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More "Obstruction" Quotes from Famous Books



... and filth, is heavy; it is a wretched bond about thy neck, by which thy strength doth fail (Lam 1:14; 3:18). But come, though thou comest in chains; it is glory to Christ that a sinner comes after him in chains. The chinking of thy chains, though troublesome to thee, are not, nor can be obstruction to thy salvation; it is Christ's work and glory to save thee from thy chains, to enlarge thy steps, and set thee at liberty. The blind man, though called, surely could not come apace to Jesus Christ, but Christ could stand still, and stay for him (Mark 10:49). True, "He ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Revolution was revolving and going to pieces. The power had to be snatched from the hands of the elements which were directly or indirectly serving the bourgeoisie and making use of the state apparatus as a tool of obstruction against the ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... Timoja attacked and took another blockhouse on the continental shore of the channel leading to Goa, which was defended by some artillery and forty men. After these exploits the channel was sounded without any farther obstruction. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... her drawing-room. It was the first time he had entered it since his divorce; but Van Degen was tarpon-fishing in California—and besides, he had to see Clare. His one relief was in talking to her, in feverishly turning over with her every possibility of delay and obstruction; and he marvelled at the intelligence and energy she brought to the discussion of these questions. It was as if she had never before felt strongly enough about anything to put her heart or her brains into it; but now everything in her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... "Dog and Pilchard" easily enough. Just beyond it the river was caught into a kind of waterfall by a ridge of stone that projected almost into mid-stream. At high tide it tumbled over this obstruction with an astonished splash and gurgle. Even when the river was at its lowest there was a dim chattering struggle at this point. Falk always connected this noise with the inn and the power or enchantment of the inn that held him—"Black Enchantment," perhaps. He was to hear that struggling ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... taken place in this respect. Moral causes come into consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force. It is already able to oppose the most formidable obstruction to the progress of injustice and oppression; and as it grows more intelligent and more intense, it will be more and more formidable. It may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... his foot stumbled against some half-buried obstruction, and stooping, the doctor touched ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... his youthful ken No cold obstruction fetters; He quickly learns the "types" of men, And all ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... its advantages; but from the time that I became generally known as their friend my safety was assured through all that region; an army with banners could not have given me the same immunity from danger, obstruction or even insult in the performance of my disagreeable duties. What glorious fellows they were, to be sure—these my late antagonists of the dark days when, God forgive us, we were trying to cut one another's throat. To this day I feel a sense of regret when I ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... fluttered the banner of the Holy Ghost. In a few moments the Christian fleet would have been at the mercy of the Moors, but Cytherea, beholding from above the peril of her favorites, hastily descended, gathered together her nymphs, and formed an obstruction, past which the vessels strove in vain to pass. As Gama, standing high on the poop, saw the huge rock in the channel, he cried out, and the Moorish pilots, thinking their treason discovered, leaped ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... Spiritual short-sightedness is the result of the neglect of the pursuit of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ. An indistinct vision may result from one of two causes: a fault in the eye, or an obstruction in the atmosphere. If you cannot make out a distant object while other people can, they will say to you, "How short-sighted you are!" but if no one can discern it, the probability is that something external has made ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... in half-earnest or he would have brought the gate down. An elephant is a very short-sighted beast, and it was pitch-dark. He could not believe that a dog could disappear through a solid iron gate, and after testing the obstruction for a moment or two, grumbling to himself angrily, he stood to smell the air and listen. There was a noise farther along the street of a stampede of some kind. That was likely enough his quarry, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... Fort Edward, but the difficulties of the country were almost insurmountable. So broken was it by creeks and morasses, that it became necessary to construct more than forty bridges and causeways, one of them over a morass two miles long. The enemy had created every possible obstruction by felling trees across the paths, and destroying the communications. Scarcely could the army advance a mile in a day, and it was the end of July before ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... funereal manner moved to report progress. HENEAGE almost mechanically lowered his head and had started to butt at TALBOT as he had upset GEDGE when he was providentially stopped and convinced that further struggle with obstruction was hopeless. So, Clause I. agreed to, Bill talked out. MAKINS, growing increasingly delightful, protested that a Bill that had been fifty years before the country, was not to be rushed through the House on a Wednesday afternoon. Argal, the more familiar the House is with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various

... no invention can equal the natural teasel head for raising a nap on woolen cloth, because it breaks at any serious obstruction, whereas a metal substitute, in such a case, tears the material. Accordingly, the plant is largely cultivated in the west of England, and quantities that have been imported from France and Germany may be seen in wagons on the way to the factories in any of the woolen-trade towns. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... swimmer, the Matutina crossed the dangerous Shambles shoal. This bank, a hidden obstruction at the entrance of Portland roads, is not a barrier; it is an amphitheatre—a circus of sand under the sea, its benches cut out by the circling of the waves—an arena, round and symmetrical, as high as a Jungfrau, only drowned—a coliseum of the ocean, seen by the diver in ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... pulleys, all the gear wheels are at the far end of the frame, and totally enclosed in dust-proof casing. The set-on handles, for moving the belt from the loose pulley to the fast pulley, or vice versa, are conveniently situated, as shown, and in a place which is calculated to offer the least obstruction to the operative. The machines are made with what are known as "two heads" or "three heads." It will be seen from the large pressing rollers that there are two pairs; hence the machine is ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour

... you must, And creep into it with a perfect trust; But in the twinkling of an eye the plow Shall pass without obstruction through your dust. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... which he displayed in the later phases of his long public life. He had entered parliament in 1810, and rapidly became the most active of the opposition speakers. He now employed without scruple all the arts of agitation, petition-framing, and parliamentary obstruction to achieve his object, and succeeded, by the aid of bankers and country-gentlemen, in defeating the government by a majority of thirty-seven. This vote might be justified, more or less, on the principle laid down by Pitt, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... when the sap that runs into them is stopt in its progress. The medulla oblongata not growing so hard as the spinalis, was doubtless owing to its not being confined in an osseous theca, but surrounded with soft parts, which allowed it room to spread. The obstruction from the bulk of this substance must have affected the brain, and probably induced the thickening of the pia mater, the hydatids, and the beginning of suppuration, whereas the dura mater, being of a harder ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson

... and Agamemnon continued: "Impediment is something that entangles the feet; obstacle something that stands in the way; obstruction, something that blocks up the passage; hinderance, something ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... had fairly hold of the rope, my fear diminished, and I went cautiously down to the bottom. Here I waited for Dunne, and we both of us silently stole along in the dark, for the moon had gone in, and we did not meet with the least obstruction. Our out of door's assistants had the prudence to get entirely out of sight. Dunne led me to a hiding-place in a safe part of the town, and committed me to the care of a seafaring man, who promised to get me ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... obviate this, both the direct and the reflected rays are received in coming from the unsilvered glass, (and after passing through the field-glass of the telescope) on a mirror placed at an angle of 45, which reflects them to the eye. By this ingenious contrivance, the obstruction is removed, and the opposite points of the horizon may be both seen at ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... sandy bed of the river, it could not have been dragged over the bar. It is true that later on, when, on account of the expansion of the gases, it would again rise to the surface, the current would bear it away, and it would then be irrevocably lost down the stream, a long way beyond the obstruction. But this purely physical effect would not take place ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... ship drawing thirty-five feet can now enter New York at any state of the tide. For ocean bars, the old system of taking the material out to sea and discharging it still survives, though a jet of water from force-pumps directed against the obstruction is also often employed with quick results. For river work we have discovered a better method. All the mud is run back, sometimes over a mile from the river bank, where it is used as a fertilizer, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... and the northern shore, the distance from one to the other being some hundred and fifty feet; that from the same island to the southern shore, a league and a half. We passed also near a river large enough for canoes. All the northern shore is very good, and one can sail along there without obstruction; but he should keep the lead in hand in order to avoid certain points. All this shore along which we coasted consists of shifting sands, but a short distance in the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... that assembly had been sent to St. Stephens to busy themselves, in unison, with the accomplishment of a common end; and if one among them should waste the time of the House by any form of obstruction, he could only do so by breaking the pledges upon the strength of which he had been elected. This fact was clearly set forth in the Speech from the Throne, delivered by the King in person. The business of Parliament was in full swing before its second sitting was far advanced. Though then ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... deserted, dark. They sat close, in long steamer chairs, watching the mysterious coastline of Mindanao, the shadowy masses of distant mountains that seemed less substance than opaque obstruction of the warm, starry sky. Neither spoke. It was the hour of fullest gratitude, of mutual dedication. The night about them was filled with that humming heard only on a big ship plowing through a calm sea after sundown, the drone of light ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... for a heavy fish," reflected Arthur, and, even as he thought it, he saw a five-pound carp rise nearly to the surface, in order to clear the obstruction of the wall, and sink silently ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... ancient comrades, and the effect of their exhortations was instantaneous on men whose minds were already half made up to the purpose which they now accomplished. There was a general shout of "Vive Napoleon!" The last army of the Bourbons passed from their side, and no further obstruction existed betwixt Napoleon and the capital, which he was once more—but for a brief ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... unbroken palisade of piles constituted the outer boundaries of the main boom. At the upper end of them perched a little house whence was operated the mechanism of the heavy swing boom, capable of closing entirely the river channel. Thus the logs, floating or driven down the river, encountered this obstruction; were shunted into the main booms, where they were distributed severally into the various pocket booms; and later were released at the lower end, one lot at a time, to the river again. Thence they were appropriated by the mill to ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White

... he reached the scene in question, he had found his throat suddenly clogged. Only by an act neither pleasant to observe nor polite to describe, could he remove the obstruction, and at a supreme moment he had improvised a movement which carried his face out of sight of the audience, so that he might free his throat unnoticed. Knowing nothing of the cause, the public applauded the effect, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... An obstruction of some kind had impeded the turning of the shaft in the "outboard bearing," which had grown dangerously hot. It was this that had caused the "slowing down" of the engine, which could not be set working again till the impediment was removed, ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... that mountain; and, by some uncommon swell in the waters, or by some convulsion of nature, the river must have opened its way through a different part of the mountain, and meeting there with less obstruction, carried away with it the opposing mounds of earth, and deluged the country below with the immense collection of waters to which this new passage gave vent. There are still remaining, and daily discovered, innumerable instances of such a deluge on both sides of the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton

... to move rocks and hills. It means that one at least of the national wills concerned has deliberately set aside its human quality—as only a human will can do—and has made of itself just such a material obstruction or menace. Hence war seems, and is often called, a contest of brute forces. Certainly it is the extremest physical effort men make, every resource of vast populations bent to increase the sum of power ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... were passed and then the force of the water seemed to drive him upward. There was now no turning back, and holding his breath with difficulty, he swam on and on, rising steadily until his head struck an iron obstruction. He put up his hands and found that it was a grating. Opening his eyes he made out that the grating was less than three inches from the surface of the river. Beyond he could see the open sky and the stars ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele

... soaked with moisture The native paths were so neglected as to be often mere tunnels closed over with vegetation, and in such places there was always a fearful accumulation of mud. To the naked Papuan this is no obstruction. He wades through it, and the next watercourse makes him clean again; but to myself, wearing boots and trousers, it was a most disagreeable thing to have to go up to my knees in a mud-hole every morning. The man I brought with me to cut wood fell ill soon after we arrived, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... work of man, not the beauty of nature, that engrosses you. You would, if you could, alight at every point to witness the last act of comedy, which is just beginning. Men and women, to whom you are an episode or an obstruction, flash by. Here is a group of boys bathing. There peasants gaze at the train as something inhuman. At the level crossing a horse chafes in his shafts. In an instant you are whizzed out of sight, and he remains. Then, as night falls, the country-side leaves its work; the eyes of the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... the door of our heart toward God, it will be opening it toward sin, and the result will be darkness. Depravity will at once have entered in, and then as every evil thought comes into the mind it will find no obstruction to its way into the heart, where it will find a fruitful soil in which to germinate ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... ground, trees themselves being little susceptible of receiving and radiating heat. The moisture of the atmosphere and ground about trees is due to the collection by the leaves and branches of a considerable portion of the rainfall, the condensation of aqueous vapor by the leaves, and the obstruction offered by the foliage to evaporation from the ground beneath ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... bathe; there he used to draw a large crowd of spectators round him, who were so loud in their enthusiasm about the way in which he dived for and brought to land various objects of clothing, tools, etc., that the police begged us to put an end to the obstruction. One morning I let him out for a little run as usual; he never returned, and in spite of our most strenuous efforts to recover him, no trace of him was to be found. This loss seemed to many of our friends a piece of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... strong partisan sentiment which was agitating the country, added, "The ladies and all the youth are with us;" that is, with the Tory party, which, under his leadership, was still an active power of obstruction to the imminent changes to which both he and his party were presently to succumb. His ministry was a period of the stormiest excitement in the political world, and the importance of the questions at issue—Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform—powerfully affected men's minds ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... predominant passions? If it exists in a king or a minister of state, how will either of them find among a people so disposed the necessary instruments to execute his great designs; or, rather, what obstruction will he not find from the continual opposition of private interest to public? But if, on the contrary, a court inclines to tyranny, what a facility will be given by these dispositions to that evil purpose? How will men with minds relaxed by the enervating ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... Lawrence Barrett, who rose from an obscure and humble position,—without fortune, without friends, without favouring circumstances, without education, without help save that of his talents and his will,—was for a long time met with indifference, or frigid obstruction, or impatient disparagement. He gained nothing without battle. He had to make his way by his strength. His progress involved continual effort and his course was attended with continual controversy and strife. When at last it had to be conceded that he was a great actor, the concession ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... Don Alonso firmly grasped his lovely burden, and with a promptness of decision and rapidity of execution congenial to his character, he threw himself fearlessly from the place, and clearing the flaming obstruction, alighted on the floor, without sustaining any injury. Dauntless he pierced through the rolling mist; he gained the entrance, crossed it, and arrived safely in ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... reflection or shadow of the Real on the physical plane. If we run against a stone wall, which is also part, with us, of the shadow, we hurt ourselves and acknowledge its existence, but to the Real it would not be an obstruction at all, it is not there. We know that this wall is not really solid, it is made up of Atoms revolving round each other but never touching, but the man in the street would give as the reason why it hurt, that it was dense, or what is called hard; if the wall were made of hay, or cotton wool, or of ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... were days of good traveling weather, with temperatures ranging from minus 5 deg. to minus 32 deg., a period of time which might have carried us beyond the 85th parallel but for those three days of wind at the start which had been the cause of this obstruction in our course. ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... The small, bleary eyes seemed to devour Piang as they tortured him with suspense, but he patiently waited for his chance, knowing that he would only have one. The banco gave a jerk as it bumped into an obstruction, and the impact forced it outward a few feet. The moment had come. As the crocodile plunged forward, Piang thrust his spear into its breast. There was a gurgling sound, a swishing of the water, and the Ugly thing ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... him inquiries about myself. In a few moments a crowd collected around us, examining me with great interest, as if I were some rare wild animal. Yet even in gratifying their curiosity they preserved a grave and courteous demeanour; and after a few words from my guide, who seemed to me to deprecate obstruction in our road, they fell back with a stately inclination of head, and resumed their own way with tranquil indifference. Midway in this thoroughfare we stopped at a building that differed from those we had ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... succeeded in speaking of something else. Mental excitement had set her blood flowing more quickly, as though an obstruction were removed. Before long the unreasoning lightness of heart began to take possession of her again. It was strangely painful. To one whom suffering has driven upon self-study the predominance of a mere mood is always ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... the course of true love ran not smooth; and yet how little would any one have suspected that from such a cause as that which now oppressed his mind, any obstruction ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... tightly that the reporter could not use his gun. At length their convulsive movements brought the men close to the lantern, and the next instant the cellar was plunged in darkness. A second later the Professor tripped over some hidden obstruction and fell, dragging his opponent with him to the earthen floor. To Jimmie's surprise there was no further movement from the body beneath him. Could the old villain be playing possum? He cautiously shifted his hold and grasped the hidden throat. He pressed the Professor's ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... hand on a post and vaulted the fence. But Anderson had to climb laboriously and painfully over the barbed-wire obstruction. Lenore marveled at his silence and his persistence. Anderson hated wire fences. Presently he got over, and then he divided his time between searching in the wheat and peering after the strange car that was ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... annual incomes, and shall use the law to its utmost to protect both." When it appeared in the platform, there was an addition that charged the failure to obtain legislation "which should have rendered impossible the recent terrible lesson in New York City" to "the obstruction in the last legislature in the interest of the moneyed classes and landlords, by the Republican party." That had not been in Peter's draft and he was sorry to see it. Still, the paragraph had a real ring of honesty and feeling in it. That was what ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... Americans who were not killed or wounded in the first machine gun-fire had saved themselves as York had done. They had dived into the brush and lay flat upon the ground, behind trees, among the prisoners, protected by any obstruction they could find, and the stream of bullets passed ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan

... deferring, deferment, procrastination, postponement, respite, reprieve; retardation, retention, obstruction; dawdling, lingering, dalliance. Antonyms: dispatch, promptness, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... orders, and was rector of Malden, in Bedfordshire, and might have risen in the church; but that, when he applied to Dr. Compton, bishop of London, for institution to a living of considerable value, to which he had been presented, he found a troublesome obstruction raised by a malicious interpretation of some passage in his Choice; from which it was inferred, that he considered happiness as more likely to be found in the company of a mistress than ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... speaker addresses the mourners as his children (konyennetaghkwen, "my offspring,") and recites each commonplace of condolence in a curt and perfunctory style. He wipes away their tears that they may see clearly; he opens their ears that they may hear readily. He removes from their throats the obstruction with which their grief is choking them, so that they may ease their burdened minds by speaking freely to their friends. And finally, as the loss of their lamented chief may have occurred in war—and at all events many of their friends have thus perished—he cleans the mats on which ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... I see her? Only when my soul for an instant is clear from all earthly and gross obstruction; and how seldom I can attain to this result while weighted with my body! But she is near me—that I know—faithful as the star to ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... shortness of breath continues to be very uneasy to him, and his long confinement has wasted him a good deal. I fear his case is more consumptive than asthmatic; he begins a course of quicksilver to-morrow for the obstruction in his breast. I shall go out to him again the day after to-morrow, and pray as fervently as you yourself do, my dear Sir, for his recovery. You have not more obligations to him, nor adore him more than ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... Discretion hasn't anything to do with brains; brains are an obstruction to it, for it does not reason, it feels. Perfect discretion means absence of brains. Discretion is a quality of the heart—solely a quality of the heart; it acts upon us through feeling. We know this because if it were an intellectual ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... Erasmus and Reuchlin, the latter of whom he bravely defended in his dispute with the Inquisition and the monks of Cologne, and in his contributions to the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum we see the youthful ardour of the Renaissance in full blast in its onslaught on the forces of mediaeval obstruction. Unlike most of those with whom he was first associated, Hutten passed from being the upholder of the New Learning to the role of champion of the Reformation; and it was largely through his influence that Sickingen took up the cause of Luther and ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... ways of contemplation are much like those two ways of action, so much celebrated, in this—that the one, arduous and difficult in the beginning, leads out at last into the open country; while the other, seeming at first sight easy and free from obstruction, leads ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... proclamation, command such insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within a reasonable time." By the act of March 3, 1807, it is provided "that in all cases of insurrection or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States or of any individual State or Territory where it is lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection or of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... into city lots, and the man became a millionaire, but he got no benefit from it. Before he died, the chaplain told me that he became a child of God. It may not have taken him more than an hour to lay the obstruction on the railroad, but he was over thirty years reaping the result ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody

... and darken us, and shut out the visions of God and blessedness, and all the glorious blue above us. The heavy, dark mist settles down on the plains, though the sky above is undimmed by it, and the sun is blazing in the zenith. Not one beam can penetrate through the wet, chill obstruction, and men stumble about in the fog with lamps and torches, and all the while a hundred feet up it is brightness and day. Or, if at some points the obstruction is thinned and the sun does come through, it is shorn of all its ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... is said to have surprised Jugurtha.[925] Perhaps earlier messages of a more cheerful import had reached him from Rome during the days when successful obstruction seemed to be achieving its end, and had dulled the fears which the massacre of Cirta most have aroused even in a mind so familiar with the acquiescent policy of the senate. Yet even now he did not lose heart, nor did his courage take the form, prevalent ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... in order to enter the portal, when the supposed dead man laid hand on his cloak, and entreated him to stay and assist him to rise. Quentin was about to use rougher methods than struggling to rid himself of this untimely obstruction, when the fallen man continued to exclaim, "I am stifled here, in mine own armour!—I am the Syndic Pavillon of Liege! If you are for us, I will enrich you—if you are for the other side, I will protect you, but do not—do not leave me to die the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... he had stretched one hand towards Nellie; the other he had laid on his heart, where it seemed to encounter some sort of hard obstruction. This he vaguely fingered, wondering what it might be, while he gave his order to Barrett. With a sudden cry he dipped his hand into his breast-pocket and drew forth the bottle he had borne away from Mr. Druce's. He snatched out his watch: one o'clock!—fifteen minutes overdue. Wildly ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... luminous fungus here and there, and the cold blue sheet-lightning only served to intensify the solemnity of the gloom. While the blackest part of the night lasted the "view" was usually made up of the black river under the foliage, with scarcely ten yards of its course free from obstruction—great snags all along it sticking up menacingly, trees lying half or quite across it, with barely room to pass under them, or sometimes under water, when the boat "drave heavily" over them, while great branches brushed and ripped the thatch continually; and as one obstacle was safely passed, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... face of the fort be torn down, and a traverse built across Broadway above it at the Bowling Green, from which the interior of the work could be raked, should the enemy attempt to land and hold it. As the North River was "so extremely wide and deep," the general regarded the obstruction of its passage to the ships as out of the question. Batteries, however, could be erected at various points along the west side where it rose to a ridge, and the power of the ships to injure the town very considerably diminished. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... Eddy" is said to have realized, a half-million dollars. Says this modern goddess: "The word Adam is from the Hebrew Adamah, signifying the red color of the ground, dust, nothingness. Divide the name Adam into two syllables, and it reads a dam or obstruction. This suggests the thought of something fluid, of mortal mind ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... and drift-wood collected in this spot from all parts of the ocean. The currents and winds bring it, but why this place is selected I do not exactly know. In a calm it might bother us, but we shall only pass through a small portion of it, and there is wind enough to send us along in spite of the obstruction it may offer. We must get a bucket ready, for Mr Hooker will be anxious to have some of it up on deck, that he may examine the creatures who live upon it. In the Pacific there is a collection of the same sort, and people who could not otherwise for want of fuel inhabit some of the ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... from the heart, you will see, on the contrary, their included portion grow excessively turgid, the heart becoming so beyond measure, assuming a dark-red color, even to lividity, and at length so overloaded with blood as to seem in danger of suffocation; but when the obstruction is removed it returns to its normal condition, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... bubbles. Now and then a heap of lumber would get wedged in between the jutting rocks above the waterfall, and then the current slackened, only to be suddenly accelerated, when the exertions of the men had again removed the obstruction. ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... strain on the heart and the lungs—(morally), glory; conferred at the moment by the public applause; confirmed the next day by a report in the newspapers. Any person who presumes to see any physical evil involved in these exercises to the men who practice them, or any moral obstruction in the exhibition itself to those civilizing influences on which the true greatness of all nations depends, is a person without a biceps, who is simply incomprehensible. Muscular England develops itself, and ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... forward Manlius to that body of men whom he had prepared to take up arms; and others of the confederates into other eligible places, to make a commencement of hostilities; and that he himself was eager to set out to the army, if he could but first cut off Cicero, who was the chief obstruction to his measures. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... much-decorated streets that marked the grand Gasche of Tarn and Tarascon. The Hotel de Quinet stretched out its broad stone steps, covered with vaultings, absolutely across the street, affording a welcome shade, and no obstruction where ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Ireland stink in the nostrils of the respectable English gentlemen who thronged the benches of the finest club in London, the protest against misgovernment would have taken the form of violence in Ireland and not of obstruction in the House of Commons. The orderly debates of Butt's time were as unproductive in showing the Irish representatives to be in earnest as were the wholesale suspensions of the later regime profitable, and if proof ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... I adore.' Why, she may command me: I serve her, she is my lady. Why, this is evident to any formal capacity; there is no obstruction in this;—And the end,—What should that alphabetical position portend? If I could make that resemble something ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... amount of labour in sculling. The forceless particles of water, so yielding to the touch, which slipped aside at the motion of the oar, in their countless myriads ceaselessly flowing grew to be almost a solid obstruction to the boat. I had not noticed it for a mile or so; now the pressure of the stream was becoming evident. I persuaded myself that it was nothing. I held on by the boathook to a root and rested, and so went on again. ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... interfere," he said "There is a serious reason for what I have done, which I will explain to you at a fitter time. In the meanwhile I offer no further obstruction to the course which you propose taking. On the contrary, I have just assisted you in gaining the end that you have ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... shop was part of one of the side arches of Temple Bar, and so reached from that obstruction to Shire Lane, which adjoins it on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... more at every turn of her propeller, the Sky-Bird shot down the last stretch of ground reaching to the fence. How fast this obstruction loomed up! Just in the nick of time the airplane left the ground. They sailed over the tops of trees and houses so close that the wheels of their landing-gear almost scraped. It was one of the finest maneuvers of the whole voyage, and the boys ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... the Rescue Expedition were quite awkward on their feet. The Patchwork Girl was as light as a feather and very spry; the Tin Woodman covered the ground as easily as Uncle Henry and the Wizard; but Tik-Tok moved slowly and the slightest obstruction in the road would halt him until the others cleared it away. Then, too, Tik-Tok's machinery kept running down, so Betsy and Trot took ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... separate beat is made stronger is probable, but hard to demonstrate; however the fact will be admitted by all physicians practising in Colorado, that hearts which are muscularly weak, even when there are bruits, greatly improve in tone, strength and steadiness; while those where from some disease or obstruction the muscle is increased in size and strength, the symptoms are almost always so alarmingly developed that they have to be sent away before there is time to observe what the ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money

... nature—that self-indulgence soon destroys the strongest nature—and she was witness to how rapidly an inflexible will disintegrates if incessantly applied to an impossibility. When a strong arrogant man, unbalanced by long and successful self-indulgence, hurls himself at an obstruction, either the obstruction yields or the man ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... Mr. Rouseau's processes are patented in England. The terms for the use of the former would, I was told, be made so moderate, as to offer no obstruction to its being used in the colonies. What Mr. Rouseau's terms are ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... besides the peculiar and specificall faculties, which this fountaine hath, it sheweth divers and sundry other manifest effects and qualities in evacuating the noxious humours of the body, for most part by urine especially when there is any obstruction about the kidneyes, ureters and bladder: Or by urine and stoole both, if the mesentery, liver, or splen, chance to bee obstructed. But, if the affect or griefe be in the matrix or womb, then it clenseth that way ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... have to pick him up again. It may have been through overwork or underfeeding, or it may have been all his own fault that he has broken his knees and smashed the shafts, but that does not matter. If not for his own sake, then merely in order to prevent an obstruction of the traffic, all attention is concentrated upon the question of how we are to get him on his legs again. Tin load is taken off, the harness is unbuckled, or, if need be, cut, and everything is done to help him up. Then he is put in the shafts again ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... locomotion, being covered by useless water. Mentone is more unfortunate than most of them, for its Hinterland is so cloven and contorted that unless you keep on the main roads, or content yourself with short but pleasant strolls, you will soon find all progress barred by some natural obstruction. And one really cannot walk along the esplanade all day long, though it is worth while, once in a lifetime, continuing that promenade as far as Cap Martin, if only in memory of the inspiration which Symonds drew therefrom. Who, he asks—who can resist the ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... popular one that naturally increases very slowly, as the Shakespeare. It has been discovered that this end can be achieved by peeling the bulblets before planting. Even if the bulblets have been kept in perfect condition, the shells are somewhat of an obstruction to their growth, and it is easy to see that the removal of these would be a great advantage by giving the kernels freedom to start and flourish unhindered. The hard covering is nature's safe protection for the beautiful ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford

