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More "Meddling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tell me that I'm meddling with what is none of my business, and this time you'll ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... The boy means Garuda Stone. I should like to know how you got hold of that; you've been meddling in my drawers, now, a thing I will not put up with, as I've told ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... to this. He could not get rid of the feeling that this was our fault somehow for meddling with the river, though of course the clear star of reason told him it could ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... as a symptom of abnormality. The mischief done by our present ignorance and neglect of important features of sex-behavior should be prevented without the incidence of mischief from exaggerated expectations and unwise meddling. ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... never come along here that it doesn't put me back at least fifty years," he observed, leaning over his side of the barouche, and peering down one of the side streets that led past the churchyard. "Sorry they've been meddling with that old church. Better have left it as it used to be in my boyhood. Do you see that little house there, set back in the yard, with the chimney crumbling to pieces? That was the first school I ever went to, and it was taught by old Miss Deborah Timberlake, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... wanted the products of scientific research, but he had a vague fear of the scientist—the "egghead." To his way of thinking, the laws were cleverly-designed restrictions promulgated by that marvelous epitome of humanity, the common man, to keep the mysterious scientists from meddling with ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... that Jimmy Jay is a very mischievous little bird. Yes, sir, he certainly loves to tease. Grandmother Magpie is mischievous, too, but she's no worse than little Jimmy Jay. She does harm by meddling and Jimmy Jay ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... I watched him meddling till I could bear to watch no longer, feeling a fierce feverish suspense as to what he might say, and my pulse beating so quick that I could scarce stand still. For was not the decisive moment very nigh when we ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... minute Dravot puts on the Master’s apron that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. ‘It’s all up now,’ I says. ‘That comes of meddling with the Craft without warrant!’ Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand-Master’s chair —which was to say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he shows all the other priests the Master’s ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... he was addicted to the smoking of opium. When the brethren first saw him, he seemed just ready to fall into the grave. He also had a bad reputation throughout the town, being accustomed to meddling with other people's business. He was a man of good natural abilities, and the people feared him. He has given up his opium and his other vile practices. His whole character seems to have undergone a change. He also has been called, as have all the others in that town, to experience ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... you have been meddling in my affairs. I consider it a mighty sneaking thing for you to do and I want you to ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... his relatives, and found himself surrounded in the corridors of the theater, and even in the street, with people congratulating him or kissing him. That displeased him greatly, for he did not like being kissed, and did not like people meddling with him ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... king, or tutelar ghost-deity. In fetichistic thought, the name is an entity mysteriously associated with its owner, and it is not well to run the risk of its getting into hostile hands. Along with this caution goes the similarly originated fear that the person whose name is spoken may resent such meddling with his personality. For the latter reason the Dayak will not allude by name to the small pox, but will call it "the chief" or "jungle-leaves"; the Laplander speaks of the bear as the "old man with the fur coat"; in Annam ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... daughters' daughters yet you thrive, Burst from your lead, and be yourselves alive! Back to the ball-room speed your spectred host; Fools' Paradise is dull to that you lost. No treacherous powder bids conjecture quake; No stiff-starch'd stays make meddling fingers ache (Transferr'd to those ambiguous things that ape Goats in their visage, women in their shape): No damsel faints when rather closely press'd, But more caressing seems when most caress'd; Superfluous ...
— English Satires • Various
... it is perfectly proper; everybody makes love to you; Jack makes love to you, and he is as good as engaged—" But here it suddenly flashed in Dick's mad head that he was meddling, and he stopped short. Rosa had turned upon him with a flash of such scorn, such indignant pain, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... fellow, and were so fresh that we doubted if he had left long before we arrived; and we made up our minds to follow him up and try to find his lair. The bears that lived on these mountains had evidently been little disturbed; indeed, the Indians and most of the white hunters are rather chary of meddling with "Old Ephraim," as the mountain men style the grizzly. The bears thus seemed to have very little fear of harm, and we thought it likely that the bed of the one who had fed on the elk would ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... you are officious or meddling or anything of the sort, I think you are one of the best and kindest-hearted women in the world. But—bless your motherly soul, Polly! the thing is utterly preposterous. Of course, Patricia is young, and likes attention, and it pleases ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... to Governor Micheltorena's order of March 29, the temporal control of the Mission was restored to the padre. But, though the order was a kindly one, and relieved the padre from the interference of officious, meddling, inefficient, and dishonest "administrators," it was too late ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... Dr. Amboyne says that Mr. Bayne can conduct your business here, and hand you a little income, without your meddling." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... byword. We are apt to think of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety, filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth century, was of a different type. By temper he was strongly conservative. He always loved best to be among his own family; he was fond of his home, fond of the old associations ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... gone; he would not when he heard about that Higg," said Janet, with uneasy and much disgusted face. "He couldn't do any good after his meddling." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to show, that aspirations after intellectual freedom had nothing whatever to do with the movement. Dante, who struck the Papacy as hard blows as Wicliff; Wicliff himself and Luther himself, when they began their work; were far enough from any intention of meddling with even the most irrational of the dogmas of mediaeval Supernaturalism. From Wicliff to Socinus, or even to Muenzer, Rothmann, and John of Leyden, I fail to find a trace of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... business meddling with lovers' affairs," rejoined Richard. "Lovers take themselves very seriously indeed, and—well, here the thing is! Now, who will go and fetch her from Liverpool? I should say that both my father and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the passions of man's fretful race Have never ceased to eddy round its base, Not injured more by touch of meddling hands Than a lone obelisk 'mid ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the Commons proceeded to take into consideration the state of Europe. The King flew into a rage with them for meddling with such matters, and, with characteristic judgment, drew them into a controversy about the origin of their House and of its privileges. When he found that he could not convince them, he dissolved them in a passion, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... therefore, ultimately, a popular judgment of his task and its performance. But he is unfortunate in another point: for he must meet that popular sentiment which at the outset looks with disfavor upon anything that has even the appearance of meddling with the commonly received and almost universally approved version of the Holy Scriptures. Let us, in a brief space and with as little of formal and scholastic criticism as possible, examine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... the most powerful assault probably ever directed against it. The subject is one which, in a volume like this, we can only touch upon, and this more with the view of drawing out the marked literary features of Pascal’s assault, than of meddling with the merits of the controversy which he waged so relentlessly. In the meantime, we must wind up, as briefly as possible, the more personal aspects ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... going to say no such thing. I was going to warn her not to meddle with matters of business of which she can understand nothing, by the advice of those who know less, and who may have jobs of their own to settle while they are meddling with hers." "And I warn you to quit this room, sir," said Sir Philip Hastings, a bright spot coming into his usually pale cheek; "the lady has already expressed her opinion upon your intrusion, and depend upon it, I ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... well be, Nellie. In all our English wars France has ever had a part either openly or by intrigues. France never seems to be content with attending to her own business, but is ever meddling with her neighbours', and, if not fighting herself, trying to set them by the ears against each other. If I were a bit younger, and had not lost my left flipper, I would myself volunteer for the service. As for Master Cyril here, I know ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... that. We did meet with one man, and that was no less a person than your bug-bear, Joel Strides—as innocent, though as meddling an overseer as one ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... to that, even from you. Mrs. Verner was in her bed—never out of it; she knew nothing whatever of the codicil. And, if she had, you will, I hope, do her the justice to believe that she would be incapable of meddling with it." ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... righteous," saith he, and then follows, "There is none that doeth good;" Rom. iii. 10, 11, 12. For it is not possible for a man that is not first made righteous by the God of heaven, to do any thing that in a gospel-sense may be called righteousness. To make himself a righteous man, by his so meddling with them, he may design; but work righteousness, and so by such works of righteousness make himself a righteous ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... Meddling in everybody's interests, Tonsard heard everybody's complaints, and often instigated frauds to benefit the needy. His wife, a kindly appearing woman, had a good word for evil-doers, and never withheld either approval or personal help from her customers in anything they undertook ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... mine from Whitby to Scarborough, and Bowler's thence to Flamborough. Carroway goes where he likes, of course, as the manner of the man is. He is a little in the doldrums now, and likely enough to come meddling. From Flamborough to Hornsea is left to him, and quite as much as he can manage. Further south there is no fear; our Yarmouth men will see to that. Now I think that you quite understand. Good-by; we shall nab ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and foolish and frightened he felt? All his brave resolutions seemed to drain away before their old, gnomish faces. Here he'd been thinking of himself as a brave spy, a gallant fighter in humanity's cause and what not. Now he saw himself for what he was; a reckless boy, meddling in affairs too big for him. He ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... prattling page aside, To me, in converse sweet, impart 25 To read in man the native heart; To learn, where Science sure is found, From Nature as she lives around; And, gazing oft her mirror true, By turns each shifting image view! 30 Till meddling Art's officious lore Reverse the lessons taught before; Alluring from a safer rule, To dream in her enchanted school: Thou, Heaven, whate'er of great we boast, 35 Hast blest ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... is to behave toward other nations as a strong and self-respecting man should behave toward the other men with whom he is brought into contact. In other words, our aim is disinterestedly to help other nations where such help can be wisely given without the appearance of meddling with what does not concern us; to be careful to act as a good neighbor; and at the same time, in good-natured fashion, to make it evident that we do not intend to be ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... (I'm sure you have, my friend!) When you have laid the puppy low,— All little pique, and malice, at an end,— Been sorry for the blow? And said, (if witty, so would say your Bard,) "Damn it! I hit that meddling fool ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... would be approved throughout the world: he would destroy slavery as a necessary step to the preservation of the Union. In the first year of the war he had said to a Southern Unionist, who warned him against meddling with slavery, "You must not expect me to give up this Government without playing my last card." This "last card" was undoubtedly the freeing of the slaves; and when the time came, Lincoln played ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... notions and his high-flown professions, had contrived to ruin him more disastrously than if he had been his bitterest foe! Ah! if he could be face to face with him once more—if only for five minutes—he would be restrained by no false delicacy: he would tell him fairly and plainly what a meddling, blundering old fool he was. But Fakrash had taken his flight for ever: there were no means of calling him back—nothing to be done now but go to ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... habits of business. vigilance &c 459; wakefulness; sleeplessness, restlessness; insomnia; pervigilium^, insomnium^; racketing. movement, bustle, stir, fuss, ado, bother, pottering, fidget, fidgetiness; flurry &c (haste) 684. officiousness; dabbling, meddling; interference, interposition, intermeddling; tampering with, intrigue. press of business, no sinecure, plenty to do, many irons in the fire, great doings, busy hum of men, battle of life, thick of the action. housewife, busy bee; new ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... certainly some one meddling with this lock," he said, after a moment's hesitation, looking stealthily up and ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... it such an access of Protestant coloring, that high Anglican writers have been in the habit of attributing the main features of the revision to the interference of the Continental Reformers. "If it had not been for the impertinent meddling," they have been accustomed to say, "of such foreigners as Bucer, Peter Martyr, and John a-Lasco, we might have been enjoying at the present day the admirable and truly Catholic devotions set forth in the fresh morning of the ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... answered, that I did not come thither to talk with him, but with the justice. Whereat he supposed that I had nothing to say for myself, and triumphed as if he had got the victory; charging and condemning me for meddling with that for which I could show no warrant; and asked me, if I had taken the oaths? and if I had not, it was pity but that I should be sent to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... constitution imposes on it. Most certainly is has no taste for the painstaking burden of being involved in a league (of human rights). Men who cannot find time once in three months to drop a ballot in the box, will not come three times a week to attend the meetings of a club. Far from meddling with the government, they abdicate, and as they refuse to elect it, they cannot ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... then, in acquiring normal habits is the conviction of the integrity of our physical machines and a determination not to interfere by thought, or by physical meddling, with the elemental functions of our bodies. After this all-important step, there are a few practical suggestions which it is well to follow. Most of them are nothing more than the common-sense habits of personal hygiene which ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... to sort themselves?' she grumbled within herself. 'But men are over-given to meddling; they mar more ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... might be well for his "beloved adopted country;" and ended by saying that the Governor's answer would be a guide to him in his political correspondence with the government he represented. In consequence of this letter, M. Theron and the French consul at Richmond, who had also been meddling with Texan affairs, were ordered to leave the Confederate States. The object evidently was to set up an independent republic between the new empire in Mexico and whichever power, Union or Confederacy, should triumph in the ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... boasting brother, construing everything (and how could she do otherwise?) as a reproach {against herself}. Accordingly, off she runs to her Father, to be avenged {on him} in her turn, and with great rancour, makes a charge against the Son, how that he, though a male, has been meddling with a thing that belongs to the women. Embracing them both, kissing them, and dividing his tender affection between the two, he said: "I wish you both to use the mirror every day: you, that you may not spoil your beauty by vicious conduct; ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... "Have you been meddling with my things again?" demanded Dick. "Mother, I've an engagement at eight o'clock and it's quarter past now; every blessed collar button is gone ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence
