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More "Innocuous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... objectionable and horrid kind; giant insects from the tropics, fearsome in every detail; fishes and crustaceans covered with weird spikes; dried octopuses of great size. Other things, too, there were, not less deadly though seemingly innocuous—dried fungi, traps intended for birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, and insects; machines which could produce pain of any kind and degree, and the only mercy of which was the ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... road. I had to devote myself. I stood under the shadow of that tree for, I suppose, hard upon an hour, and had not the heart to be angry. Once some one remembered me, and brought me out a half a tumblerful of the playful, innocuous American cocktail. I drank it, and lo! veins of living fire ran down my leg; and then a focus of conflagration remained seated in my stomach, not unpleasantly, for a quarter of an hour. I love these sweet, fiery pangs, but I will not court them. The bulk of the time ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... roulette and rouge-et-noir are not permitted at Nice, the gambling at present carried on being apparently harmless. It is in reality even more insidious, being a stepping-stone to vice, a gradual initiation into desperate play. Just as addiction to absinthe is imbibed by potions quite innocuous in the beginning, so the new Casino at Nice schools the gamester from the outset, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees preparing him for ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... will get it. But I must tell you that, besides the reason of the varnish, I have had a sneaking desire to keep the picture by me, and not to lose it from my eyes just yet. I am in love with it. I washed it myself very carefully with only sweet salad oil: perfectly innocuous as you may imagine: and that, with the new lining, and the varnishing, has at least made the difference between a dirty and a clean beauty. And now, whoever it may be painted by, I pronounce it a very beautiful picture: tender, graceful, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... led them, consciously or unconsciously, to transfer to the human person of Christ (and to a much slighter extent, to the Virgin Mary) a measure of those feelings which could find no vent in their external lives. We can trace this, in a wholesome and innocuous form, in the visions of Juliana of Norwich. Quotations from Ruysbroek's Spiritual Nuptials, and from Suso, bearing on the same point, are given in the body of the Lectures. Good specimens of devotional poetry ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... one instructive lesson—that it is not during the process of decomposition of philosophies, and especially of religions, that social changes occur, for such breakings-up commonly go on in an isolated, and therefore innocuous way; but if by chance the fragments and decomposed portions are brought together, and attempts are made by fusion to incorporate them anew, or to extract from them, by a secondary analysis, what truth they contain, a crisis ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... intellectual effort during the menstrual period, would be inadequate whenever it was not superfluous. But in Dr. Clarke's theory this period has a peculiar influence in rendering morbific conditions that at other times are innocuous. This, in virtue of the law already quoted, that the evolution of force at one centre of the nervous system is incompatible with an evolution of equal intensity at another, since it diminishes the sum of resources distributed to the nervous system as ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... tombs. They even went themselves to the graveyard and fetched bits of rotten flesh, which they slyly gave their lovers to eat—with more that is still worse. Pieces of the hair and nails of the lover were boiled in oil stolen from the ever-burning lamps in the church. The most innocuous of their charms was to make a heart of glowing ashes, and then to pierce it while singing: 'Prima che'l fuoco spenghi, Fa ch'a mia porta venghi; Tal ti punga mio amore Quale io fo ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Lafite and so forth, you may put your trust in God, or in a blue pill. Chateau Cassis would be a good name for these finer vintages, seeing that the harmless black currant enters largely into their composition, though not in sufficient quantity to render them wholly innocuous. Which suggests a little problem for the oenophilist. What difference of soil or exposure or climate or treatment can explain the fact that Mentone is utterly deficient in anything drinkable of native origin, whereas Ventimiglia, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... additional quantities of sugar played an important part—my men and myself drank gallons upon gallons. Many of those drinks had powerful astringent qualities and had severe effects upon the bladder, but some were indeed quite good and innocuous. ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the future, and astrology and priesthood are synonymous terms, since the business of the priest has always been to prophesy, a profession he has not yet discarded. Their prophecies are at present innocuous and lightly heeded. They preach that perfect faith will move a mountain, but energetic railroad-builders of today find it quicker ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... be detected, as in toothing or worms, it should be removed. As this species of asthma is so liable to recur during sleep, like epileptic fits, as mentioned in Section XVIII. 15. there was reason to believe, that the respiration of an atmosphere mixed with hydrogen, or any other innocuous air, which might dilute the oxygen, would be useful in preventing the paroxysms by decreasing the sensibility of the system. This, I am informed by Dr. Beddoes, has been used with decided success by Dr. Ferriar. See ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... have not considered the many accounts given by travellers of the wretched food collected by savages. I have read an account of the savages of Australia cooking, during a dearth, many vegetables in various ways, in the hopes of rendering them innocuous and more nutritious. Dr. Hooker found the half-starved inhabitants of a village in Sikhim suffering greatly from having eaten arum-roots (9/5. Dr. Hooker has given me this information. See also his 'Himalayan Journals' 1854 volume 2 page 49.), which they had pounded ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... to keep his mind a perfect blank. What he had to do was keep his strongest surface thoughts entirely on innocuous things. The trouble with that was that it made it extremely difficult to think about some way to get out of the jam he was in. Thinking on two levels at once, while not impossible, required a nicety of control that made wire-walking over ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... remains. To the picture of Catholic students seceding to Trinity and the Queen's Colleges, the memorialists add this darkest stroke of all: 'They will, in the solitude of their own homes, unaided by any guiding advice, devour the works of Haeckel, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell; works innocuous if studied under a professor who would point out the difference between established facts and erroneous inferences, but which are calculated to sap the faith of a solitary student, deprived of a discriminating ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... severe study as well as arduous and protracted manual labor ought to be avoided. The nervous systems of many women are also injuriously affected during pregnancy by perfumes, which at other times are agreeable and innocuous. It is therefore prudent not only to exclude all offensive scents, but also to abstain from the strong odors of various strong perfumes, eau-de-cologne, and of flowers. Large bouquets often cause feelings of faintness, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... bosses in the district was easy," Caesar used to say; "I managed to have one make all the others innocuous, and then I made that one, who was Don Calixto, innocuous and ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... cheering, nothing in the nature of hysterical exultation displayed by the crew of the Adventure, when the longboat ran alongside and those who had performed the audacious feat of rendering two powerful batteries innocuous rejoined their shipmates; everything was accepted as a matter of course. It was fully realised by all hands that the deed was one, the successful accomplishment of which required the display of nerve and courage of superlative character, but it was understood that the entire expedition, from start ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the artisan as to members of the crust. But the chief result of the penny-in-the-pound rate is to supply women old and young with outmoded, viciously respectable, viciously sentimental fiction. A few new novels get into the Library every year. They must, however, be "innocuous," that is to say, devoid of original ideas. This, of course, is inevitable in an institution presided over by a committee which has infinitely less personal interest in books than in politics or the price of coal. No Municipal Library can hope to be nearer than ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... application the patient had violent shivering with vomiting and intense collapsus. Death occurred on the fourth day. Experiments were at once undertaken on rabbits, and proved that this catastrophe was due entirely to the pyrogallic acid pomade, and that the chrysarobine was innocuous. In some instances the rabbit died within two hours. It was also found that in the case of the patient in the Breslau Hospital the pyrogallic acid had acted by its extreme avidity for oxygen when in contact with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... Regents. President Haven had come to see its inevitability, particularly in a state institution, and perhaps its advisability, but successive discussions had only postponed action from year to year. So it was not until January 5, 1870, that the great step was taken in the following innocuous resolution: ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... mind so long prevalent among practitioners of medicine; once let it be everywhere understood that the presumption is in favor of food, and not of alien substances, of innocuous, and not of unwholesome food, for the sick; that this presumption requires very strong evidence in each particular case to overcome it; but that, when such evidence is afforded, the alien substance or the unwholesome food should ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Gloucester, is on her way to prison. She says, "Go, lead the way. I long to see my prison." Johnson comments: "This impatience of a high spirit is very natural. It is not so dreadful to be imprisoned, as it is desirable in a state of disgrace to be sheltered from the scorn of gazers." This note may be innocuous enough, but it is worth recalling that Johnson was arrested for debt in February, 1758, when he was engaged in the edition of Shakespeare. And two years earlier, in March of 1756, he had also been arrested for debt. Friends ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... illegitimate child; the prescriber is quite in the dark. He is in the same position as if he had prescribed a quack medicine of which the composition was unknown to him, with the added disadvantage that the medicine may turn out to be far more potently explosive than is the case with the usually innocuous patent medicine. The utmost that a physician can properly permit himself to do is to put the case impartially before his patient and to present to him all the risks. The solution must be for the patient himself to work out, as best he can, for it involves social and other considerations which, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... walked home, that night, the doctor told my sister and me that, whatever the greater world might think of the sin at Wayfarer's Tickle, whether innocuous or virulent, Jagger was beyond cavil flagrantly corrupting our poor folk, who were simple-hearted and easy to persuade: that he was, indeed, a nuisance which must be abated, come ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... that nothing but "sidetracking" could stop another nomination of Roosevelt for the Governorship, and this Rough Rider was a thorn in his flesh. So he went on his subterranean way to have him nominated for the most innocuous political berth in the gift of the American people. He secured the cooperation of Senator Quay of Pennsylvania and another boss or two of the same indelible stripe; but all their political strength would not have accomplished the desired result without assistance from quite ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... that spread therethrough I saw that the whole room was rising and sinking in rhythmical motion; that the lights of King's Cobb had disappeared, and that in their place was revealed a world of pale and tossing water, the pursuing waves of which leapt and clutched at the glass with innocuous fingers. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... are concerned. When a person was suspected of being involved in a conspiracy against the government he was liable at any moment to be seized and conducted to prison, where he might be detained indefinitely, until the danger was over, or he was considered innocuous. The ancient fortress at the river mouth in Santo Domingo, known as La Torre del Homenaje, bears over its entrance the sign, "Political Prison," and rarely has it been without tenants, even when the country ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... In nearly all the cities, except New York, every guest is provided with a dancing card, which makes the keeping of dancing engagements a part of the festivity. New York is too large for such things, and dancing cards have been relegated to the realms of innocuous desuetude. However, if you are at a ball or a dance in another city where they are used, your first duty would be to have your engagements filled. You should remain with your partner after each dance until her ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... shouldered a long straight piece of bamboo. The nature of this implement the sailor could not determine at the moment. When the knowledge did come, it came so rapidly that he was saved from many earlier hours of abiding; dread, for one of those innocuous-looking weapons was fraught with more quiet deadliness than a ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... stale smell, as of dead leaves suddenly disinterred from wet mould,—as of grasses decomposing after a flood. Something saffron speckled the slimy water of the gutters; sulphur some called it; others feared even to give it a name! Was it only the wind-blown pollen of some innocuous plant? ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... nothing. Self-preservation was the guiding principle of his policy, his first object and his only excuse. Among many wicked and ingenious expedients three main methods are remarkable. First, he removed or rendered innocuous all real or potential rivals. Secondly, he pursued what Sir Alfred Milner has called 'a well-considered policy of military concentration.' Thirdly, he maintained among the desert and riverain people a balance of power on the side ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... of "Barbados Green Bitters." It is a most comforting local cocktail, apparently quite innocuous. It is not; under its silkiness it is abominably potent. One "green bitter" is food, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... Pursuing his innocuous meditation he nodded to himself: "I rather like the poor one better than any girl I ever saw. Doubtless she paints portraits over solar prints. That's all right; she's doing more than I have done yet.... I approve of those eyes of hers; they're like the eyes of that ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... their complexions. But what was most striking to the eye was the appearance of the immense white flowers (whitened sepulchres) of the Datura strammonium, growing high out of the shingles of the river; and on this same Seriphus, outlawed from the more gentle haunts of their innocuous brethren, congregated his associates, the other prisoners, of whom, both from his size and bearing, he ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... weeks. At Holyhead we carefully took our bikes aboard, and settled down to a cold voyage. We were all a trifle apprehensive at our lack of escort, for then, you will remember, it had not yet been proved how innocuous the German fleet is in ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... choose among, to find one less dangerous or offensive. As the judicious physician informs the patient suffering under some cutaneous or other external torture, that the poison lay deep in his constitution—that it must have worked in some shape—and well it is that it has taken one so innocuous—so may even the book-hunter be congratulated on having taken the innate moral malady of all the race in a very gentle and rather a salubrious form. To pass over gambling, tippling, and other practices which cannot ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... yours. You didn't want it spoken out. You didn't want to be told you were in love. It was a thing too harsh and sweet. It frightened you to think of. You wanted us to sit for ever, like two lovers painted on a fan, fixed in an everlasting and innocuous bliss. ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... of harsh constructions [59] and misplaced epithets, but on the other hand contains some pretty lines. If it be genuine, its boldness is remarkable. Great numbers of other poets appear in the pages of Martial, Statius, and Pliny, but they need not be named. The fact that verse-writing was an innocuous way of spending one's leisure doubtless drove many to it. CODRUS, or Cordus, [60] was the author of an ambitious epic, the Theseid, composed on the scale, but without the wit, of the Thebaid. The stage, too, engaged many writers. Tragedy and comedy [61] were again reviving, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... him off, unrepining, from his wife's society), ordered him to remove her, silence her, beat her if necessary—and so save her from the unpleasant alternative of solitary confinement on bread and water until she could be, if not useful, innocuous. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... to prove that Mark Twain had thought long and deeply upon the problematical nature of a future life. It is, in essence, a reductio ad absurdum of those professors of religion who still preach a heaven of golden streets and pearly gates, of idleness and everlasting psalm-singing, of restful and innocuous bliss. Mark Twain wanted to point out the absurdity of taking the allegories and the figurative language of the Bible literally. Of course everybody called for a harp and a halo as soon as they reached heaven. They ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... he caught it was rather that of a person who is pleased at verifying something he has had the acumen to discover than any more poignant emotion. He went far oftener to see this than he did to watch Blanche in her small part as one of the innocuous and well-bred company performing at the little old Strand Theatre, which was then still a phalanx of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... drive out the poison. These various incantations are a large part of the wirreenun's education; not least valuable amongst them is the chant sung over the tracks of snakes, which renders the bites of those snakes innocuous. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... named his two officers of the watch, Dogberry and Verjuice; the poisonous Dogberry, and the acid liquor of green fruits, affording suitable names for the stupidly innocuous constables, in a play the very essence of which is Much Ado About Nothing. Another of his discoveries he had, during their last lesson, unfolded to David, who had certainly contemplated it with interest. It was, that the original forms of ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... itself in the tune as well as argument, in choice of words—words honest and precise—as well as in ideas, in fidelity to human nature and the flowers of the fields as well as to principles, in facts reported more than in deductions proposed. Though a writer write on something as innocuous as the white snails that crawl up broomweed stalks and that roadrunners carry to certain rocks to crack and eat, his intellectual integrity, if he has it, will ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... in his hand, and contemplated the repast. It was only logical to suppose it to be innocuous, and a keen appetite hastened the issue. He sidetracked his suspicion, and made an excellent breakfast. So the first day of his ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... an infinite tenderness, trembling with fraternal pity, awoke within him, now that he was about to plunge into the painful truths of existence; and it was something emanating from himself, something very great and very good which was to render innocuous the terrible avalanche of facts which was impending. He was determined that he would reveal everything, since it was necessary that he should do so in order to remedy everything. Was not this an unanswerable, a final argument for evolution, the story of these beings who ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... innocent and innocuous weapon, but two table knives are not, for one can be used against the other so skillfully as to form a fairly good hack saw, with which prison bars may be sawed. The sawing of steel bars was the sound that the sentry had ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... their path in the Wilderness, their stores were already running low. With the further horrors it is superfluous that I should swell this narrative, already too prolonged. Suffice it to say that when at length a night passed by innocuous, and they might breathe again in the hope that the murderer had at last desisted from pursuit, Mountain and Secundra were alone. The trader is firmly persuaded their unseen enemy was some warrior of his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there's uncommon little of it—they don't get a hundredweight in a generation. Then there's the red form, and that's what Johnnies have been dumping down 580 tons of at What's-its-name. It's quite innocuous, and is used for commercial purposes—tanning leather, or making spills, or something of that kind. Now may I ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... do so powerfully and truly, is relieved of a load which crushes his subsequent compeers to the earth. Mediocrity is ever envious of genius—ordinary capacity of original thought. Such envy in early times is innocuous or does not exist, at least to the extent which is felt as so baneful in subsequent periods. But in a refined and enlightened age, its influence becomes incalculable. Whoever strikes out a new region of thought or composition, whoever opens a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... there's no harm done!" said the old Doctor, and wrote a prescription which was at least innocuous. He knew of no simples to cure love-sorrows; but in his heart of hearts he held ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... should ever set eyes on ye ag'in," said Jerry, with an innocuous flick of his whiplash, hitting the dasher by intent. "That ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... hunting, time pressing him into frantic speed. The idea was incredible, but it had to be true. He searched the micro-film files for three hours before he found it, in a "Who's Who" dating back to 1958, three years before the war with China. A simple, innocuous listing, which froze him to his seat. He read it, unbelievingly, yet knowing that it was the only possible link. Finally ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... the which she lay when the fierce war Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor In many a mimic moon and bearded star O'er woods and lawns;—the serpent heard it flicker In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar— 285 And when the windless snow descended thicker Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... tolerated the society of Cargrim with equanimity, although he detested playing a part so foreign to his frank and honourable nature. However, he saw the necessity of masking his dislike until the sting of this domestic viper could be rendered innocuous, and was sufficiently gracious on such occasions as he came into contact with him. Gabriel was less called upon to be courteous to the schemer, as, having come to a complete understanding with his father, he rarely visited the palace; but when he did so his demeanour towards Mr Cargrim ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... which arise out of purveying physiological and psychological refreshments and excitements, which are, according as they are indulged in temperately or intemperately, grateful and innocuous, or sources of disaster and ruin. The evils which are associated with the drink traffic and the ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... mast-head. All the same, "Come if you Dare" is a fine song; "Fairest Isles, all Isles excelling," is one of Purcell's loveliest thoughts, and the words are more boastful than ferocious; "Saint George, the Patron of our Isle," is brilliant and the words are innocuous. The masque element is not dumped into King Arthur altogether so shamelessly as in other cases; the whole play is a masque. Although there is a plot, the supernatural is largely employed, and nymphs, sirens, magicians, and what not, gave the ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... important being the scheme of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company. In reference to this scheme the Report to the Visitors states "I may say briefly that I believe that it would be possible to render such a railway innocuous to the Observatory; it would however be under restrictions which might be felt annoying to the authorities of the Railway, but whose relaxation would almost ensure ruin to the Observatory."—"The meridional observations of Mars in the Autumn of 1862 ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... people getting scared at nothing out in No Man's Land. The laborers of the camp were more or less incurious. They did their allotted hours of labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house, and fell into a snake-like torpor. Life seemed quiet and innocuous. Liquor was prohibited. The regime was military. Soon after the bugle had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters chafing through the turbines ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... had drifted into his innocuous affair with the star of "The Valley" he was not certain himself. Innocuous it certainly was. Afterwards, looking back, he was to wonder sometimes if it had not been precisely for the purpose it served. But that was long months after. Not until the pattern was ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... patient in my condition to take a little medicated sugar seemed reasonable. But from my point of view my refusal was justifiable. That innocuous sugar disc to me seemed saturated with the blood of loved ones; and so much as to touch it was to shed their blood—perhaps on the very scaffold on which I was destined to die. For myself I cared little. I was anxious to die, and eagerly would ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... There was no doubt about the younger man; he was English to the core, English in his love of chance, English in his loyalty to his word; stupidly English. That he was the younger was a trifling matter to deduce: no young man ever led his elder into mischief, harmful or innocuous. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... 'effectual means' of converting sinners. If it be a truth that preaching is but comparatively a minor part of a minister's duty, it is certainly neither a Scripture nor a Shorter Catechism truth; and, lest it should be not only not a truth at all, but even not an innocuous untruth, we think all who hold it would do well to inquire how they have come ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... spirituous liquors under the name of Sarah Schnetterling, tobacconist. The window had the placard 'Ici on parle Francais', and was adorned in a tasteful manner with ornamental pipes, fishing-rods and flies, jars of sweets, sheets of foreign stamps, pictorial advertisements of innocuous beverages. A woman with black grizzling hair, fashionably dressed, flashing dark eyes, long gold ear-rings, gold beads and gaudy attire, came out to reclaim her property. A word or two passed about payment, during which Clement had a strange thrill of puzzled recollection. ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the weakest part, always succumb first, and the most vigorous trees never manifest it until they are weakened by their first crop of fruit. All are familiar with the fact that an old frost bite will swell or succumb to a temperature which will be innocuous to any other part of the body. The microscope may invariably reveal fungi in the patch of pear blight precisely as the housewife discovers the mold plant in her preserves and canned fruit, and even ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... men, fond of what they termed liberty, and by no means admirers of priestly domination, being mostly Protestants. Just before the outbreak of this rebellion, it was determined between the priests and the —-, that this party should be rendered comparatively innocuous by being deprived of the sinews of war—in other words, certain sums of money which they had raised for their enterprise. Murtagh was deemed the best qualified person in Ireland to be entrusted with the delicate office of getting their money from them. Having received his instructions, he invited ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... a place where life is o'er, And sorrow's blasts innocuous rave; A place where sadness comes no more. Know'st thou the place? It is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... into the palm of his hand he proceeded to swallow them with a backward throw of his head. Tabloids were Mr. Purvis's only personal indulgence. He had been recommended them for his nerves, and he had swallowed so many that had they not been perfectly innocuous he must have died ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... An amended law of 1869 gave the Senate a certain control over removals, although the constant practice of early times had been to give the executive a free hand. Moreover the law had fallen into disuse—or, as the President put it—into "innocuous desuetude." The case on which the Senate chose to force the issue was the removal of George M. Duskin, United States District Attorney in Alabama, and the nomination of John D. Burnett in his place. The ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... extensive, and as to quantity, which is illimitable. Within our shanty there are certain species which make themselves felt, smelt, or otherwise apparent to our annoyance, without taking into consideration the hosts that, as far as we are concerned, are innocuous. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... his own heart. But the owner of the spear recovered himself in a flash, and, seizing the blade of the weapon in his bare hand, he twisted it upward with such strength that the slender wooden shaft snapped, leaving the head in his hand and the innocuous shaft in that of M'Bongwele. At the same instant half a dozen men flung themselves upon the king, and in a trice his hands were drawn behind him, and securely bound. Then, from somewhere, two long thongs or ropes of ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... I spent, of course, a period of ostensible study, as four generations of my fathers had done aforetime. But in that leisured, slatternly and ancient city I garnered a far larger harvest of (comparatively) innocuous cakes and ale than of authentic learning, and at my graduation carried little of moment from the place save many memories of Bettie Hamlyn.... Her father taught me Latin at King's College, while Bettie taught me human intimacy—almost. Looking back, I have not ever ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... curtains of muslin or silk—had been trying to eyes and nerves. Infinitely preferable would stone or wood have been, for dwellings; but as Jannati Shahr was, so the Legion had to take it. And doubtless long generations of familiarity with it had made it wholly normal, pleasant, and innocuous to ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... composed of a congeries of meteoric fragments, and these, when exposed to the Sun's heat, throw off luminous nebulous particles that are swept by some repulsive force into space and form the appendage known as the tail. Comets may be regarded as celestial objects that are perfectly innocuous. Neither fear nor dread need be apprehended from their visits; they come to please and instruct, not to ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... recommendation of vice. This inversion of moral fervour is perhaps the source of most that is vaguely called "immoral" in imaginative literature. But Edgar Poe is as innocent of immorality as he is of morality. No more innocuous flowers than his are grown through the length and breadth of Parnassus. There is hardly a phrase in his collected writings which has a bearing upon any ethical question, and those who look for what Wordsworth called "chains of valuable ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... condemned to death I would not have expected a man to startup and take my place. Susan B. Anthony—she of the senatorial mind—will be remembered when the politicians of today have long been doomed to 'innocuous desuetude.'" Miss Willard then quoted a few familiar lines ending with the sentence, "And Susan B. Anthony has been ordained of God to lead ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... though only to begin the ethical battle all over again; to fight and to wander among the tombs in the valley of indecision for a week and a day, eight miserable twirlings of the earth in space, during which interval he was invisible to his friends and innocuous ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... equally innocuous. That which is most injurious is to entertain unworthy conceptions of the nature and attributes of God; and it is this that Masonry symbolizes by ignorance of the True Word. The true word of a Mason ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... "The Dong with the Luminous Nose" and Carroll's "Jabberwocky" are, respectively, bright and disguised versions of gothic terror and misery on the one hand, and medieval knightly exploit on the other, both rendered innocuous for the nursery and ridiculous for the adult. The risks of seriousness have ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... rule, the herring-pickling came under the category of pleasant work, but to-day there was dissatisfaction all along the line. The women chattered freely as they worked, but their talk was not quite innocuous—it was all carefully aimed; the men had made them malicious. When they laughed, there was the sound of a hidden meaning in their laughter. The men had to be called out and given orders about every single thing that ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven And the green earth lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder; he would linger long In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, Until the doves and squirrels would partake 100 From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own. 105 His wandering ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that I read in the scientific journals that sewer-gas was comparatively innocuous. After the hundreds of sanitary tracts in which the deadliness of sewer-gas has been an axiom of faith, after the thousand-and-one deaths from it in the contemporary novel, it is grimly diverting to learn that sewer-gas may be welcomed without fear to our hearths and homes. The ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Jim is as a den of serpents. I reckons now he has a plumb dozen mowed away in his raiment. Thar's no harm in 'em; bein' all bull-snakes, which is innocuous an' without p'ison, fangs, ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... a sort of musical or sketch entertainment, thoroughly innocuous, and, while attaining a certain amount of popularity and presumably success to their projectors, were of a nature only amusing to the completely ennuied or juvenile temperament. Readings by various persons, more or less celebrated, not forgetting ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... the import of the strings [of wampum which he had brought as ambassador] and Gietterowane committing to memory what he said."] So effective was this provision of their constitution that for more than three centuries this main cause of Indian wars was rendered innocuous, and the "Great Peace" remained undisturbed. This proud averment of their annalists, confirmed as it is for more than half the period by the evidence of their white neighbors, cannot reasonably be questioned. What nation or confederacy of civilized Europe can show an ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... surely," replied Mavis, thinking of the innocuous young men, indigenous to Shepherd's Bush, whom she had so often ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... cream-thick Essex speech and the shuffling feet, you were brave indeed to face Bill Wrenn the Great, with his curt self-possession, for he was on a mission for Istra, and he cared not for the goggling eyes of all England. What though he was a bunny-faced man with an innocuous mustache? Istra would be awakening hungry. That was why he bullied you into selling him a stew-pan and a bundle of faggots along with the tea and eggs and a bread loaf and a jar of the marmalade your husband's farm had been making these two hundred years. And you should have had coffee ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... some uncommon effect on the fish. After water has been treated in this way, the fish, seemingly quite stupefied, rise to the surface, on which they float in great numbers, and allow themselves to be caught. The strangest part of it is that they are perfectly innocuous as food, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... witchcraft. There was in our near neighbourhood, for example, a person known as the Dudley Devil, who could bewitch cattle, and cause milch kine to yield blood. He had philtres of all sorts—noxious and innocuous—and it was currently believed that he went lame because, in the character of an old dog-fox, he had been shot by an irate farmer whose hen-roost he had robbed beyond the bounds of patience. He used to discover places where objects were hidden which had been stolen from local farmhouses, and he ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... on this subject in the newspapers. They were, I hope, better written than the run of Penny Dreadfuls, and perhaps with more discrimination of taste in the choice of adventures. But I certainly do not feel able to claim that their effect upon a perverted mind would be innocuous. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bristled up at this resurgence of the protectionist champions, but Disraeli was too wise to invite a renewal of that contest which the voice of the nation had settled, and the subject was left to lapse into innocuous desuetude for half a century. Representing but a minority in Parliament, the ministry could maintain itself but a few months. December, 1852, found the Whigs again in power, where they remained until 1859, Disraeli using his talents the while to build up and consolidate the Tory opposition ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... jay, parrots of all tints, everything rich and rare in plumage. A coronal of the same encircled her glossy hair, the tiny plumes contrasting with the blonde ringlets, and the bona fide hooks ostentatiously displayed; lesser and more innocuous flies edged the sleeves, corsage, shoes, and gloves; and her fan, which she used as skilfully as Jenny Wren, presented a Watteau-like picture of an angling scene. Anything more daintily, quaintly pretty could not be imagined, and the male part of the assembly would have ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... President, a long-whiskered septuagenarian, is popularly known as "Papa" Kaempf. I see Liebknecht whispering quietly in Kaempf's ear. He is asking for permission to speak, probably as soon as comrade Davidssohn has finished making his innocuous suggestions of minor reforms to relieve discomforts in the trenches. Kaempf is shaking his head negatively. As the official executor of the House's wishes, the old man understands perfectly well that Liebknecht must ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... a very old saying, and therefore of course indisputably true, that some have greatness thrust upon them. True of men, it is, in one instance at least, true of places—Needley, from an unheard of, modest, innocuous and unassuming little hamlet, leaped in a flash into the focus of the world's eyes. In huge headlines the papers in every city of every State carried it on their front pages. And while the first astounding despatch from ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... bridge so recently replaced by this structure was much more picturesque, curving across the flood and supported upon multitudinous feet, like a long-legged centipede of the innocuous kind. For three hundred years it had stood over the stream firmly and well, and it had its ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... following in the steps of Howard, draws back the curtain and shows the shuddering horrors in the prisons of Siberia, the Czar would willingly offer much more than 15,000 roubles for a successful essay upon his life. John Howard sleeps in innocuous silence at Kherson; George Kennan speaks through the everywhere-present press to the court of last appeal, the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... copy what it feels too difficult. This much at least is certain, that for one cause or another, everything that now at Paris or London our painters most care for and try to realize, of ancient Rome, was utterly innocuous and unattractive to the Saxon: while his mind was frankly open to the direct teaching of Greece and to the methods of bright decoration employed in the Byzantine Empire: for these alone seemed to his fancy suggestive of the glories of the brighter world promised by Christianity. ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... than on her first arrival in the neighbourhood, less haggard, a little plumper, but as he compared her dulled and faded beauty with Toni's youthful bloom he wondered, not for the first time, if her companionship were altogether innocuous. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... subject of interest without indiscretion. He told me among other things, that if fire had to be opened on Juarez, just across the river, he understood from talk he heard that these two comparatively innocuous guns would alone be used at first. If the damage they did on the opposite side were enough to force the enemy to capitulate in haste, the other four guns would remain silent, and El Paso intact. But, said ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... vigilance, she had blundered twice within five minutes. That stupid story about her dress-maker was bad enough—it would have been so simple to tell Rosedale that she had been taking tea with Selden! The mere statement of the fact would have rendered it innocuous. But, after having let herself be surprised in a falsehood, it was doubly stupid to snub the witness of her discomfiture. If she had had the presence of mind to let Rosedale drive her to the station, the concession might have purchased his silence. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... no part in the side comment that passed among his comrades, only grinned occasionally, his eyes unwaveringly on Morgan's face. Morgan was drawn to note him particularly among this mainly trifling and innocuous bunch, uneasily impressed by the cold curiosity of his round, tigerish eyes. He thought the fellow appeared to be calculating on how much blood a granger of that bulk contained, and how long it would take him ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... be highly reasonable to believe they are least desirable. It is just where the chances for a child are least that passions are grossest, basest, and most heedless, and stand in the greatest need of a sense of the gravity of possible consequences to control their play, and to render it socially innocuous. If we were to take over or assist all the children born below a certain level of comfort, or, rather, if we were to take over their mothers before the birth occurred, and bring up that great mass of children under the best conditions for them—supposing this to be possible—it ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... properly done directly after the bite, will effectually prevent hydrophobia. The nitrate of silver acts not only as a caustic to the part, but it appears effectually to neutralise the poison, and thus, by making the virus perfectly innocuous, is a complete antidote. If it be either the lip, or the parts near the eye, or the wrist, that have been bitten, it is far preferable to apply the caustic than to cut the part out; as the former is neither so formidable, nor so dangerous, nor so disfiguring as the latter, and yet it is ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... most innocuous way in which we may digress is by compiling one of those delectable literary hotch-potches known as 'commonplace books.' Here, with careful selection, we may garner those delightful thoughts, those gay conceits or pithy stories, that strike our ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... of outraged respectability, with here and there an epithet distinguishable like a plum in a pudding. "Ruffian," they called him, "assassin," "robber," and so forth, the innocuous amateur abuse of men who have learned their bad language from their newspapers. It was not till he had gone a hundred yards, and the noise of their lamentation had a little died down, that there emerged out of the blur of it a voice ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... this particular Seckendorf was both vain and tyrannous. His hatred for Frederick II. and his eternal "combinations" went to such lengths that, during the first Silesian war, he offered the Austrian Court a detailed plan by which the "Land-hungry conqueror" might be personally rendered innocuous. (See Arneth, Maria Theresa, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... Deflect their engines, throwing still the bolts Far into space; but from the rampart top Flung ponderous masses down. Long as the shields Held firm together, like to hail that falls Harmless upon a roof, so long the stones Crushed down innocuous; but as the blows Rained fierce and ceaseless and the Romans tired, Some here and there sank fainting. Next the roof Advanced with earth besprinkled: underneath The ram conceals his head, which, poised and swung, They dash with mighty force upon the ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... manifestation of grateful regard which a woman of fine quality always returns for elevated and unexacting admiration I was still left with such privilege of access as is granted to the family-gossip, or to an innocuous uncle, and it is of such a passion, rashly nurtured under this protection of an improbability, that I propose ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... put over the candles should not have this paper- fringe; it is very dangerous. But if a candle screen takes fire, have the coolness to let it burn itself up without touching it, as thus it will be entirely innocuous, although rather appalling to look at. Move a plate under it to catch the flying fragments, and no harm will be done; but a well-intentioned effort to blow it out or to remove it generally results in a very much ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... quarrymen—stories like that unspeakable novel "Three Decades," of which I am credibly informed eight million tons have already been sold; and which, let me say, when I had read only seven slabs of it I had carted away and dumped into the Red Sea; or the innocuous but highly frivolous tales of Miss Laura Jean Diplodocus—they would hardly accept from me as worthy of serious attention such admonitions as I am constantly giving them on the subject of the decadence of literature when I find them poring over the novels ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... the way to limit it, by the federal system, which suffers it to exist nowhere in its plenitude. They deprived their state governments of the powers that were enumerated, and the central government of the powers that were reserved. As the Romans knew how monarchy would become innocuous, by being divided, the Americans solved the more artful problem of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... unnoticed by his contemporaries, the main result of his solar researches was an unmistakable one. It was nothing less than the definitive introduction into astronomy of the paradoxical conception of the central fire and hearth of our system as a cold, dark, terrestrial mass, wrapt in a mantle of innocuous radiance—an earth, so ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are the houses and public monuments? There is nothing so much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland; and a pair of people, swinging ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... observation of these taboos is one of sympathy by which a certain action, productive of a certain physical effect in one subject may produce by some sympathetic correlation an analogous effect in another. An instance will make this clear. To wear a necklace is an action in itself perfectly innocuous and even beneficial, in so far as it enhances the person of the wearer, but for the Manbo man and wife such a proceeding at this particular time would produce, by some species of mystic correlation, a binding effect on the child in the hour of parturition, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... in search of Harriet, and found her in a summer-house reading an innocuous French romance which her professor had selected. There was no place near by where Miss Trumbull might lie concealed, and Betty went to the ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... Chesterfield. It was thronged with elegant ladies and gentlemen. The daughter of the happy household was playing and singing Verdi's "Ah! I have sighed to rest me;" the fond mother was turning the pages; the fond father was sighing and resting up stairs, in a state of innocuous desuetude, produced by the "music" of old Kentucky Bourbon; but he could not withstand the power of the melody below. Quickly he donned his clothing; he put his vest on over his coat; put his collar on hind side foremost; buttoned the lower buttonhole ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... of Prussian blue and gamboge, two pigments possessing a like degree of stability, and perfectly innocuous to each other. It is a mixture more durable and more transparent than chrome greens made with chromate of lead. There are two varieties in common use—No. 1, a light grass green, in which the yellow predominates; and No. 2, a deeper ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... aims at awakening sympathy for the life portrayed, is bound, he thinks, to demoralize both the artist and the spectator. But art is something more than sympathy, and there are other aspects of the aesthetic experience which tend to render that sympathy innocuous, even from the standpoint of the puritan. In the first place, the sympathy is usually with an imagined life that has no direct relation to the will and gives the spectator no opportunity to enter into and share it—he participates through the imagination, not through the senses. Moreover, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... incorrigible, incredulity, incumbent, indecorous, indigenous, indigent, indite, indomitable, ineluctable, inexorable, inexplicable, inferential, infinitesimal, infinitude, infraction, infusion, inhibit, innocuous, innuendo, inopportune, insatiable, inscrutable, insidious, inspissated, insulate, intangible, integral, integument, interdict, internecine, intractable, intransigent, intrinsic, inure, invalidate, inveigh, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... is to-day doing most in the elevation and redemption of India herself. And many of them are defying this obsolete and debasing law of their faith. Many others are crying for a modern interpretation of the law—an interpretation which will explain away its bitterness and render it innocuous. For it is not simply or chiefly the reactionary and absurd character of this legislation which exasperates the intelligence of the land; it is the very offensive and revolting nature of the expiation ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... went carefully over the plat in the land office. Florence Grace Hallman had been busy arranging the details of the coming of the colony, and she had neglected to visit the land office lately. Since she cannily represented the excursion as being merely a sight-seeing trip—or some such innocuous project—she failed also to receive any inkling of ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... furze, showing the blunt tail of a blindworm. I have heard people say that the red ones are venomous, but the grey harmless. The red are spiteful, and if you see them in the road you should always kill them. It is curious that in places where blindworms are often seen their innocuous nature should not be generally known. They are even called adders sometimes. At the farm below, the rooks have been down and destroyed the tender chickens not long hatched; they do not eat the whole of the chicken, but disembowel it for ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... of their life and the obtuseness of their sensibility reduced to a minimum the bad results of wounds and shocks, while their warfare, being free from the awful devices due to the devilry of modern man, was comparatively innocuous; even if very destructive, its destruction was necessarily limited by the fact that those accumulated treasures of the past which largely make civilisation had not come into existence. We may admire the beautiful humanity, the ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... when his gaze caught their eyes. And turned red. And grinned shyly and silently. Women giggled, and looked innocuous, and slapped each other on the thigh or on the bare shoulders and kissed their ravaged men. In the night they lay awake and their thoughts were white hot. But the ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... a monster of terrible potential, yet so innocuous looking that he'd not stand out. I couldn't produce him, couldn't say where in the world he was. Nevertheless he was the basis, the motivation second only to mine. I took the long, hard way—three years—making ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... could not lay claim to the high powers of pathology which the Yankee had asserted himself to be the possessor of. Under all the circumstances I judged it expedient to forego any direct opinion upon the case, and to administer a compound quite as innocuous in its nature as the "soothing syrup" of infantile notoriety. It was, how ever, a gratifying fact to learn next morning that—whether owing to the syrup or not, I am not prepared to state the patient ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... answer was a pistol shot, which, whistling past his cheek, struck the uplifted fragment of rock with such force as to send a stunning feeling up to his very shoulders. The stone fell from his benumbed grasp, and, striking the edge of the cliff, bounded innocuous over the head of the policeman, who, springing upwards, was within a few feet of Rhimeson before he had fully recovered himself. "Away!" he cried, taking again the path up the mountain, and closely followed by ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... terrible past yours was!" mockingly. "Nonsense!" briskly. "You are guilty of nothing but innocuous villainies. If there were fairies I should ask one to make you fall violently in ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... clubs which are such a thorn in the flesh of Mr. John Kirby, Jr., the new president of the National Manufacturers' Association. In his inaugural address Mr. Kirby warned his colleagues that women's clubs were not the ladylike, innocuous institutions that too-confiding man supposed them to be. In those clubs, he declared, their own wives and daughters were listening to addresses by the worst enemies of the Manufacturers' Association, the labor leaders. By which he meant that ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... for having been a follower of Wagner. I contemplate the youthlets who have long been exposed to his infection. The first relatively innocuous effect of it is the corruption of their taste. Wagner acts like chronic recourse to the bottle. He stultifies, he befouls the stomach. His specific effect: degeneration of the feeling for rhythm. What the Wagnerite calls rhythmical is what I call, to use a Greek metaphor, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... his own misprision of treason. He would be asked 'how he knew the secret.' Godfrey's lips were thus sealed; he had neither the wish nor the power to speak out, and so his knowledge of the secret, if he knew it, was innocuous to the Jesuits. 'What is it nearer?' Coleman was reported, by a perjured informer, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... miraculous, which acted so fearfully upon the imaginations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, existed; but the implicit faith, the boundless and triumphant credulity with which the virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, rendered them comparatively innocuous. If men had been a little less superstitious, the effects of their superstition would have been much more terrible. It was firmly believed that any one who deviated from the strict line of orthodoxy must soon succumb beneath the power of Satan; but as there ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... interest, which, strictly speaking, in the Catholic Church is not the case.[4] The Council of Trent was simply wrung from the Romish Church, and she has made the dogmas of that council in a certain sense innocuous by the Vatican decrees.