... days, at least they have days when they put their powers into act, and days when they suffer them to repose.' Piozzi Letters, i. 265. In 1781 he wrote:—'I thought myself above assistance or obstruction from the seasons; but find the autumnal blast sharp and nipping, and the fading world an uncomfortable prospect.' Ib. ii. 220. Again, in the last year of his life he wrote:—'The: weather, you know, has not been balmy. I am now reduced ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... sometimes in direct imitation of Pindar, Anacreon, Theocritus, or Horace. His best work is that in which he freed himself most fully from the influence of a model. His deepest and truest note's are those that celebrate the pleasures of this life, the delights of nature, and the inevitable "cold obstruction" of death. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... right, met with the same obstruction and lost many of its men and officers while waiting for the British artillery to smash a way through for them. This the artillery did when word had been carried back telling of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... occasions we make a practice of stopping an occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so to call it) of fatigue. We have then walked, played or worked "enough," so we desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... death of the five young men, and for the lost lover. In the river the great fish remained, its fin just above the surface, and was called by the Indians "Fish that Bars," because it bar'd navigation. Canoes had to be portaged at great labor around the obstruction. ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... of stopping there. No, before beginning he must set at work some power outside himself which should be operative even against his will; which should be as final as death itself. Until to-night this had seemed an impossibility. Now, with that chief obstruction removed, he had but to consider the ethics of ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... river the party met with no obstruction to their progress for twelve days, save the usual accidents and delays incidental to travelling in an unexplored region. Oxley's opinion of the value of the new district had, as is evident from his journal, been steadily decreasing ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... we cram the mind of a child with facts that have nothing to do with his own experiences, and have no relation to his own dynamic activity? Let us realize that every extraneous idea effectually introduced into a man's mind is a direct obstruction of his dynamic activity. Every idea which is introduced from outside into a man's mind, and which does not correspond to his own dynamic nature, is a fatal stumbling-block for that man: is a cause of arrest for his true individual activity, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... the gleam of a lamp placed high above the surface affects the migrants: he would not be able to keep his eyes from it, but would quickly lose the sense of direction, and probably end his career much as the bird does, by breaking his machine and perhaps his bones against some unseen obstruction in ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... this month Mr. Barrow, a midshipman belonging to his Majesty's ship Supply. His death, which was rather sudden, was occasioned by an obstruction in the bowels, brought on by bathing when very much heated and full. He had attended divine service on the Sunday preceding his death, and heard Mr. Johnson preach on uncertainty of human life, little thinking how soon he was himself to prove the verity of the principal point of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... Intense scorn arose in the Protestant world for every kind of image and decoration, because these were supposed to posit life on what was purely sensuous and natural, and so bar the way to the Divine. Still, the obstruction [p.120] created by Protestantism in this direction opened a door in quite another direction. Art of a higher kind than picture or statue arose, which was far removed from the sensuous level and which emerged from ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones

... said Dallas, as he paused for a few moments to rest and gain his breath, before shooting into collar again, when the trace tightened, the sledge creaked and ground over the blocks of ice, and glided over the obstruction which had checked him for the moment, and the runners of the heavily loaded frame rushed down the slope, nearly knocking him off his feet. The young man growled savagely, for the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... even moderate pressures; but recently all trouble on this head has been obviated by introducing the three projections near the center, as shown in the cuts, which bear upon each other and form a series of stays from one end of the cells to the other, supporting the plates until the obstruction is forced away. We give an illustration below showing the arrangement of a pair of filter presses with pneumatic pressure apparatus, which has been successfully applied for dealing with sludge containing a large amount of fibrous matter and rubbish, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various

... cheering; but, unlike the early success of the war, it was received with a solemn, wordless thankfulness. Then, when the imminent danger was passed, the Government went rapidly to work to improve the obstruction and strengthen the battery at Drewry's Bluff. This became a permanent fort, admirably planned and armed with navy guns, worked by the seamen of the disused vessels. The Federals stuck to the name they first gave it—Fort Darling—for no reason, perhaps, but because of the tender ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... is so very small that inflammation of the cecum soon closes it and then we have a mucous surface without drainage, which means obstruction—opposition to the requirements of nature—for one of the functions of the mucous membrane is to secrete and this secretion must have an outlet or the part ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... one, are let, and it would speedily be tenanted if more conveniently located. There is a pillar in it, and, in order to get a proper view of the officiating minister, you must stand up, lean forward, and glance with a rolling eye round the corners of the obstruction—a thing which many of the more bashful of our species would not ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley

... prescribe the terms and conditions for licensing taverns, peddlers, and public vehicles. They have control of streets, bridges and public grounds; and have authority to construct bridges and pavements, and to regulate the use and prevent the obstruction of the highways. They may establish and maintain sewers and drains. They may construct and control public wharves, and regulate and license ferries. They may establish and regulate markets. They may provide a police force and a fire department. They may construct or purchase and operate water works ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... rude sledge, which is little more than a couple of short wooden runners with boards nailed across them, and a short pole at each corner, plunges into the snow and then carries forward a mass of it until the obstruction becomes too great; the clumsy machine then mounts over it somehow, and again plunges down till the increasing traffic makes the road one series of hillocks and deep holes or cahots, which jolt and jerk the traveller enough to dislocate every joint in his body. They ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach

... This obstruction removed, there is, as we said above, no height of greatness which the American people may not reach. Then, and then only, shall we begin to consolidate ourselves into a nation, with a distinct organon of principles, feelings, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... eyes of her new friend. It would have been an inexpressible consolation if she could have told her troubles to her elder sister, from whom she had never concealed anything till within the last few weeks. But, alas! by the fault of another, a barrier had arisen between them, which proved an obstruction at every turn of their daily intercourse; for while she had been compelled to despise and dislike Gerald, Rosa was always eulogizing his noble and loving nature, and was extremely particular to have his slightest wishes obeyed. Apart from ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... and people who come to stare remain to supper, and possibly return to drop a card on the following afternoon. But, if you go in for this sort of thing, you must resign yourself to certain inconveniences. Your pretty drawing-room will be like Park Lane in a state of chronic obstruction. The carpenter's work will interfere somewhat with your comfort, and it is tiresome to be perpetually unhinging your doors and pulling your windows out of their frames. The jealousies and bickerings among the performers are another ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... contained within the drum has free communication with the external air by an open passage, called the Eustachian tube, leading to the back of the mouth. This tube is sometimes obstructed by wax, when a degree of deafness ensues. But when the obstruction is removed in the effort of sneezing or otherwise, a crack or sudden noise is generally experienced, accompanied usually with an immediate return ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... woman, a man should walk near the curb, unless passing an obstruction-as, a building in course of construction-when she should have the outer side to protect her from harm, or from coming in ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green