... the stories told by travelers of officious meddling by the police on their arrival in Russia, and of their footsteps being dogged, I have recently been favored with some light on that subject. I believe the tales, with reservations, since some perfectly innocent and truthful friends of mine related to me their own similar ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... his eyes, and thinkers "miscreants," because ideas and thinkers have rashly meddled with politics and practice. This would be all very well if the dislike and neglect confined themselves to ideas transported out of their own sphere, and meddling rashly with practice; but they are inevitably extended to ideas as such, and to the whole life of intelligence; practice is everything, a free play of the mind is nothing. The notion of the free play of the mind ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... last clever people, wise in their own conceit, began to believe nothing, and became like the fool who said in his heart, "There is no God." So there came to be a bad feeling against all the clergy, and the Jesuits, who had made themselves very meddling and troublesome, were put down at the entreaty of several kings. When they were taken away from their converts in South America, it turned out that the poor Indians had not steadfastness enough to take care of themselves; ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... had it in my power I obtained redress for the oppressed. I very soon, therefore became an object of suspicion and dread amongst the petty tyrants of that district; and by them I was denominated "a busy meddling fellow;" but as a set off to this, I received the thanks, the blessings of the poor, and the love of my servants, whom I looked upon as my friends and neighbours. I had as much work done for my money as any man; I paid my servants well; but I did what was of much more consequence ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... women, even for lunch, for fear of losing a vote. The whole thing appealed to the men irresistibly. We are receiving praise from all quarters for the kind of campaign we made—no personalities, no boasting of what we would do, no promises, no meddling with other issues—just 'Votes for Women' straight through, because it is just and reasonable and everywhere when ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... managed everything. One of his acts was to restore some exiles. And since Lepidus had great power and caused him considerable fear, he gave his daughter in marriage to this leader's son and made arrangements to have the latter appointed high priest, so as to prevent any meddling with enterprises which he had on foot. In order to carry out this plan with greater ease, he diverted the choice of high priest from the people back to the priests, and in company with the latter he consecrated him, performing few or none of the accustomed rites, though he might ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... am!" she cried. "You've been a nuisance in the house from the first with your officious meddling! You take too much on yourself! You forget ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... Tex, who rode a little apart with his hat pulled over his eyes, evidently in deep thought. Sudden had all the arrogance of a strong man who has managed his life and his business successfully. He wanted to attend to Tex himself, without any meddling from ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... stands Ruskin, whose writing is art, and whose art is unworthy his writing. To him and his example do we owe the outrage of proffered assistance from the unscientific—the meddling of the immodest—the intrusion of the garrulous. Art, that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by?—for guidance from the hand that holds neither brush ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... dead: Listless, she crawls along in doleful black, Whilst bursts of sorrow gush from either eye, Past falling down her now untasted cheek. Prone on the lowly grave of the dear man She drops; whilst busy meddling memory, In barbarous succession, musters up The past endearments of their softer hours, 80 Tenacious of its theme. Still, still she thinks She sees him, and, indulging the fond thought, Clings yet more closely ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... adventures, nevertheless. One day as we were passing by a tuft of small trees, a rhinoceros charged upon my horse, which very narrowly escaped by wheeling short round and getting behind him; the beast then made off without meddling with us any more. Every day we used to shoot some animal or other, for provision: sometimes it was a gnu, something between an antelope and a bull; at other times it was one of ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... must tell you, you know, as a friend, you'd better not be meddling with such notions; they are bad, George, very bad, for boys in your condition,—very;" and Mr. Wilson sat down to a table, and began nervously chewing the handle of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... poikilia, pleonexia, polypragmosyne. Liddell and Scott definitions: "poikilia metaph: cunning; pleonexia a disposition to take more than one's share; polupragmosune meddling." ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... I should think it is a new name," said Mr. Tulliver, with angry emphasis. "Dorlcote Mill's been in our family a hundred year and better, and nobody ever heard of a Pivart meddling with the river, till this fellow came and bought Bincome's farm out of hand, before anybody else could so much as say 'snap.' But I'll Pivart him!" added Mr. Tulliver, lifting his glass with a sense that he had defined his resolution in ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... silence in which each heart could almost hear the other beat. Oh! how wicked—wicked—would she be if she had come meddling with his life again, ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... content myself with giving only a character of the person and his writings, without meddling with the transactions of his life, which was altogether private: I shall only make this known observation of his family, that there was scarce so many extraordinary men in any one. I have been acquainted with five of his brothers, of which three are still ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... his patriotic view of this work did not commend itself to his brother travellers. He found that they had no feeling but one of contempt for people whom they regarded as meddling amateurs. Occasionally, when some convent, under a bustling Mother Superior, advanced from the region of half-charitable sales at exhibitions into the competition of the open market, contempt became dislike, and wishes were expressed in quite unsuitable language that the good ladies would mind ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... who restored the Church in France; hence, I need not tell you how important and indispensable I believe religion and the Church to be for the welfare of nations. Great tasks and great duties are intrusted to the hands of the clergy. Endeavor to fulfil them faithfully, gentlemen. Above all, avoid meddling with politics. Pay exclusive attention to your own affairs, and do as the gospel commands you: 'Render unto Caesar the things ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... not show you my best tricks at first, it was because one must not be so foolish as to display all one knows at once. I always take care to keep my best tricks for emergencies; and I have plenty more to prevent young folks from meddling. However, I have come, gentlemen, in all kindness, to show you the trick that gave you so much trouble; I only beg you not to use it to my hurt, and to be more discreet in future." He then shows us his apparatus, and to our great surprise we find it is merely ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... ousels had gone on with their nest-building and brood-rearing, undisturbed by human spectators. I wondered whether many of the visitors noticed the birds, and whether any one but myself had discovered their nest. Indeed, their little ones were safe enough from human meddling, for one could not see the nest without wading up the stream into the sphere of the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... disarranged, and walked away, leaving 'Lena to wonder what course she had better pursue. Once she resolved on telling Mabel all that had passed between them, but the next moment convinced her that, as he had said, she would be meddling, so she decided to say nothing, silently hoping that affairs would turn out better ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... explain myself further, for I am meddling, I believe, with too many matters. It has always been my failing that I could never make myself understood—as I said before [11]—but at the cost of many words. A nun begins to practise prayer; if her director be silly, and if he should take it into his head, he will make her feel that it ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... Denner," Dr. Howe said, when, the business over, he rose to go, "this den of yours is cold!" He stooped to shake the logs in the small stove, hoping to start a blaze. The rector would have resented any man's meddling with his fire, but all Mr. Denner's friends felt a sort of responsibility for him, which he accepted as ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... experiences,—my very senses, Armitage. I have leaned on you so many years that I missed you sorely when this trial came. If you had been there, things might not have taken this shape. He looks upon Chester—and it's one thing Chester hasn't forgiven in him—as a meddling old granny; you remember the time he so spoke of him last year; but he holds you in respect, or is afraid of you,—which in a man of his calibre is about the same thing. It may not be too late for you to act. Then when he is disposed of once and for all, I can know ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... with this? Why, yes, gentlemen, I had the same right as every man that has a footing in his country, or that has a posterity to possess liberty and claim right, must have, to preserve the laws, liberty, and government of that country to which he belongs, and he that charges me with meddling in what does not concern me, meddles himself with what 'tis plain he ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... the neighbours would divert you. Opposite lives a Christian dyer who must be a seventh brother of the admirable barber. The same impertinence, loquacity, and love of meddling in everybody's business. I long to see him thrashed, though he is a constant comedy. My delightful servant, Omar Abou-el-Hallaweh (the father of sweets)—his family are pastrycooks—is the type of all the amiable jeune premiers of the stories. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... them. Their relations were so very peculiar. It would seem sheer impertinence on his part to interfere with the management of Lord Scoutbush's property. Really there was a great deal to be said, Tom felt, for poor Elsley's dislike of meddling in ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... and let in the sunshine. A few scratches and digs were made in the ground with a stone digger, and the seed once dropped in took care of itself. The ears could hang for weeks after ripening, and could be picked off without meddling with the stalk; there was no need of threshing and winnowing. None of the Old World cereals can be cultivated without much more industry and intelligence. At the same time, when Indian corn is sown in tilled land it yields with little labour more than twice as much food per ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... especially subject to propoganda of the four-flusher for their home influence is, to say the least, negative. Their opportunities limited, their education neglected and they are easily aroused by the meddling influence of the vote-getter and the traitor. I would to God that their eyes might be opened ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... here to tell me about the search-warrant; and she tells you to mind your own business; and droll enough it is. We always fancy we're saying an impertinence to a man when we tell him to attend to what concerns him most. It shows, at least, that we think meddling a luxury. And then she adds, "Kilgobbin is welcome to you," and I can only say you are welcome to Kilgobbin—ay, and in her own words—"with such regularity and order as the meals succeed."—"All ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... received against the city, this new Jerusalem, if they believe according to the tale that is told of her, that she is and has been of old a rebellious city, and destructive to kings, and a diminisher of their revenues. She is not for meddling with any thing that is theirs, from a thread even to a shoe-latchet. Her glory is spiritual and heavenly, and she is satisfied with what is her own. 'Tis true, the kings and nations of this world shall one day bring their glory and honor to this city; but yet not by outward force or compulsion: ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... felt you meddling with my destiny in a way that made me uneasy. Soon you'll have learnt all ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... replied. "But it will not be wise to stay here long. I was recognised this afternoon by that meddling old imbecile ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... it is a main part by itself, which answereth to all the rest. But, above all things, caution must be taken that men have a good stay and hold of themselves, and that this much knowing do not draw on much meddling; for nothing is more unfortunate than light and rash intermeddling in many matters. So that this variety of knowledge tendeth in conclusion but only to this, to make a better and freer choice of those actions ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... apology, of course, for meddling in your affairs at all. But as it will be more conducive to your success that the Duke should hear this from you than from me, and as I feel that I am bound by my duty to him and to Lady Mary to see that he be not left in ignorance, I think that I ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... Prov. xii. 1. There is a generation of men that can endure to hear nothing but gospel promises, that cry out against all reproving of sins, and preaching of God's wrath against unbelieving sinners as legal, and meddling with other men's matters, especially if they reprove the sins of rulers, their public state enormities, as if the whole word of God were not profitable, as if reproofs were not as wholesome as consolations, as if threatenings did not contribute to make men flee from the wrath ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... have assigned two hundred pesos additional salary to the eight hundred of the protectorship to Don Luis Arias de Mora; for, in addition to exercising this office, he is the archbishop's counselor. Therefore he despatches and performs what pertains to him in ecclesiastical matters, without meddling with the royal patronage and jurisdiction of your Majesty, as the archbishop has tried to do hitherto. By that means I think that the archbishop will be quiet, and we shall be able to live in peace. Doctor Luis Arias is a person who merits honor from your Majesty by giving him this ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. They perceived, however, by his banner, that the King was on board, which gave them great joy, as they were eager to fight with him; so they put their vessels in proper order, for they were expert and gallant men on the seas. They ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the mayor said hastily; "you speak very prudently and well, sir. I hope you will honor me by taking up your abode in my house during your stay here; but may I ask you not to allow my wife, who is inquisitive by nature, to see the list with which I furnish you? Women are ever meddling in matters which ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... on the dorsum of the foot extending from one malleolus to the other, and as far forwards as the front of the scaphoid. The chief caution required is to divide all ligaments which hold the bone in place, and dissect it clean on all other parts before meddling with its posterior surface where the groove exists for the flexor longus pollicis tendon near which the posterior tibial vessels ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... Princes secretly admired—obtain release from the Tower, and ere three more years were past his head fell as a forfeit to the stern demands of Spain. And Prince Charles often declared that naught indeed could come from meddling with luck saving burnt fingers, "even," he said, "as came to me that profitless night when I sought a boon for snatching the lucky raisin from good ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Ramsay, the moment there was a pause. "His name isn't Drummond at all: it is Plummer. And he isn't fit to be a guest in any decent house, and I've come to tell you so and have you give him the sack and put him to the door at once. Excuse me meddling, but you have been very kind to me and received me most hospitably, and I am not going to see you taken in by a rascal and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... cure, unless there be a general amendment of condition. Good does not immediately succeed evil. One evil, and a worse, may follow another, like Caesar's assassins, who brought the republic to such a pass, that they had reason to repent the meddling with it." Such, too frequently, is the lot of those who, abandoning themselves to their imagination, and without consulting the past, mix together promises of liberty and the despotism of Utopias which they would impose on ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... to admiring missionary enterprise," she wrote. "The enthusiasm which seems to so many magnificent seems to me but a meddling in other people's business; the money that is poured out, so much bread and light and air and happiness filched from the smitten children ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... reconvert the British Isles to the true faith. Her cheek flushed, and her eye shone with the theme; and Francis smiled paternally; but the young priest drew back. Mrs. Gaunt saw in a moment that he disapproved of a woman meddling with so high a matter uninvited. If he had said so, she had spirit enough to have resisted; but the cold, lofty look of polite but grave disapproval dashed her courage and reduced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and virtuous and intelligent and loving but she has her faults. There are lovelier women. I could easily get a divorce for you.' We would quickly throw such a man out of the door. A man's country is like his wife. If she is virtuous and well-disposed he should permit no meddling, odious person to come between them, or to suggest to him that he put poison into her tea. Least of all should he look for perfection in her, knowing that it is not to be found in this ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... school, no longer able to pay the high rent required by the Royal Institution, was removed to its present site in Brown Street, placed under the management of Mr. Hammersley, who had previously been a successful teacher at Nottingham, and freed from the meddling of incompetent authorities. And now pupils anxiously crowd to receive instruction, and annually display practical evidence of the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... very deed, they cannot let be this foolish meddling with matters too high for them. If the woman would but conform and go to church, I hear, her womanish fantasies should very like be overlooked. Good lack I can a man not believe as he list, yet hold his tongue and be quiet, and not bring down the laws on his head?" concluded ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... nothing, but my heart was ready to burst with vexation. Madam de Warrens, who did not seem to think so highly of this expedient as the projector pretended to do, contented herself by saying, everyone should endeavor to promote good actions, and that she would mention it to his lordship; but the meddling devil, who had some private interest in this affair, and questioned whether she would urge it to his satisfaction, took care to acquaint the almoners with my story, and so far influenced those good priests, that when Madam de Warrens, who disliked the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... you will drive her to madness, and she will kill every man of you," said Lord Claud coolly. "She has a devil in her, and is bullet proof; you had better leave meddling with both ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... for I quietly adopted father's views on political subjects without meddling with them. But even father went over with his State, and when so many outrages were committed by the fanatical leaders of the North, though he regretted the Union, said, "Fight to the death for our ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... wreathed her arm in his, and they paced the room in silence. At length she said, "If we go to find John Hagar, shall we not be meddling again? A man who respects a woman's freedom must love his own. It is the last thing left him. Don't hunt him down. I believe nothing could hurt him now like seeing ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... dine Cambaceres." His table was in fact an important state engine, as appears from the anecdote of the trout sent to him by the municipality of Geneva, and charged 300 francs in their accounts. The Imperial 'Cour des Comptes' having disallowed the item, was interdicted from meddling with similar municipal affairs in future (Hayward's ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... had told him over and over how his master would give him to the big mastiff if he ever found him 'meddling.' Samson had got too near the mastiff's kennel once, and had felt his terrible breath in his face. He thought about that, but he pulled in ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... know that Jimmy Jay is a very mischievous little bird. Yes, sir, he certainly loves to tease. Grandmother Magpie is mischievous, too, but she's no worse than little Jimmy Jay. She does harm by meddling and Jimmy ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... meddling with this lock," he said, after a moment's hesitation, looking stealthily up and ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... taken on an absorbed and pondering look. "I never come along here that it doesn't put me back at least fifty years," he observed, leaning over his side of the barouche, and peering down one of the side streets that led past the churchyard. "Sorry they've been meddling with that old church. Better have left it as it used to be in my boyhood. Do you see that little house there, set back in the yard, with the chimney crumbling to pieces? That was the first school I ever went to, and it was taught by old Miss Deborah Timberlake, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... deal with trade and industry as though they were matters that concerned only the particular business firms engaged in them was no longer an economical error, it was also a political blunder. To Government meddling in trade and industry the British people have ever been averse. And their dislike is intelligible although no longer warranted. A glance at Germany's economic campaign and its results ought to have borne out the thesis that individual self-reliance and push are unavailing to cope with ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... your worship's valour, courtesy, accomplishments, and task, there is a variety of opinions. Some say, 'mad but droll;' others, 'valiant but unlucky;' others, 'courteous but meddling,' and then they go into such a number of things that they don't leave a whole bone either in your worship or ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... eat till they were fully satisfied, and they left him nothing but the bare bones. The next heavy blast of wind opened the branches and liberated him. He went home, thinking to himself, "See the effect of meddling with frivolous things when I had ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... show traces of sickness." "This were the best way," answered I, "I have just now bathed in hot water, but I will have my head shaved." Then I said to my page, "Go to the bazaar and bring me a barber, a discreet fellow and one not inclined to meddling or impertinent curiosity or likely to split my head with his excessive talk."