[5] In this sense, it may be said that the period of development of dogma is altogether closed, and that therefore our discipline requires a statement such as belongs to a series of historical phenomena that has ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... An innocuous sadness sat comfortably in his heart. Later he would embrace her. Kiss ... watch her undress. Things that would mean nothing.... But they might help waste time, and perhaps give him another glimpse of ... He paused in his thought and felt a dizziness ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Ma," declared Rufus, perceiving that Geraldine would as yet refuse to go alone with him, and considering that as ballast in the tonneau his mother's presence would be innocuous. "This little girl's got the reins. You and me are passengers. Don't ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... please me," he admitted, when I think of Gordon Atterbury and Everett Constable and a few others,—Eldon Parr,—who believe that religion ought to be kept archaic and innocuous, served in a form that won't bother anybody. By the way, Nell, do you remember the verse the Professor quoted about the Pharisees, and cleansing the outside of the cup ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... carriage-and-four, he would have got a hearty welcome, and he would have found his claim of kindred eagerly allowed. But he thought he was saying a bitter and cutting thing, and (strange to say) the old lady fancied she was listening to a bitter and cutting thing. He was merely expressing a certain and innocuous truth. But though all mortals know that in this world big people meet greater respect than small, (and quite right too,) most mortals seem to find the principle a very unpleasant one, when it comes home to themselves. And we learn but slowly to acquiesce in seeing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... in common fairness, convinced of her error. So now, says Jurgen presently, you see for yourself. Is anything changed between us? Do we not sit here, just as we were before? Why, to be sure! a kiss is now attestedly a quite innocuous performance, with nothing very fearful about it one way or the other. It even has its pleasant side. Thus there is no need to make a pother over kisses or over an arm about you, when it is more comfortable sitting so: how can one reasonably deny to a sincere friend what is accorded to a cousin or ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... bristled with innocuous informations. An acquaintance of the period, interested in Mallare's work as an artist, smiled and commented, "These are, no doubt, symbols. A psychological code into which you have translated great ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... at that moment broken. Those who had expected to see the goddess, armed with flames and sulphurous smoke, burst forth and destroy the daring heroine who thus braved her, in her very sanctuary, were awe-struck when they saw the fire remain innocuous, and the flames roll harmless, as though none were present. They acknowledged the greatness of the God of Kapiolani; and from that time few indeed have been the offerings, and little the reverence paid ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... supernaturalism so much poorer and cruder than their own? What happened was that they intrenched themselves in their system, cut themselves off from the genial influences that might have rendered it innocuous, and became sectaries, like their opponents. Enlightenment was only to come after a recrudescence of madness and by the mutual slaughter of a fresh crop of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... children, George and Marietta, could remember those early struggling days with as fresh an emotion as that of their parents. Indeed, Marietta, now a competent, sharp-eyed matron of thirty-two, could not see the most innocuous colored lithograph without an uncontrollable wave of bitterness, so present to her mind was the period when they painfully groped ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... depravity (and God knows and you know we are depraved enough) and all our sophistication, and untarnished by them, there is a sweet germ of innocence and simplicity still. When a stranger says to me, with a glow of inspiration in his eye, some gentle, innocuous little thing about "Twain and one flesh" and all that sort of thing, I don't try to crush that man into the earth—no. I feel like saying, "Let me take you by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for weeks." We will deal in palpable ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... rolled back by a Henry the Fowler and an Otto the Great; the Northmen enrolled themselves as members of the European commonwealth. The petty feudal despot was no longer needed. From a protector he had degenerated into a pest of society. The great political problem of the age was to make him innocuous. It was taken in hand, and it was settled, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... neighborhood of Ypres, and there can be no doubt that the effect of these poisonous fumes materially influenced the operations in that theater, until experience suggested effective counter-measures, which have since been so perfected as to render them innocuous. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... opposite ends of the social course, they displayed, in respect to the "figure" that each, in his way, made, one the expansive, the other the contractile effect of the perfect white waistcoat. A scratch company of two innocuous youths and a pacified veteran was therefore what now offered itself to Mrs. Stringham, who rustled in a little breathless and full of the compunction of having had to come alone. Her companion, at the last moment, had been indisposed—positively not well enough, and so had packed her off, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... was at pains to insist upon, is a much better instructor for the young than any story-book, however innocuous it may seem to grown-up people, who for the greater number have not the faculty of seeing how the tale would have affected them in ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Metropolis. [A] From his throne The King had fallen, [B] and that invading host— Presumptuous cloud, on whose black front was written The tender mercies of the dismal wind That bore it—on the plains of Liberty 15 Had burst innocuous. Say in bolder words, They—who had come elate as eastern hunters Banded beneath the Great Mogul, when he Erewhile went forth from Agra or Lahore, Rajahs and Omrahs [C] in his train, intent 20 To drive their prey enclosed within a ring Wide as a province, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... nine centimetres of picture-moulding, or dropping into the corner grocery to buy a hectolitre of green onions? When man dug gold and iron and tin out of the earth he made things with them. Now when we discover a new mineral we dub it "molybdenum" and let it rust in innocuous ease. When man loses the art of nervous speech, his power of action goes with it. And as we ruminate, the Bonasa umbellus togata ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... will perhaps be surprised to find how often the hero frankly indulges his grief; he cries with a freedom that suggests a trait inherited from his mother of moist memory. No doubt, there was abuse of this "sensibility" in earlier fiction: but Richardson was comparatively innocuous in his practice, and Coleridge, having the whole sentimental tendency in view, seems rather too severe when he declared that "all the evil achieved by Hobbes and the whole school of materialists will appear inconsiderable ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... tyrannous. His hatred for Frederick II. and his eternal "combinations" went to such lengths that, during the first Silesian war, he offered the Austrian Court a detailed plan by which the "Land-hungry conqueror" might be personally rendered innocuous. (See Arneth, Maria ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the infant. If it remain in this position, it is further stated, the mother will suffer later and the fetus will either perish or be born with difficulty. If the Hippocratic writers knew that this coiling is sometimes quite innocuous, they did not in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... horribly, brutally drunk, and possibly does some mischief before he recovers. But it is only fair to say that he but rarely gets drunk, and that when he is thirsty he quenches his thirst with water, with a harmless decoction of herbs or lemonade, or with the almost innocuous wine. This sobriety is not the result of any temperance legislation or restrictions. No license is required for opening a shop for the sale of liquor. Only revenue dues and octroi duties have to be paid, and, of course, there is a ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... semi-independent Mohammedan ruler to the south. This last was R17's work, which Mahbub had picked up beyond the Dora Pass and was carrying in for R17, who, owing to circumstances over which he had no control, could not leave his post of observation. Dynamite was milky and innocuous beside that report of C25; and even an Oriental, with an Oriental's views of the value of time, could see that the sooner it was in the proper hands the better. Mahbub had no particular desire to die by violence, because ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... on the one great subject of interest without indiscretion. He told me among other things, that if fire had to be opened on Juarez, just across the river, he understood from talk he heard that these two comparatively innocuous guns would alone be used at first. If the damage they did on the opposite side were enough to force the enemy to capitulate in haste, the other four guns would remain silent, and El Paso intact. But, said Tony ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... disinterred from wet mould,—as of grasses decomposing after a flood. Something saffron speckled the slimy water of the gutters; sulphur some called it; others feared even to give it a name! Was it only the wind-blown pollen of some innocuous plant? ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... declared Rufus, perceiving that Geraldine would as yet refuse to go alone with him, and considering that as ballast in the tonneau his mother's presence would be innocuous. "This little girl's got the reins. You and me are passengers. ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... of this innocuous sort of verse.[3] Another example may be seen in this hymn to a king: "Firm is the sky; firm is the earth; firm, all creation; firm, these hills; firm the king of the people (shall be)," etc.[4] In another ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... knife is an innocent and innocuous weapon, but two table knives are not, for one can be used against the other so skillfully as to form a fairly good hack saw, with which prison bars may be sawed. The sawing of steel bars was the sound that the sentry had heard mingling ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... and the guns were spiked by Captain Willis and a few sailors, who crossed the river for the purpose. The flank of the advance being thus protected, the attack on Tangku itself began with a cannonade from thirty- six pieces of the best artillery of that age. The Chinese fire was soon rendered innocuous, and their walls and forts were battered down. Even then, however, the garrison gave no signs of retreat, and it was not until the Armstrongs had been dragged within a very short distance of the walls, and the foot-soldiers had absolutely effected an entrance, that the garrison thought of ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... to the dry colours being rubbed into the wax with the fingers. I invariably apply the colours with a brush. It must be injurious to close the pores of the skin, even were the powders so used innocuous; but to say nothing of the danger of the method alluded to, it is a most dirty occupation, and ladies would not like to see their hands dyed with carmine, Prussian blue, or chromes. Such a method of tinting is likely to prejudice ladies against the work altogether; besides ...
— The Royal Guide to Wax Flower Modelling • Emma Peachey
... lapdog! The bacteria were thus said to be "domesticated;" for the process was similar to the domestication of wild animals into tame. The virus was said to be "attenuated;" that is, made thin or fine; that is, its poisonous and death-dealing quality, was so reduced as to make it comparatively innocuous. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... arrow-root: this compound, when perfectly cold, is mixed up with the cream. From 220 to 260 grains, (or three large tea-spoonfuls) of arrow root are added to one pint of milk; and one part of this solution is mixed with three of cream. It is scarcely necessary to state that this sophistication is innocuous. ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... We steam into a wooded bay, beneath a hill covered with the brown atap bungalows of European colonists. Colossal oil-tanks, painted red, disfigure the shore. Each tank holds 4,000 tons of oil, 30,000 tons per month being the usual export. Kerosene taints the air, but is considered to be innocuous, and to drive away the curse of mosquitos. The unimaginable and ferocious heat makes every step a terror, during a snail's progress up a wooded road. Sun-hat and white umbrella scarcely mitigate the scorching rays on this perilous ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... never lays a hand on the animal; he moves all round the little table, which contains no appliances of any sort; for the most part, he stands behind the horse which is unable to see him, or comes and sits beside his guest on the innocuous corn-bin, busying himself, while lecturing his pupil, in writing up the minutes of the lesson. He also welcomes with the most serene readiness any restrictions or tests which you propose. I assure you that the ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... brilliant Chinese doctor whose genius was directed to the discovery of new and unique death agents, we had obtained a clue in those works of a scientific nature which bulk largely in the library of a medical man. There are creatures, there are drugs, which, ordinarily innocuous, may be so employed as to become inimical to human life; and in the distorting of nature, in the disturbing of balances and the diverting of beneficent forces into strange and dangerous channels, Dr. Fu-Manchu excelled. I had known him to enlarge, ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... a like usual mercy. At opposite ends of the social course, they displayed, in respect to the "figure" that each, in his way, made, one the expansive, the other the contractile effect of the perfect white waistcoat. A scratch company of two innocuous youths and a pacified veteran was therefore what now offered itself to Mrs. Stringham, who rustled in a little breathless and full of the compunction of having had to come alone. Her companion, at the last moment, had been indisposed—positively ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... the hands of the renowned Benvenuto Cellini, and is well worthy to be a love gift to the fairest dame in Italy. But its contents are invaluable. One little sip of this antidote would have rendered the most virulent poisons of the Borgias innocuous. Doubt not that it will be as efficacious against those of Rappaccini. Bestow the vase, and the precious liquid within it, on your Beatrice, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... If the cause can be detected, as in toothing or worms, it should be removed. As this species of asthma is so liable to recur during sleep, like epileptic fits, as mentioned in Section XVIII. 