimes it excuses them from a battle, and the old experienced ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... of her. Doubtless the poor soul took the sous in the basket to be the gift of the brothers, and, as her portion is not always the same from day to day, but depends on what they can spare from the store set apart for almsgiving, she would not notice the diminished cakes and milk, save perhaps to grumble a little at the increase of the beggars who trespassed thus on her pension." There was silence among us for a moment, then St Aubyn's boy spoke. "Father," he asked, tremulously, "shall I not see that good Gluck again and tell the monks how he saved me, and how Fritz and Bruno brought ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... either dropped their bundles or fell out of line, with the result that we went into action with less than five hundred men—as, in addition to the stragglers, a detachment had been left to guard the baggage on shore. At the time I was rather inclined to grumble to myself about Wood setting so fast a pace, but when the fight began I realized that it had been absolutely necessary, as otherwise we should have arrived late and the regulars would have had very hard ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... built church and schools, and I am content," replied the priest. "Let the next man erect a presbytery. What there is, is enough for me, and who is to grumble, if ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... grievances, however, is still incomplete. You are dissatisfied with our generalship as displayed in the field, and with the wisdom of our policy as developed by the cabinet. Unquestionably you have a constitutional right to grumble to your heart's content; but are you not aware that such complaints are as old as the history of the human race? Do you believe this to be the first war that was ever mismanaged, and that our undoubted blunders are either novel or peculiar to Republics? There never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... their elders will take the trouble to call it out, the whole party came in to terms one by one, shook hands all round, and vowed on the hilt of Amyas's sword to make fools of themselves no more, at least by jealousy: but to stand by each other and by their lady-love, and neither grudge nor grumble, let her dance with, flirt with, or marry with whom she would; and in order that the honor of their peerless dame, and the brotherhood which was named after her, might be spread through all lands, and equal that of Angelica or Isonde of Brittany, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... more than an hour after reaching the waterfront the Germans had brought up their engineers, the bridge had been repaired, the fire from Fort St. Anne had been silenced, and their troops were pouring across the river in a steady stream in pursuit of the Belgians. The grumble of field-guns, which continued throughout the night, told us that they had overtaken ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... honours are satisfied, 'tisn't for the likes of me to grumble,' Andy said resignedly. 'Only if everybody knew what was before them, they mightn't do ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... packing-cases marked 'Settlers' Effects' had no more part in the show than a new boy his first day at school. But two years in Canada and one run home will make him free of the Brotherhood in Canada as it does anywhere else. He may grumble at certain aspects of the life, lament certain richnesses only to be found in England, but as surely as he grumbles so surely he returns to the big skies, and the big chances. The failures are those who complain that the land 'does not know a gentleman when it sees him.' ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... am an old soldier, am not apt to grumble at trifles, [illegible word] and blunderbusses! I never before got into such a snarl.—Mounting the ramparts of the enemy was mere child's play to it!" Here he began to take out the contents of the basket, meanwhile keeping up a running commentary, during which ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... gruff and knowing chuckle at a spicy yarn or so, And a sigh for some old shipmate gone the way that all men go, And there's little need to wonder at a grumble now and then, For the ships must have their growl out, just the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... love of adventure, and particularly of military parade and grandeur, that has since led me into more than one difficulty. Capt. Hugh Littlepage, my grandfather, was delighted with all he saw until after the expedition had sailed, when he began to grumble on the subject of the religious observances that the piety of the Puritans blended with most of their other movements. On the score of religion there was a marked difference; I may say there is still a marked difference between New England and New York. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... strained all his faculties to listen. For a moment he heard nothing but the hum of the wind and the vibration of the engines transmitted by the mast. Then, faint and intermittent, like the far-off grumble of a gathering thunderstorm, his ear caught a sound that ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... theatrical. It is easy to imagine the whole interview: the shrunken face of the Porter beaming all over with an appreciation of the honour paid her, and the Doctor full of benevolence and patronising courtesy, even to the extent of drinking cheap tea without a grumble. After the philosopher takes his leave he will likewise take with him a vivid memory of the beldam's many wrinkles—so many, indeed, that "a picture of old age in the abstract might have been taken ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... not a man that can be bullied. I am a much better man than I was at eighteen. I won't be married in a black eye if I can help it. But, when I am once married, here I stand against all comers, and if you hear them grumble or threaten you, tell them that any Sunday afternoon, when there is nothing better to be done, I'll throw my cap into the ring and fight all the Fieldings that ever were pupped, one down another come on." Then turning quite cool and contemptuous all in a moment, he said, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... such as the opening of the book last quoted (the wide, treeless, communal plain with its various labouring teams), or as some of the Lake touches in Lucrezia Floriani, or as the relieving patches in the otherwise monotonous grumble of Un Hiver a Majorque, are unsurpassable. Nor is this gift limited to mere paysage. The famous account of Chopin's playing already mentioned for praise is only first among many. But whether these ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... he answered. "Don't you bother about that, old fellow. This is my affair, arranged for my special amusement. I shan't grumble if the fun costs something, for I am sure there will ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... the bridge that connects the railway station with the hotel on the opposite side of the stream, and scarcely a light was shining from the windows of the dim white building before him; he was very tired, rather cross, and disposed to grumble at the delay in his journey; and the general aspect of things—the bad supper, the sleepy waiter carrying a candle up flights of broad shallow wooden stairs, and down a long passage to a remote room barely furnished, the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... was a good officer, an able tactician and a resolute leader. He had hardly, however, realised as yet that the movements of a brigade must be subordinated to those of the whole army, and he was wont to grumble if his troops were held back, or were not allowed to pursue some local success. Steuart was also a West Pointer, but with much to learn. Taylor and his Louisianians played so important a part in the ensuing operations that they deserve more detailed mention. The ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... I am not blaming you in earnest, my foster-sister, because I grumble a little when I cannot see my way out of the tangle." He bent over Kark to make sure that he was really as unconscious as he seemed; then he lowered his voice nervously. "What makes it a great mishap is that your ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... post-station we were much amused to read on a board "528 kilos. to St. Petersburg, 470 kilos. to Uleborg." But we were more amazed on our return from a ramble, prepared to grumble that the meal ordered an hour before was not ready, when the host walked into the room, and, making a most polite ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Quite certainly, it won't be a large fortune; very likely not more than your own. But enough to live on, no doubt. I know the value of money—no man better. It would be pleasant enough to play with thousands a year. But I don't grumble so long as I ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... several elderly single gentlewomen, who buy flannel for the poor at my shop, and they are very particular; as they ought to be, indeed: for morals are very strict in this county, and particularly in this town, where we certainly do pay very high church- rates. Not that I grumble; for, though I am as liberal as any man, I am for an established church; as I ought to be, since the dean is my best customer. With regard to yourself I inclose you L10., and you will let me know ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... spoon, and a dash of soy sauce. You may then abandon yourself to the delights of making a cake for yourself, baking it for yourself, and then eating it yourself, and if you spend a couple of hours over the operation the man will not grumble. As this arrangement combines both the pleasure of making a cake and playing with fire, it is very popular, and we cannot wonder that Taro took a turn, though Miss Blossom did not. She felt herself rather too big to join the swarm of happy urchins round ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... ceased to grumble at Harry's presence, and she cooked Jim appetising suppers as of old and she even spoke pleasantly to Harry. Jim fondly imagined that she was becoming as devoted to the bright, engaging little fellow as he was himself, and he could not know that in his absence hard words and frequent blows ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... that, of course, though I'm blowed if I'd have done it myself; but why should you do anything? You're all right. Your brother stood out of the team to let you in it, and here you are, in it. What's he got to grumble about?" ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... announced on the posters had appeared, but all had sent letters full of kindly wishes; and the others—all the celebrities one had never heard of—had turned up to a man. Still, on the whole, the show was well worth the money. There was nothing to grumble at. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... gave it to me yourself, you did; it was on Easter Day in the morning—and do you sit down at the wheel and spin. See, you put your foot on the treadle so, to turn the wheel, and you twist the flax with your fingers so. Don't you get up, but just turn the wheel and grumble and mumble ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... appreciation of its mirthful principle. If he emigrate to France, he soon feasts upon frogs as freely and speaks with as accurate an accent as the Parisian, but he cannot quite assume the gay insouciance of the French; if to England, he adores method, learns to grumble and imbibe old ale, yet does not become accustomed to the free, blunt raillery,—the "chaff,"—with which Britons disport themselves; if to China, he lives upon curries and inscribes his name with a camel's-hair pencil, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... be the last to grumble at this," he quietly interrupted, "for you have spent some very pleasant half-hours already, listening to what you have termed my 'cock-and-bull' stories. You know the English Provident Bank, of course, in Oxford ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... aimless remarks. When he wanted a still quieter 'confab' with his maturing novel, their voices and footsteps echoed too clearly in the verandahs and the scantily furnished rooms. But did he venture to grumble at these minor drawbacks, Lance would declare he was demoralised by floating loose in an Earthly Paradise and becoming a mere appendage to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Really, I am half ashamed to name him, for fear you should be angry with me for doing so. It is—it is the pig! The resemblance is not exactly a flattering one to you, perhaps, but we are all alike, and it would be worse than foolish to grumble at being created as we are. Moreover, there is one difference; the pig, who thinks of nothing but eating, has a very much larger stomach than we have, which is some consolation, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... bargained for," said Aunt Dorothy. "But in their own rough way the men tried to be kind to me. The food we had was disgusting, the boat dreadfully fishy, oily, and dirty; there was not a possibility of being comfortable day or night. But I have nothing to grumble at. They took me back safe and sound to the beche-de-mer station at last, and there I heard all about you, even to the saving of Peter. All the discomforts and horrors put together were nothing to my suspense ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... sure, there was my old aunt; and she would have helped us, but she could not, for the old woman is bed-ridden; so she did nothing but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning till night: heaven knows, poor old soul, that she had no great reason to be very happy; for you know, sir, that it frets the temper to be sick; and that it is worse still to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Don't touch that, it may be poisoned." Of course we had to be careful of spies, but I stuck the bottles in my pack when the officer wasn't looking. Well, we marched to the depot and were soon packed into the small uncomfortable coaches. We started to kick and grumble, but Rust said: "You are lucky to have coaches at all. Last time I went up I rode in a cattle-car," and he pointed out a lot of cars on which was painted "Capacity, so many horses, so many men." After that we ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... sleep, or say one's prayers; especially to marry, if the lady was of a degree entitled to be a king's ward. Jane, fortunately, had no estate, the king's father having stolen it from her when she was an infant; so all the king could do about our marriage was to grumble, which I let him do to ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... strange—everything, except the heat, delightful. And as Fred said, "some folk would grumble in hell!" Trees, flowers, birds, costumes of the women, sheen of the sea, glint of sun on bare skins of every shade from ivory to ebony, dazzling coral roadway and colored coral walls, babel of tongues, sack-saddled donkeys sleepily bearing loads of coral for new buildings, and—winding ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... may, but they leads no no good. Look at those fellows at the Feathers; all were happy enough before Jim Holder, who is a scholar, came among them, and now since he reads to them they do nothing but grumble, and growl, and talk about I don't know what—corn laws, and taxes, and liberty, and all other nonsense. Now, what could you do more than you do now, if you larnt ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wanted to say that I wasent mad with Jim Allcorn, as sum peepul supposed; but it do illustrate the onsertainty of human kalkulashuns in this subloonery world. The disappintments of life are amazin', and if a man wants to fret and grumble at his luck he can find a reesunable oppertunity to do so every day that he lives. Them sort of constitutional grumblers ain't much cumpany to me. I'd rather be Jim Perkins with a bullit hole through me and take my chances. Jim, you know, was shot ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... deadlier part,—"Mark it, noble Russian gentlemen; and you to have the easier!"—surely that is loyal, and not in the old cat's-paw way? But in that, too, there is an offence. Butturlin and the Russians grumble to themselves: "And you to take all the credit, as you did at Kunersdorf? A mere adjunct, or auxiliary, we: and we are a Feldmarschall; and you, what is your rank and seniority?" In short, they will not do it; and in the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of his dinner. His wife understood this well, and always bore with him at such moments, coming down to him in the dressing-room behind the back parlor, and ministering to his wants. I fear he took some advantage of her goodness, knowing that at such moments he could grumble and scold without danger of contradiction. But the institution was established, and Cecilia never rebelled against its traditional laws. On the present day he had much to say to her, but even that he could not say without some ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... There are opportunities everywhere. Every one of them is a test of love. Brother, sister, how does your love stand the test? Love will not grumble; it will not complain; it will not shrink from service. Do you love as fervently as ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... responsible for this little book. Not long ago, I met a man—fit, single, and young—who began to grumble to me of the hardships of his "funkhole" in England, and, incidentally, to belittle the hardships of the man at the front. After I had told him exactly what I thought of him, I was still so indignant that I came home and began to write a book about the trenches. Hence Mud and Khaki. ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... addressing Finot; "they won't cost the management anything, for the chorus and the orchestra and the corps de ballet are to take them whether they like it or not; but your paper is so clever that nobody will grumble. And you are going to have your boxes. Here is the subscription for the first quarter," she continued, holding out a couple of banknotes; "so don't ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of the hand. An ex-butler of Lord Todmorden was a pensioner in the Grey Friars Hospital (it has been said that at that ancient establishment is a college for old men as well as for boys), and this old man would come sometimes to his successor's Sunday dinner, and grumble from the hour of that meal until nine o'clock, when he was forced to depart, so as to be within Grey Friars' gates before ten; grumble about his dinner—grumble about his beer—grumble about the number of chapels he had to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... only a short way when two of them fell ill. They felt they just had to lie down, and did so, and became thoroughly chilled, which added to their pangs of nausea. After awhile we proceeded very slowly. No longer their song echoed against the cliffs. They broke their pained silence only to grumble at one another. ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... three pounds a week and his expenses besides, so it pays HIM pretty well. Well then, the shearers go to the squatters. "All right," say they, "we'll shear your sheep, but it's going to be twenty shillings instead of seventeen and six." The squatters grumble, but they've got to have their sheep shorn, and they pay the twenty shillings. Next year, I'm told, the word is to go round that it's to be twenty-two and sixpence. Well sir, we're to see what's to ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Henry could not afford to pay Dentist Bills because he needed all his Money to buy more Poland Chinas and build other Cribs. If she wanted a Summer Kitchen or a new Wringer or a Sewing Machine, or Anything Else that would lighten her Labors, Henry would Moan and Grumble and say she was trying to land ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... about the sentiment," said Rose, "but I am sure about the pie. If that were missing at dinner-time I know who would grumble. So I'll go, and attend to my duties." She had risen, and was confronting Scarlett. "Good-bye," she said, "and ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Englishman with his large wooden packing-cases marked 'Settlers' Effects' had no more part in the show than a new boy his first day at school. But two years in Canada and one run home will make him free of the Brotherhood in Canada as it does anywhere else. He may grumble at certain aspects of the life, lament certain richnesses only to be found in England, but as surely as he grumbles so surely he returns to the big skies, and the big chances. The failures are those who complain that the land 'does not know a ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... it is true, grumble at those of their own standing in the service; nor do they try to out-manoeuvre their fellows of the same department; but, third-class men are jealous of those in the second- class, second-class men of lucky "seniors," hankering after their shoes; and all, alike ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is of no use to grumble about this state of things unless one is prepared to indicate some sort of practical remedy. And I believe—and I venture to make the statement because I am wholly independent of all sorts of medical schools, and may, therefore, say ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... seem always to be meeting. To me,' he added, with a reassuring smile, 'it is a great pleasure. A very great pleasure indeed. We see too little of each other during office hours. Not that one must grumble at that. Work before everything. You have your duties, I mine. It is merely unfortunate that those duties are not such as to enable us to toil side by side, encouraging each other with word and gesture. However, it is idle to repine. We must make ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... Sir Giles Wapshot's family were insulted that one of the Wapshot girls had not the preference in the marriage, and the remaining baronets of the county were indignant at their comrade's misalliance. Never mind the commoners, whom we will leave to grumble anonymously. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be broad enough to bear all that for himself," said Harry. "I get ashamed of myself when I grumble, and yet one seems to be surly if one doesn't say what ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... slightly elevated garden, is not only a favorite resort in summer, but is thronged every winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed. It is fashionable in Russia to grumble at the cold, but unfashionable to convert the grumbling into action. On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a stretch, in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero, to watch the fascinating horse races ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... unflinching and uncompromising followers in the Boer camp were not reckoned at more than eighty. The disaffected waverers who, according to circumstances, would follow the majority either to acts of overt resistance to Government and lawless violence, or to grumble and disperse, 'accepting the inevitable,' were reckoned at about eight hundred at the outside. The rest of the camp, variously estimated as containing from sixteen hundred to four thousand in all, but probably never exceeding two thousand five hundred present ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... interesting handful YOU'D be, Master Cyril,' said old Nurse, 'if I wasn't to bring your meals up to time. Don't you begin grumbling now, fear you get something to grumble AT.' ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... effect was to stretch him out upon the deck senseless and bleeding. The sound of his fall disturbed one or two of the rest—all of whom were sprawled out inertly upon the foredeck, in the midst of empty and overturned bottles and pannikins—just sufficiently to cause them to raise their heads and grumble out a few unintelligible words; but we had no difficulty whatever with them, and in less than half an hour we had the whole of them securely bound, hand and foot, and lying at our mercy. Having reduced them to this condition, and disarmed them, we distributed ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... these forests! The church is finished, and the bells have summoned the people from the whole neighbourhood. The priest has come from Heldenichlag to dedicate the church, and the schoolmaster to play the organ. But some of the folk grumble because there is no inn by the church; and I hear that the grassteiger has applied for a spirit license. This is the shadow of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... difficulty in getting Newman through the scale. "'Fraid you never'll make a great singer, my boy," he said, "but you may be able to grumble bass a little, if you prove to have an ear that can follow. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... find good servants. If you want to hire a maid servant in this city, she will not allow you the title of master, or herself to be called a servant; and you may think yourself favoured if she condescends to inform you when she means to spend an evening abroad; if you grumble at all this, she will leave you at a moment's warning; after which you will find it very difficult to procure another on any terms. This is one of the natural consequences ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... too hard on you to have to face 'em. Best not to try. We had our go and missed; p'raps we'd better take what they give us and not grumble." ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... her head sorrowfully as she warned Dora off till the nurse's dress could be changed. Occasionally she cried out petulantly, "If he would only be impatient, and fret and grumble like other people; if he would not take things so quietly; if he would resist and struggle, I believe he might fight the battle and win it yet. I think he will get over the crisis, but what of that if there is no rallying? He is letting life go because he will not grasp it hard, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... his lip hurt him a good deal while he ate. He wanted to grumble about something; but the fear of being compared to Sylvia Courtney kept him silent about the broken glass. Priscilla took ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... partly from necessity, he ceased to grumble, and from that time forth it was wonderful how much less unpleasant even external things appeared, and how much his health benefited by the tranquillity of spirits thus produced. He was willing to be pleased with all that was done with that intent; and as he grew better, it ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sometimes, early in the morning; when, looking out to sea, the water and the firmament were one world of deep and brilliant blue. At other times, there were clouds and haze enough to make an Englishman grumble in his own climate. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... because it was the day following this I was in at the death, when Ebenezer Smith, the Mayfair murderer, came to his end. He made an excellent breakfast of ham and eggs just before his execution, the Governor was good enough to tell me, and was collected enough even to grumble at the age of one ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness and seriousness. "Ah!" he thought, again and again, "she's only seventeen; she'll be thoughtful enough after a while. And her aunt allays says how clever she is at the work. She'll make a wife as Mother'll have no occasion to grumble at, after all." To be sure, he had only seen her at home twice since the birthday; for one Sunday, when he was intending to go from church to the Hall Farm, Hetty had joined the party of upper servants from the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... were spending the summer at Mount Holly Inn, and, among other instances of his growing restiveness, Daniel was inclined to grumble at having to bolt his dinner, dress hurriedly in his sun-baked room on Park avenue, and make the suburban car journey nightly in order to reach her side. Sometimes he balked and called her up by 'phone instead, ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... reason in life why they should get a meal ready merely because a timepiece says twelve o'clock. Let them wait until a man's hungry," he would grumble. Then, arrived at the cabin, he would be all courtesy ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... this evening, Iris; happier than I have been for months. The fact is, this infernal place has hipped us both confoundedly. I didn't like to grumble, but I've felt the monotony more than a bit. And so have you. It's made you brood over things. Now, for my part, I like to look at the bright side. Here we are comfortably cut off from the past. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... in calling him an honest fellow presently after. No one quality engrosses us purely and universally. Were it not the sign of a fool to talk to one's self, there would hardly be a day or hour wherein I might not be heard to grumble and mutter to myself and against myself, "Confound the fool!" and yet I do not think that to be my definition. Who for seeing me one while cold and presently very fond towards my wife, believes the one or the other to be counterfeited, is an ass. Nero, taking leave of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... morning—not a living soul is near, Far, far away there is the faint grumble of the guns; The battle has passed long since— All is Peace. At times there is the faint drone of aeroplanes as They pass overhead, amber specks, high up in the blue; Occasionally there is the movement of ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... value manners above morals, and pleasantness above honesty, is one that all of us have to guard against. And when we have held to a custom merely because it is old, have refused to consider fairly the reasons for its change, and are inclined to grumble when the change is carried out, we shall be none the worse for thinking of the people, young and old, who, in the time of Harrison and Shakspere, the "Forgotten Worthies"[82] and Raleigh, no doubt 'hated those nasty new oak houses and chimnies,' and ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... families. Still, there are boats in plenty. Men have come down from towns and villages higher up, for they say that the troops are under no control and, when the boats come in after a night's fishing, they come down and help themselves and, if a man ventures to grumble, he gets a musket ball to pay him for his fish. The men here, at first, were against their fishing between this place and the sea; but the authorities stepped in, and said that the more food, the better for the people; and as the price was fixed, the men here saw that it made no difference to them. ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... is what Democracy comes to," said Lady Niton, taking up her knitting again with vehemence. "'Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin.' You Liberals have opened the gates—and now you grumble at ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cannon, but if he succeed in so doing, he receives a sou; the reader may suppose that a miss takes place at the rate of about seven times to a hit; and after several young countrymen had been trying in vain, and had lost a good many pence, they began to grumble and declare that it was next to impossible to hit the cannon more than once in a hundred times, upon which the proprietor himself took the cross-bow and at the same distance as the others stood, hit the cannon five times running with ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... a long breath behin', and I look round; but, no, it is Norinne with a smile—for she never grumble—bagosh! What purty eyes she have in her head! She have that Marie in her arms, and I say to Bargon it is like the Madonne in the Notre Dame at Montreal. He nod his head. 'C'est le bon Dieu—it is ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... make him angry to keep his mind off the score," said Pickings, feebly to himself. He added aloud, "Stop kicking about your old sixth hole! You've had the darndest luck I ever saw, and yet you grumble." ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... day and through the nights, and still there was nothing to be seen but water. The men had several times given vent to their discontent, and now began to grumble again. Columbus soothed them and reminded them of the reward that awaited them when they had attained their goal. "Besides, their complaints were useless, for I have sailed out to reach India, and intend to prolong my voyage ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... by it, Penhallow. I have personal memories of that young roast pig, I think your man called it a shoat. Your corps must have caught it hard these last days. I suppose we are in for something unusual. You are the only man I know who doesn't grumble. Francis says it's as natural to the beast called an army as ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... a pattering of claws over the beaten clay of the floor, there entered the dog. Once or twice it paced the length of the room. Then, with a sniff at my legs, and a grumble to itself, it departed as it had come. Perhaps the creature felt too old to bay a dirge to its master after the manner of its kind. In any case, as it vanished through the doorway, the shadows—so I ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... supreme capacity combined with a facile temper and a sense of humour. His old companions of the stage had been perhaps his best instructors in the art of moulding the will of the common man. He had the right address for every one; a grumble was met by a few kind words; a roar of laughter was awakened by a ready jest, and its recipient was the happier for the day. When help was wanted, his resources seemed boundless; yet he never gave as though he expected a return, and ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... stillest, yet most diligent of housewives, began at last that "spring-cleaning" which she makes so pleasant that none find the heart to grumble as they do when other matrons set their premises a-dust. Her handmaids, wind and rain and sun, swept, washed, and garnished busily, green carpets were unrolled, apple-boughs were hung with draperies of bloom, and dandelions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... authority as yet. The Prussian Majesty grumbles painfully responsive: "Will, with eagerness, do whatever is just; most surely! But is his Britannic Majesty aware? Hanover Officials are quite misinformed as to the circumstances;"—and does not return any of the men. Merely a pacific grumble, and nothing done in regard to the complaints. Then there is the Meadow of Clamei which we spoke of: "That belongs to Brandenburg, you say? Nevertheless the contiguous parts of Hanover have rights upon it. Some 'eight cart-loads of hay,' worth ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the appointment of Dr. Michaelis, says "there is no chance of his clubbing together with the big industrialists and misguided agitators." So long however as they are clubbed separately we shall not grumble. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... almost as deeply incensed as his guest at the gross injustice of the paragraph, which, nevertheless, would be widely copied, and create public opinion, and so double the difficulties in the young man's way; and he kept up as steady a grumble and growl as had his sorely disquieted dog in the afternoon. But Haldane lowered at the fire for a long time ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... than five minutes, but not much more, when the whole army was on the march again, but the foot cavalry forgot to grumble when they came again into their beloved valley, across which, and up and down which, ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Space unconditioned should be his! For him liberty should not lie in space, but in his own soul. Room should be but the poor out-aide symbol of his inward freedom! He would spin out, he would weave, he would unroll essential liberty into spiritual space! His mind to him a kingdom was. Not a grumble, not a snarl! He left discontent to men, to build their own prisons withal. A proud man with everything he longs for, if such a man there be, is but a slave; this creature of the glad creator was and would be free, because he was a free soul. Prison bars could not touch that ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the argosy which lay somewhere at its bottom. But the man was stout in heart and full of hope. He set his seamen to work to drag along the coast, and for weeks they went on fishing up sea-weed, shingle, and bits of rock. No occupation could be more trying to seamen, and they began to grumble one to another, and to whisper that the man in command had brought them ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste to the Chieftain's door, The terrible rumble, grumble and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... had no knowledge of Box and Cox he did not reply to this grumble, but, rolling up in his blankets until he resembled a huge ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... which he seldom exceeded. If he had friends with him, they paid for what they drank. This pot of porter per diem was the only demand made upon my mother for permission to remain separate, and she did not grumble at it. His tobacco he found himself out of the tobacco money allowed at the hospital. He had received some pay, which, contrary to his former custom, he had laid by in the charge of one of the lieutenants of the hospital, for at that time ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... intended. Besides, if the loss of his memory leads to the sacrifice of Brunnhilda, afterwards its sudden return, due to another potion, leads immediately to his own death. We must accept these potions as part of the machinery. If we do not grumble at talking dragons, tarnhelms, flying horses and fires and magic swords, we need not boggle at a couple of glasses of ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... will find happiness in having what we all feel to be a higher moral standard than others. If they go in for this, however, they must be content with virtue as her own reward, and not grumble if they find lofty Quixotism an expensive luxury, whose rewards belong to a kingdom that is not of this world. They must not wonder if they cut a poor figure in trying to make the most of both worlds. Disbelieve as we may the details of the accounts which record the growth ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the bet. Alan's luck improved as May passed and June dwindled; at the beginning of July he hit a hot streak when he seemed to be marching up to the winner's rostrum every other round, and the other Class C patrons began to grumble. The night he came home with six hundred newly-won credits, Hawkes opened a drawer and took out a slim, ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... negro servant would receive about fifteen hundred pounds, including an annuity of seventy pounds a year, grumbled and muttered "a caveat against ostentatious bounty and favor to negroes." But however much the Sir Johns may grumble, we cannot think the less of Johnson for his kindness in remembering a faithful ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... fool, you are quite mistaken, Dr Edward," she said, a little sharply. "I see how it is as well as anybody can do. I knew how it was when I left the colony. Don't be alarmed about me. Do you think I am to be turned against my own flesh and blood by finding out their follies; or to grumble at the place God put me in?—Nothing of the sort! I know the kind of situation perfectly—but one may make the best of it, you know: and for that reason ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... in this strain for some time, rehashing all the arguments he had heard Greene and Cary use. He had always been rather disposed to grumble at his limited chances in Heatherton, and now the great West seemed to stretch before him, full of alluring prospects and visions. Ogden and Tom wanted him to go too, he said. He had half a notion to. Heatherton was a stick-in-the-mud sort of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... St. Paul accepted him as something to be grateful for, so soon as his mission was explained to him; and after that, who is to say what may not be a gift of God! It won't do to grumble at any thing—will it, sir?—when it may so unexpectedly turn out to be given to us by God. I begin to suspect that never, until we see a thing plainly a gift of God, can we be sure that we see it right. I am quite certain the most unpleasant things may be such gifts. I should be glad ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... should be put in repair or removed; but there was "a joker" inserted elsewhere which nullified this. Instantly there were stormy outbursts in the Chronicle, Inquirer, and Globe; but Cowperwood, when he read them, merely smiled. "Let them grumble," he said to himself. "I put a very reasonable proposition before them. Why should they complain? I'm doing more now than the Chicago City Railway. It's jealousy, that's all. If Schryhart or Merrill had asked for it, there would have been ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the people who like warmth began to grumble a little—hypnotised by the Press. But the spell-of-hot-weather had had enough. "I'll go somewhere else, where I'm really welcome and they don't have contents bills," it said, and it crossed the Channel to Paris. It looked back to the English shores, deserted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... am called up not to grumble, but to say that the establishment of "The Atlantic Monthly" was an era in literature. I say it cheerfully. I believe, nevertheless, it was not the first era of the sort. The sanguine generations have been indulging in them all along, and as "eras" they are apt to ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... sea that men are never so much disposed to grumble and mutiny as when least employed. Hence an old captain, when there was nothing else to do, would issue the order to "scour the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... within it, to hear and see what all this could mean. I likewise was one of the company.—'Here! here! Mr. Rector,' bawled the Squire, 'we ha' brought you your due. I'll warrant, for once, you sha'n't grumble that we do not pay ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of the public mind at this time is thus described by Gray:—"Grumble, indeed, every one does; but, since Wilkes's affair, they fall off their metal, and seem to shrink under the brazen hand of Norton and his colleagues. I hear there will be no Parliament till after Christmas. If the French should be so unwise as to suffer the Spanish court to go on ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... which the said boat had been dragged years before, upon rough runners like a sleigh, partly by the ponies, partly by hand labour. Scoodrach was seated amidships, rowing slowly, and every now and then tucking his oar under his leg, to give his nose a rub, and grumble something about "ta flee." ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... We are accustomed to grumble over the increase in the cost of living. But the enhancement of price in the necessities of physical life is nothing compared to the increase in the cost ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome. But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything had which nature makes inevitable. In that category before anything else comes old age, to which all wish to attain, and at which all grumble when attained. Such is Folly's inconsistency and unreasonableness! They say that it is stealing upon them faster than they expected. In the first place, who compelled them to hug an illusion? For in what respect did old age steal upon manhood faster than ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Ziethen himself defends his action stoutly, and maintains that he could never have succeeded in a direct attack, in broad daylight. Anyhow, as the matter came out all right in the end, the king was too well satisfied to do no more than grumble at him. ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... for us, ought to be ashamed of abetting him in it." Those were the thanks which honest Bows got for his friendship and his life's devotion. And I do not suppose that the old philosopher was much worse off than many other men, or had greater reason to grumble. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... go along with them, I positively refused it, and rose up, for I was sitting on the ground, in order to go to the boat. One or two of the men began to importune me to go; and when I refused, began to grumble, and say they were not under my command, and they would go. "Come, Jack," says one of the men, "will you go with me? I'll go for one." Jack said he would—and then another—and, in a word, they all left me but one, whom I persuaded to stay, and a boy left in the boat. So the supercargo ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't you?" pursued Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and assuming the daughter's. "How you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your nice old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the answers; and how many of the answers you will leave until tomorrow after all! The ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... feed you, light you, sleep you, wait on you, for two francs a day. Withered old ladies, ancient governesses, who will teach you for forty centimes an hour, gather round these ricketty tables, wolf up the thin soup, grumble at the watery coffee, help themselves with unladylike greediness to the potato pie. It must need careful housewifery to keep these poor creatures on two francs a day and make a profit for yourself. So "Madame," the much- grumbled-at, who has gone to bed ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... 100 strings of beads. I wished to begin the exchange by being generous, and told his messenger so; then a small quantity of maize was brought, and I grumbled at the meanness of the present: there is no use in being bashful, as they are not ashamed to grumble too. The man said that Kabinga would send more when ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... peevish and cry out; some men did so from their hearts, admiring the Duke of Marlborough's prodigious talents, and deploring the disgrace of the greatest general the world ever knew: 'twas the stomach that caused other patriots to grumble, and such men cried out because they were poor, and paid to do so. Against these my Lord Bolingbroke never showed the slightest mercy, whipping a dozen into prison or into the pillory without ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pitch-dark nights in pouring rain the men, wet to the skin, covered with mud and filth, without a smoke, groping about in the dark to find a likely stone, carried on the work in silence; and when the word was passed along to knock off work, they "turned in" without a grumble into a wet bivouac. There was no complaining, and the men were never required by their officers to bring along the stones faster. The only noise that broke the stillness of the night was the incessant "click, click, ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... was exceedingly hot, a day when men sweat and grumble as they march, when they fall down like dead things on the roadside at every halt and when they rise again they wonder how under Heaven they are going to drag their limbs and burdens along for the next forty minutes. We passed Les Brebes, like men in a dream, pursued a tortuous path across a wide ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... help thinking that to grumble in the presence of that rich, despotic personality would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... getting Newman through the scale. "'Fraid you never'll make a great singer, my boy," he said, "but you may be able to grumble bass a little, if you prove to have an ear that can follow. ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the nervous man as the wires became quiet. "I—" again the wire sputtered, and he couldn't hear himself talk. When it was quiet, he tried again, but as soon as he began to grumble, the wire began to sputter. He glanced suspiciously at the boy, but the latter was ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... the House of Lords. When the matter came before the Commons, Lord John delivered a speech so adroit and so skilful that friends and foes alike were satisfied, and even pronounced Radicals forgot to grumble. ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... have corrected in all the copies struck off after the first lot of 2500. I daresay there will be a new edition in the course of nine months or a year, and this I will correct as well as I can. As yet the publishers have kept up type, and grumble dreadfully if I make heavy corrections. I am very far from surprised that "you have not committed yourself to full acceptation" of the evolution of man. Difficulties and objections there undoubtedly are, enough and to spare, to stagger any cautious ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... to sit inside and drive out of window; but then he was told of the impropriety of his daughters going out to dinner in gigs, and the expense of flies. When Flora talked of propriety in that voice, the family might protest and grumble, but were always reduced to obedience; and thus Blanche's wedding had been the occasion of Ethel being put into a hoop, and the Doctor into a brougham. He was better off under the tyranny than she was, in spite of the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... things themselves were to himself of so very little value! Living alone at Scumberg's was not a pleasant life. Even going out in his brougham at nights was not very pleasant to him. He could do as he liked at Como, and people wouldn't grumble;—but what was there even at Como that he really liked to do? He had a half worn out taste for scenery which he had no longer energy to gratify by variation. It had been the resolution of his life to live ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the dirt off his knees. "If there's anything that stirs my temper, it's this mumble-grumble, whiffle-and-hint business. Out and open, that's my style." He was reflecting testily on the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... mistaken of having passed through animal systems before. All these waters contain nitrates, which stimulate the kidneys and increase the thirst. The fresh additions of water required in cooking meat, each imparting its own portion of salt, make one grumble at the cook for putting too much seasoning in, while in fact he has put in none at all, except that contained in the water. Of bitter, bad, disgusting waters I have drunk not a few nauseous draughts; ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... speeds rapidly on and Beatrice is now counted as quite an old nurse. She finds her work in the bungalows very pleasant and the soldiers find her most obliging. She works hard and is never tempted to grumble. ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... he have the gift of showing my road, I shall not grumble with him that he desires to make it pleasant.—Fare thee well, kind Wilfred—I charge thee not to attempt to travel till ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... we grumble at times, just as people at home are grumbling at the Savoy, or Lockhart's. It is the Briton's habit so to do. But in moments of repletion we are fain to confess that the organisation of our commissariat is wonderful. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... South at break of day, Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay, The affrighted air with a shudder bore, Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door, The terrible grumble and rumble and roar, Telling the battle was on once more, And Sheridan twenty miles away. And wider still those billows of war Thundered along the horizon's bar, And louder yet into Winchester rolled ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... your couch of glory slumber comes Bosomed amid the archangelic choir; Not with the grumble of impetuous drums Deepening the ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... and very soon they had completed the work necessary for the protection of all. The tools of the enemy "casualties," the spades and picks left behind in deserted villages, were all gladly piled on to the French soldiers' knapsacks, to be carried willingly by the very men who used to grumble at being loaded with even the smallest regulation tool. As soon as night had set in on the occasion of a lull in the fighting, the digging of the trenches was begun. Sometimes, in the darkness, the men of each ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... until spring. I believe that rheumatic or neuralgic invalids should avoid the damp resorts to which they are constantly flocking only to be dissatisfied. Every sort of climate can be found in the State, so that no one has the right to grumble. ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... why it should be changed. A mere outburst of temper on the part of a few Juniors was nothing: it had happened before, and would no doubt happen again; it was as much the province of Juniors to grumble as of Seniors to rule. But they reckoned without Gipsy. That any girl of her age should be capable of welding the shifting dissatisfaction of the Lower School into one solid mass of opposition had never occurred to them. So far no Junior had exercised ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... Let em grumble. I allers found out that when a man is gettin up in the world, that, like carrion crows hoverin over a sick animal, grumblers fly about him, lickin their chops and watchin a good opportunity to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... first," said Pickard, with a shake of the head, "at first I'd no great reason to grumble. He cert'ny wor a good hand at spottin' a winner. But as time went on, I' t' greatest difficulty in gettin' a settlement wi' him, d'ye see? He wor just as good a hand at makin' excuses as he wor at pickin' out winners—better, I think! I nivver knew wheer I was wi' him—he'd pay up, and then he'd ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... the step with the knowledge, and therefore with the joint responsibility, of the Chancellor? If the answer is in the negative, it is the "personal regiment" again, and people are angry: if the latter, they may disapprove of the step and grumble at it, but it is covered by the Chancellor's signature and they can raise no constitutional objection. Hence the demand usually made on such occasions for an Act of Parliament once for all defining fully and clearly the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the man said, opening the gate. "It is late for a discharge; but I don't suppose the prisoner will grumble at that." ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... courting trouble, honey, as Willy Shakespeare says somewhere. Oh, well, if it wasn't Willy Shakespeare it was somebody else who said it, and it's just as true anyway. Take your umbrella and wait till the rain comes down before you grumble. I've got an exeat and I didn't expect it, and I'm going off my head a little. That's all! Don't worry yourselves about me. I'm sane ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... satisfaction to the rate-payers, and is indeed hardly fair towards them, since the new bridges and roads render available large tracts of land that would otherwise be valueless, and for which Tom C——'s honourable masters obtain a handsome price in consequence. The inhabitants grumble at these proceedings, but can do no more, the sole and whole management of the fund in question being in the ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... trees, some to cull the nectar, some to search for insects attracted for like purpose, some to nibble and discard white petals. All the moist soil beneath is strewn with snowy flakes, for at night flying foxes blunder among the branches, destroying more blooms than they eat. But why grumble? Birds which nip off petals and musty foxes which brush down whole posies in their clumsiness are but positive checks to overproduction. Do they not avert the unthankful task of carting away dozens of barrow loads of superfluous fruit? ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... paper an' the cost of pen an' ink. She just tells him very sweetly if he'll only wait a bit An' be seated in the parlor, she will write a check for it. She can write one out for twenty just as easily as ten, An' forgets that Pa may grumble: "Well, ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... Mrs Pearson knocked at the door, and told me that a lady and gentleman had called, I shut my book which I had just opened, and kept down as well as I could the rising grumble of the inhospitable Englishman, who is apt to be forgetful to entertain strangers, at least in the parlour of his heart. And I cannot count it perfect hospitality to be friendly and plentiful towards those whom you have ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... fashion. After one of these feasts there was often much that was objectionable; and, wherever possible, farmers have abolished them, giving a small sum of money instead; but in places the labourers grumble greatly at the change, preferring the bacon and the beer, and the unrestrained license. It is noticeable how the women must have their tea. If it is far from home, the children collect sticks, and a fire is made in a corner ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... they advertise, but wait until they are full of freight and passengers. The latter are boarded on them from the time they take passage, if they wish,—often a week or ten days. Berths are often engaged by "loafers," who eat and sleep on board, and grumble at the detention, but who suddenly decamp when the ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... of Lord George Bentinck and exerted themselves to return a majority to the House of Commons, it would have profited them more than useless execrations and barren discontent. But it is observable, that no individuals now grumble so much as the farmers who voted for free trader in 1847, unless indeed it be the shipowners, every one of whom for years, both in and out of Parliament, supported the repeal ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menaechmus of talent, has one dupe,—history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it. In our day, a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its service, wears the livery of success, and performs the service of its antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity argues capacity. Win in the lottery, and behold! you are a clever ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... on through the woods to Grandpa Grumble's house; for, sure enough, Bunny and Susan had gone to bed and turned out all ...
— Snubby Nose and Tippy Toes • Laura Rountree Smith
... say that I wasent mad with Jim Allcorn, as sum peepul supposed; but it do illustrate the onsertainty of human kalkulashuns in this subloonery world. The disappintments of life are amazin', and if a man wants to fret and grumble at his luck he can find a reesunable oppertunity to do so every day that he lives. Them sort of constitutional grumblers ain't much cumpany to me. I'd rather be Jim Perkins with a bullit hole through me and take my chances. Jim, you know, was shot down at Gains' Mill, and the ball went ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... the low-hanging, leaden skies of a Swedish December day before the first snow has fallen. It made him long for sunlight, and the parties brought it to some extent. Then care and caution were forgotten, although his father might grumble before and after. Then the daily routine was broken, and Granny became cynically but actively interested, bent above all on seeing that "the ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... in running between the cellar and the great kitchen, and between the kitchen and the stable, where the troopers had always a job for me, and allowed me in return to join in their talk. They seemed to think this an adequate reward, and I did not grumble. ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... she announced, beginning with her sister. "Three for Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't you?" pursued Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and assuming the daughter's. "How you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your nice old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the answers; and how many of the answers you will leave until tomorrow ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Harry checked him from asking Baltic to leave. Moreover, the man was greatly liked by Mrs Mosk on account of his religious spirit, and approved of by Bell from the order he kept in the hotel. Therefore Mosk, being in the minority, could only stand on one side and grumble, which he did with ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... congratulation that the British prosperous and the British successful, to whom warning after warning has rained in vain from the days of Ruskin, Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, should be called to account at last in their own household. They will grumble, they will be very angry, but in the end, I believe, they will rise to the opportunities of their inconvenience. They will shake off their intellectual lassitude, take over again the public and private affairs they have come to leave so largely in the hands of the political barrister and the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... me rather say it myself: These poets are turning everything upside down; nobody dares to grumble. An author might owe in unsecured debts his twenty thousand—what of it? He is unable to pay, that is all. What if a business man should act in this manner? What if he were to obtain wine or clothes on false promises of payment? He would simply be arrested ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... it. But I mean it. Boys are such—— What? little prudes, like the old duennas in the books, and that is what you are. You think things are wrong that are not wrong. But it is to an Englishman the right thing to grumble," Bice said, with a smile of reconciliation as they stepped into the street. On that sweet morning even the street was delightful. It restored them to perfect satisfaction with each other as they made their way to the Park, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... plundering. But having respect for their good birth, and pity for their misfortunes, and perhaps a little admiration at the justice of God, that robbed men now were robbers, the squires, and farmers, and shepherds, at first did nothing more than grumble gently, or even make a laugh of it, each in the case of others. After awhile they found the matter gone too far for laughter, as violence and deadly outrage stained the hand of robbery, until every woman clutched her child, and every man turned pale at the ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of Box and Cox he did not reply to this grumble, but, rolling up in his blankets until he resembled a huge ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... him fast; and now his manly love for Elisabeth held him faster still. But even the chains which love had rivetted are capable of galling us sometimes; and although we would not break them, even if we could, we grumble at them occasionally—that is to say, if we are merely human, as is the case with so many ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... listening men the noise dropped to a loud grumble; rose to a piercing shriek; wavered and leaped rapidly from note to note. It was increasing; rushing upon them with unbearable sound. The sense of something approaching, driving toward them swiftly, was strong ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... for the proper support and equipment of their army. If it had cost five million dollars, or ten million dollars, to supply every company in General Shafter's command with hammocks, waterproof rain-sheets, extra clothing, and camp-kettles, the money would have been appropriated and paid without a grumble or a murmur. We are not a stingy people, nor even an economical people, when the question is one of caring for the men that we send into the field to fight for us. If, then, the financial resources of the War Department were unlimited, and if it had supreme ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... more than any other bird in the bag. In the first place, there is its scarcity. Half a dozen to every hundred pheasants would in most parts of the country be considered a proportion at which none could grumble, and there are many days on which not one is either seen or shot. Again, there is the bird's twisting flight, which, particularly inside the covert, makes it anything but an easy target. Third and last, it is better to eat than any other of our ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... his wife, "but then see how little on the other hand is required to make them miserable! Let the sun hide his head for a day, and they grumble!" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... mother to go to bed first, and waited a little while before beginning her preparations. She was so long that her mother, although still engrossed by the pain in her head, began to grumble. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... into poetry" on account of them. Their bliss infected every body in the car, and in spite of the weariness of our journey, and the vexation of the misadventures which had succeeded one another unsparingly ever since we left home, we found ourselves far on the way to Genoa before we thought to grumble at the distance. There was with us, besides the bridal party, a lady travelling from Bologna to Turin, who had learned English in London, and spoke it much better than most Londoners. It is surprising how thoroughly Italians master a language ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... exploration of a vaster spiritual America! Pobloff trembled. He was so transported by the idea, that his capacious frame and large head became enveloped in a sort of magnetic halo. He diffused enthusiasm as a swan sheds water; and his men did not grumble at the numerous extra rehearsals, for they realized that their chief might make ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... his habit either to laugh or to grumble at Karl Steinmetz's somewhat subtle precautions. The word "danger" invariably made him laugh, with a ring in his voice which seemed to ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... They'd grumble at being taken away from their work to assemble a review of all the known facts about Eden—a dead issue as far as their own work was concerned, for Eden had been assayed and filed away as solved. They'd ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... novelet-made love, all her purely legal dilemmas as to whether she was married or "betrayed," quite miss our hearts and worry our minds. To console ourselves we must just look at her. We do so; and her beauty feeds our starving emotions. Sometimes we grumble ungallantly at the lady because she does not act as well as she looks. But in a drama which, with all its preoccupation with sex, is really void of sexual interest, good looks are more ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... to have little peace that night! Hardly had Dick finished his grumble and sauntered away, before her husband's step ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... weather, Marthy'd say, 'Ain't everything predestined? Warn't this drought app'inted before the foundation of the world? What's the sense in grumblin' over the decrees of God?' And it got so that if Amos wanted to grumble over anything, he had to git away from home first, and that must 'a' been mighty wearin' on him; for, as a rule, a man never does any grumblin' except at home; but pore Amos didn't have that privilege. Sam Amos used to say—-Sam ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... should grumble, had she not such a super-abundance of discretion. She smiles upon me it is true; is all gentleness, all benevolence; but then she does just the same to every body else. For my part, I see no difference; except that I sometimes think she has a kinder ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... and as many as you can get," Trent answered shortly. "I have a 100 pound note with me. I shall not grumble if I get little change out of it, but I want ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Cross. Within little more than an hour after reaching the waterfront the Germans had brought up their engineers, the bridge had been repaired, the fire from Fort St. Anne had been silenced, and their troops were pouring across the river in a steady stream in pursuit of the Belgians. The grumble of field-guns, which continued throughout the night, told us that they had overtaken ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... of his own countrymen the comfortable things that he tells of the English; but we need not grumble at that. The father who is severe with his own children will freely admire those of others, for whom he is not responsible. Emerson is stern toward what we are, and arduous indeed in his estimate of what we ought to be. He intimates that we are ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... course, certain superfine persons who, in the case of a famous artist, think very like the sitter, and are satisfied so long as they get an ornamental picture, or one well up to date. But the truly human grumble, and are more than justified in doing so. Their cravings have been disappointed; they had expected the impossible, and have ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... cattle-yards was twice as good as ours, and me and Jim used often to wonder why the Sydney people hadn't managed to have something like them all these years, instead of the miserable cockatoo things at Homebush that we'd often heard the drovers and squatters grumble about. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... exclaimed; and then, restraining himself, he broke into a soft laugh. "You may accuse me of that feeling when you hear me grumble." ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... home for me. There was the skin of a monstrous Wolf, but no other hint of triumph. We buried the fearless one on a butte back of the Ranch-house. Penroof, as he stood by, was heard to grumble: "By jingo, that was grit—cl'ar grit! Ye can't raise ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... letting the old lady grumble on, sat down to his bowl of steaming soup. "What do you say to dinner, Pascualet! Don't mind her! Your daddy is going to make the best sailor in the Cabanal out of you! Tell us, mama, what ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the brothers passed through the deserted penguin rookery, with never a bark or a grumble from the whilom excited birds as they tramped the well-worn paths which they had made from the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a first-rate singer. The pupil was apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's progress was very remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump, who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at the new system, and the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made to go through. It was very different in HER time, she said. Incledon knew no music, and who could sing so well now? Give her a good English ballad: it was a thousand times ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the effect of awakening the doctor, who immediately began to grumble at his patient's admitting visitors without permission. By the time he had examined Eustace's wounds and pronounced him to be progressing favourably, the whole Castle was up and awake, and Arthur, against his will, was sent down to attend on Sir John Chandos ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the night sets in, look back with regret at the "gusty, babbling, and remorseless day;" but, if we do so, we miss the supporting faith of the Christian and the manly cheerfulness of the heathen. To grow old is quite natural; being natural, it is beautiful; and if we grumble at it, we miss the lesson, and lose ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... when he learnt, after the interchange of various hoarse and to him unintelligible bellowings, that he was to wait in that narrow damp lobby for the coming of his fellow- Commissioner, the grating on his feelings was even more discordant. He had not pluck enough left to grumble: but he grunted his displeasure. He grunted, however, in vain; for in about a quarter of an hour Alaric was close to him, shoulder to shoulder. He also wore a white jacket, &c., with a nightcap of mud and candle on his head; but somehow he looked as though he had worn them all his ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... shepherd who lived among the mountains with his wife and children; and so very poor was he that he often found it hard to give his family enough to satisfy their hunger. But he did not grumble; he only worked the harder; and his wife, though she had scarcely any furniture, and never a chance of a new dress, kept the house so clean, and the old clothes so well mended, that, all unknown to herself, she rose high in the favour of the ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... become one of their anxious number. But differences of training and experience remained to constitute real and very serious obstacles, although—and let me say it here, as I shall have plenty of occasion to grumble further on—the chief deterring or exclusive influence I ever suffered from in Boston or Cambridge was that of a kindness so much in excess of my capacity to make fair returns that I had often to flinch from accepting it. Literary and professional men ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... had worked a cure, She never heard him grumble; She saw his soul was good and pure, ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... average size and a certain amount of pluck can make himself at least moderately proficient. Kennedy, after consultations with Fenn, had picked out what he considered the best fifteen, and the two set themselves to knock it into shape. In weight there was not much to grumble at. There were several heavy men in the scrum. If only these could be brought to use their weight to the last ounce when shoving, all would be well as far as the forwards were concerned. The outsides were not ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... against the tenor of the news of to-day which is splendid indeed in one sense; ominous in another. The Turks are being heavily reinforced. All the enemy troops who made the big attack last night were fresh arrivals from Adrianople. I do not grumble at the attack (on the contrary we like it), but at the reason they had for making it, which is that two fresh Divisions, newly arrived, asked leave to show their muscle by driving us into the sea. Full ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... trudging peasants, men, women and boys hurrying to the fields for the long weary hours of toil lasting often into the dark of night. But we were told they were working for their own profit, were their own masters, and did not grumble. This grinding toil in the fields, as practised here where nothing was wasted, could not of course be a happy or healthful work, nor calculated to elevate the peasant in intelligence, so as a matter of fact the great body of the country ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... won't do that. In the first place you'd go to sleep, and then she would be offended; and I don't know that your sufferings would make mine any lighter. I'm not prepared to alter the ways of the world, but feel myself entitled to grumble at them sometimes.' ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... have no right to be ill-tempered. We two are among the supremely fortunate ones of our time. We have no excuse for misbehaviour. Got nothing to grumble at. Always I am lucky. THAT—with the waggon—was a very near ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... and riotous revelers. Of course this condition of affairs could not long be endured. Stung by the slight appreciation of her talents in England, and not choosing to endure the want of patience which made the public grumble when she chose to sing badly or not at all, she quitted England after a very brief stay. Lord Mount Edgcumbe saw her in the opera of "Didone," and avows bluntly that he could see nothing more of her ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... And the two boys went on with their disagreeable work so heartily that they soon had it out of the way; Sandy remarking as they finished it, that, for his part, he did not like the business at all, but he did not think it fair that they two, who could not do the heavy work, should grumble over that they could do. "The worst of it is," he added, "we've got to look forward to months and months of this sort of thing. Father and Uncle Charlie say that we cannot have the rest of the family come out until we have a house to put them in—a ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... hatred," and ready to throw themselves upon society. In the past he saw nothing so much to be admired as the Feudal System, it was so very summary and trenchant in its modes of dealing with masses of men so unreasonable as to grumble when they were starving. In the present, all that he could reverence was the cannonarchy of Russia, which he invoked to restore to France that golden age in which Crecy and Poictiers were fought, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... doing well, but not well enough for that. Next year, if I live, you will be able to have a carriage. Don't begin to grumble, Honoria. I have got L150 to spare, and if you care to come round to a jeweller's you can spend it on ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... now, she was sure she heard Uncle Charlie's deep voice. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she heard Aunt Isabel's voice, no louder than uncle Charlie's but more penetrating; it had a queer note in it—almost as if she were crying. Suddenly she did cry out!—And then Uncle Charlie's deep grumble again. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... chic. I saw no other woman similarly placed whose eyes held so assiduously, and without ever a wandering flutter, to the face of the man who was paying. But Freddie never noticed her. He chewed savagely at his cigar, looking about the while for things to grumble at or to curse. Rod? He is still writing indifferent plays with varying success. He long since wearied of Constance Francklyn, but she clings to him and, as she is a ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... up the results usually attained, let no discontented taxpayer grumble at the large outlays annually made in behalf of the deaf and dumb. If they learned absolutely nothing in the school-room, the intelligence they gain by contact with each other, by the lectures in signs, by intercourse with teachers, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... began to appear, and, after the nature of such things, they developed with marvellous rapidity. People began to grumble about "contraction of the currency." In every country there arose a party which demanded "free money." Demagogues pointed to the brief reign of paper money after the demonetization of gold as a happy period, when the people had enjoyed their rights, and the "money barons"—borrowing ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... moved out of Grumble Street and into Thanksgiving Alley," he said, "it'll be a privilege for this village; but you can't do it, Anne. However, there's no use talking to you, you incorrigible optimist. You're the worst case I ever saw, Anne Peace, and I haven't the smallest hope of curing ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... prudence, and being unable to conceal the jewels any longer, she one day said to me, "Bourrienne, there is to be a large party here to-morrow, and I absolutely must wear my pearls. But you know he will grumble if he notices them. I beg, Bourrienne, that you will keep near me. If he asks me where I got my pearls I must tell him, without hesitation, that I have had them a ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... mouth all the time," he would grumble. "A fellow working for the Cardews never gets ahead. What chance has he got, anyhow? It takes all he can ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... not care if he is vexed, old curmudgeon that he is!" cried Blucher. "He must always have something to grumble at, and has often enough said very hard things about me. Let him do so again, for aught I care! I shall, nevertheless, not go to the ball. What should I do there? Merry I cannot be, for my indignation almost stifles my heart, and, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... in a fright, Al out of bed did tumble. The German lad was raving mad, How he did groan and grumble! He cried to Vic, 'I've cut my stick: To St. Petersburg go right slap.' When Vic, 'tis said, jumped out of bed, And ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... again. He was on good terms, but not familiar, with his messmates, and very respectful to the captain. There was no other officer in the service who would have suited Captain Delmar so well as Mr Hippesley, who, although he might occasionally grumble at not being promoted, appeared on the whole to be very ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... were placed, which continually did great damage to the besiegers. Michael Angelo, notwithstanding that he had made provision beforehand for whatever might occur, posted himself upon the hill. After about six months the soldiers began to grumble amongst themselves of I know not what treachery; Michael Angelo partly knowing about this himself, and partly by the warnings of certain captains, his friends, betook himself to the Signoria and discovered to them what he had heard ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... to swill sack; never"—but here the voice of the discontented woman, who, in her excitement, had risen from her seat and walked away, was lost in the pantry, or rather subdued into an inarticulate grumble; and Spikeman, after waiting awhile, and finding it improbable that the conversation would be resumed, knocked in a peculiar manner on the door, which was almost ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... thought Cecil; but she was too well bred to grumble, and she had her great work to carry on of copying and illustrating ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... easy thing for governments to compel all those who travel by ships, to provide themselves with a life-preserver. By this cheap and simple contrivance, I am prepared to show that thousands of lives would be annually saved; and no one would grumble at either the cost or inconvenience of carrying so ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... tents being just issued,) an order came from Beaufort that we should be ready in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards, being some of those captured by them a few weeks since, and now assigned for their use. I wondered if the men would grumble at the night-work; but the steamboat arrived by seven, and it was bright moonlight when they went at it. Never have I beheld such a jolly scene of labor. Tugging these wet and heavy boards over a bridge of boats ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... last look at the lonely house, 'if it had only been Edward Kornicker who was thus cast adrift, to kick his way through the world with empty pockets, and without a soul to say to him God speed, or 'I'm sorry for you,' it would have been right and proper, and no one would have any cause to grumble or find fault; but this being a girl, with no money, and consequently with no friends, no experience, as I have, it's a very hard case—a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... an imaginary dialogue between Cato and Laelius. We found the first portion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refreshment (pocula quoedam vini).—All want to reach old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it; therefore they are donkeys.—The lecturer will allow us to say that he is the donkey; we know we shall grumble at old age, but we want to live through youth and manhood, in spite of the troubles we shall groan over.—There was considerable prosing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... almost all in, but as farmers always grumble about something, they are now growling about the lightness of the crop. All the young part of our household are wrapt up in uncertainty concerning the Queen's illness—for—if her Majesty parts cable, there will be no Forest Ball, and that is a terrible prospect. On Wednesday (when no post arrives ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... calmness he answered as he leaned against the rudder, "There's nothing to grumble at; Timar knows what to do." With the courage of despair Trikaliss drew his dagger out of his girdle in order to cut the rope himself; but the steersman pointed toward the stern, and what Trikaliss saw there ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... to one. Indeed, if we were to take out of the gospels what Jesus said to small audiences, we should rob them of their choicest portions. So, if, when we get to the chapel we find that there are more pews than people, let us preach to those who are there. Why grumble at the few who have come, perhaps a long way? Let us feed these with the choicest of the wheat. It may be an historic time for anything you know. There may be someone there whom your sermon may lead to Jesus, and who ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... busy in helping us. Every one vied with the others in being friendly to us; and the poor neglected invalid who had been crowded to the wall, the overlooked officer Toulan, was now an object of universal care and attention. We rode home to our inn in a royal carriage, and the host did not grumble any longer; he was anxious to procure us food, and very active in caring for all our needs. The queen had saved us from misfortune, the queen had made us ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... They loved to grumble, those old salts, for as soon as one had shot off his grievance his neighbour would follow with another, each more bitter than ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Back Bay family whose good father had been one of the most successful and most brutal of all the "East India traders," when I suggested to him that he was fortunate in obtaining twenty per cent. on some copper ventures about which he was grumbling. (My readers must not confuse a Boston grumble with the ordinary ejaculations of discontent indulged in by the inhabitants of other portions of the world remote from the Hub of the Universe. A Boston grumble consists of an upward movement of the eyebrow, a slight ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... of the big campfire and the beautiful clear sky overhead filled the boys with aspirations to "camp out," and they were rather inclined to grumble at Swiftwater's orders compelling them to ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... that I have a right to grumble a little if I pay," she said, with features between a smile ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... aspirations. The harbour lights, illumining the troubled waters of their lives. What could be done with them? They could hardly be maintained out of the public funds as mere mementoes of the past. Besides, there were too many of them. The tax-payer would naturally grumble. As Town Halls, Assembly Rooms? The idea was unthinkable. It would be like a performance of Barnum's Circus in the Coliseum at Rome. Yes, they would disappear. Though not, she was glad to think, in her time. In towns, the space would be required for other buildings. Here and there some gradually ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... quasi-circular basin, called El-Safh ("the level ground of") Jebel Malih ("Mount Pleasant"?), which the broad-speaking Bedawin lengthen to Malayh. Our camel-men had halted exactly between two waters, and equally distant from both, so as to force upon us the hire of extra animals. We did not grumble, however, as we were anxious to inspect the Afran ("furnaces") said to be found upon the upper heights of the Sharr—of these apocryphal features more hereafter. Fresh difficulties! The Jerafin-Huwaytat tribe, that owns the country south of the Surr, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... around it, we're in a bad way. The soldiers grumble about the officers, the officers grumble about us, see? And we're damn well ready now to send both Villa and Carranza to hell to have a good time all by themselves.... I guess we're in the same fix as that peon from Tepatitlan who complained about his boss all day long but worked on just ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... aspiring and struggling upwards, And it needeth that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety: He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure, Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... were disposed to grumble at the small part they seemed to be playing in the great tussle in which England was engaged, the authorities were satisfied that for so small a town to have kept occupied during the first critical month of the war 10,000—and ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... old—guiltless as yet of the sty—with no original speck of the amor immunditiae, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest—his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble, and a grumble—the mild forerunner, or praeludium, of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... that!" he roared, his anger lifting his voice high above the grumble and the sharp clack of the place. "I'll ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... minded to Fling it at him, knock him and the Chaplain down, and leave the precious pair to pick themselves up again, but I forebore. "Well," I said, "if that's the value you put upon your life, I can't grumble at your Guerdon. I suppose that shrivelled little carcass of yours isn't worth more than fourpence. I'll e'en change it in town, and buy fourpennyworth of Dutch cheese, and you shall have the parings for nothing to send to your Mamma as a gift from foreign parts. Good morning ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... superiors, and I predict that he will get well and be promoted. I think you will receive a letter in a day or two from the surgeon. I prescribe that you and mamma sleep in the morning till you are rested. I won't grumble at taking my coffee alone." Then, to the colored woman and her son: "Don't you worry. We'll see that you are ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... vanity overcame her prudence, and being unable to conceal the jewels any longer, she one day said to me, "Bourrienne, there is to be a large party here to-morrow, and I absolutely must wear my pearls. But you know he will grumble if he notices them. I beg, Bourrienne, that you will keep near me. If he asks me where I got my pearls I must tell him, without hesitation, that I have had them ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... we've reach'd her, lo! the captain, Gallant Kidd, commands the crew; Passengers their berths are clapt in, Some to grumble, some to spew, 'Hey day! call you that a cabin? Why 'tis hardly three feet square; Not enough to stow Queen Mab in— Who the deuce can harbour there?' 'Who, sir? plenty— Nobles twenty Did at once my vessel fill'— 'Did they? Jesus, How you squeeze us! ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... said; "but in any case I am sure your wit would have come to the rescue, and you would have said that you had in fact bought them from your savings; but that thinking your husband might grumble at your little economies you had thought it best to say that they came ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... clamor, hue and cry, plaint; lungs; stentor. V. cry, roar, shout, bawl, brawl, halloo, halloa, hoop, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, screech, screak[obs3], shriek, shrill, squeak, squeal, squall, whine, pule, pipe, yaup[obs3]. cheer; hoot; grumble, moan, groan. snore, snort; grunt &c. (animal sounds) 412. vociferate; raise up the voice, lift up the voice; call out, sing out, cry out; exclaim; rend the air; thunder at the top of one's voice, shout at the top of one's voice, shout ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the two Generals came in from some vanity of inspection to grumble a little merrily at the open air banquet, but to take their places in all good humour, and the lively meal began with all the home witticisms, yet not such as to exclude strangers. Indeed, Hubert Delrio was treated with something like distinction, ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Work is such an admirable tonic. The princess works, and finds life very tolerable. You will never succeed with people like Frau von Treumann and the baroness. They belong to a class of persons that will grumble even in heaven. You could easily make those who are happy already still happier, for it is in them—the gratitude and appreciation for life and its blessings; but those of course are not the people you want to get at. You think I am preaching?" ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... and cry, plaint; lungs; stentor. V. cry, roar, shout, bawl, brawl, halloo, halloa, hoop, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, screech, screak^, shriek, shrill, squeak, squeal, squall, whine, pule, pipe, yaup^. cheer; hoot; grumble, moan, groan. snore, snort; grunt &c (animal sounds) 412. vociferate; raise up the voice, lift up the voice; call out, sing out, cry out; exclaim; rend the air; thunder at the top of one's voice, shout at the top of one's voice, shout at the pitch of one's breath, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... rash when I ventured to remonstrate about a bill. Ellice pointed out, with justice, that so long as I slouched round and let Wandle rob me, I'd no right to grumble at her for buying a few things. Most unwisely I maintained my point and"—he indicated the broken crock and littered table—"you see ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... hours' sleep," he wrote to his mother. "And I was perfectly comfortable. I can tell you one thing, too, Mother. If I ever get home after this experience, there'll be one in the house who'll never grumble! This business puts the grumbling out of your head. This is where the men are. This is where every man ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... "the peasants will make a demonstration. You know as well as I do—as well as Prince Pavlo does, despite his imperturbable face—that the whole country is a volcano which may break forth at any moment. But the control is strong, and therefore there is never a large eruption—a grumble here, a gleam of fire there, a sullen heat everywhere! But it is held in check by the impossibility of communication. It seems strange, but Russia stands because she has no penny postage. The great crash will come, not by force of arms, but by ways of peace. The signal will be a postal ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... railways and the million ride. God hath so willed the toiling millions reap The golden harvest that the rich have sown. Six feet of earth make all men even; lo The toilers are the rich man's heirs at last. But there be men would grumble at their lot, Even if it were a corner-lot on Broadway. We stand upon the shoulders of the past. Who knoweth not the past how may he know The folly or the wisdom of to-day? For by comparison we weigh the good, And by comparison all evil weigh. "What can we reason, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... gales. The "line" was passed; southern seas were reached; new constellations glittered overhead; strange fish and luminous creatures gambolled in the sea, and the whalers' fishing-ground was entered. Latterly the men had ceased to grumble at the captain, although he had by no means ceased to swear at and bully the men, and Gaff began to hope that they had got over their bad fit, and were going to settle down to ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... course not. I ain't one o' them blokes as grumble cause a feller's 'ungry. Wot d'yer say to a bit o' cold meat and ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... knocking up. At first I refused to go on, but on the promise that he would get a bullock at the nearest place I mounted upon the luggage. Fortunately, my gift camel is a good one, not like the horse, and can carry a large weight. I cannot grumble much, as the Sheikh's camels are transporting many of my private things. Nevertheless you must show a stern resistance to all these liberties, otherwise you will never be ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... kind master allowed her to do, for a few days after Cara's birth; grumbled when the Arabs and camels moved on; grumbled when any one touched him with a pat or caress, and grumbled when let alone. In fact, the only time when Cara did not grumble was when he took his meals, and this was simply because his mouth and tongue were occupied with getting ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... have not named the arrowroot plants, because I have planted my land with them again, but they might be fairly put to the credit of the account. The above statement shows what may be done with good land and good management; but even if a man can only clear L10 on an acre of land, he ought not to grumble. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... old fellow was Sam, and he used to say that no one loved the young masters so well as he did; but somehow or another Sam never used to see them out in the garden without finding something to grumble about. His complaints were generally without foundation; but Sam used to think he had cause to complain; and, being rather an old man, he used to consider he had a right so ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... life. I got a love of adventure, and particularly of military parade and grandeur, that has since led me into more than one difficulty. Capt. Hugh Littlepage, my grandfather, was delighted with all he saw until after the expedition had sailed, when he began to grumble on the subject of the religious observances that the piety of the Puritans blended with most of their other movements. On the score of religion there was a marked difference; I may say there is still a marked difference between New England ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... self-control, thought, effort to fulfil that aspiration even in part. For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue. Men begin at first, as boys begin when they grumble at their school and their schoolmasters, to lay the blame on others; to be discontented with their circumstances—the things which stand around them; and to cry, "Oh that I had this!" "Oh that I had that!" But by that way no deliverance lies. That discontent ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... was once only a handful of atoms. There was the period of Birth; there was the period of Conquest; and finally there has come the period of Domination. Now, with its hold on the industry, the life of eight states, complete, like the great Serpent it can grumble, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the man in black, 'why she will be true to herself. Let Dissenters, whether they be Church of England, as perhaps they may still call themselves, Methodist, or Presbyterian, presume to grumble, and there shall be bruising of lips in pulpits, tying up to whipping-posts, cutting off ears and noses—he! he! the farce of King Log has been acted long enough; the time for Queen Stork's tragedy is drawing nigh'; and the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the toiler humble, Just reason to complain, To shirk your task and grumble And think that it is vain Because you see a brother With greater work to do? No fame of his can smother The merit ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... disgrace.' Many of them lived almost entirely upon biscuit, others on their own private supplies, and some paid extra for better rations from the ship. This marvellously changed my notion of the degree of luxury habitual to the artisan. I was prepared to hear him grumble, for grumbling is the traveller's pastime; but I was not prepared to find him turn away from a diet which was palatable to myself. Words I should have disregarded, or taken with a liberal allowance; but when a man prefers dry biscuit there can be no question of the sincerity ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other matter. Hence it occurs that no offense against the post-office is committed when the connection between different mail trains is broken. The post-office takes the best it can get, paying as other customers pay, and grumbling as other customers grumble when the service rendered falls short of that which ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... restricted rations in England; but no starvation and no sign of it. There were partisan criticisms and plenty of "grousing." The Britisher is never contented unless he can grumble—especially at his own government. But there was no lack of a real unity of purpose, nor of a solid, cheerful, bull-dog determination to hang on to the enemy until he came down. It is this spirit that has enabled a nation, which was almost ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... said Will. "I will never grumble on that subject again." There was a gentleness in his tone which came from the unutterable contentment of perceiving—what Dorothea was hardly conscious of—that she was travelling into the remoteness of pure pity and loyalty towards ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of fashion. After one of these feasts there was often much that was objectionable; and, wherever possible, farmers have abolished them, giving a small sum of money instead; but in places the labourers grumble greatly at the change, preferring the bacon and the beer, and the unrestrained license. It is noticeable how the women must have their tea. If it is far from home, the children collect sticks, and a fire is made in a corner of the field, and the kettle boiled; and about four o'clock they take a cup ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... finer perceptibilities. But when he learnt, after the interchange of various hoarse and to him unintelligible bellowings, that he was to wait in that narrow damp lobby for the coming of his fellow- Commissioner, the grating on his feelings was even more discordant. He had not pluck enough left to grumble: but he grunted his displeasure. He grunted, however, in vain; for in about a quarter of an hour Alaric was close to him, shoulder to shoulder. He also wore a white jacket, &c., with a nightcap of mud and candle on his head; but somehow he looked as though ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... experienced in war had volunteered to follow Richard Shelton. The service of watching Sir Daniel's movements in the town of Shoreby had from the first been irksome to their temper, and they had of late begun to grumble loudly and threaten to disperse. The prospect of a sharp encounter and possible spoils restored them to good humour, and they joyfully ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as the unpardonable sin. But what do we want of a hospitality that makes strangers of us, or of confidences that keep us at arm's-length? Better the tavern and the newspaper; for in the one we can grumble, and from the other learn more of our neighbors than we care to know. John Smith's autobiography is commonly John Smith's design for an equestrian statue of himself,—very fine, certainly, and as much like him as like Marcus Aurelius. Saint Augustine, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... paterfamilias, and that he showed his slaves great consideration for their welfare. He complains, indeed, jocularly in one place that too much kindness is not good for servants, as it leads them to presume upon the easy-going temperament of their master, but that is only a good- natured grumble on the ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... "Yes, I am very late, but I will not grumble as I did this evening when we were told we must work overhours, for it is thanks to the lateness that I have—prepare yourself, my girl—I have found the ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... about the over-preservation of game, and they grumbled about the rabbits. The hunt had its grumble too because some of the finest coverts were closed to the hounds, and because they wanted to know what became of the foxes that formerly lived in those coverts. Here was a beautiful place—a place that one might dream life away in—filled with ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... Anything may happen. They may shoot Shepstone and his staff and the twenty-five policemen, or they may just grumble and go home. Probably they ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... in such cases no writer would grumble, But give you his hearty permission, When two correspondents on one mark should stumble, To make ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... near. But as the general says, say I, One should always the whole of a case descry. We call ourselves all the Friedlander's troops; The burgher, on whom we're billeted, stoops Our wants to supply, and cooks our soups. His ox, or his horse, the peasant must chain To our baggage-car, and may grumble in vain. Just let a lance-corp'ral, with seven good men, Tow'rd a village from far but come within ken, You're sure he'll be prince of the place, and may Cut what capers he will, with unquestioned sway. Why, zounds! lads, they heartily hate us all— And would rather the devil should give ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... by the cells, the refectory, and the domestic buildings of the monks. The erection of the castle is dated in the twelfth century, and from this time we may consider the older abbey buildings around the church to have been deserted and left to ruin; but we can hardly grumble at a transfer which has given us so curious a combination of military and monastic architecture ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... supply of water to drink. It almost seemed that their meager allowance of a pint and a half each for the twenty-four hours did little more than increase their thirst. They could not safely alter their unpleasant situation, however, and they wisely made the best of it and did not grumble. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... ran with him to the nest. A contest now took place between them, who should have the egg; often the dog was foiled, although he was the stronger of the two. If he gained the victory, he ran joyfully to me with the egg, and put it into my hand. Kees, nevertheless, followed him, and did not cease to grumble and make threatening grimaces at him, till he saw me take the egg,—as if he was comforted for the loss of his booty by his adversary's not retaining it for himself. If Kees had got hold of the egg, he endeavoured to run with it to a tree, where, having devoured it, he threw down ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... that on that day the great debacle was to culminate. We listened all day for cannon thunder; under certain conditions of the atmosphere the sound of heavy guns may reverberate as far perhaps, as from Sedan to Waterloo. That day, however, there was no ominous grumble from the eastward, the sky was cloudless, the flowers bloomed about the Chateau d'Hougomont, and the birds twittered in peace at the point before La Haie-Sainte to which the First Napoleon advanced in the evening and where for the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... is apparently the one new thing in the town, and it is new enough to more than make up for the oldness of everything else. We went there to grumble because, after we had done the ruined castle (and it had done Mamma), Joseph's "all little" hour threatened to lengthen itself into at ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the distance behind them. It came nearer as the sound of the motor approached. The motor's mutter became a grumble. It was definitely a truck. They could hear those other sounds that trucks always make in ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... your life long, and if you drink nothing but water, or the very mildest beer, and live on very plain food, and never lose your temper, and go to church every Sunday, and always remain content in the position in which Providence has placed you, and never grumble nor swear; and always keep your clothes decent, and rise early, and use every opportunity of improving yourself, you will get on very well, and never come ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... and had arranged about billets. So the men were immediately shown into their billets. I am billeted in a farm-house; I have a nice little bedroom all to myself, and sleep in a civilian bed. So I am very well off. What do you say? I have nothing to grumble about as regards my quarters. B Company is billeted in the two barns belonging to this farm: two platoons in each barn. The Company parade in a delightful field the other side of the barns. There are three officers' messes: Headquarters and two of two combined companies. ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... invoked war, turned every development of material and social science to aggressive ends, and at last when she felt the time was ripe she let loose the new monster that she had made of war to cow the spirit of mankind. She set the thing trampling through Belgium. She cannot grumble if at last it comes home, stranger and more dreadful even than she made it, trampling the German towns and fields with German blood upon it ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... weather vor I," he would frequently grumble to his greatest crony, James Coachman, who, for his part, bitterly resented the abnormal length of the daily drives. "Zure as vate, when I zits down tu my tea, cumes a message from one are t'other on 'em, ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... and still. He could hear the footsteps of his recent visitor pounding up the road, and the splashy grumble of the surf on the bar was unusually audible. He stood for a moment looking up at the black sky, with the few stars shining between the cloud blotches. Then he turned and looked at the little house ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... years. He is one of the foremost men in the city; he has broad and liberal ideas, and none of the jealousy of us Flemings that is so common among the citizens, although my countrymen more directly rival him in his trade than they do many others who grumble at us, though they are in no way ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... month's time you should grumble and fall out with me for not writing, you will certainly be in some degree justified; for I think it must be near upon three weeks since I wrote to you, which is a sin and a shame. To say that I have not had time to write is nonsense, for in three weeks there ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... patient, down-trodden Canadians began to grumble. One day a crowd of angry women threw their horse-flesh at Vaudreuil's door. Another day even the grenadiers refused to eat their rations. Then Montcalm's second-in-command, Levis, who ate horse-flesh himself, for the sake of example, told them ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... enemy. No matter; the British Army, colloquially speaking, knew its way about. Thus when the shades of night were falling, the general disposition was one of willingness to wait. The food, to be sure, lacked something of its wonted excellence; but it served (in the summer), and we did not grumble. The shelling, too, had fallen somewhat flat. Mafeking was more out of the way and in a worse plight than Kimberley. Reflections of this kind begot condescension and ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... you with a speckled trout, Pull your hair to make it sprout; Though you grumble, also pout, One, two, three, and ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... glory slumber comes Bosomed amid the archangelic choir; Not with the grumble of impetuous drums Deepening the chorus ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... paper in the morning, and idly and slowly peruse the advertisements on the first page, forget it, eat some bacon, grumble at the youngest boy, open the paper, read the breach of promise case on page three, drop it, and ask your wife for more coffee—hot—glance at your letters again, then reopen the paper at the news page, and ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... chase, father!" cried Jack, "Nothing like real hunting after all. And just to see how Storm and Grumble go along over a grassy plain! It is perfectly splendid! We soon tired out the little antelopes, and were able ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... changed, and not for the better. Still, if any one has no right to grumble, it is the archaeologist, because the building of these suburban quarters has placed more knowledge at his disposal than could have been gathered before in the lapse of a century. I quote only one instance. Famous ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... in Martin, an' a lovin' gran'mother in me. Dry your eyes an' be a Blanchard. God A'mighty sends sawls in the world His awn way, an' chooses the faithers an' mothers for 'em; an' He's never taught Nature to go second to parson yet, worse luck. 'Tis done, an' to grumble at a dead man's doin's—specially if you caan't mend ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... with some Satisfaction, and fell to work might and main: and continued at it for near two years together, felling Timber, and fetching it out of the Woods, laying Foundations, hewing Stone, till they were almost killed with labour. And being wrought quite tyred, they began to accuse and grumble at one another for having been the occasion of all this toil. After they had laboured thus a long while, and were all discouraged, and the People quiet, the King sent word to them to leave off. And now it lies unfinished, all the Timber brought in, rots upon the place, and ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... sauce. You may then abandon yourself to the delights of making a cake for yourself, baking it for yourself, and then eating it yourself, and if you spend a couple of hours over the operation the man will not grumble. As this arrangement combines both the pleasure of making a cake and playing with fire, it is very popular, and we cannot wonder that Taro took a turn, though Miss Blossom did not. She felt herself rather too big to join the swarm of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... contrived to miss my lunch to-day, I shan't grumble," replied Peter, smiling. "Till ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... twice I caught some tone of you in some American Magazine; utterances highly noteworthy to me; in a sense, the only thing that is speech at all among my fellow-creatures in this time. For the years that remain, I suppose we must continue to grumble out some occasional utterance of that kind: what can we do, at this late stage? But in the real "Model Republic," it would have been different with two ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... glanced up at the thermometer, and it registered a hundred in the shade! Mechanically I pushed the lime- juice towards Mulholland, and pointed to the water-bag. There was nothing else to do except grumble at the drought. Yet there my wife was, a picture of coolness and delight; the intense heat seemed only to make her the more refreshing to the eye. Water was not abundant, but we still felt justified in trying to keep her bushes and flowers alive; and she stood there holding ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I daresay you'll miss them when you are away, for all your scolding when you are with them. No, no, I don't mean that you are unkind to them, but you do grumble a lot! All the same I won't be unjust, and I know ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Dog-Tooth when he took his second wife, and his third wife. They said Dog-Tooth was different from other men and second only to God that Big-Fat kept in his taboo house, and Dog-Tooth said so, too, and wanted to know who were they to grumble about how many wives he took. Dog-Tooth had a big canoe made, and, many more men he took from work, who did nothing and lay in the sun, save only when Dog-Tooth went in the canoe, when they paddled for him. And he made Tiger-Face ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... people who take part in the early stages of a political campaign—who attend caucuses and primaries, who speak of politics to their neighbors, as members and parts of the machine, and regard only those as good and reliable American citizens who take no part whatever, simply reserving the right to grumble after the work has been done by others. Not much can be accomplished in politics without an organization, and the moment an organization is formed, and, you might say, just a little before, leading spirits will be developed. Certain ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... do for me, old fellow?' asked Mr Lenville, poking the struggling fire with his walking-stick, and afterwards wiping it on the skirt of his coat. 'Anything in the gruff and grumble way?' ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... wet to the skin, covered with mud and filth, without a smoke, groping about in the dark to find a likely stone, carried on the work in silence; and when the word was passed along to knock off work, they "turned in" without a grumble into a wet bivouac. There was no complaining, and the men were never required by their officers to bring along the stones faster. The only noise that broke the stillness of the night was the incessant ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... former times the chief had been a very quiet and dignified man, but now he sang, danced in the streets, and publicly hugged the women, so every one thought him crazy. The Crows disliked the conduct of their chief very much, and began to grumble against the trader; for they thought he was to blame for the great change that had come over their chief. Some said he was bewitched, others that the trader had an evil spirit in one of his boxes, and thus they talked, some believing one thing, and some another, but ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... bed as we had, squire, and we don't grumble. Why, you're not half a fellow. Like to go ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the Tore fjeld before nightfall, they would have to spend the night outdoors. One of them suggested to the others that perhaps this delay was intentional. The owner of the place probably wanted them to spend the night there; they began to grumble among themselves, and at last ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... south, along what is called "the Mosquito Coast," the weather grew stormy and the gales were severe. His ships were crazy and worm-eaten; the food was running low; the sailors began to grumble and complain and to say that if they kept on in this way they would surely starve before they could ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... blundherin' man, an' don't you be doin' ut," sez he. Wid that he shows me a Waster action—the breech av her all cut away to show the inside—an' so plazed he was to grumble that he dimonstrated fwhat Hogan had done twice over. "An' that comes av not knowin' the wepping you're purvided ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... moved slowly by. One or two stopped before the shop, and the carters offered vegetables for sale. The old woman would have nothing to say to them, but waved them on irritably. Three had thus stopped and again proceeded, and an impatient grumble broke from the old lady as a fourth, a covered wagon, drew ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... ground of reason. But even terror and admiration of the captain failed us before the end. The men wearied of the hopeless, unremunerative quest and the long strain of labour. They began to shirk and grumble. Retribution fell on them at once, and retribution multiplied the grumblings. With every day it took harder driving to keep them to the daily drudge; and we, in our narrow boundaries, were kept conscious every moment of ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... my boy," answered his father, "it is bet- ter to give warning of a danger that does not exist than overlook one that does. I dare say the sailors will not grumble much, if they don't find a reef where ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... on shore after so long a voyage could scarcely seem otherwise than strange, one missed the eternal rocking at which so many grumble on board ship. Dogs (Melbourne is full of them) kept up an incessant barking; revolvers were cracking in all directions till daybreak, giving one a pleasant idea of the state of society. The next few days were busy ones for all, though rather dismal ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... latter a large hound was kept. The hound did not hear their steps of himself, whether that he were naturally drowsy, or overwearied the day before, but, the gardener's curs awaking him, he first began to growl and grumble in response, and then as they passed by to bark out aloud. And the barking was now so great, that the sentinel opposite shouted out to the dog's keeper to know why the dog kept such a barking, and whether anything was the matter; who answered, that it was nothing, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... where the knights, their pages and squires were placed, the crowding was of course less excessive, but even here the amount of space, which a subaltern traveling to India for the first time nowadays would grumble at, was considered amply sufficient for half a dozen knights of distinction. It was a week after sailing, when Cnut touched Cuthbert's arm as he came on deck ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... do not mean the Senator who spoke last. He [Mr. HUNTER] says that this proposition here is worse than the old Constitution. If that be really so, what in the world has he been complaining of so bitterly? He tells us, now, that under the old Constitution slavery was secure. Then, why do you grumble? He considers it as secure, not only wherever it is, but wherever it can go—nay, more than that; wherever the Stars and Stripes of the American Republic can float. I have been telling my people that, as a Republican, ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... to enter for your cash, smash, crash, Past drowsy Charley, in a deep sleep, creep, But frightened by Policeman B 3, flee, And while they're going, whisper low, "No go!" Now puss, while folks are in their beds, treads leads. And sleepers waking, grumble—"Drat that cat!" Who in the gutter caterwauls, squalls, mauls Some feline foe, and screams ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... for my benefit, that I might not fancy that I had nothing further to do than to wait for the coming of good luck, as is the case too often with certain people, who then grumble and find fault with the world because their luck never comes. I do not mean to say that opportunities do not occur to some men more frequently than to others, but I believe that they visit most of us at some time or other of our lives, ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... road; An honest cord in Jethro still would fail By a good foot upon the Deacon's scale, And, more to abate the price, his gimlet eye Would pierce to cat-sticks that none else could spy; Yet none dared grumble, for no farmer yet But New Year found him in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the exchange by being generous, and told his messenger so; then a small quantity of maize was brought, and I grumbled at the meanness of the present: there is no use in being bashful, as they are not ashamed to grumble too. The man said that Kabinga would send more when he had ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... John Bull dislikes keeping the idle, bastard children of other nations. He readily protects all those who tread upon English soil, but in return for this kindness he expects them, like bees, to be all workers. Drones, ragamuffins, and rodneys cannot grumble if they get kicked out of the hive. If 20,000 Englishmen were to tramp all over India, Turkey, Persia, Hungary, Spain, America, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, South Africa, Germany, or France, in bands of from, say two to fifty men, women, and children, in a most wretched; miserable condition, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... that she should become a first-rate singer. The pupil was apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's progress was very remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump, who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at the new system, and the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made to go through. It was very different in HER time, she said. Incledon knew no music, and who could sing so well now? Give her a good English ballad: it was ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was run to earth in the cardroom and introduced to her. Ida did not wait for him to ask her to dance but calmly ran her pencil through three names on the programme and bestowed the vacancies thus created on him in such a way that he could not refuse them. Dermot, however, did not grumble. She was Noreen's friend; if not the rose, she was near ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... offence against her dear Thomas. SHE never showed such disrespect to HER husband: and as for affection, wives never think of that now-a-days, she supposes: but things were different in HER time—as if there was any good to be done by staying in the room, when he does nothing but grumble and scold when he's in a bad humour, talk disgusting nonsense when he's in a good one, and go to sleep on the sofa when he's too stupid for either; which is most frequently the case now, when he has nothing to do but to ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... he looked over the long ridges that lay stretched in rows before him, he was vexed, and began to grumble, and say, "The harvest would be backward, and all things would go wrong." At the mere thought of which he frowned more and more, and uttered words of complaint against the heavens, because there was no rain; against the earth, because it was so dry and unyielding; ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... and began to grumble as usual; but his wife said not a word and went to bed repeating to herself: "To-morrow you will see!" The next morning the hundred peas had become a hundred sons. One cried: "Papa, I want to drink." Another said: "Papa, I want to eat." Another: "Papa, take me up." He, in ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... psychological fact, mystical states of a well-pronounced and emphatic sort ARE usually authoritative over those who have them.[281] They have been "there," and know. It is vain for rationalism to grumble about this. If the mystical truth that comes to a man proves to be a force that he can live by, what mandate have we of the majority to order him to live in another way? We can throw him into a prison or a madhouse, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... it means my death," young Calverley assented. "Well! I have feasted with the world and found its viands excellent. The banquet ended, I must not grumble with my host because I find his choice of cordials not altogether to my liking." Thus speaking, he was aware of nothing save that the fiddlers were now about an air to which he had often danced ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... may secure the attachment and confidence of their people. A grateful and contented spirit certainly characterizes the negroes of Antigua. They do not lightly esteem what they have got, and murmur because they have no more. They do not complain of small wages, and strike for higher. They do not grumble about their simple food and their coarse clothes, and flaunt about, saying 'freemen ought to live better.' They do not become dissatisfied with their lowly, cane-thatched huts, and say we ought to have as good houses as massa. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... But, grumble as she might, there was no getting out of it, and, as Hauskuld would listen to nothing, she sought for her foster-father, Thiostolf, who never had been known to say her nay. When she had told her story, he bade her be of good cheer, prophesying that Thorwald should ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... all the copies struck off after the first lot of 2500. I daresay there will be a new edition in the course of nine months or a year, and this I will correct as well as I can. As yet the publishers have kept up type, and grumble dreadfully if I make heavy corrections. I am very far from surprised that "you have not committed yourself to full acceptation" of the evolution of man. Difficulties and objections there undoubtedly are, enough and to spare, to stagger ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... longer deemed lucky; promotion passed him by and seized upon his fellow in the field. I had missed the war in China and the fighting in the Philippines and, as a consequence, had seen juniors lifted over me. Yet, possibly, I had small cause to grumble; for my own gold leaves had dropped upon me in Cuba, to the disadvantage of many who were my elders, and, doubtless, my betters as well. I had applied for active service, but evidently it had not met with approval, for ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... keep her sense of it alive, but she much preferred to forage with him in the afternoon; that was poetry, she said, and the other was prose. He would have liked to talk the proposition over with her; to realize the compliment while it was fresh, to grumble at it a little, and to be supported in his notion that it would be bad business just then for him to undertake a task that might draw him away from his play too much; to do the latter well would take a great deal of time. Yet he did not feel quite that he ought to ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... public mind at this time is thus described by Gray:—"Grumble, indeed, every one does; but, since Wilkes's affair, they fall off their metal, and seem to shrink under the brazen hand of Norton and his colleagues. I hear there will be no Parliament till after Christmas. If the French should be so unwise as to suffer the Spanish court to go on in their ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... trees to shake them down, and worked much harder for their own pleasure than they had done for their master's bidding, for it is a strange truth that fairies and children never complain of the toil and trouble they take in search of amusement, although they often grumble when asked to work for ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... reader may possibly exclaim, 'there is nothing new about this. Woman has ever been man's favourite grumble-vent, from the day when the first man got out of his first scrape by blaming the only available woman!' True enough, age cannot stale the infinite variety of women's misdemeanours, as viewed by men; tradition has hallowed the subject, custom carries it on; ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... to be pleased with them. If they demean themselves as fools and incapables, (as they sometimes do,) they bring grist to your mill; but if they show wisdom, courage, and constancy, they leave you to stand at your mill-doors and grumble for want of toll,—as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... fellowship examination, and once I have mounted my hobby-horse, good-bye to letters, good-bye to replies, goodbye to everything." (Carpentras, 27th November, 1848.) "You are right, seven times right to storm at me, to grumble at my silence, and I admit, in all contrition, that I am the worst correspondent you could find. To force myself to write a letter is to place myself on the rack, as well you know...But why do you get it into your ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... more cordially to books, since it looked as if there were a good two years of them ahead at the least. But he liked the honesty that would not pretend to anything it did not feel, and he liked even better the spirit that had kept the lad true to his pledge of honest work without a squirm or grumble through all these weeks of grilling summer weather when sustained effort of any sort, particularly mental effort, was undoubtedly a weariness and abomination to flesh and soul, to his restless, volatile, ease-addicted, liberty ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... gives him the best of characters. He says the boy is thoroughly to be depended upon, and that his work is well done, even to cleaning the pigs; and, best of all, he is never heard to grumble." ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... "the Rebels keep their best generals for their Home Guard. Lee and Early, and the rest of the crew, are lambs and sucking doves to Generals Starvation, Wear-'em-out, and Grumble,—especially that last-named fellow, who is the worst of the three, because he comes under our own colors, and we feel shy about firing on our own men. I believe we are all too apt to think that muscles are the vital ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... returned Mrs. Peet, with a heavy sigh, as she gazed at her son with tears in her eyes, 'and he is so patient! Why, you never so much as hear a grumble, nor a fret! Now, what do you think his great wish is—what he is ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... man finds no place where he can rest the sole of his foot. Twice a year, regularly, have I to pass through this trying ordeal, willy-nilly, as it is said, in some strange language. To rebel is useless. To grumble of no avail. Up come the carpets, topsyturvy goes the furniture, and swash! goes the water from garret to cellar. I don't know how other men act on these occasions, but I find discretion the better part of valor, ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... and opening the bundle, "here you are. Don't grumble with me when we have to go to ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... luck in the wars, you've the less reason to grumble at the bit of a surge you may have felt in your garments, as they run you up to this here yard-arm. I say, brother, I've known stouter fellows take the same ride, who never knew when or how they ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... and bad flour; now they have bacon, dried venison, fresh fish, fresh game, potatoes, flour, baking powder, tea, coffee, milk, sugar, molasses, lard, cocoa, dried apples, rice, oatmeal, far more than was promised, all ad libitum, and the best that the H. B. Co. can supply, and yet they grumble. There is only one article of the food store to which they have not access; that is a bag of beans which I am reserving for our own trip in the north where weight counts for so much. Beaulieu smiles when I speak to him, but I know he is at the ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the jackal, 'you go to the well and fetch the water, and I will pour it into the trenches that run between the patches of corn.' And as he did so he sang lustily. The work was very hard, but the sheep did not grumble, and by-and-by was rewarded at seeing the little green heads poking themselves through earth. After that the hot sun ripened them quickly, and soon harvest time was come. Then the grain was cut and ground and ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... as the vernacular says, 'tail off.' The trouble taken about Halbert by personages natural and supernatural promises the case of some extraordinary figure, and he is but very ordinary. Still, at the works of how many novelists except Scott should we grumble, if we had the admirable descriptions of Glendearg, the scenes in the Abbey, the night-ride of poor Father Philip, the escape from the Castle of Avenel, the passage of the interview of Halbert with Murray and Morton? Even the episode of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... thermometer is at 109 degrees in the shade, and everything one touches seems to be at melting point! Unfortunately we have had all our cool things for our journey, and they are too dirty to wear in a "live" town. These three last days are the only days we have had to grumble at the heat; and, I expect, if we bad been out at the farm, quietly doing our various works, we should not have felt it so much; but a tent on a hot day is ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... at the station at Plum Creek, the coach was a little ahead of time, and the driver who was there to relieve ours commenced to grumble at the idea of having to start out before the regular hour. He found fault because we had come into the station so soon, and swore he could drive where our man could not "drag a halter-chain," as he claimed in his boasting. We at once took a dislike to him, and secretly wished that he would come ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Evelyn. If I am satisfied, who should have the right to grumble? The pain of losing you is better than the pleasure of winning anybody else.... So you think, Evelyn, you will never return to ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... which he always took in the company of his wife and daughters—a correct, but possibly a depressing, way of spending a vacation which must have been intended to furnish some social variety in a man's life; and we were all very idle, and all very much inclined to grumble at the heat, and length, and general slowness of the days, when one morning, as I was going out in order to send a parcel off to Mrs. Craven, who should I meet coming panting up ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... colloquialism which is so expressive that perhaps its use may be forgiven. "The daughter's tragedy," I muttered, and considering it, philosophising according to my wont, I tried to reconcile myself to this visit. "After all," I said, "I am on my own business, therefore I have no right to grumble." ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... right there, missy, an' its only half what he desarves the whole of us together could give him, but shure, if we give him all we're able, an' our good intinshions along wid that, he won't be the man to grumble at that same." ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... can't help themselves. There is a right of way all round the Island, and nobody would be allowed to close it. Some owners grumble and don't like it a bit; but mamma says it is one of the best things in Newport, and that it would be a great injury to the place to have it taken away. The Cliff walk is very celebrated, you know. Lots of people have written ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... only a favorite resort in summer, but is thronged every winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed. It is fashionable in Russia to grumble at the cold, but unfashionable to convert the grumbling into action. On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a stretch, in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero, to watch the fascinating ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... I must try to show them that Luke Raeburn's daughter knows how to bear pain; I must be patient, however much I boil over in private. Yet is it honest, I wonder, to keep a patient outside, while inside you are all one big grumble? Rather Pharisaical outside of the cup and platter; but it is all I shall be able to do, I'm sure. That is where Mr. Osmond's Christianity would come in; I do believe that goes right through his life, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... quell him," said he. "When Godefroy's tongue is out he can't grumble, and grumbling is his ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Featherstone and rather sympathized with him, but could not stay at the Garth or come back there until he had cleared up the mystery about his comrade's silence. Pete did not grumble much when they went down the drive, but said he had no friends in the neighborhood and it was a long way to ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... these? Where is the rascall Cooke? How durst you villaines bring it from the dresser And serue it thus to me that loue it not? There, take it to you, trenchers, cups, and all: You heedlesse iolt-heads, and vnmanner'd slaues. What, do you grumble? Ile ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... person. However that may be, the law would benefit the rich, because the rich would be owners of the land. Certain provisions of it were directly meant to prevent opposition in the country. For if many of the poor farmers would grumble at being ousted from their land, the land which had been specially assigned to Latin towns, and of which Tiberius Gracchus had threatened to dispossess them, was left in the same state as before his legislation; ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... pretensions that he seldom showed any signs of, except of ill—humors, a good share of which he bestowed on me; though I was pleased to hear him play the flute, on which he was a tolerable musician. This second Egistus was sure to grumble whenever he saw me go into his mistress' apartment, treating me with a degree of disdain which she took care to repay him with interest; seeming pleased to caress me in his presence, on purpose to torment ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... kitchen. When you find it she is worried because it is the opposite end of the house to the dining-room. You point out to her the advantage of being away from the smell of the cooking. At that she gets personal: tells you that you are the first to grumble when the dinner is cold; and in her madness accuses the whole male sex of being impractical. The mere sight of an empty house makes ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... don't grumble," returned the Cellarman. "If anything grumbles, it's what I've took in through the pores; it ain't me. Have a care as something in you don't begin a grumbling, Master George. Stop here long enough for the wapours to work, and ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... commodities and ask ourselves, in the light of experience and common sense, upon what factors their price seems mainly to depend? Two factors spring to mind at once; their cost of production and their usefulness. As regards the former, the case seems clear enough. We may indeed sometimes grumble that the price of this or that commodity is unconscionably high in comparison with its cost; but this only goes to show that we conceive a relation between price and cost as the normal, governing rule. If one commodity cost only a half as much to produce as another, we should think ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... newly arrived Englishman with his large wooden packing-cases marked 'Settlers' Effects' had no more part in the show than a new boy his first day at school. But two years in Canada and one run home will make him free of the Brotherhood in Canada as it does anywhere else. He may grumble at certain aspects of the life, lament certain richnesses only to be found in England, but as surely as he grumbles so surely he returns to the big skies, and the big chances. The failures are those who complain that the land 'does not know a gentleman ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... It's no use courting trouble, honey, as Willy Shakespeare says somewhere. Oh, well, if it wasn't Willy Shakespeare it was somebody else who said it, and it's just as true anyway. Take your umbrella and wait till the rain comes down before you grumble. I've got an exeat and I didn't expect it, and I'm going off my head a little. That's all! Don't worry yourselves about me. I'm sane at ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... followed by general assent and gladness. A small group there is, however, of malcontents, former adherents of Telramund's, who grumble: "Hear that! He is to remove us out of the country, against an enemy who has never so much as threatened us! Such a bold beginning is ill-beseeming. Who will stand up against him when he is in command?"—"I will!" comes from a muffled figure that has crept among them, and Friedrich uncovers ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... for his little weaknesses—of which evil tongues, said Mrs. Turpin, of course made the most. He might be irregular in payment; he might come home 'at all hours,' and make unnecessary noise in going upstairs; he might at times grumble when his chop was ill-cooked; and, to tell the truth, he might occasionally be 'a little too free' with the young ladies—that is to say, with Mabel and Lily Turpin; but all these things were forgiven him because he was 'a real gentleman,' and ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... be obsequiously obeyed, "no questions asked," and no payment demanded; and as for the future, why - as Mr. Larkyns observed, as they strolled down the High - "I suppose the bills will come in some day or other, but the governor will see to them; and though he may grumble and pull a long face, yet he'll only be too glad you've got your degree, and, in the fulness of his heart, he will open his cheque-book. I daresay old Horace gives very good advice when he says, 'carpe diem'; but when he adds, 'quam minimum credula ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... more to bear. We all have our share of trouble at one time or another. Who knows but you may see prosperous days yet,—you and your aunt together? Though indeed that's more than I think," she added, with the old ominous shake of the head; "but, grumble here or grumble there, it will make little difference in ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Arizona. But you fellows wouldn't. We've seen some thing of the soldiery down in that part of the world, and they're the laziest crowd you ever saw. Why, the Army officers in Arizona sleep all day and grumble about the heat all night. They have tame Apaches to do their work for them. Oh, no, you wouldn't suffer down ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... I. When they sent me here from Russia I set my teeth at once and said: 'I want nothing!' The devil whispers to me about my wife and my kindred, and about freedom and I say to him: 'I want nothing!' I stuck to it, and, you see, I live happily and have nothing to grumble at. If a man gives the devil the least opportunity and listens to him just once, then he is lost and has no hope of salvation: he will be over ears in the mire and will never get out. Not only peasants the like of you are lost, but the nobly born and the educated also. About fifteen years ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
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