[FN609] The boy went out at once and brought back with him this wretched old man, this Shaykh of ill omen. When he came in he saluted me and I returned his salutation; then quoth he, "Of a truth I see ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... nay, rabidly devout, if we may coin the adverb; in her own eyes she was perfection, in those of her neighbours slightly objectionable; and she was altogether a droll, and by no means an unusual compound of piety, censoriousness, charity, proscription, gossip, kindness, meddling, ill-nature, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... no is nothing. I don't think that means much, but we call him that for fun...." But Mary could not remember what the child's real name was. What difference did it make? As if she could have a child meddling round the house while she was sewing. But of course this was not the real reason. The real reason was that she could not bring up a child—did she ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... The getting rid of the present evil is not cure, unless there be a general amendment of condition. Good does not immediately succeed evil. One evil, and a worse, may follow another, like Caesar's assassins, who brought the republic to such a pass, that they had reason to repent the meddling with it." Such, too frequently, is the lot of those who, abandoning themselves to their imagination, and without consulting the past, mix together promises of liberty and the despotism of Utopias which they would impose on nations under pretext of enfranchising them. Despising the work of the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... at once obscured. "Mary, a considerable spell back a wise man said, 'Every fool will be meddling.' If you aren't familiar with the author, Mary, it would pay you to read him." Again he gave his attention to Celia. "We'll share this, turn and turn about," he compromised. "First you have a spoonful ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... inexhaustible like Nature. He is to paint, as Turner said, only his impressions, and this precisely because they are not his, but stand outside of his will. To further this, to get the direct action of the artist's instinct, clear of the meddling and patching of forethought and afterthought, is no doubt the aim of the seemingly careless, formless handling now in vogue,—the dash which Harding says makes all the difference between what is good and what is intolerable in water-colors,—and the palette-knife-and-finger ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... representing the respect and affection with which the Parliament regarded him, and that he was master either to accept or refuse its offers. No reprimand was given, therefore, to the Parliament, but it was informed that the King prohibited it from meddling with the corn question. However accustomed the Parliament, as well as all the other public bodies, might be to humiliations, it was exceedingly vexed by this treatment, and obeyed with the greatest grief. The public was, nevertheless, much affected by the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... "beloved adopted country;" and ended by saying that the Governor's answer would be a guide to him in his political correspondence with the government he represented. In consequence of this letter, M. Theron and the French consul at Richmond, who had also been meddling with Texan affairs, were ordered to leave the Confederate States. The object evidently was to set up an independent republic between the new empire in Mexico and whichever power, Union or Confederacy, should ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... eyes of his fellow-citizens. Had Fortini known that the Marchese had been made aware of the purposed excursion of his nephew with the singer—as the reader knows that he had been by the officious meddling of the Conte Leandro,—it might have seemed strange that he should have chosen just that day and hour for the declaration of his intention. Was it that he hastened to acquire such an authority over Bianca, as might enable him to put an end to any such escapades for the future? Was it that he ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... to the families of A— and A—, and well acquainted with the particular affairs of each; who, far from treating him as a bastard and impostor, received him with civility and seeming kindness, asked him to eat, presented him with a piece of money, and, excusing himself from meddling in the affair, advised him to go to Ireland, as the most proper place for commencing a suit for the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... will drive her to madness, and she will kill every man of you," said Lord Claud coolly. "She has a devil in her, and is bullet proof; you had better leave meddling with both the beasts." ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... nay, sigh for ladies' love. Much specious lore, but little understood; Veneering oft outshines the solid wood: His solid sense—by inches you must tell. But mete his cunning by the old Scots ell; His meddling vanity, a busy fiend, Still making work his selfish ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... saw Mr. Patterson ride up. He went into the bunk-house to wait until the men should come. Now, from something Gale had said I fancied that Bob Patterson must be the right man. I am afraid I am not very delicate about that kind of meddling, and while I had been given to understand that Patterson was the man Sedalia expected to marry, I didn't think any man would choose her if he could get Gale, so I called him. We had a long chat and he told ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... this new Jerusalem, if they believe according to the tale that is told of her, that she is and has been of old a rebellious city, and destructive to kings, and a diminisher of their revenues. She is not for meddling with any thing that is theirs, from a thread even to a shoe-latchet. Her glory is spiritual and heavenly, and she is satisfied with what is her own. 'Tis true, the kings and nations of this world shall one day bring their glory and honor to this ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... before his ship sailed, a letter, also from Italy, from his aunt Maria, who was spending the winter in Rome, informed him that the ring was a Christmas gift from her. In his rage he unjustly condemned Aunt Maria as a meddling old busybody, and gave ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... as public property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman is a tribute to me. You cannot have celebrity and sex-privilege both.' Thus Ethelberta laughed off the awkward conjuncture, inwardly deploring the unconscionable maternal meddling which had led to this, though not resentfully, for she had too much staunchness of heart to decry a parent's misdirected zeal. Had the clanship feeling been universally as strong as in the Chickerel family, the fable of the well-bonded fagot might ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... autonomous; but I should like you to recollect that this is a sacrifice, and that you should not be surprised if it occasionally happens that you see a biologist apparently trespassing in the region of philosophy or politics; or meddling with human education; because, after all, that is a part of his kingdom which he has only voluntarily forsaken"]—how to learn biology, the use of Museums, and above all, the utility of biology, as helping to give right ideas in this world, which] "is after all, absolutely governed by ideas, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... uncomfortable feeling, doubt, invaded him. He had an unjustified sense of meddling, of blundering into a paramount situation to which he lacked the key. He had done nothing debatable, he assured himself; Mariana's inherent, well—prejudices, couldn't be charged to him. In the room where he was to sleep the uneasiness followed ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... briar pipe, knickerbockers and white spats had already become a familiar object in the streets of the town, when a terrible uproar at the Club—one of those periodical, approximately monthly, rows at which the police, who hated meddling with foreigners, were reluctantly compelled to intervene—suggested to her that something might be done in that direction. She got him elected President for that year, President for the next, the next, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to become absorbed in the process of his thought; the look was wholly impersonal: I have seen the same in the eyes of portrait-painters. The counts upon which whites have been deported are mainly four: cheating Tembinok', meddling overmuch with copra, which is the source of his wealth and one of the sinews of his power, 'peaking, and political intrigue. I felt guiltless upon all; but how to show it? I would not have taken copra in a gift: how to express ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Abbe Le Loutre. But while his energy, ability and patriotism are undoubted, his conduct has been the subject of severe criticism not only on the part of his adversaries but of the French themselves. He did not escape the censure of the Bishop of Quebec for meddling to so great an extent in temporal affairs, but the Bishop's censure is mild compared to that of an anonymous historian, who writes: "Abbe Loutre, missionary of the Indians in Acadia, soon put all in fire and flame, and may be justly deemed the scourge and curse of this country. This wicked ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... his wife do household labors, and have all the balance of the time to play and get forty cents a month, and be happy. No it would have happened that way in the books, but didn't happen that way to Jim. No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to make trouble, and so the model boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad of it because, you know, Jim hated moral boys. Jim said he was "down on them milksops." Such was the coarse language of this bad, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... youths are especially subject to propoganda of the four-flusher for their home influence is, to say the least, negative. Their opportunities limited, their education neglected and they are easily aroused by the meddling influence of the vote-getter and the traitor. I would to God that their eyes might be opened to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... the rich man's diversion, and men of poor or moderate means cannot afford to think about it. The beautiful world is full of entertainment for those who search wisely; then why should any man vex heart and brain by meddling with a pursuit which gives him no pleasure, and which cannot by any chance bring him profit? I have no pity for a man who ascribes his ruin to betting, and I contemn those paltry weaklings whose cases I study ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... handling the razors, For talking of cutting throats, For calling hair-powder flour, For meddling with anything on ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... of the word. On the contrary three of our earlier translations of the Bible have, "Meddle with your own business" (1 Thess. iv. 11); and Barrow in one of his sermons draws at some length the distinction between 'meddling' and "being meddlesome", and only condemns ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... no further harm was done," ejaculated the lady shuddering, while her lord proceeded—"It was not malice, but malapert meddling, then. Master Leonard Copeland, thou must be scourged to make thee keep thine hands off where they be not needed. For the rest, thou must await what my Lord of Whitburn may require. Take him away, John Ellerby, chastise him, and keep ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... communicated to me, and as far as I had it in my power I obtained redress for the oppressed. I very soon, therefore became an object of suspicion and dread amongst the petty tyrants of that district; and by them I was denominated "a busy meddling fellow;" but as a set off to this, I received the thanks, the blessings of the poor, and the love of my servants, whom I looked upon as my friends and neighbours. I had as much work done for my money as any man; I paid ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... of Bashkai. The minute Dravot puts on the Master’s apron that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. ‘It’s all up now,’ I says. ‘That comes of meddling with the Craft without warrant!’ Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand-Master’s chair —which was to say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... always saying that you don't like to let feeling interfere with business. But I wouldn't stand Farnsworth—little shrimp!—setting up to run a bank. Ill? Well, he ought to be; makes himself ill meddling with other people. He'd be better if he didn't worry about what doesn't belong to him. I'd give him rest. It's all well enough to sneer at a woman's notion of business, but the bank would be better off if you had entire control of it. The directors know that, they ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... you do so, if it pleases you? Women must aye be meddling with pins and barbs. If they be not pricking velvets or home-spun, they must be thrusting sharp points into those that love them best. Why shouldst thou differ from others of ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... truly popular, any more than Webster and Burke were, since intellectual arrogance and superiority are offensive to fortunate or ambitious nobodies,—Jefferson's prudence and modesty kept him from meddling with the funded debt and from entangling alliances with the nation he admired. Jefferson was not sweeping in his removals from office, although he unfortunately inaugurated that fatal policy consummated by Jackson, which has since been the policy of the Government,—that spoils belong to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... trying to pry into anything that you see that another person wishes to keep to herself; for it shows a meddling disposition, and is a breach of the command to do as ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... sent were Free-masons, who, joining in the communication, made "a very honorable report to the Queen, who never more attempted to dislodge or disturb them; but esteemed them a peculiar sort of men, that cultivated peace and friendship, arts and sciences, without meddling in the affairs of Church or State" (Book of ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... foolish and absurd for you to be meddling thus with the affairs of your neighbors. Give up your inquisitive habits, and learn some useful business. While you are doing this, I will consent to manage ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... "It was not exactly that, Mr. Lyman. But I did think that it was meddling with something ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... have loved Stephen almost all his life, as though he were my own, and hoped as long for his great happiness. On more than one occasion I contrived situations which I thought might make your choice my happiness, too. I know now that I was no better than any other meddling old woman, whose efforts are well meant but dangerous for all that. And I will meddle no more. But—but my heart aches a little, too, to-day, Barbara. May I just talk ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... Yetmore, sharply. "Why, Tom Connor, himself, and old Crawford and those two meddling boys of his. They'd not only suspect—they'd know that you had done the job and that I'd paid you for it. And if they should go around telling their version of the story, everybody would believe them and nothing I could say would count against them; for they've all of them, worse luck, ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... old notebooks the maxim Incredibilia sola Credenda, soon perceived how high and glorious a thing was that service at which he assisted. Our stupid ancestors taught us that we could become wise by studying books on 'science,' by meddling with test-tubes, geological specimens, microscopic preparations, and the like; but they who have cast off these follies know that they must read not 'science' books, but mass-books, and that the soul is made wise by the contemplation of mystic ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... of this world and we've got to live in this world. Mike's always trying to get beyond it, to get into touch with the other side. It's no good meddling with that sort of thing, it always has a disastrous effect on the human mind and human happiness, which proves to me that we're not intended to know or to get in touch with those who have left us. It's unwise to give up one's thoughts to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... will never resent words of warning or comfort if they are prompted by genuine feeling. When I was a young man, I felt as you do. My wife's cousin, a young fellow not yet of age, lived in our house for six months. My dread of meddling was such that I never asked him to be present at family worship, or spoke to him on the subject of religion. He fell into the company of a wild set, and was rapidly going to the bad. When I reasoned with him I spoke of Christ. "Do you call yourself a Christian?" he asked, assuming ...