15. there was reason to believe, that the respiration of an atmosphere mixed with hydrogen, or any other innocuous air, which might dilute the oxygen, would be useful in preventing the paroxysms by decreasing the sensibility of the system. This, I am informed by Dr. Beddoes, has been used with decided success by Dr. Ferriar. See Class II. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... present carried on being apparently harmless. It is in reality even more insidious, being a stepping-stone to vice, a gradual initiation into desperate play. Just as addiction to absinthe is imbibed by potions quite innocuous in the beginning, so the new Casino at Nice schools the gamester from the outset, slowly and by infinitesimal degrees preparing him for ruin, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... quickly divine what event formed the third of these easily to be foreseen developments of the most eventful day in the life of the cow's new proprietor. The kicking cow kicked Jathrop Lathrop's mother, not out of any especial antipathy towards that most innocuous lady, but just because it was of a kicking nature and Mrs. Lathrop was temptingly kickable. The sad part of the matter was that Mrs. Lathrop was not only kickable but breakable as well. It followed that at ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... his motive, the secretary was taking a chance. (p. 347) Announcing his directive to the press transformed what could have been an innocuous, private reaffirmation of the department's pledge of equal treatment and opportunity into a public exercise in military policymaking. The Secretary of Defense in effect committed himself to a public review ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... stage the piebald denizen of the stable, and the half-reasoning parent of combs, to display the brisk locomotion of Columbine, or the tortuous attitudinizing of Punch;—these are the occupations of others, whose ambition, limited to the applause of unintellectual fatuity, is too innocuous for the application of satire, and too humble ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... never changed a line. He gravely turned the pistol over in his hand, and truly enough the rusty weapon appeared to be quite innocuous except to ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... that little quaver prefacing her last two words which precipitated the affair. Otherwise a question natural enough under the circumstances would have proved innocuous. But for the life of her she could not control her voice; on those simple words it broke; and so the question became confession—confession, accusation and ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... hardness of their life and the obtuseness of their sensibility reduced to a minimum the bad results of wounds and shocks, while their warfare, being free from the awful devices due to the devilry of modern man, was comparatively innocuous; even if very destructive, its destruction was necessarily limited by the fact that those accumulated treasures of the past which largely make civilisation had not come into existence. We may admire the beautiful humanity, the finely developed social organisation, and the skill ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... convention movement proved comparatively innocuous in June is due in part to confidence inspired by the conciliatory policy of one outstanding Northerner, Webster. "Webster's speech", said Winthrop, "has knocked the Nashville Convention into a cocked hat." [46] "The Nashville Convention has been blown by your giant effort to the four winds." ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... until it becomes like a steaming hot blanket that is death to unacclimated life. All of this is changed where siccity prevails. The rapid evaporation quickly dispels the vapors and the dry heat desiccates the disease creating germs and makes them innocuous. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... to suggest to Mr. JOHNSON that this Mixture be administered to the Bug with a spoon, and not sprinkled promiscuously on the ground. We have drank Tea with a "green flavor," and found it comparatively innocuous; but Potatoes with a green flavor, (especially if flavored by the JOHNSONIAN method,) we should consider as doubtful, to say the least. It is the general impression that there is nothing Green in Paris; but your house painter knows there is such a thing as Paris Green, and that it is the oxyde ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... believe the bite innocuous as a cut of this penknife? Make yourself easy. I am easy, though I value your life as much as I do my own chance of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... submerged. Immediately within the embankment, on the right side of the streamlet, is the empty tower or by-wash, that dismal monument of culpable negligence. We gazed on it with a strange feeling, thinking how easy it would have been to demolish two or three yards of it, so as to allow an innocuous outlet to the pent-up waters. When we had satisfied our curiosity, we commenced a toilsome march across the hills to a valley, in which there has lately been formed a series of embankments for the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... not even aware of her existence a fortnight ago. Then coming down cheerfully one morning to breakfast—it was the very day after my return from England—I found a letter from an English friend, who up till then had been perfectly innocuous, asking me to befriend Minora. I read the letter aloud for the benefit of the Man of Wrath, who was eating Spickgans, a delicacy much sought after in these parts. "Do, my dear Elizabeth," wrote my friend, "take some notice of the poor thing. She is studying art in Dresden, and has nowhere literally ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... upon much stronger nerves than Georgie's. For a time he contained his rising choler and chanted monotonously, over and over: "I COULD! I COULD, TOO! I COULD! I COULD, TOO!" But their tumult wore upon him, and he decided to avail himself of the recent decision whereby a big H was rendered innocuous and unprofane. Having used the expression once, he found it comforting, and substituted it for: "I ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... unrepining, from his wife's society), ordered him to remove her, silence her, beat her if necessary—and so save her from the unpleasant alternative of solitary confinement on bread and water until she could be, if not useful, innocuous. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... qualities, odours, and tissues of plants are often modified by a change which seems to us slight. The Hemlock is said not to yield conicine in Scotland. The root of the Aconitum napellus becomes innocuous in frigid climates. The medicinal properties of the Digitalis are easily affected by culture. The Rhubarb flourishes in England, but does not produce the medicinal substance which makes the plant so valuable in Chinese Tartary. As the Pistacia lentiscus grows abundantly in the South of France, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... release her prey. She seems to watch the progress of the paralysis. With the tips of her mandibles she explores the Spider's mouth several times over, as though to ascertain if the poison-fangs are really innocuous. When all movement subsides, the Pompilus makes ready to drag her prey elsewhere. It is then I ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... that night, the doctor told my sister and me that, whatever the greater world might think of the sin at Wayfarer's Tickle, whether innocuous or virulent, Jagger was beyond cavil flagrantly corrupting our poor folk, who were simple-hearted and easy to persuade: that he was, indeed, a nuisance which must be ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... round, innocuous face, with the downy mustache and ruminative eyes, and smiled irrepressibly. Then her own ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... arrest the dark apprehensions that tramped harshly through Dan's mind. As for Bassett, Dan recalled his quondam chief's occasional flings at Allen, whom the senator from Fraser had regarded as a spoiled and erratic but innocuous trifler. Mrs. Bassett, Dan was aware, valued her social position highly. As the daughter of Blackford Singleton she considered herself unassailably a member of the upper crust of the Hoosier aristocracy. And Dan suspected that Bassett also ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... treatment of the scene, which is typical of a good deal of his work, has the power to call a tear to the eye of sensibility, his sentiment, divested as it is of the Italian's subtle sensuousness, appears perfectly innocuous and at times ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the peach. I presume you're acquainted with the average run of British generals, but this was my first. I sat on his left hand, and he talked like—like the Ladies' Home Journal. J'ever read that paper? It's refined, Sir—and innocuous, and full of nickel-plated sentiments guaranteed to improve the mind. He was it. He began by a Lydia Pinkham heart-to-heart talk about my health, and hoped the boys had done me well, and that I was enjoying ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... Greenwich Park, the most important being the scheme of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company. In reference to this scheme the Report to the Visitors states "I may say briefly that I believe that it would be possible to render such a railway innocuous to the Observatory; it would however be under restrictions which might be felt annoying to the authorities of the Railway, but whose relaxation would almost ensure ruin to the Observatory."—"The meridional observations of Mars in the Autumn of 1862 have been ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... mythologists see in this myth an emblem of crime restrained and made innocuous by the power of the law, others see the underground fire, which kept within bounds can injure no one, but which unfettered fills the world with destruction and woe. Just as Odin's second eye is said to rest in Mimir's well, so Tyr's second hand (sword) is found in Fenris's jaws. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... a constant fire was kept up, but this was as innocuous as the bombardment from above; and when the Spaniards fell back, only three of the defenders had been in any way injured, and these were hit by the pistol balls, fired by the assailants of ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... students seceding to Trinity and the Queen's Colleges, the memorialists add this darkest stroke of all: 'They will, in the solitude of their own homes, unaided by any guiding advice, devour the works of Haeckel, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell; works innocuous if studied under a professor who would point out the difference between established facts and erroneous inferences, but which are calculated to sap the faith of a solitary student, deprived of a discriminating judgment to which he could refer for a ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... fortify their perilous sovereignty. He shrank from nothing. Self-preservation was the guiding principle of his policy, his first object and his only excuse. Among many wicked and ingenious expedients three main methods are remarkable. First, he removed or rendered innocuous all real or potential rivals. Secondly, he pursued what Sir Alfred Milner has called 'a well-considered policy of military concentration.' Thirdly, he maintained among the desert and riverain people a balance of power on the side of ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... suggested by Dr. Clarke, of intermitting intellectual effort during the menstrual period, would be inadequate whenever it was not superfluous. But in Dr. Clarke's theory this period has a peculiar influence in rendering morbific conditions that at other times are innocuous. This, in virtue of the law already quoted, that the evolution of force at one centre of the nervous system is incompatible with an evolution of equal intensity at another, since it diminishes the sum of resources distributed ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... era of deliverance, a systematic despotism had deprived the subjects of the Pope, not only of all participation in public affairs, but of the simplest and most legitimate liberties, of the most innocuous progress, and even—I shudder as I write it—of recourse to the laws. The whim of one man had arbitrarily reversed the decisions of the courts of law. And lastly, an incapable and disorderly caste had wasted the public ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... in his chair, studied the man thoughtfully, giving only partial attention to what was said. This was the standard opening stage of a Tribunal interrogation, an underplayed exchange of questions and answers. Innocuous as it seemed, it was part of a procedure which had become refined almost to an unvarying ritual—a ritual of beautiful and terrible precision which never failed to achieve its goals. Every man watching and listening in ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz
... mud-carts—what an insight does it give into the wide-spreading and tangled interests of a modern capital! It was impossible to touch the mud of Paris without periling the subsistence of eighteen hundred persons. What more fit, what more innocuous to all parties, it would seem, than to clear away the mud from the streets—to clear it away as soon as possible, that it should not lie there, exhaling pestilence during the heat of the day? But stop—there are in Paris some eighteen hundred persons who gain their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... thrown much upon Lady Hilda's society; and as Lady Hilda was laudably eager to instruct him in billiards, lawn tennis, and sketching, he rapidly grew to be quite an adept at those relatively moral and innocuous amusements, under her constant instruction ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... without preponderant mischief, so much the better; but Nature, disburthened of her corruptions and prejudices, required no more to be happy. This at least was as much as the conditions of humanity admitted: a tranquil, undisturbed, innocuous, non-competitive fruition, which approached most nearly to the perfect happiness ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... succession of which to-day excite my wonder; we couldn't have changed oftener, it strikes me as I look back, if our presence had been inveterately objected to, and yet I enjoy an inward certainty that, my brother being vividly bright and I quite blankly innocuous, this reproach was never brought home to our house. It was an humiliation to me at first, small boys though we were, that our instructors kept being instructresses and thereby a grave reflection both on our attainments and our spirit. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... destructor, to render the refuse and gases perfectly innocuous and harmless, is worked at a temperature varying from 1250 deg. to 2000 deg. F., and the maintenance of such temperatures has very naturally suggested the possibility of utilizing this heat-energy for the production of steam-power. Experience shows that a considerable amount ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... the observation of these taboos is one of sympathy by which a certain action, productive of a certain physical effect in one subject may produce by some sympathetic correlation an analogous effect in another. An instance will make this clear. To wear a necklace is an action in itself perfectly innocuous and even beneficial, in so far as it enhances the person of the wearer, but for the Manbo man and wife such a proceeding at this particular time would produce, by some species of mystic correlation, a binding effect on the child in the hour of parturition, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. If the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the dandy, the swash-buckler and the literary man. He led Mr. Richards through the house. Every odd corner displayed weapons—guns, pistols, boar-spears, swords of every shape and make. On one cupboard was written "The Pharmacy." It contained the innocuous medicines for Mrs. Burton's poor—for she still continued to manufacture those pills and drenches that had given her a reputation in the Holy Land. "Why," asked Richards, "do you live in a flat and so high up?" "To begin with," was the reply, "we are in good condition, and run up and down ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... matters as motor-cars, fine raiment, beautiful boudoirs and correctness smote Audrey severely. She saw that there was only one thing worth having, and that was the mysterious thing that Jane Foley had. This mysterious thing rendered innocuous cruelty, stupidity and injustice, and reduced them ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... from wearied and nerveless arms, fell innocuous round the form of Almamen: and as, waving aloft his ominous banner, he disappeared again behind the screen-works, the Spaniards almost fancied they could hear his exulting ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the attention from its superiority to the things that are. The same undercurrent of jealousy operates in our reception of animadversion. Men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts than in that which is innocuous, and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes, than of that which falls ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... stripped of its vigor on the plea that it is barbarous. When our fathers quarreled they took a pot-shot at each other at ten paces; now disagreements involving even family honor are carried into the courts—the bloody Code Duello has been relegated to "innocuous desuetude." Texas is supposed by our Northern neighbors to be the "wurst ever," the most bloodthirsty place this side the Ottoman Empire; yet the Houston Post, leading paper of Harris county, is crying ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... however, of the death of horses, cattle, sheep, and dogs, have been recorded; but the particular species causing death in each instance has not been noted with precision; so that there are considerable doubts with many well-informed persons whether some innocuous kinds may not, like the ringed snake of England, be classed amongst their poisonous congeners, and indiscriminately ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... had re-collected the four innocuous-looking films and set them apart from the rest. "And have you been quite unable," he inquired, "to trace the bomb to its origin, or to discover anything as ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... beware of "Barbados Green Bitters." It is a most comforting local cocktail, apparently quite innocuous. It is not; under its silkiness it is abominably potent. One "green bitter" is food, two ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... following being the actual results obtained by analysis: Percentage of Pure Fat, 99.982. I found the 'shortening' effect of 12 ozs. of Cottolene practically equal to that of 1 lb. best butter. For hygienic reasons, Cottolene may be used with safety as a perfectly harmless and innocuous substitute for other fats ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller
... the cigarette he had and lighted a fresh one, afterward holding the note over the flame of the match. Here and there, where the paper charred in the heat, a letter or word stood out from the bare whiteness of the paper, and finally, a message complete appeared between the innocuous ink-written lines. The prisoner ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... across the room, and an electrical machine will not work without a pan of coals under the cylinder. But as no part of the island is more than twenty-five miles from the sea, this continual moisture appears to be quite innocuous, its worst effect being the musty smell which it causes in everything in the mountains, where there is the most rain. Use fortunately takes from us the perception of this, or it would be quite intolerable. Perpetual summer, and the utmost glory of earth, sky, and sea, are not to be enjoyed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... so far from rendering him innocuous to the Opportunist party, brought him into Parliament[2] (as the French Chambers are now called) and increased his popularity. He had been already elected deputy both from the Department of the Aisne and the Department of the Dordogne,—the latter ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... our households every day the details of the brawls and fights of drunken men and the horrible murders which they commit, they would discontinue advertising, without warning or dissent, side by side with the atrocities, the 'innocuous beers,' the pure malt whiskies, the genuine brandies, guaranteed to prevent and cure all ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... though widely different in structure, are yet not unrelated in sentiment, being both devoted to the changing heart. One amateur critic has seen fit to frown upon so skilled an apotheosis of inconsistency, but it seems almost captious thus to analyse an innocuous bit of art so daintily and tastefully arrayed. "To Celia" is perhaps slightly the better of the two, having a very commendable stateliness of cadence, and a gravity of thought greater ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... harm done!" said the old Doctor, and wrote a prescription which was at least innocuous. He knew of no simples to cure love-sorrows; but in his heart of hearts he held to ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... shape of three-quarters of a pint of tea and eight ounces of dry bread. Whether the price of groceries was affected by the Christmas demand, or whether the kitchen was demoralised by the holiday, I am unable to decide; but I noticed that the decoction was more innocuous than usual, although I had thought its customary strength could not be weakened without a miracle. My breakfast being devised on the plainest vegetarian principles, there was no occasion for grace before meat, so I sipped the tea and munched the bread (eight ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... absorbs gases with great avidity, and on this account it is utilized as a powerful disinfectant, for when once putrefactive gases are absorbed by it, they undergo a gradual oxidation, and are rendered innocuous, in the same way animal charcoal is a valuable agent for purifying water, for by filtering the most impure water through a bed of animal charcoal nearly the whole of the organic impurities ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... brave indeed to face Bill Wrenn the Great, with his curt self-possession, for he was on a mission for Istra, and he cared not for the goggling eyes of all England. What though he was a bunny-faced man with an innocuous mustache? Istra would be awakening hungry. That was why he bullied you into selling him a stew-pan and a bundle of faggots along with the tea and eggs and a bread loaf and a jar of the marmalade your husband's farm had been making these two hundred years. And you should have had coffee for ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... ardent young men, fond of what they termed liberty, and by no means admirers of priestly domination, being mostly Protestants. Just before the outbreak of this rebellion, it was determined between the priests and the . . ., that this party should be rendered comparatively innocuous by being deprived of the sinews of war—in other words, certain sums of money which they had raised for their enterprise. Murtagh was deemed the best qualified person in Ireland to be entrusted with the delicate office of getting their money from them. Having received his instructions, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... next morning. Lord Talbot insisted on fighting immediately. This altercation, and some delay of Wilkes in writing papers, which (not expecting, he said, to take the field before morning) he had left unfinished, delayed the affair till dusk, and after the innocuous exchange of shots by moonlight, the parties shook hands, and supped together at the inn with a great deal ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... rhythmical motion; that the lights of King's Cobb had disappeared, and that in their place was revealed a world of pale and tossing water, the pursuing waves of which leapt and clutched at the glass with innocuous fingers. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... experiments with roasted coffee prove that it is the most powerful means, not only of rendering animal and vegetable effluvia innocuous, but of actually destroying them. A room in which meat in an advanced degree of decomposition had been kept for some time, was instantly deprived of all smell on an open coffee-roaster being carried through it, containing ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... suggested, in a very weak voice, that if the toady would say, "he-ar, he-ar!" less frequently, perhaps they would "he-ar" much better—a suggestion which was received with a burst of laughter and a round of applause. It effectually quelled the toady and rendered him innocuous for ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... your hair with tongs and take dancing lessons from a tango lizard or go in for a course of sotto voce sayings from a French portrait painter, but you'd still remain the Nice Boy. That's why I like you. You're as refreshing and innocuous as a lettuce salad, and you may glare as much as you like. I hope you'll never be spoilt. Come on. We shall be late for dinner." And she made him quicken his ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... fallen horse; again set straight, The two, extended, stretch'd the tightened rein. Again in mortal strife the warriors clos'd: Once more Sarpedon hurl'd his glitt'ring spear In vain; above Patroclus' shoulder flew The point, innocuous; from his hand in turn The spear not vainly thrown, Sarpedon struck Where lies the diaphragm, below the heart. He fell; as falls an oak, or poplar tall, Or lofty pine, which on the mountain top For some proud ship the woodman's axe hath hewn: So he, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... law; power must be conferred upon the Interstate Commerce Commission to superintend the financial management of railroads; holding-companies must cease to exist; and corrective policies must be shaped, whereby so-called 'trusts' will be regulated and rendered innocuous. Are ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... open-eyed to face trouble; he told them the wolves were waiting for them, but to rejoice and be exceeding glad for the chance of lining up against them. Let us clear our minds forever of the idea that Jesus was a mild and innocuous person who parted his hair and beard in the middle, and turned his disciples ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... minimum of danger. So they waited, and talked, and ate and always from the corners of their eyes were conscious of the slightly built, inoffensive man who sat beside Lawlor near the head of the table. In appearance he was surely most innocuous, but Nash had spoken, and in such matters they were all willing to take his word with a ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... Englishmen haven't it; it is the chiefest of the virtues, for tho a man speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if he have not humor we will have none of him. Women may continue to laugh over those innocent and innocuous incidents which they find amusing; may continue to write the most delightful of stories and essays—consider Jane Austen and our own Miss Repplier—over which appreciative readers may continue to chuckle; ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... the strings [of wampum which he had brought as ambassador] and Gietterowane committing to memory what he said."] So effective was this provision of their constitution that for more than three centuries this main cause of Indian wars was rendered innocuous, and the "Great Peace" remained undisturbed. This proud averment of their annalists, confirmed as it is for more than half the period by the evidence of their white neighbors, cannot reasonably be questioned. What nation or confederacy ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... Captain. "Dear old C. M. is about as innocuous as a peacock. Madam Bartlett should have been born in the seventeenth century. What will she say when she sees your name blazing ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... enjoined by the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in our little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of his discipline, and the prospect did but the more reconcile us to our lot. His thunders rolled innocuous for us; his storms came near, but never touched us; contrary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were drenched, our fleece was dry.