— The Art of Soul-Winning • J.W. Mahood
... were issued for the Church of Scotland, which owed their existence to the dangerous meddling of Laud, now Archbishop of Canterbury. James, who loved Episcopacy, had dreaded the influence of Laud in Scotland; his fear was justified, for it was given to Laud to make an Episcopal Church impossible north of the Tweed. Although certain of the Scottish ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... compromise Epimetheus, Prometheus?" demanded Pandora. "Besides, my attendant Hope was always telling me that all would come right, without any meddling of mine." ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... replied, very innocently. "If there were none others, the world would get along without so much meddling ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... hair Only one material and two spiritual things had power with him; the one material thing was hunger, the two spiritual things were a feeble love for Clare, and a strong horror of water of any seeming depth. Now a new element was added to this terror by the meddling of the moon in the fiendish mystery—the secret of which must, I think, have been the bottomless depth ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... in all particulars like it that had gone before, what little hope the few had in Judge Thayer's weather doctor evaporated and passed away. Those who had scoffed at the beginning jeered louder now, making a triumph of it. The Baptist preacher said the evil of meddling in the works of the Almighty was becoming apparent in the increasing severity of the hot wind. Ascalon, for its sins past and its sacrilege of the present, was to writhe and scorch and wither from the face of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... his kind and I like not the breed," replied Dauvrey. "Methinks he resembles rather his brethren of Italy than those I have seen in this land of mist and fog. He has been meddling with ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... plaint against M. de La Tour d'Azyr! You are out of your senses, I think. Oh, you are mad; as mad as that poor friend of yours who has come to this end through meddling in what did not concern him. The language he used here to M. le Marquis on the score of Mabey was of the most offensive. Perhaps you didn't know that. It does not at all surprise me that the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... old man said, "What are you after now?" and the Lion asked if he had seen Ananzi pass that way, but the old man said, "No, that fellow Ananzi is always meddling with some one; what mischief has he ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... with feathers. And yet of all this the laws are so full that without it they cannot be understood, as I intend more fully to show unto you in a peculiar treatise which on that purpose I am about to publish. Therefore, if you will that I take any meddling in this process, first cause all these papers to be burnt; secondly, make the two gentlemen come personally before me, and afterwards, when I shall have heard them, I will tell you my opinion freely without any feignedness ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... earn our salt by bucking up against the law of the survival of the fittest, thereby rendering humanity the beautiful service of encumbering the earth with the weak. If the medical profession would just quit its damn meddling, nature might manage, in time, ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... following two rounds of transparent presidential elections. Guinea-Bissau's transition back to democracy will be complicated by a crippled economy devastated by civil war and the military's predilection for governmental meddling. ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... all poets, but the best. Nemo infelicius de poetis judicavit, quam qui de poetis scripsit. {148a} But some will say critics are a kind of tinkers, that make more faults than they mend ordinarily. See their diseases and those of grammarians. It is true, many bodies are the worse for the meddling with; and the multitude of physicians hath destroyed many sound patients with their wrong practice. But the office of a true critic or censor is, not to throw by a letter anywhere, or damn an innocent ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... seem like meddling, but it isn't," she began rather concernedly. "It's just that I'm used to looking after people. I wanted to talk to you about ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... careful a superintendent as Rose; for unless she had kept a constant watch over me, there is no saying how many awkward habits I might unconsciously have contracted. But she cured me of poking my head forward, of standing on one leg, of tilting my chair, of meddling with things that were not my own, of leaning against the furniture while I was speaking, of putting my elbows on the table, of biting my nails, of spilling my tea, and of making ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... old digger in men's flesh, Doctors are ever itching to be priests, Meddling in conduct, natures, life's privacies. We have been coupled now for twenty years, And she has never turned from me an hour— She knows a woman's duty and a queen's: Whose, then, can her affection be but mine? How can I hurt her—she is still my queen? If her strong ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... in the fact that it is a free union and only subject to the inherent penalties that follow its infraction, not to external penalties. Ours is not free; our faith in its natural virtues is not quite so firm as we assert; we are always meddling with it and worrying over its health and anxiously trying to bolster it up. We are not by any means willing to let it rest on the sanction of its own natural or divine laws. Our feeling is, as James Hinton used ironically ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... messenger despatched to-night from Downing Street will be at the Embassy in the Faubourg Saint Honore the day after to-morrow. But that constant and minute control, which the Foreign Secretary is bound to exercise over diplomatic agents who are near, becomes an useless and pernicious meddling when exercised over agents who are separated from him by a voyage of five months. There are on both sides of the House gentlemen conversant with the affairs of India. I appeal to those gentlemen. India is nearer to us than China. India is far better known ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by travelers of officious meddling by the police on their arrival in Russia, and of their footsteps being dogged, I have recently been favored with some light on that subject. I believe the tales, with reservations, since some perfectly innocent and truthful friends of mine related to me their own similar ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... top, she kneaded it gently despite the infant's cries, trying to round it a bit. Madame Lorilleux grabbed the baby from her; that could be enough to give the poor little thing all sorts of vicious tendencies, meddling with it like that while her skull was still soft. She then tried to figure out who the baby resembled. This almost led to a quarrel. Lorilleux, peering over the women's shoulders, insisted that the little ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... loving or angry, bold or busy, courteous or cruel or cowardly, and don't drink too often, [E] or be too lofty or anxious, but friendly of cheer. [G] Hate jealousy, be not too hasty or daring; joke not too oft; ware knaves' tricks. Don't be too grudging or too liberal, too meddling, [N] too particular, new-fangled, or too daring. Hate oaths and [P] flattery. [Q] Please well thy master. Don't be too rackety, [S] or go out too much. [V] Don't be too revengeful or wrathful, and wade not too deep. The middle path is ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... And from the way you talk, I can imagine who it is you have in mind. That wouldn't be the first time Lef Seller has been guilty of meddling!" ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... Hood's band," he continued. "At least I've been adopted by a new sort of Robin Hood who's travelling round robbing the rich to pay the poor, and otherwise meddling in people's affairs—the old original Robin Hood brought up to date. If it hadn't been for him I might be cooling my heels in jail right now. He's an expert on jails—been in nearly every calaboose in America. He's tucked me under his ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... safely raised at any time. After being thus driven out, they may be pushed about with impunity, and still be quiet! In short, by using smoke on all occasions where they would be likely to be disturbed without it by our meddling with them, it has a tendency to keep dormant their combative propensities. When these have never been aroused, there is much less danger from their attacks while walking or looking among them. Any one wishing further proof, I would recommend the experiment of managing ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... he half whispered, "what on earth, or in hell, has made you come meddling here, I'd like to know! ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... birds through the fairy land of first love. Such an interlude! to be called on by gruff human voices to give up all the cherished secrets that she had trembled to whisper even to herself. She felt as if love itself had been defiled by the coarse, rough hands that had been meddling with it; so to her sister's soothing address Susan made no answer, only to cry and sob ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... he was attacked by a bully and ex-prize fighter who was hired by some of his enemies to teach him the rewards to be won from "meddling." The result was unexpected. The bully went sprawling, knocked down by a well directed blow from the undersized, bespectacled young assemblyman—and some of the gang that attempted to bring aid to the fallen also found themselves upon the floor. ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... life the barber plays an important part. In the Arabian tales he is generally a shrewd, meddling, inquisitive fellow. In Spain and Italy the barber is often the one brilliant man in his town; his shop is the place where gossip circulates, and where many a ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... did not impress me favorably, and I sometimes wished the distance between our camps greater. His most serious failing was an uncontrollable propensity to interfere with and direct the minor matters relating to the command, the details for which those under him were alone responsible. Ill-judged meddling in this respect often led to differences between us, only temporary it is true, but most harassing to the subordinate, since I was compelled by the circumstances of the situation not only invariably to yield my own judgment, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... been the lesson he had received for meddling with Imperial fiefs; and he must have been mad had he thought of provoking further the resentment of the Emperor. To Farnese, Charles V was a sleeping dog it was as well to ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... before beginning the chronicle of the kingbird babies, I should like to give my testimony about one member of the family. As a courteous and tender spouse, as a devoted father and a brave defender of his household, I know no one who outranks him. In attending to his own business and never meddling with others, he is unexcelled. In regard to his fighting, he has driven many away from his tree, as do all birds, but he never sought a quarrel; and the only cases of anything like a personal encounter were ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... stye of hog-fishes, and the kennel of dog-fishes?' Other cases may be more doubtful. On one occasion, Disraeli spoke of the policy of his opponents as a combination of 'blundering and plundering.' The jingle was thought to be adapted from a previous epigram about 'meddling and muddling;' but here is the identical phrase: Coleridge wrote in the 'Courier:' 'The writer, whilst abroad, was once present when most bitter complaints were made of the ——government. "Government!" exclaimed a testy old captain of a Mediterranean trading-vessel, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... quick temper, and as he turned on his heel, was like to have replied and raised a brawl. My own meddling tongue had brought the rebuff upon me: but yet my heart was ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... what we had for lunch and dinner, who came to see us, and what clothes we wore. I'm glad you wouldn't have that mantua-maker of hers. Cannot my girl have her frocks made where she likes? I'll tell you what, Nelly: your aunt is a presumptuous, meddling, overbearing, ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... approved throughout the world: he would destroy slavery as a necessary step to the preservation of the Union. In the first year of the war he had said to a Southern Unionist, who warned him against meddling with slavery, "You must not expect me to give up this Government without playing my last card." This "last card" was undoubtedly the freeing of the slaves; and when the time came, Lincoln played it unhesitatingly ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... boldly, and tell him all from beginning to end. You knew it before me, and ought to have given me a hint of what was going on! The girl might yet have been advised. It might still have been time to save her! But, no! There was something for your meddling and making, and you must needs add fuel to the fire. Now you have made your bed you may lie on it. As you have brewed so you may drink; I shall take my daughter under my arm and be off with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... cut him short. "I can take care of myself. I don't say your motives are bad,—you may think this is a favor,—but I call it a confounded piece of meddling, and I'll trouble you to let ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Maxime, "you are a serious man now, a legislator! As for me, the mere meddling in electoral matters in the interests of other people ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... preaching in the cities." The concessions of August had always been odious, and were now canceled. "As for you and your accomplices," she continued to the Count, "you will do well to go to your homes at once without meddling with public affairs, for, in case of disobedience, I shall deal with you ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... patriarch. Peter asked the patriarch if nothing could be done to protect the pilgrims, and to retrieve the Holy Places. The patriarch replied, "Nothing, unless God will touch the heart of the western princes, and will send them to succor the Holy City." The patriarch did not propose meddling himself, nor did it occur to him that the pope should intervene. He took a rationalistic view of the Moslem military power. Peter, on the contrary, was logical, arguing from eleventh-century premises. If he could but receive a divine mandate, he would raise an invincible army. He prayed. His prayer ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... West took himself off toward his room, his broad shoulders well back, and his clear, merry voice singing the school song as he strode along. Joel turned into the library, feeling well satisfied with the result of his meddling, to pore over a reference book ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the state of things in Italy so well as the large-hearted German ambassador, who enjoyed the confidence of every element in Italian politics as a sincere friend of the country. He was recalled later on account of a pique of Herbert Bismarck, whose untimely meddling with public affairs had, I believe, more to do with his father's fall than any act of the Prince. As an eminent German statesman put it, in a conversation not long after the recall of Von Keudall, "a Bismarck ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... case worker is clearly defined," a teacher had said. "Meddling in another's province, without the permission of your supervisor, is ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... they came in sight of a gang of elk. Wyeth was immediately for pursuing them, rifle in hand, but saw evident signs of dissatisfaction in his half-breed hunters; who considered him as trenching upon their province, and meddling with things quite above his capacity; for these veterans of the wilderness are exceedingly pragmatical, on points of venery and woodcraft, and tenacious of their superiority; looking down with infinite contempt upon all raw beginners. The ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... be killed!" shrieked her sister, "and just because of your meddling ways, Therese." But she called to deaf ears, for now Mademoiselle Therese, enjoying notoriety, kept popping her head in and out of the window, dodging the stones and shouting out threats and menaces, which were returned by ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... quality. My cousin and Henry Allegre had a lot to say to each other and so I was free to talk to her. At the second visit we were like old friends, which was absurd considering that all the chances were that we would never meet again in this world or in the next. I am not meddling with theology but it seems to me that in the Elysian fields she'll have her place ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... as the king my sovereign and father (whom may holy Paradise keep) was informed that the religious who resided in the Philipinas Islands, busied in the instruction and conversion of the Indians, were meddling in things that did not concern them, he ordered Gomez Perez das Marinas, then governor and captain-general of the Philipinas Islands, or the person in whose charge the government might be—by his decree, dated ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... darling of your political Repairer. Call the party and the men by their right names: and give me for utility in legislation or administrative action an Old Tory and Obstructive party rather than this middling, meddling, muddling Repairer— ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... very encouraging, and disclosed to me a somewhat consoling prospect of increasing my influence as musical conductor at a time when my disgust was daily growing stronger at the constant meddling with our opera repertoire, which made me lose more and more influence as compared with the wishes of my would-be prima donna niece, whom even Tichatschek supported. Immediately on my return from Berlin I had begun the orchestration of Lohengrin, and in all other ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... forgotten all about her raid upon Uncle Ewen's affairs. Her thoughts floated to a little cottage on the hills, and its two coming inhabitants. And in her dream she seemed to hear herself say—"I oughtn't to be meddling with other people's lives like this. I don't know enough. I'm too young! I want somebody to ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you get for your infernal meddling!" snapped Halkett. In catastrophic moments many barriers go down; deference to superior ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... Constable Wiseman filled his mind through two courses, for he did not speak until he set his fish knife and fork together and muttered something about a "silly, meddling jackass!" ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... touch very nearly the administrative independence of China itself," and that a loan thus obtained was "obnoxious" to the principles upon which the American government rests. It is to be hoped that President Wilson's dictum will be universally accepted after the war and that meddling in Chinese affairs will cease.] although the rupture which had come in the previous June as a forerunner to the Crisp loan had caused the general public to lose sight of the supreme importance of ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Dr. Howe said, when, the business over, he rose to go, "this den of yours is cold!" He stooped to shake the logs in the small stove, hoping to start a blaze. The rector would have resented any man's meddling with his fire, but all Mr. Denner's friends felt a sort of responsibility for him, which he accepted as ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... mistrusted any one. That is why the big lock was not fastened. The key, not working well, he took it some days ago to the locksmith, and when the latter failed to return it, he laughed, and said he thought no one would ever think of meddling with his ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... to pun, but since you speak of La Surete,[4] I cannot help noticing that they are blundering terribly over these very affairs. Confound those clumsy fools and their meddling! They will interfere with things which are no concern ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... to receive unsolicited advice from another quarter. He was told by Lord Loughborough, both in words and in writing, that the plan savored too much of the advice given to M. Egalite, and he could guess from what quarter it came. For his own part, he was then of opinion, that to have avoided meddling in the great political questions which were then coming to be discussed, and to have put his affairs in a train of adjustment, would have better become his high station, and tended more to secure public respect to it, than ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... suggested that our estray laws—the law respecting the issuing of executions, the road law, and some others, are deficient in their present form, and require alterations. But considering the great probability that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer [not] meddling with them, unless they were first attacked by others, in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand, which in my view, might tend most to ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... whom I answered, that I did not come thither to talk with him, but with the justice. Whereat he supposed that I had nothing to say for myself, and triumphed as if he had got the victory; charging and condemning me for meddling with that for which I could show no warrant; and asked me, if I had taken the oaths? and if I had not, it was pity but that I should be sent ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... railing. It was seldom, such was his privileged character, and the protection he enjoyed from the sovereign, that any of the courtiers resented his remarks; but Sir Thomas Wyat's feelings being now deeply interested, he turned sharply round, and said, "How now, thou meddling varlet, what business ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... new-made widow too, I've sometimes spied, Sad sight! slow moving o'er the prostrate dead: Listless, she crawls along in doleful black, Whilst bursts of sorrow gush from either eye, Past falling down her now untasted cheek. Prone on the lowly grave of the dear man She drops; whilst busy meddling memory, In barbarous succession, musters up The past endearments of their softer hours, 80 Tenacious of its theme. Still, still she thinks She sees him, and, indulging the fond thought, Clings yet more closely to the senseless turf, Nor heeds the passenger who looks that way. Invidious ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... them out. I don't mean in anything wrong, but the order is so entirely opposed to the monastic spirit. It is difficult to explain; I really can't.... What I mean is ... well, that their worldliness is repugnant to me—fashionable friends, confidences, meddling in family affairs, dining out, letters from ladies who need consolation.... I don't mean anything wrong; pray don't misunderstand me. I merely mean to say that I hate their meddling in family affairs. Their confessional is a kind of marriage bureau; they have always got some plan on for marrying ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... glory of the Navy. Paul Jones in the Revolutionary War singeing John Bull's beard at his own fireside. 1812. The ships of iron that kept the Confederate States engirdled and forbade outside meddling with domestic troubles. ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... better, and thee might be worse. Anyhow, we couldn't do without thee, John. Hey, Phineas! who's been meddling with my spectacles?" ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... blessing (forsooth!) of meeting, and billing and cooing every day, the two young people, your parents, went on in a fool's paradise, little heeding the world round about them, and all its tattling and meddling. Rinaldo was as brave a warrior as ever slew Turk, but you know he loved dangling in Armida's garden. Pray, my Lady Armida, what did you mean by flinging your spells over me in youth, so that not glory, not fashion, not gaming-tables, not the society of men of wit in whose way I fell, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Constance would never be on so large a scale as her sister, so that the jacket refused to be transferred except at the risk of being spoilt by alteration; and here Mrs. Morton interfered, 'It would never do to have them say at Northmoor that "Lady Morton's" gift had been spoilt by their meddling with it.' Constance was glad, though she suspected that Lady Adela would ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "do not touch them, do not let us have anything to do with them. I wanted poor dear Mr Sharnall not to go meddling with them, and now see what has happened. Perhaps it is a judgment"—and she uttered the word under her breath, having a medieval faith in the vengeful irritability of Providence, and seeing manifestations of it in any untoward event, from the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... his mother asked anxiously. "It will not do for you to be found meddling in these matters. At present you stand well in the favour of the Earl, who loves you for the sake of his wife, to whom you are kin, and of your father, who did him ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... devil! Some one has been meddling already, I find! The very sword I speak of is gone! There's the sheath hanging empty! What can it mean? Do you know anything of ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... of Maggy's hand! And here's a deep hole which Fred's naughty finger must have made! And here, Bessy, are your marks. I'm ashamed of you all. Meddling with my nice cake ...
— The Nursery, August 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 2 • Various
... beauties; no more playing, no more trumpeting 'Chaos Vanquished' is vanquished. 'The Laughing Man' is done for. 'Taratantara' is dead. Dea sleeps on. She does well. If I were she I would never awake. Oh! she will soon fall asleep again. A skylark like her takes very little killing. This comes of meddling with politics. What a lesson! Governments are right. Gwynplaine to the sheriff. Dea to the grave-digger. Parallel cases! Instructive symmetry! I hope the tavern-keeper has barred the door. We are going to die to-night quietly at home, between ourselves—not I, nor Homo, but Dea. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Mr. Charles Pinckney, "South Carolina can never receive the plan [of the Constitution] if it prohibits the slave-trade. In every proposed extension of the powers of Congress, that State has expressly and watchfully excepted that of meddling with the importation of negroes." (Madison Papers, p. 1389.) Mr. Charles C. Pinckney "thought himself bound to declare candidly, that he did not think South Carolina would stop her importations of slaves in any short time." Thus you see, Sir, that the "deliberate declarations" ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... himself jointly with Mr Morris complained of our interfering as he thought in that department; and therefore he did not incline to subject himself to any further censures, or as he expressed it "raps over the knuckles" for meddling in the affair. We were indeed as much surprised as Mr Izard appears to have been on the occasion, but our surprise arose from another cause; it was to find Mr William Lee desirous of holding such a plurality of appointments, in their own nature incompatible ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... bad. I must tell you, you know, as a friend, you'd better not be meddling with such notions; they are bad, George, very bad, for boys in your condition,—very;" and Mr. Wilson sat down to a table, and began nervously chewing the ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... begin to be all that he does, for he's meddling with every thing, and continually making remarks about our society," said Grimshaw, evidently intending to create ill feeling against the consul, and to make the matter as bad ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... last provision was generally and most justly blamed. To turn every ignorant meddling magistrate into a state inquisitor, to insist that a plain man, who lived peaceably, who obeyed the laws, who paid his taxes, who had never held and who did not expect ever to hold any office, and who had never troubled his head about problems of political philosophy, should ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "you have a taste in these things, let us have your aid in the selection." Rupert was by no means backward in complying, for he loved to be meddling ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... aback by this unexpected attack that at first he hardly knew how to meet it. Should he lecture his wife for her presumption in meddling in his affairs, which were quite beyond her comprehension as a woman, or should he make light of the matter and laugh it off? After a moment's reflection he ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... between this and Daverill's removal, words came from him which may bring the story home or explain it if events have not done so already. "The old * * * has got his allowance. He won't ask for no more. Who was he, to be meddling? You was old enough in all conscience, July-ar!" His pronunciation of her name has a hint of a sneer in it—a sneer at the woman he victimised, some time in the interval between his desertion of his wife and his final error of judgment—dabbling ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the dragon and even ridden in him," said Mr Chairman. "There is a famous story about that; but the majority still look upon the railway with suspicion and even distrust. We only ask to be let alone, and not be interfered with by meddling mortals," he said in a gruff voice. "What do we need with you? Our civilization and our history are more ancient even than that of India or Egypt, and from us the human ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... this time. A break in their friendship now would bring Dora forward to explain, and Dora had a wonderful cleverness in presenting her own side of any question. Ethel shrunk from her innuendoes concerning Fred, and she knew that Basil would be made to consider her a meddling, jealous girl who willingly saw evil in Dora's guileless enjoyment of a ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... oppositionists, and the oldest and most celebrated ministers of religion, employed their venal pens and voices to condemn Mr. Madison, and to justify the British doctrine. This is a deep stain on the character of our clergy; and the subsequent conduct of the British, may serve to shew these ever meddling men, that our enemies ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... to co-operate, you are asking a man deeply and deservedly cynical about your intentions and your knowledge. He has seen wheat fail all his life, he has seen grass succeed. Grass has saved him, and now he is asked to turn his back on it. Little wonder that he curses you for a meddling fool. "Prove it!" he says—and you cannot. You could if you had it in your power to show him that your guarantee of a fair price for wheat was "good as the Bank." Thus, the first item of instruction to the farmer consists ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... alike. The aim of the distinguished writer of the "Grip of Desire" is far removed from that of vulgar and gratuitous image-breaking. He seeks to show the danger to human character that comes through meddling with one of the most imperious of natural instincts. If in the "Chastisement of Mansour" he bodies forth the consequences of unbridled Libertinism, in the "Grip of Desire" he demonstrates the evils attendant on a life of forced Celibacy. In the first we have ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... us take advantage of the absence of this American, to talk over our affairs; some things don't concern him at all, and I don't care to have him meddling with them." ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... to you, you stupid darling?' answered Pelagia, who lived in hourly fear of thunderstorms. 'Who is going to be cross with any one, except I with you, for mishearing and misunderstanding, and meddling, as you are always doing? I shall do as I threatened, and run away with Prince Wulf, if you are not good. Don't you see that the whole crew are expecting you to make ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... the thought of it," cried Helen, desperately. "Please don't think I'm meddling, but has ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... two Browns, whose quarrels are the scandal of the neighbourhood. Her influence in fact over the poor is a strange mixture of good and evil, of real benevolence with an interference that saps all sense of self-respect, of real sympathy and womanly feeling with a good deal of womanly meddling, curiosity, and babble. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... is a strange praist, and almost as black as a nagur; and I'd be a poor body, I think, to let him be meddling wid my work. Shure, I never heard of the like of such interfering in Ireland, nor in the States at all!" Then turning to the Mexican cook, Manuel—"You may lave the fire alone till I ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... joining in the communication, made "a very honorable report to the Queen, who never more attempted to dislodge or disturb them; but esteemed them a peculiar sort of men, that cultivated peace and friendship, arts and sciences, without meddling in the affairs of Church or State" (Book of ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... that really mattered could—if you were given to looking forward—be foreseen. A strike—a really bad one—might conceivably affect Anthony's business, for a time; but not all the strikes in the world, not all the silly speeches, not all the meddling and muddling of politicians could ever touch one of those ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... she said, with a note of reproof in her voice. "'T'ud be real dangerous. Folks could be sent to prison for meddling wi' wills, an' sich." ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... raised that the Bill proposed to throw technical education into the hands of the Science and Art Department. But, in reality, no power of initiation, nor even of meddling with details, was given to that Department—the sole function of which was to decide whether any plan proposed did or did not come within the limits of "technical education." The necessity for such control, somewhere, is obvious. No legislature, certainly not ours, is likely to grant the power of ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... persuasions, is the cause of thousands turning away to other sects which are not subjected to scrutiny. The Unitarian is in this point the most convenient, and is therefore fast gaining ground. Mr Colton observes, "Nothing can be more clear, than that scripture authority against meddling, tattling, slander, scandal, or in any way interfering with the private concerns, conduct, and character of our neighbours, except as civil or ecclesiastical authority has clothed us with legitimate powers, is specific, abundant, decided, emphatic. It is founded in human nature; it is essential ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... in this matter—my reason for meddling," she informed me. "Belle's welfare means a great deal to me; just how much you can perhaps best understand after hearing a bit of my ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... by Sir James Berwick, "a busy, meddling, vain, good-humoured man, whose chief ambition it was to be considered thoroughly 'a man of the world,' and 'a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various
... his search alone, while Mrs. Liddell and her daughter went to the latter's room, anxious to keep from meddling with what did ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... two men on board who didn't take things easy. They wanted to know what had happened, and they wanted to know what was likely to happen next. I was one of these men, and a stock-broker from New York was the other. He was an awful nervous, fidgety, meddling sort of a man, who was on this cruise for the benefit of his health, which must have been pretty well worn out with howling, and yelling, and trying to catch profits like a lively boy catches flies. He was always poking his nose into all sorts of things that didn't concern him, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... alone, how young and foolish and frightened he felt? All his brave resolutions seemed to drain away before their old, gnomish faces. Here he'd been thinking of himself as a brave spy, a gallant fighter in humanity's cause and what not. Now he saw himself for what he was; a reckless boy, meddling in affairs too big for him. He ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. Because time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp angles of its cornices, shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me tell you what comes of meddling with things that can take care of themselves.—A friend of mine had a watch given him, when he was a boy,—a "bull's eye," with a loose silver case that came off like an oyster-shell from its contents; you know them,—the cases that you ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... After carelessness, meddling with an engine comes next in the list of bad habits. The tinkering engineer never knows whether his engine is in good shape or not, and the chances are that if he should get it in good shape he would ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... said Arthur rudely, "but you can be muzzled. I say again: keep away from Washington, and keep your hands off my enterprise. You have some idea of what happens to men like you for interfering. If I meet you in Washington, or find any trace of your meddling in the matter, here is what I shall do; this whole scandal of the escaped nun shall be reopened, this confession shall be printed, and the story of Louis' adventure, from that notable afternoon at four o'clock until his return, word ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... told him?" asked his wife, in a frightened tone. "What if he goes with his tale to the police, or to that meddling doctor, that took such notice of him. He's never been the ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... they not told you anything, then? That is wrong. Well, at the risk of meddling in what does not concern me, I think it is better to put you in possession of the facts: Your deceased cousin never was married, but he had a child all the same—Claudet is his son, and he intended that he should be his heir ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... for meddling with other peoples' affairs," chided Phil, laughing immoderately as he observed the rueful ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... from any bigoted attachment to the religion in which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped at different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by his brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity and love of meddling, repaired to Deptford and was honoured with several audiences. The Czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at Saint Paul's; but he was induced to visit Lambeth palace. There he saw the ceremony of ordination performed, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have they tend to hold, to segregate, secrete from meddling hands, preserve untouched and unaltered. Owing to this power to protect, islands show a large percentage of rare archaic forms of animal and plant life. The insular fauna of Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and Madagascar ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... discretion will naturally prevent your talking of this; but I thought you would like to be prepared, if this affair should any how happen to become your business, though your late discussion With the Duc de Chaulnes will add to your disinclination from meddling ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... protest of enlightenment against Rome's dictates in temporal affairs. And, as has before happened when that irresistible potentiality, the people, has been stirred into action, the Church was disestablished, its property confiscated, and its meddling, parasitical ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... a lot to say to each other and so I was free to talk to her. At the second visit we were like old friends, which was absurd considering that all the chances were that we would never meet again in this world or in the next. I am not meddling with theology but it seems to me that in the Elysian fields she'll have her place in a ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... I could say anything more, the door that led to the landing was opened softly and slyly, and Miss Jillgall peeped in. Eunice instantly left me, and ran to the meddling old maid. They whispered to each other. Miss Jillgall's skinny arm encircled my sister's waist; they ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the disgrace of religion and the dishonor of God. We are bound to say, however, that none among the priesthood encourage or take a part in them, unless those low and bigoted firebrands who are alike remarkable for vulgarity and ignorance, and who are perpetually inflamed by that meddling spirit which tempts them from the quiet path of duty into scenes of political strife and enmity, in which they seem to be peculiarly at home. Such scenes are repulsive to the educated priest, and to all who, from superior minds and information, are perfectly aware that no earthly or other ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... till now, quailed; counterfeit serenity could not hold its head up and look the real in the face. Had Lurton been abashed or nervous or self-conscious, Plausaby might have assumed an air of indignation at the minister's meddling. But Lurton had nothing but a serene sense of having been divinely aided in the performance of a delicate and difficult duty. He reached out his hand and greeted Plausaby quietly and courteously and yet solemnly. Isabel, for her part, perceiving that Plausaby ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... was a part of Betsey's daily duty for some weeks. Then came the soap-boiling in great iron kettles over the fire in the wide fireplace. Apparently, this was not always a certain operation. Science had not yet put her meddling but useful finger into the soap-pot, for madam sadly records that on the twenty-first of May she had superintended the soap-boiling, but had not been blessed with "good luck;" and on the third of June we find the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... his head despondently. He went all over the car again, but was forced to the first conclusion, that the reserve current had leaked away, in consequence of the meddling prank of the youth at the hotel. The situation was far from pleasant, and the delay would seriously interfere ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... but be sensible that M. de Matignon is not one of my brother's friends, and that he is, besides, a busy, meddling kind of man, who is sorry to find a reconciliation has taken place with us; and, as to my brother, I will answer for him with my life in case he goes hence, of which, if he had any design, I should, as I am well assured, not be ignorant, he never having yet concealed anything ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... than elevate them. To venture criticism of parental laches or of the conduct of the young, to admonish or advise different manners and conduct from that which the inclination of the young seems to suggest, would be to run the risk of being regarded as officious or meddling, and thereby of inviting insult. Parents whose children are known to be of the class pictured are themselves timid and indisposed to insist upon obedience from them, for fear of offending them and causing them to go away from home. The inexperience and ignorance of childhood ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... policy and large liberality of the Church, as regards philosophical inquiry. If there ever was a time when the intellect went wild, and had a licentious revel, it was at the date I speak of. When was there ever a more curious, more meddling, bolder, keener, more penetrating, more rationalistic exercise of the reason than at that time? What class of questions did that subtle, metaphysical spirit not scrutinize? What premiss was allowed without examination? ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... xii. 1. There is a generation of men that can endure to hear nothing but gospel promises, that cry out against all reproving of sins, and preaching of God's wrath against unbelieving sinners as legal, and meddling with other men's matters, especially if they reprove the sins of rulers, their public state enormities, as if the whole word of God were not profitable, as if reproofs were not as wholesome as consolations, as if threatenings did not contribute to make men flee from ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... cypher will not matter though it take precedence of the significant figures. But corruptio optimi pessima. The most evil case of the royal form is far worse than the most evil case of the unroyal. It is easy to imagine, upon a constitutional throne, an active and meddling fool who always acts when he should not, who never acts when he should, who warns his Ministers against their judicious measures, who encourages them in their injudicious measures. It is easy to ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... commotion in the West Indies, attended with every sort of mischief to the slaves as well as to the planters, rather than abandon their own schemes and notions, in which there is much more of vanity and the love of meddling than of benevolence and charity. The whole conduct of Sir Eardley Wilmot, who is only the organ of a party, proves this; for, though well aware he could take no advantage of his resolution, and that if nothing was done to correct the effect of it, a great deal of excitement ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... "advisedness" from the right quarter, under the lead of "ignorant persons;" and therefore it was necessary to make a great ado about it, and hold her up as a warning to prevent other persons from meddling in such matters. Her husband was an uncle of Mary Walcot, one of the afflicted children; and it was particularly important to keep their relatives, and members of their immediate families, from taking any part or action in connection with them, except under due ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Carry them to those trees. Hurry!" and to Little he barked: "You, Little, get aft here, and for God's own sake, keep your meddling hooks off things as ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... or less, which would be a loss to us. Besides, if the original mortgage was for L200, it is not that sum which would redeem it now. Many expenses have been created by these money-lenders, all which must be satisfied before the writings would be given up. It is meddling with a wasp's nest to interfere rashly. I am happy that Lord Milton has taken the writings, to look them over. He may be able to do some good, and to keep your friends the Billingses in their little estate, but I fear it is not possible for you to ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... Ned precipitated a war of words. As the meetings between Alfred and the uncle became more frequent Alfred "grew more tantalizing and impudent," so the uncle asserted. Finally, Alfred informed the uncle that he was meddling and that his meddling was not appreciated. A quarrel followed. Alfred's powers of vituperation were a surprise to the mother and uncle and a delight to Lin, who informed Mrs. Todd: "Lor! I expektid tu ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... interests in Colorado. One mine he was going to sell. An old gentleman and his daughter were just ready to buy it. The papers were all drawn, and they were to pay over their money that evening. But some horrid young man, a wandering fiddler or something, got to meddling and persuaded ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... of a drug clerk, tries a little calomel powder on the sore, and it either "dries up" and secondary symptoms of syphilis appear in due course, or it gets worse or remains unchanged and the patient finally goes to a doctor or a dispensary to find that his meddling has lost him the golden opportunity of aborting the disease. If secondaries appear, a bottle or two of XYZ Specific, again at the suggestion of the all-knowing drug clerk, containing a little mercury and potassium iodid, disposes of a mild eruption, ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... silver one like the key of my piano, or the black cabinet. She woke and was very angry to find me meddling." ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... interfering at all in the election on his account, as he knew that I had an objection to place myself in the power of such a fellow, by being even in the same room with him. Cleary, who, upon such occasions, was always a very busy, officious, meddling Marplot, felt very much mortified at this prohibition, so much so, that I am informed he immediately offered his services to the Rump, to act in opposition to his patron and friend, the Major. But, however basely the Rump might have acted in other respects, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Baillie, her father's friend. The bright-eyed, slim little maid, with her chestnut hair and exquisite complexion, must have been as unexpected a sight in that gloomy place as a wild rose in a desert. None could suspect her of meddling with affairs of State, or of tampering with the prisoners of his gracious Majesty. Thus Grisell Home was able successfully to carry a letter of advice and information, and to bring back to her father in the Merse tidings of a ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... and even here saw cause for disappointment. In these troublous days she had no taste for landed property, and she was convinced, besides, that Otto had paid dearer than the farm was worth. Lastly, the order for the Prince's release fairly burned her meddling fingers. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... what was the heaviest calamity of all, as we have related already, he came to an end which was undeserved by him. His character appeared to be that of a man of a mild and moderate disposition, and suffered the administration of affairs to be generally done by others under him. He was averse to much meddling with the public, nor had shrewdness enough to govern a kingdom. And both Antipater and Herod came to their greatness by reason of his mildness; and at last he met with such an end from them as was not agreeable ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... of ridiculous, hideous, and grotesque pictures, and wished to know what they were for. She saw underneath them the words—drunkard—idler—glutton, etc. etc. She very soon remarked that the drunkard resembled the coachman, the cross and meddling person the cook, the pedant her own teacher, and thus she proved the ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... her way," said Richard, who had drawn near during the colloquy. "No good will come of meddling with her." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that I was at the bottom of the mystery. I had had it on my conscience to assure her that she really ought to know of what her husband was capable. "Of what I am capable? Elle ne s'en dottie que trop!" said Ambient, with a laugh; but he took my meddling very good-naturedly, and contented himself with adding that he was very much afraid she would burn up the sheets, with his emendations, of which he had no duplicate. The doctor paid a long visit in the nursery, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... years the elder of his cousin, Ensor Doone, and was making suit to gain severance of the cumbersome joint tenancy by any fair apportionment, when suddenly this blow fell on them by wiles and woman's meddling; and instead of dividing the land, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... that I did not come thither to talk with him, but with the justice. Whereat he supposed that I had nothing to say for myself, and triumphed as if he had got the victory; charging and condemning me for meddling with that for which I could show no warrant; and asked me, if I had taken the oaths? and if I had not, it was pity but that I should be ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... that, helpful or healthful in action—to the harmful and filthy action of temporary meddlers, such as the hanging of seventeen priests before breakfast, and our profitable military successes, in such a prolonged piece of 'temporary meddling' as the Crimean war. ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... scruple on the point. He scarcely liked, he said, the idea of concealing it from Romer. They always told each other everything. But Mrs. Wyburn was afraid of her son's anger—which she could not endure, unless she was in the right—and of appearing ridiculously meddling. Harry owned that her conduct might seem rather malicious and absurd. At last he consented, and it was agreed that neither of them should ever say anything about it to ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... the doctor wouldn't like me meddling with his prescribing, Tom," said Murray shortly. "Now then, up ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... memory, and we were both men, Traddles and I met again. He had the same simple character and good temper as of old, and had, too, some of his old unlucky fortune, which clung to him always; yet notwithstanding that—as all of his trouble came from good-natured meddling with other people's affairs, for their benefit, I am not at all certain that I would not risk my chance of success—in the broadest meaning of that word—in the next world surely, if not in this, against all the Steerforths living, if ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... we are to tease you; but what did you want meddling with the like of us, when it's a long time we are going our own ways — father and son, and his son after him, or mother and daughter, and her own daughter again — and it's little need we ever had of going up into a church and swear- ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... do not consider Pierce the brightest man in the country, for there are twenty more so." It would have been a mild statement if he had said two hundred. Pierce wanted him, of course, to write a campaign biography, and communicated with him to that effect; but Hawthorne disliked meddling in such matters, and at first declined to do it, although it was expected to be highly remunerative. Pierce, however, insisted, for Hawthorne's reputation was now much beyond his own, and he felt that a biography by so distinguished a writer ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... faces, which they considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. They perceived, however, by his banner, that the King was on board, which gave them great joy, as they were eager to fight with him; so they put their vessels in proper order, for they were expert ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others better than those who are engaged in them; as ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... thoroughly enlisted Jacinth's sympathy for her friends. Possibly, far down in Jacinth's heart, candid and loyal by nature, lay a consciousness that, notwithstanding the plausible and, to a certain extent, sound reasons for not meddling in other people's affairs, and for refraining from all 'Harper' allusions to Lady Myrtle, she was going farther than she needed in her avoidance of these girls, in her determination not to know anything about ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... delicate and passionate construction, physical and mental, and, as the reader will already have included, wasted on culture comparatively unprofitable, faculties that would have been better employed but for the meddling of Miss Fanny Bellairs. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... said the other, approaching the window, and directing the attention of his companion to the Cove: "'Tis the bark that has so often foiled the efforts of all thy cruisers, and which transports me and my wealth whither I will, without the fetters of arbitrary laws, and the meddling inquiries of venal hirelings. The scud, which floats above the sea, is not freer than that vessel, and scarcely more swift. Well is she named the Water-Witch! for her performances on the wide ocean have been such as seem to exceed all natural means. The froth of the sea does not ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Shall I be—meddling in what isn't my business, if I ask what they are?" queried Mr. Smith diffidently. "You know I am very much interested ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... camps greater. His most serious failing was an uncontrollable propensity to interfere with and direct the minor matters relating to the command, the details for which those under him were alone responsible. Ill-judged meddling in this respect often led to differences between us, only temporary it is true, but most harassing to the subordinate, since I was compelled by the circumstances of the situation not only invariably to yield my own judgment, but many a time had to play peacemaker—smoothing ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... heed my advice. My mind tells me that nothing but evil can come of meddling with Skroppa. There will be no limit ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Sganarelle, "Quelle infamie! Peste soit le coquin, de battre ainsi sa femme." The woman snubs him for his impertinence, and says, "Je veux qu'il me battre, moi;" and Sganarelle beats him soundly for meddling with what does not concern him.—Moli['e]re, Le ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... on Parisian society. The author of France is described as 'not beautiful, but with something lively and agreeable in her whole person. She is very clever, and seems to have a good heart; it is a pity that for the sake of popularity she should have the mania of meddling in politics.... Her vivacity and rather springing carriage seemed very strange in Parisian circles. She soon learned that good taste of itself condemned that kind of demeanour; in fact, gesticulation and noisy manners have never been popular ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... recover her lost provinces, she is fighting to recover her self-respect and her national independence; she is fighting to shake off this nightmare that has been on her soul for over a generation, [cheers,] a France with Germany constantly meddling, bullying, and interfering. And that is what would happen if Russia were trampled upon, France broken, Britain disarmed. We should be left without any means to defend ourselves. We might have a navy that would enable us, perhaps, to resent insult from Nicaragua, [laughter,] ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne's forthing, or the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... screamed the archdeacon, giving so rough a pull at his nightcap as almost to bring it over his nose; "why not!—that pestilent, interfering upstart, John Bold;—the most vulgar young person I ever met! Do you know that he is meddling with your father's affairs in a most uncalled-for—most—" And being at a loss for an epithet sufficiently injurious, he finished his expressions of horror by muttering, "Good heavens!" in a manner that had ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... when Maren had been to the village shop, Ditte ran out screaming, as she came back. "Grandad's dead!" she burst out sobbing. Soeren lay bruised and senseless across the doorstep to the kitchen. He had been up on the big chest, meddling with the hands of the clock. Maren dragged him to bed and bathed his wounds, and when it was done he lay quietly following her movements with his eyes. Now and then he would ask in a low voice what the time was, and from this Maren knew that ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... quiet, self-contained aspect, and, being a bachelor, has doubtless spent a calm life among his clay and marble, meddling little with the world, and entangling himself with no cares beyond his studio. He did not talk a great deal; but enough to show that he is still an Englishman in many sturdy traits, though his accent has something foreign about it. His conversation was chiefly ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the State was also a topic which he felt required a word. "Considering the great probability," he said, "that the framers of those laws were wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with them, unless they were attacked by others; in which case I should feel it both a privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend most ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... present evil is not cure, unless there be a general amendment of condition. Good does not immediately succeed evil. One evil, and a worse, may follow another, like Caesar's assassins, who brought the republic to such a pass, that they had reason to repent the meddling with it." Such, too frequently, is the lot of those who, abandoning themselves to their imagination, and without consulting the past, mix together promises of liberty and the despotism of Utopias which they would impose on nations under pretext of enfranchising ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... replied Standish thoughtfully. "I like not meddling with graves for despite or for curiosity, but sith it much imports us to understand this country where we are to dwell, I think we may examine this mound, and, as thou sayest, if it be a grave of white ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Epimetheus, Prometheus?" demanded Pandora. "Besides, my attendant Hope was always telling me that all would come right, without any meddling of mine." ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... As you say. But there's the wisdom of twenty years' shabbiness in me. And I wonder if the good Sir John wants to be meddling." ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... and intelligent and loving but she has her faults. There are lovelier women. I could easily get a divorce for you.' We would quickly throw such a man out of the door. A man's country is like his wife. If she is virtuous and well-disposed he should permit no meddling, odious person to come between them, or to suggest to him that he put poison into her tea. Least of all should he look for perfection in her, knowing that it is not to be found in this ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... steeped in rest divine from the organ of veneration to the point of the great toe, be it on a bed of down, chaff, straw, or heather, in palace, hall, hotel, or hut? If in an inn, nobody interferes with you in meddling officiousness; neither landlord, bagman, waiter, chambermaid, boots;—you are left to yourself without being neglected. Your bell may not be emulously answered by all the menials on the establishment, but a smug or shock-headed drawer appears in good time; and if mine host may not always dignify ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... she decided that her mother was equally if not more to blame than she, and, upon catching sight of her lordly, self-satisfied brother, acquitted herself of ALL responsibility and charged everything to her meddling relatives. Her encounter with the exasperating Kenneth, however, served to throw a new and most unwelcome light upon the situation. It WAS a shabby trick to play upon the Strikers. She had not thought of it before. And how she hated him for making ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Martella to a certain spot on the mountain-side, he pointed out to her how a small cannon—doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in price—might be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Matter short, when this crafty Fellow, with such Expressions as these, had clear'd himself from all Suspicion of a Design, and had gain'd Credit, that he understood one Way perfectly well, Balbinus's Mind began to have an Itch to be meddling. And at last, when he could hold no longer, Away with your Methods, says he, of Curtation, the Name of which I never heard before, I am so far from understanding it. Tell me sincerely, Do you throughly understand Longation? Phoo! says he, perfectly well; but I don't love ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... has wandered on these banks to thwart my ripe design? Perdition to the meddling slave! his life shall pay the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... actually exist and ran about the plains of Babylon. If his method was good for the divination of the course of events ten hours old, why should it not be good for those of ten years or ten centuries past; nay, might it not extend ten thousand years and justify the impious in meddling with the traditions of Oannes and the fish, and all the sacred foundations ...
— On the Method of Zadig - Essay #1 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the high bluffs and ridges. They are monuments of patient labor, and make of themselves hills as great as nature's. But the siege pieces, which often bellowed upon them like thunderbolts along the mountain-tops, are gone now, and only straggling, meddling fellows pass them at all. The highest of these works commands both ends of the Dutch Gap canal, and while our lads were digging they often hid themselves in caves which ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... are especially subject to propoganda of the four-flusher for their home influence is, to say the least, negative. Their opportunities limited, their education neglected and they are easily aroused by the meddling influence of the vote-getter and the traitor. I would to God that their eyes might be opened to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... dearest," he replied. "But it will not be wise to stay here long. I was recognised this afternoon by that meddling old ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... his mother saw him she was very sorry. But when he told her what the matter was she was vexed. 'Aha!' said she, 'how often have I told you about meddling with somebody else's business! How often have I told you about sticking your nose into things that don't concern you! I'm not sorry for you one bit, because if you had obeyed me you wouldn't be coming home now with your hand mashed all to flinders. But, no! daddy-like, you've got to go and get ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... where he is, and let's get away. I've heard say there were ghosts on L'Etat, and now I know it. No good comes of meddling ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... is, laddie. It's a matter of life and death, I'm thinking!" He smiled grimly, as it entered his head that he might be driven to do violence to that meddling policeman. The yellow gas-light gave his face such a sardonic aspect that Sandy ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... proviso which created the American principle of federalism. The Constitution made no grant, or even inferred a grant, of power to the federal government for meddling, to any extent, or for any purpose whatever, in the private cultural, economic, social, educational, religious, or political affairs of individual citizens—or in the legitimate governmental activities of the individual states which became members of the federal union. Hence, states could ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... Grace desires nothing so little as to meddle with any man's conscience. Then I suppose they would say that hearing mass was a public act and therefore unlawful; but then how if a man's private faith bids him to hear mass? Is not that meddling with his private conscience to forbid him to go to mass? What folly is this? And yet my Lord Keeper and her Grace are no fools! Then ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... all the party were willing to agree that a few years ago most educated men in the south regarded slavery as a misfortune and not justifiable, though necessary under the circumstances. But the meddling, coercive conduct of the detested and despised abolitionists had caused the bonds to ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... seemed to forget himself, the subject and the company, and to become absorbed in the process of his thought; the look was wholly impersonal: I have seen the same in the eyes of portrait-painters. The counts upon which whites have been deported are mainly four: cheating Tembinok', meddling overmuch with copra, which is the source of his wealth and one of the sinews of his power, 'peaking, and political intrigue. I felt guiltless upon all; but how to show it? I would not have taken copra in a gift: how to express that quality by my dinner-table ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no hand of that, as sure as my name's Dionysius Cram," replied the jailer. "Can't prove an alibi there, Master Shanks, for I saw him do the job; besides he can't pay. What's the use of meddling with him? He must swing some time you know, and one day's as good as another. But come in, Master Shanks, come in. But who's ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... "Well, you shouldn't go meddling with matches and fire, as I've told you often," said Mary, pointing her moral rather inopportunely. Still she patted and consoled the little chap as much as she could; and when Doctor Jolly came ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... should be held without a light; and the Brethren set their faces against superstition. They forbade ghost-stories; they condemned the popular old-wives' tales about tokens, omens and death-birds; they insisted that, in case of illness, no meddling busybody should interfere with the doctor; and thus, as homely, practical folk, they aimed at health of ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... is written (Prov. 20:3): "All fools are meddling with revilings [Douay: 'reproaches']." Now folly is a vice opposed to wisdom, as stated above (Q. 46, A. 1); whereas anger is opposed to meekness. Therefore reviling does not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... speak very prudently and well, sir. I hope you will honor me by taking up your abode in my house during your stay here; but may I ask you not to allow my wife, who is inquisitive by nature, to see the list with which I furnish you? Women are ever meddling in matters which ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... night, when the Laumes come, as they are accustomed to do between Thursday evening and Friday morning, they seize any spinning which has been begun, work away at it till cock-crow, and then carry it off. In modern Greece the women attribute all nightly meddling with their spinning to the Neraides (the representatives of the Hellenic Nereids. See Bernhard Schmidt's "Volksleben der Neugriechen," p. 111). In some respects the Neraida closely resemble the ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... they dreamed of nothing less, than of meddling at all with the condition of the people; on whom they looked merely as tools and instruments for the present, and sources of plunder and profit in ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... her dear; But that dear love did cost my life and all. To reckon up a thousand of her pranks, Her pride, her wasteful spending, her unkindness, Her false dissembling, seeming sanctity, Her scolding, pouting, prating, meddling, And twenty hundred more of the same stamp, Were but to heap[428] an endless catalogue Of what the world is plagu'd with every day. But for the main of that I have to tell, It chanced thus—Late in a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... about the search-warrant; and she tells you to mind your own business; and droll enough it is. We always fancy we're saying an impertinence to a man when we tell him to attend to what concerns him most. It shows, at least, that we think meddling a luxury. And then she adds, "Kilgobbin is welcome to you," and I can only say you are welcome to Kilgobbin—ay, and in her own words—"with such regularity and order as the meals succeed."