[3] His boys turned out the better scholars; we, I suspect, have the advantage ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... own. After all, even the most adroit politicians must sometimes sacrifice an offering to candor, not to say honesty. At the end of the year he retired to the privacy of his home at Monticello, where he remained in seclusion, not wholly innocuous, until the end of 1796. Edmund Randolph succeeded him as ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... could only take back one hour of her life, well she knew what that hour would be! Even that shameful time with Leonard on the hill-top seemed innocuous beside the degrading remembrance of her conduct to the noble friend of her ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... be happy without her that a woman never understands. Her lack of understanding of it causes a good bit of unhappiness, too. Men are gregarious; they like to be together. But women gauge them by their own needs, and form dark surmises about these harmless meetings, which are as innocuous and often as interesting as the purely companionable huddlings ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the spot I find, indeed, " caldrons of boiling water;" but the caldrons are in the depths. At irregular openings in the rocky ground the bubbling water wells to the surface, and the fires-ah! where are the fires. On another part of this desert are curious springs that look demure and innocuous enough most of the time, but occasionally they emit columns of spray and steam. It is related of these springs that once a party of emigrants passed by, and one of the men knelt down to take a drink of the clear, nice-looking ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... regard of theories of inspiration. To Quakers, as to mystical writers in general, biblical infallibility has never seemed to be a doctrine worth contending for. They have always felt that an admixture of human error is perfectly innocuous where there is a living spirit present to interpret the teaching of Scripture to the hearts of men. But elsewhere, the doctrine of unerring literal inspiration was almost everywhere held in its straitest form. Leslie, for example, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... perfume?—what of one of vaporized tobacco, or gunpowder?—and where do these artificial vapors fall back in beneficent rain? or through what areas of atmosphere exist, as invisible, though perhaps not innocuous, cloud? ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... shadow of hesitancy that "the modern religion" lies under no such suspicion. As dispensed by Mr. Wells, it is entirely wholesome. If it is found to cheer, it will certainly not inebriate. Indeed, the doubt one feels as to its popular success lies in the very fact that it contains but an innocuous proportion of alcohol. ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... heads when his gaze caught their eyes. And turned red. And grinned shyly and silently. Women giggled, and looked innocuous, and slapped each other on the thigh or on the bare shoulders and kissed their ravaged men. In the night they lay awake and their thoughts were white hot. But ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... from grace, above related, was so innocuous that it need not be counted to his discredit. His was the case of the pugilist who slipped on a piece of peel and felt unable to rise: had the place been a ring, instead of a pavement, he would have been up and dancing within ten seconds. So with Anthony—had ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... Bountiful—grandmothers, aunts, and mothers-in-law—whose chief delight lies in the administration of their cherished provision of domestic medicine, is past computation, and one shudders to think of what might happen if their energies were turned from this innocuous, if not beneficent channel, by the strong arm of the law. But ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... typhoid or measles) which injured her thyroid excessively, may be poisoned by the new elements introduced into the blood by the growing fetus, as it is the job par excellence of the thyroid to render innocuous these poisons. Of adrenal insufficiency, failure of the adrenals to hypertrophy sufficiently in pregnancy, little is known. Possibly the corpus luteum, the endocrine formed of the torn egg nest in ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... that scene of ampler majesty 95 Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven And the green earth lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder; he would linger long In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, Until the doves and squirrels would partake 100 From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own. 105 His wandering step, Obedient to high ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Perhaps the most innocuous way in which we may digress is by compiling one of those delectable literary hotch-potches known as 'commonplace books.' Here, with careful selection, we may garner those delightful thoughts, those gay conceits or pithy stories, ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... with a golden bottle, with cracked ice in a tall glass, with a crisp curl of lemon peel, ready for an innocuous libation, brought his nose down from the heights to look for the foot, found that it no longer barred the way, and marched on to ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... That stupid story about her dress-maker was bad enough—it would have been so simple to tell Rosedale that she had been taking tea with Selden! The mere statement of the fact would have rendered it innocuous. But, after having let herself be surprised in a falsehood, it was doubly stupid to snub the witness of her discomfiture. If she had had the presence of mind to let Rosedale drive her to the station, the concession might have purchased his ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... there were three light-weights in the running—Sheen, Peteiro, and a boy from Clifton. Sheen drew the bye, and sparred in an outer room with a soldier, who was inclined to take the thing easily. Sheen, with the thought of the final in his mind, was only too ready to oblige him. They sparred an innocuous three rounds, and the man of war was kind enough to whisper in his ear as they left the room that he hoped he would win the final, and that he himself had a matter of one-and-sixpence with Old Spud ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... district was easy," Caesar used to say; "I managed to have one make all the others innocuous, and then I made that one, who was Don Calixto, innocuous ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... away from them, are around the rooms. In nearly all the cities, except New York, every guest is provided with a dancing card, which makes the keeping of dancing engagements a part of the festivity. New York is too large for such things, and dancing cards have been relegated to the realms of innocuous desuetude. However, if you are at a ball or a dance in another city where they are used, your first duty would be to have your engagements filled. You should remain with your partner after each dance until her ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... making solitary meditation follow on the useful field of observation sought in the world, and thus he drew profit from both, without ever suffering himself to be exclusively engrossed by one or the other. The enervating atmosphere of drawing-rooms remained innocuous for him; he came out from them with a mind as virile and independent as if he had never breathed it, keeping all his ideas strong and bold, just and humane, as they were before. But the consequences of this rare equilibrium, which he was ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... joy disturbed Lezard's otherwise innocuous features; he winked horribly at Dr. Fooss and at me, and uttered a faint click with his teeth and tongue like the ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... be my death,—though friendly you profess yourself,— If to me in a strain like this so often you address yourself: "Come, Holly, why this laziness? Why indolently shock you us? Why with Lethean cups fall into desuetude innocuous?" ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... absurd exhibition which Price had seen on the night I started with them. He might easily have said, if he was determined to compliment me, that they had "improved," "progressed," or something equally adequate and innocuous. But no. The man must needs be effusive, positively gushing. He came to me in transports. "Wonderful!" he ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... the morning paper, too much absorbed in the hypothesis that would explain his daughter's non-appearance to find much amusement in the editor's bland and innocuous comments upon the sensational episode of the preceding night. He recalled her evident excitement and preoccupation when she came in from her walk with Leigh. If her interview with the young man had been what he feared, it was natural ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... buried, and a second rusty spear-wound close to the first; the head of the weapon was cut out, his wounds dressed, and he was put to bed. Another man had a wound from a wooden-headed spear; and most had been struck more or less by these rude and, luckily, innocuous weapons. A dozen or two of Dyak spears were left in the Malay boat, which I got. Some were well-shaped, with iron heads; but the mass simply pieces of hard wood sharp-pointed, which they hurl in great numbers. Fire-arms the Dyaks had none, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Head, where they found plenty to amuse them. It was a splendid headland, rising bluff four hundred feet out of the sea, and presenting magnificent reaches of rock scenery on all sides. The boys lay on the turf at the summit, and flung innocuous stones at the sea-gulls as they sailed far below them over the water and every now and then pounced at some stray fish that came to the surface; or they watched the stately barques as they sailed by on the horizon, wondering at ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... completely entangled in the folds of one, a wonderfully slender kind, being nearly six feet in length, and not more than half an inch in diameter at its broadest part. It was a species of Dryophis. The majority of the snakes seen were innocuous. One day, however, I trod on the tail of a young serpent belonging to a very poisonous kind, the Jararaca (Craspedocephalus atrox). It turned round and bit my trousers; and a young Indian lad, who was behind me, dexterously cut it through with his knife before it had time ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... the Mutiny, combining considerable research with the grossest perversions of facts and great literary power with the most savage hatred—were bound in false covers as "Pickwick Papers," or other equally innocuous works. Other seditious leaflets besides those for the incitement of mutiny in the native army appear to have come from America, whilst newspapers like the Talvar and the Bande Mataram, which preach the same gospel of murder ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... wealthy multi-millionaires, employ the very best lawyers they can obtain to pick flaws in these statutes after their passage; but they also employ a class of secret agents who seek, under the advice of experts, to render hostile legislation innocuous by making it unconstitutional, often through the insertion of what appear on their face to be drastic and sweeping provisions against the interests of the parties inspiring them; while the demagogues, the corrupt creatures who introduce blackmailing schemes ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... separate guard-house of their own in the kitchen, where Mrs. Carmichael, who could not sleep because of her apprehensions of evil to some unknown defender, furnished them with bread and cheese and innocuous hot elderberry wine and cold cider. After partaking plentifully of the refreshments, Sylvanus and Ben lit their pipes, and the latter communicated to the company the story of his woes in the case of Serlizer. Sylvanus ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... than ever arose from the little crowd of Indians, whose mounts began to partake of the excitement imparted by the ponies that had begun to tear to and fro in the narrow gulch, while after discharging another innocuous flight of arrows against the barrier of stones, about a dozen of the savages came on, yelling and belabouring their mounts, driving them nearly frantic as ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... his life; but when George Kennan, following in the steps of Howard, draws back the curtain and shows the shuddering horrors in the prisons of Siberia, the Czar would willingly offer much more than 15,000 roubles for a successful essay upon his life. John Howard sleeps in innocuous silence at Kherson; George Kennan speaks through the everywhere-present press to the court of last ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... presided, small whiskers growing between his humors where they had escaped the razor, like the vegetation of that harsh land in the low places, out of the destroying edge of the wind. For army-game was held so innocuous in Comanche that even a cook might ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Between these innocuous engines of destruction, little black cannon balls had been piled into a mimic pyramid, near to which three men stood engaged in desultory conversation. One of them, Tom observed as markedly taller, more commanding and distinguished in bearing, than his ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... at pains to insist upon, is a much better instructor for the young than any story-book, however innocuous it may seem to grown-up people, who for the greater number have not the faculty of seeing how the tale would have affected them ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... throughout his work: what he paints, or sings, or writes, conveys a lesson while it pleases. On the other hand, depravity in an artist or a poet percolates through work which has in it nothing positive of evil, and a very miasma of poisonous influence may rise from the apparently innocuous creations of a tainted soul. Now Correggio is moralised in neither way—neither as a good nor as a bad man, neither as an acute thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary. He is simply sensuous. On his own ground he is even very fresh and healthy: his delineation ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... of the eland, like those of most antelopes, are large, bright, and melting, without any expression of fierceness; and the animal, though so very large and strong, is of the most innocuous disposition—showing fight only when driven ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
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