—"All the luggage belonging to you," etc., and "I am, very respectfully, your Aunt." By my conscience, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... hall. He said he had left it in the study; we could not find it there. At last he found it himself in the old summerhouse, and said—I beg pardon—he said he was sure you had taken it there: that some one, at all events, had been meddling with it. However, I am very glad it was found, since he seems to ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for yourself, Charles Osmond. None of your hurrying and meddling now, old man; you've just got to leave it to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... at once—if depend I must—on yonder dignified Kaisar and that noble king than on our meddling kinsman," said Ebbo. "I shall be his equal now! Ay, and no more classed with the court Junkern I was with to-day. The dullards! No one reasonable thing know they but the chase. One had been at Florence; and when I asked him of the Baptistery ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gobble up everything that comes within their reach, to the hens that flutter over our beds and shake the dust of ages from the barn-roof at dawn, to the noisy little children with the dirty faces and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... alone then, fellows," Brad went on to say, being convinced by the logic of Sid that it was dangerous business meddling with anything belonging to Buck Lemington, even in a spirit of sporting fairness. "It's so smashed anyway, that it'll never again be worth fixing up. Too bad, too, for it was a ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... from all the investigations that I have been able to make that the farmers as a whole are determined to maintain the independence of their business. They do not wish to have meddling on the part of the Government or to be placed under the inevitable restrictions involved in any system of direct or indirect price-fixing, which would result from permitting the Government to operate ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... tones, "but I fear me his charity flatters us. Certainly no man can deny that Scotland is ever ringing with debate. But much of it had better been left unsaid, and most of it is carried on by ignorant brawlers, who should be left ploughing fields and herding sheep instead of meddling with matters too high for them. At least such is my humble mind, but I am only a gentleman private of the Prince's guard, and there is opposite me a commissioned officer of his army. It is becoming that Captain Hugh MacKay, who many ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... you meddling with my destiny in a way that made me uneasy. Soon you'll have learnt all ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... things gone on in this way, I am not prepared to say; probably had not a meddling Fate decided to take a hand in the game, Betty would have continued to think she hated Alfred, and I would never have had occasion to write his story; but Fate did interfere, and, one day in the early fall, brought ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... freedom had nothing whatever to do with the movement. Dante, who struck the Papacy as hard blows as Wicliff; Wicliff himself and Luther himself, when they began their work; were far enough from any intention of meddling with even the most irrational of the dogmas of mediaeval Supernaturalism. From Wicliff to Socinus, or even to Muenzer, Rothmann, and John of Leyden, I fail to find a trace of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Britain was suspicious and irritating, for it was secret, busy, and meddling, insolent to the weak, conciliatory, even truckling, to the strong. The very name of diplomacy is and has been odious to English Liberals, for by means of it a reactionary Government could check domestic reforms, and hinder the community ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... He is suspicious of me, which makes it impossible for one to count upon his conduct. If he saw us meddling with the cabinet, he would be very apt to rush with his complaints to Mrs. Packard, and I am not ready yet to take her into our confidence. I want first to be sure that my surmises ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... one of his pupils either for partiality or dislike. Yet he was thoroughly kind-hearted, and many remembered his good deeds with generous gratitude. Nor was he wholly wrong in his theory that a tutor often does as much harm by meddling interference as he does ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... cruel or cowardly, and don't drink too often, [E] or be too lofty or anxious, but friendly of cheer. [G] Hate jealousy, be not too hasty or daring; joke not too oft; ware knaves' tricks. Don't be too grudging or too liberal, too meddling, [N] too particular, new-fangled, or too daring. Hate oaths and [P] flattery. [Q] Please well thy master. Don't be too rackety, [S] or go out too much. [V] Don't be too revengeful or wrathful, and wade not too deep. The middle path is the ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... first child on a Wednesday; almost all the important events of her life had befallen her on Wednesday, and it seemed in the fitness of things that Wednesday should bring with it the close of that life. Wednesday came; and, as Lord Hervey puts it, "some wise, some pious, and a great many busy, meddling, impertinent people about the Court" began asking each other, and everybody else they met, whether the Queen had any clergyman to pray for her and minister to her. Hervey thought all this very offensive and absurd, and was of opinion that if the Queen cared about praying, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... District of Kansas, from which the troops,[204] who were guarding the only real danger zone, the southeastern part of the state, were expressly excluded. The hydra-headed evil of the western world then asserted itself, the meddling, particularistic spoils system, with the result that Lane and Pomeroy, unceasingly vigilant whenever and wherever what they regarded as their preserves were likely to be encroached upon, went to President Lincoln and protested against the preferment of Denver.[205] ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... gone, and there will be no coming back. You would not take her name from the roll of the church, and I will not be meddling with that book. But I hef blotted out her name from my Bible, where her mother's name iss written and mine. She has wrought confusion in Israel and in an elder's house, and I ... I hef no danghter. But I loved her; she nefer knew how I loved her, for her mother would be looking ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... we all let her alone, behave as she might. We saw that there could be no meddling without marring. She had been too conscious of us all, before anybody spoke. We could only hope there was no ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... had himself jointly with Mr Morris complained of our interfering as he thought in that department; and therefore he did not incline to subject himself to any further censures, or as he expressed it "raps over the knuckles" for meddling in the affair. We were indeed as much surprised as Mr Izard appears to have been on the occasion, but our surprise arose from another cause; it was to find Mr William Lee desirous of holding such a plurality of appointments, in their own nature incompatible with each other, and impossible ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... and definite determination by the North to resent any intervention by Europe makes evident that Seward and Lincoln were fully committed to forcible resistance of foreign meddling. Briefly, if the need arose, the North would go to war with Europe. Adams at least now knew where he stood and could but await the result. The instruction he held in reserve, nor was it ever officially communicated to Russell. He did, however, state its tenor to Forster who had contacts ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Alley," as it was called. Evidently, the old woman seemed to think the entire street was her personal property and that she was responsible for the welfare of all the dwellers thereon. Well, he guessed he had taught her not to come meddling in his affairs. He hoped he had anyway. Dying? The idea of such a thing; how dared she tell him he was dying when everyone else fed him with the hope that he would be better to-morrow, next week, next month. Ah! yes, but to-morrow never came; or rather, when it did come, it was no longer to-morrow ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety, filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth century, was of a different type. By temper he was strongly conservative. He always loved best to be among his own family; he was fond of his home, fond of the old associations ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... condition of the bowels; and if any fool had asked you what politics was, you would have sucked your thumb, and offered them to suck it; for generous you always was, and just came after. And what cry have bigger folk, grown upright and wicked, to make about being smacked, when they deserve it, for meddling with matters outside of their business, by those ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... in our faces. We grant them one and all and for all that they are worth; it is something above and beyond that we desire. Christ was in general a great enemy to such a way of teaching; we rarely find him meddling with any of these plump commands but it was to open them out, and lift his hearers from the letter to the spirit. For morals are a personal affair; in the war of righteousness every man fights for his own hand; all the six hundred ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... common-sense course and truly American policy which were by us heretofore pursued with such signal success in the cases of Hayti, Mexico, and Venezuela, all inhabited by people equally unfit for self-government, and geographically much closer to ourselves. We propose to guarantee them against outside meddling, and, above all, from "tutelage," and make them, by ...
— "Imperialism" and "The Tracks of Our Forefathers" • Charles Francis Adams
... or India gauze. "Shall we talk of rags at such a solemn moment?" she retorted; and then proceeded with her direct plea for Magdeburg. In the midst of her eloquence, when the Emperor seemed almost overcome by her importunity, her meddling husband most inopportunely entered the room. He began to argue and reason, citing his threadbare grievance, the violation of Ansbach territory, and endeavoring to prove himself to be right. Napoleon at once turned the conversation to indifferent ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of dissent. "Not on your life!" cried he. "Of course, my wife must be a lady, and interested in my career. But none of your meddling politicians in petticoats for me! I'll do my own political maneuvering. I want a woman, not a ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... silence, frightened her till she realized what it was. She had a nervous feeling of not being alone. It was as if the shadows held goblins that peered out at the intruder. She darted to the mantelpiece and replaced the photograph. She felt like some heroine of a fairy-story meddling with the contents of the giant's castle. Soon there would come the sound of a great footstep, thud—thud . ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... said Charles. "We don't go to get the fruit; we only want to pay him for defending the Hiller—meddling with other people's business. It's too late to do any thing to-night," he added, glancing at his watch, "but let us go there to-morrow night, and pull up every strawberry-plant we can lay our hands on. You know, we can do as much mischief of that kind as we please, ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... she revived, And underwent a quick immortal change, Made Goddess of the river. Still she retains Her maiden gentleness, and oft at eve Visits the herds along the twilight meadows, Helping all urchin blasts, and ill-luck signs That the shrewd meddling elf delights to make, Which she with precious vialed liquors heals: For which the shepherds, at their festivals, Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream Of pansies, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... there goes the other," cried Nick. "Come on, master, or they'll finish him off before you can get there. Real wild, they birds is, because he's meddling with their booblins. 'Bout half-fledged, ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... him; 'tis a meddling friar; I do not like the man: had he been lay, my lord, For certain words he spake against your Grace In your retirement, I had ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... you talk! The like of me go meddling around at the reception of a prophet? A mudsill like me trying to push in and help receive an awful grandee like Edward J. Billings? Why, I should have been laughed at for a billion miles around. I shouldn't ever heard the ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... that Scoon understood neither Latin nor Greek, he wisely avoided naming the constant moderator in English, but always gave the Greek or Latin name for it. Sermon being ended, Scoon said to some of the nobles attending him, You see I have scared the preacher from meddling with the constant moderator, but I wonder who he spoke so much against by the name of praestes ad vitam. They told him, That it was in Greek and Latin the constant moderator; which so incensed him, that when Mr. Row proceeded to constitute the synod in the name ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... he could pull himself together (he was extremely embarrassed) sufficiently to do honour to such a challenge. If she would fling down the glove on the temperance question, it seemed to him that it would be in him to pick it up; for the idea of a meddling legislation on this subject filled him with rage; the taste of liquor being good to him, and his conviction strong that civilisation itself would be in danger if it should fall into the power of a herd of vociferating women (I am but the reporter ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... would wait till the time was ripe, and then abolish slavery on grounds that would be approved throughout the world: he would destroy slavery as a necessary step to the preservation of the Union. In the first year of the war he had said to a Southern Unionist, who warned him against meddling with slavery, "You must not expect me to give up this Government without playing my last card." This "last card" was undoubtedly the freeing of the slaves; and when the time came, Lincoln played it unhesitatingly and triumphantly. How ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... young man. The presence of the satiric and unsympathetic old engineer nerved him to settle the dispute, if he might. The hint from the other that he had been meddling in what was outside his business gave him an uncomfortable sense ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... know, when I tell you that I have loved Stephen almost all his life, as though he were my own, and hoped as long for his great happiness. On more than one occasion I contrived situations which I thought might make your choice my happiness, too. I know now that I was no better than any other meddling old woman, whose efforts are well meant but dangerous for all that. And I will meddle no more. But—but my heart aches a little, too, to-day, Barbara. May I just talk ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... repeated Emma scornfully. "That's too old a story to take in Miss Roscoe; besides which, there's not a cat in the house. She hates 'em. You'll just have to own up, and serve you both right for meddling." ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... Perkins, but I still think it was because he didn't want Perkins meddling in his affairs. He seems to me to be the very incarnation of a fixed purpose—to ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... them have been made the freemen of the Lord Jesus Christ, and left this world rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. The elements of an empire, which I hope will lead Ethiopia very soon to stretch out her hands to God, is the fruit of the institution here. An officious meddling with the institution, from feeling and sentiments unknown to the Bible, may lead to the extermination of the slave race among us, who, taken as a whole, are utterly unprepared for a higher civil state; but benefit them, it cannot. Their condition, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Adam, nobody's outlooks and reflections had in them, successive and simultaneous, more gigantic forms of fear and of hope. He is on a very high peak at this moment; suddenly emerging from his thick cloud, into thunderous victory of that kind; and warning all Pythons what they get by meddling with the Sun-god! Loud enough, far-clanging, is the sound of the silver bow; gazetteers and men all on pause at such new Phoebus Apollo risen in his wrath;—the Victory at Prag considered to be much more ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... humanity, the usual endowment of aboriginal deity, together with the customary superhuman strength. If these demigods differed from others of their class, it was only in being more commonplace, and in not meddling much with man. Even such personification of natural forces, simple enough to be self-suggested, quickly disappeared. The various awe-compelling phenomena soon ceased to have any connection with the anthropomorphic noumena they had begotten. For instance, the ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... turned into a precedent for good, and though irregular gatherings of a like sort were for a while occasionally held they were soon seen to be fruitless and discontinued. But the Commons long shrank from meddling with purely administrative matters. When Edward in his anxiety to shift from himself the responsibility of the war referred to them in 1354 for advice on one of the numerous propositions of peace, they referred ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... are you? What do you want? This ain't an egg-shop. What call have you to come meddling with our eggs? Do you want me to put the police on to you? Is it the crocodile's egg you're after? I don't know nothing about 'no eggs. You'd best speak to Mr. Brown: it's him that varnishes ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... saloon in America has become a public nuisance. The liquor trade, by meddling with politics and corrupting politics, has become a menace and a danger. Those who think and those who love America and those who love liberty are going to bring this moral question into politics more and more; also this question of bribery, this question of lobbying, this question ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... might have, until the downfall of Napoleon, and the reduction of the militia, events cotemporaneous, smelt powder on the Phoenix Park on field days, and like Hudibras, of pleasant memory, at the head of a charge of foot, "rode forth a coloneling." In place, however, of meddling with cold iron, I yielded to "metal more attractive," and in three months became a Benedict, and in some ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... of Tippecanoe, considered as a conflict from the losses on each side, would to-day be regarded only as a skirmish, yet it had a great moral influence in restraining the savages in the northwest, and, but for the meddling of the British agents, a permanent peace with the Indians ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... to these states. To deal with trade and industry as though they were matters that concerned only the particular business firms engaged in them was no longer an economical error, it was also a political blunder. To Government meddling in trade and industry the British people have ever been averse. And their dislike is intelligible although no longer warranted. A glance at Germany's economic campaign and its results ought to have borne out the ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... likely, though, his enormous vanity lay at the bottom of it. He would show these wives of his, in whose admiration he basked all the day long, whether or not he was to be thwarted in his purpose of eating crumbs by a meddling boy with some kind of ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... a dishonor? The Boston people took him and placed him on his honor to live at Johnson Hall and do no meddling. And now he's fled to Fort Niagara to raise the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
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