... fast as they fell others took their places, until at last, under their furious exertions, the little steamer began to quiver, and then moved slightly backward off the boom. There was an ominous cracking of timber for a few seconds, as some part of her splintered planking caught in the obstruction, and then, with a rending, tearing noise, it gave way, and the launch slid into the water of the bay, shipping a ton or two of it over her stern as she splashed in. But she was afloat once more, and could she only come unscathed through that inferno of bullets, ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... of error' were 'shams,' or simply vexatious contrivances for delay, and brought a profit to the Chief Justice of over L1400.[427] Lord Eldon was always before him as the typical representative of obstruction and obscurantism. In his Indications respecting Lord Eldon (1825) he goes into details which it must have required some courage to publish. Under Eldon, he says, 'equity has become an instrument of fraud and extortion.'[428] He ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... hurried away after the messenger, Connell close at his heels. Two hundred yards they followed, winding along under the bank, and presently came to a sharp bend, beyond which and across the stream the prairie lay open and undulating for many a league, the only obstruction to the view being a little grove of cotton-woods on the opposite shore and possibly half a mile away, and that little grove and the level bench about it were alive with Indians and Indian ponies, the former at least in high state ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... groaned a moorland brook close by, which grumbled at some obstruction in its pathway, and then sighed over its mossy bed, like a tired child emerging exhausted from a long fever, to fall asleep as deeply as if the seal of death had been planted upon the little lips. Occasionally he shifted his position, as his limbs grew cramped, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." "The Spirit and the bride say come, and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will let him take of the waters of life freely." Yes, freely. There is no obstruction. All ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... free intervals between which are filled in with pieces of glass, porcelain, or any other material not attackable by acids. The arrangement is such that the rising vapors can regularly and without obstruction traverse these materials of wide surface. The condensed liquid falls back into the lower part of the boiler. The worm, e, debouches into a cooler, F, fed with water through ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... brother with regard to the subject of his night's conversation with his friends, soon received the unwelcome news of the commodore's aversion to matrimony; and justly imputing the greatest part of his disgust to the satirical insinuations of Mr. Hatchway, resolved to level this obstruction to her success, and actually found means to interest him in her scheme. She had indeed, on some occasions, a particular knack at making converts, being probably not unacquainted with that grand system of persuasion which is adopted by the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... followed was of the roughest character. If it was a road at all it was a wood-track; Evan heard the twigs crackle under the tires. They lurched and bumped alarmingly. Once they had to stop to allow the chauffeur to drag some obstruction out of the way. Evidently they had not had the car that way before, for ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... might have been forced into it, against her own desire and recollection. It would be small comfort, but it would be some, I thought, and on I came. That I might have the truth, the real truth; observing freely for myself, and judging for myself, without obstruction on the one hand, or presenting my own influence (if I had any) before her, on the other; I dressed myself unlike myself—you know how; and waited on the road—you know where. You had no suspicion of me; neither had—had ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... [that is, by him] a burnt-offering, and my servant Job shall pray for you; for him will I accept; lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job.' See here, an offence is a bar and an obstruction to acceptance with God, but by a mediator, but by an intercessor. He that comes to God by himself, God will answer him by himself—that is, without an intercessor; and I will tell you, such are not like to get any pleasant ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... too far away from the position to rush it, he hesitated to deploy, and when at last he was about to give the order, a further delay was caused by a line of thorn bushes. The Brigade passed through or avoided the obstruction and was at the halt on the point of changing formation when the Boers in the advanced trenches, which had been so stealthily excavated that no one in the British Army seems to have been aware of their existence, received the alarm and opened fire. Possibly the situation ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... Board clerks roused themselves to judicial obstruction. The little lawyer turned up again to represent about a dozen threatened interests; local landowners appeared in opposition; people with mysterious claims claimed to be bought off at exorbitant rates; the Trades Unions of all the building trades lifted up collective voices; and a ring of dealers ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... provinces to France. You have just now made a vassal of Switzerland, and to all our remonstrances on the subject you have answered with utter scorn. While you violate your stipulations, how can you expect that we shall perform ours? But another obstruction to the surrender of Malta has been produced by the conduct of France herself. She has seized the entire property of the Order in France, in Piedmont, and wherever she can seize it. Spain, probably by her suggestion, has followed her example, and the Order now ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... Spires in the summer of 1526 witnessed the strength of the new party, for in it the two sides treated on equal terms. Many reforms were proposed, and some carried through against the obstruction by Ferdinand, the emperor's brother and lieutenant. The great question was the enforcement of the Edict of Worms, and on this the Diet passed an act, known as a Recess, providing that each state should act in matters of faith as it could answer to God and the emperor. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... vagabonds, as also other thieves and offenders, should be formed into bodies under the command of proper officers, and under the guard and awe of our soldiery. These should every day at low water carry away these sandhills, and remove every other obstruction to the navigation of this most excellent and ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe

... the towrope; the line creaks under the enormous tension but holds fast. On board the junk, a drum tattoo is beaten and fire-crackers let off, and a dozen men with long ironshod bamboos sheer the vessel off the rocks as foot by foot it is drawn past the obstruction. Contrast with this toilsome slowness the speed of the junk bound down-stream. Its mast is shipped; its prodigious bow-sweep projects like a low bowsprit; the after deck is covered as far as midships with arched mat-roof; coils of bamboo rope are hanging under the awning; ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... respecting the ceremony of circumcision, that its object was to take from the symbol of Osiris, (Phallus) the pretended obstacle to fecundity: an obstacle which bore the seal of Typhon, "whose nature," says Plutarch, "is made up of all that hinders, opposes, causes obstruction." ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... game with me. What! they take the precaution to carry me alone in the van, prepare a nice little obstruction, and imagine I am going to take to my heels and rejoin my friends. Well, and what about the twenty agents of the Surete who accompanied us on foot, in fiacres and on bicycles? No, the arrangement did not please me. I should not have got away alive. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... solemnity, and, above all, by the sympathy of the surrounding multitude, that many of them were thrown into violent convulsions, which convulsions, in certain instances, produced a removal of disorder, depending upon obstruction. We shall, at this day, have the less difficulty in admitting the above account, because it is the very same thing as hath lately been experienced in the operations of animal magnetism: and the report of the French physicians upon that mysterious remedy is very applicable to ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... 1564, and which constitutes one of the earliest examples of canal navigation in the country. "But why", it may be asked, "did the need for cutting a canal arise when the river flowed up to the heart of the city?" The need arose in consequence of the obstruction of the natural waterway near Topsham, by Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of Devon, with the result that no ships could proceed beyond Countess Weir, at Topsham, 4 miles below Exeter. The first obstruction was placed in the river by Isabella ...
— Exeter • Sidney Heath

... virtually calculated to put off the suffering proletariate with a deceitful prospect of relief, but was at the same time decidedly revolutionary and possessed of a—strictly speaking —anarchical prerogative of obstruction to the authority of the magistrates and even of the state itself. But that faith in an ideal, which is the foundation of all the power and of all the impotence of democracy, had come to be closely associated in the minds of the Romans ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the current of air running through the tunnel and blowing away the obstruction at this ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... fleet. The city was promptly evacuated by the Confederate General Lovell. Meanwhile, General Butler was busy moving his transports and troops around outside by sea to Quarantine; and, having occupied that point in force, Forts Jackson and St. Philip capitulated on April 28. This last obstruction removed, Butler, after having garrisoned the forts, brought the bulk of his army up to New Orleans, and on May 1 Farragut turned over to him the formal possession of the city, where Butler continued in command of the Department of the ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... after the health of him whose fate was now entwined with her own. She gently opened the door of the room. The shutters were yet closed, but the sun poured his rays through the chinks, darting, in spite of the obstruction, a light which rendered the night-lamp useless. The curtains of the bed were closed, and all was quiet. Norah sat upon the floor, her eyes fixed upon the ceiling with wild and haggard look, and as she passed the beads which she was telling from one finger to the other (her lips ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... n. impedimentum; literally, something which impedes or entangles the feet: hence, an obstacle, an obstruction. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton

... on in the teeth of so real an obstruction? Has not our own weapon turned against us, Science abolishing with authoritative hand the very truth we are asking it ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... streams, who carry their most precious possessions on their shoulders. Others bear their sick relatives, caring nothing for their goods, and mothers go laden with their infants. Others drive their cows, sheep, and goats, causing much obstruction. Some of the populace, however, appear apathetic and bewildered, and stand in ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... second bidding. Resolutely gripping the bar, he raised it on high and dealt the stubborn obstruction to Tom's freedom a reverberating blow. Three times he brought it down upon the opposing portal. Half a dozen more swings of the bar and splinters began ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... of them, was the wagon perched against a tree, one of the front wheels and an axle broken, and the tongue wrenched off; but the yaks had disappeared. It is singular that the team had gone thus far without meeting an obstruction. As it was, one wheel had locked with a tree, and the yaks, by their tremendous power, had broken the parts ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... and continuous obstruction Parnell at once found a ready helper, Mr. Joseph Biggar. But Parnell, Biggar and those who from 1876 to 1880 acted generally or frequently with them were only members of the body led by Butt; though they were, indeed, ultimately in more or ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... rattle of wheels on Grafton Street, and gave a loud yell for assistance. The owner of the wagon came to the scene. General Day demanded his help as one of the posse comitatus. But it was as hard to the two to move the obstruction as it had been for the old General alone. So the General put the debtor in charge of his new recruit, and went off up street to see what counsel he could get in the matter. All the lights in the lawyers' offices and places of business were out except a solitary gleam which came ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... the bend below appeared the tracking crew, slipping in the ooze, scrambling over fallen trunks, plunging through willows. Behind them trailed the long, thin line that must be kept taut, whatever the obstruction. Finally the York boat poked its nose lazily into ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... Beauty lingers,) And marked the mild angelic air, The rapture of Repose that's there,[cj] The fixed yet tender traits that streak The languor of the placid cheek, And—but for that sad shrouded eye, That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now, And but for that chill, changeless brow, 80 Where cold Obstruction's apathy[59] Appals the gazing mourner's heart,[ck] As if to him it could impart The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon; Yes, but for these and these alone, Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour, He still might doubt the Tyrant's power; So fair, so ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... the third expedition every petty annoyance and obstruction that the malice of Bishop Fonseca could invent was used to thwart and delay the admiral. Each subordinate official knew that insolence to the object of the Bishop's envy and dislike, and neglect of his wishes, were the surest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... caused them to start, and listen for a moment with uplifted paddles. The canoe thus left to itself, unguided, drifted aside, and hung for an instant upon the upraised end of a sunken log. Rene reached his hand down into the water to push it clear of the obstruction, but suddenly withdrew it with a suppressed cry of pain and fright. At the same moment a large water-snake, of the kind known as a moccasin, glided away, and disappeared ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe

... whole field was actually alive with cows. I reached the fence just one jump ahead of the oldest cow, and, seeing no reason why I should take time to crawl through between the wires, I lifted myself over the airy obstruction in a manner that must have convinced that old animated bit of blackness that I had absolute ownership in every nut about me. This little episode supplied me with material for reflection for at least a week, and made me realize ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... ground, there would be no obstruction from the trees, which are tall, straight, and without underwood, and stand at a sufficient distance from each other. Between the trees, the land is abundantly covered with grass. Our voyagers saw many houses of the inhabitants, but met with only one of the people, who ran away as soon as ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... now on our boats again, and heading for the Chutes, as they are called, the one obstruction to the navigation of Peace River for over six hundred miles. We debarked at the head of the rapids above the Grand Fall, and walked to their foot along a shelving and slippery portage, skirting the very edge of the torrent. ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... Obstruction of mails and interstate commerce. Ocean (see Sea). Oklahoma, labor legislation of discussed; capital of must not be removed under enabling act. Old-age pensions, German. Oleomargarine, legislation concerning. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... remembered the post-surgeon's cunning comments, and tried to assure himself that the fractured ends of the bones met each other fairly, without the intervention of tendons or muscle-covering, and that there was no obstruction to the movements of the ankle. When he had finished, his brow was wrinkled with anxiety, but he was satisfied that he had done to the ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... the paddle, however, were sturdy and muscular, and could keep to the task for hours without sensible fatigue. Kenton did not mind a simple obstruction of that nature, and, indeed, would have been glad because of the curtain thus offered if it had continued ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... with her head inshore, so now it was pointed along the beach, luckily in the right direction, i.e. lying from the cruiser). There was nothing left to us but to put on full speed, and if possible force her from the obstruction, which after two or three hard bumps we ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... their instructions perfectly so far as making ready was concerned. Burnside seemed to have paid no attention whatever to the instructions, and left all the obstruction in his own front for his troops to get over in the best way they could. The four divisions of his corps were commanded by Generals Potter, Willcox, Ledlie and Ferrero. The last was a colored division; ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... and to act, is the same thing with God. "He spake, and it was done." When the divine Word operates in the soul, without any obstruction, the soul becomes what this Word wills it should become. When Mary Magdalene was made whole, it was no more Mary Magdalene, but Jesus Christ, who lived in her. St. Paul says, "I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me." In the same manner, the Word ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham

... possession of their stipend hath been & ought to be accompted and censured as a great contempt of the Authority and Censures of the Kirk, Considering also that the continuance of deposed Ministers in the possession of the stipend, is a great prejudice and obstruction to the planting of the vaiking Kirk, and to the service of God there. Therefore do declare and Ordain, That whosoever after the sentence of Deposition pronounced against them, Do either exercise any part of the Ministeriall calling in the places they ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... which were flecked here and there by small patches of fleecy scurrying cloud; the fog had drifted away, leaving the atmosphere delightfully pure and clear, so that, narrow as was the channel down which we were winding our way, we had no difficulty in steering clear of all obstruction. As we crept down the lagoon we gradually got a truer breeze and more of it, so that by midnight we found ourselves just passing out of the Conconil lagoons and entering Santa ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... if you must, And creep into it with a perfect trust; But in the twinkling of an eye the plow Shall pass without obstruction through your dust. ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... mingled with their ancient comrades, and the effect of their exhortations was instantaneous on men whose minds were already half made up to the purpose which they now accomplished. There was a general shout of "Vive Napoleon!" The last army of the Bourbons passed from their side, and no further obstruction existed betwixt Napoleon and the capital, which he was once more—but for a brief space—to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the discussion which the boys were having, suggested that they block up the road near its entrance with his heavy carts, and then, if the thieves should get past them, they would be obliged to leave the team at the obstruction in order to make good ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis

... had given way, burying a section of track under gravel and rock. A hundred men were at work clearing it away, and it was probable they would finish by noon. A gang boss, who had come back with telegraphic reports, said that half a dozen men had carried Quade's hand-car over the obstruction about midnight. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... whereupon Gasppard, with his hand on his little sword, said: 'Why don't you give him a good kick, mama?' This made everybody laugh; and I said, still keeping my head stiff: 'We will go round to the other door, my son, since there is this obstruction in ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... known as the "second wind." On usual occasions we make a practice of stopping an occupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so to call it) of fatigue. We have then walked, played or worked "enough," so we desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... where he stood was a little waterfall in the brook. The current was stopped by some stones and logs, and the water tumbled over the obstruction, forming quite a little cataract, which sparkled ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott

... everything good was to come from Joffre, Foch, Wilson, or Roosevelt, everything evil originated in the Kaiser Wilhelm, Lenin and Trotsky. They were as omnipotent for evil as the heroes were omnipotent for good. To many simple and frightened minds there was no political reverse, no strike, no obstruction, no mysterious death or mysterious conflagration anywhere in the world of which the causes did not wind back to these personal sources ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... moonless night Their discontented and deserted shades. Observe these horrid walls, this rueful waste! Here some refresh the vigour of the mind With contemplation and cold penitence: Nor wonder while thou hearest that the soul Thus purified hereafter may ascend Surmounting all obstruction, nor ascribe The sentence to indulgence; each extreme Has tortures for ambition; to dissolve In everlasting languor, to resist Its impulse, but in vain: to be enclosed Within a limit, and that limit fire; Severed ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... feeling no pain she thought no more of it; in a few days after, she complained what she eat or drank lay like a stone in her stomach, and little or nothing pass'd through her. After three weeks obstruction, she fell into a most violent bloody flux, attended with a continual pain at the pit of her stomach, convulsions, and swooning fits; nor had she any ease but while her stomach was distended with liquids, such as small beer, or gruel: She ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... lips, and greedily swallowed though with evident effort. The toasted bread is soaked in a portion of the broth, and is also devoured as speedily as offered, with an avidity made still more painful by the difficulty of swallowing, occasioned by some obstruction in the throat. ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... before reaching the adjoining field. But she went on. Where the fence turned, she turned, there being no obstruction to her doing so. This brought her into a wilderness of tangled grasses where free stepping was difficult. As she groped her way along, she had ample opportunity to hear again the intermittent sounds of the hammer, and to note that ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... instance, all manner of craft have to be watched to see that they do not carry more passengers than their licence permits, that obstruction is not caused by mooring across public stairs, that more than the fixed fare is not demanded by watermen, that no boat is navigated for hire without a licence, ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... the garden at eleven o'clock and sat down by me on the lawn. Chillington and Pamela had gone riding with the squire, Dora was visiting the poor. We were alone. The appearance of Miss Liston at this hour (usually sacred to the use of the pen), no less than her puzzled look, told me that an obstruction had occurred in the novel. Presently she let me ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... speaking, in a voice that had risen to a shriek with the effort to make himself heard, when the crisis came. We did just touch a projecting ridge, but the wind, howling past it, carried us in an instant round the obstruction. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... into an open glade, which the keen sunlight lit without obstruction. Obviously arranged, was his first appraisal of the tableau there presented. A woman in blue half-knelt, half-lay, upon the young grass, while a man, bending over, fettered her hands behind her back. A swarthy and exuberantly bearded fellow, attired in green-and-russet, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... civil and military, which it is for the happiness of both to obliterate; that when the members assemble the, will be proposing to do something, and what that something may be, will depend on actual circumstances; that being an organized body, under habits of subordination, the first obstruction to enterprise will be already surmounted; that the moderation and virtue of a single character have probably prevented this Revolution from being closed as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish; that he is not immortal, and his successor, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... worked. The passage continued as a downward slope for about fifty yards and then became almost level for a like distance. Only in two places had the walls or ceiling fallen in to any considerable extent, and in neither of those places was the obstruction so great as to ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis

... the jutting point of land, and missed it by little more than a hair's breadth, just as Randy turned pale with the sudden discovery of his danger. He breathed easier as the canoe passed swiftly on toward mid-channel. He could see nothing ahead, and was therefore blissfully ignorant of the obstruction that ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... answer was to put her hand upon her mother's lips. Her mother went on, softly and steadily, in spite of that slight obstruction. Yet not in spite of it, for her ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... having done this thing, both for the pride of it, and because it was so delightful a thing to have before him the prospect of endless time, which he might spend in adding more and more to his science, and so doing good to the world; for the chief obstruction to the improvement of the world and the growth of knowledge is, that mankind cannot go straightforward in it, but continually there have to be new beginnings, and it takes every new man half his life, if not the whole of it, to come up to the point where his predecessor left off. ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... its inconveniences, and made them adhere to it with insurmountable obstinacy. The captain was therefore obliged to give way to the torrent, though he never changed his opinion, and had, in appearance, to acquiesce in this resolution, though he gave it all the obstruction he could, particularly in regard to lengthening the long-boat, which he contrived should be of such a size, as, though it might carry them to Juan Fernandez, he yet hoped might appear incapable of so long a navigation ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... apiece, sending the tiny float softly and easily across the river. They entered the patch of shadow cast by the schooner and dipped their paddles with greater caution. But no challenge greeted them; they pulled up under the overhanging stern of the vessel itself without obstruction. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... so light was the soil upon them, that the rain rendered the ground very soft. The river had many fine reaches, extending in straight lines from one to three miles, and of a corresponding breadth. The rapids, although frequent, offered no material obstruction to the boats. The current in the long reaches was scarcely perceptible, and it appears to me that the difference of elevation between this station and the last ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... sharply, wheeled to the right of the obstruction, and became once more a solid mass, leaving the barricades behind them, the Chief of Police at the head of the line forcing the mob back to the curbstone, laying about him with his club, thumping heads and cracking wrists as he ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't] The lady shall have no obstruction, unless from ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... Artillery is at Grotkau; well forward towards Neisse; halfway between Brieg and it. Same day, Colonel Camas returns to him out of Glatz; five of his men lost; and reports That Browne has had the roads torn up, that Glatz is mere ice and obstruction, and that nothing can be made of it at this season. Good news ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... have cast themselves bodily into the flaming ruins and perished with the chief had they not been restrained by their companions. Then the bright, swift flames with their hot tongues licked this 'cold obstruction' into chemic change, and the once 'delighted spirit' of the savage was ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow

... "Every obstruction by the government of the United States to the arming of French vessels must be an attempt on the rights of man, upon which repose the independence and laws of the United States; a violation of the ties which unite the people of France and America; and even a manifest contradiction ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... hole when, unexpectedly, the further side of the grave caved in. I swore under my breath at this brilliant result of my efforts, and, with the intention of clearing away the rubble, thrust my spade deep into the loose earth. It met with a solid obstruction, something that seemed to me like the root of a tree, or——At that I stopped dead. Could it be possible that I had struck the foundation of ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh

... have letters-patent from the king expedited, in order to have permission and leave to make the said voyage; and no obstruction shall be made or given to these letters, by any allies, friend, or confederate of the king, our ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... improperly so termed, as this obstruction is nothing more than a gradual descent for a distance of about a mile and a half, where the water, forcing its way over a rugged rocky bottom, presents the appearance of a rapid. Below this the country is of various aspects—hills, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... to see all things accomplished, and their Trading going forward. And in time Tom Thumb got on his doublet, tho he was seven years pulling on the first sleeve. Yet before you come to this great pleasure, you'l meet with a troublesom obstruction in the way, which if you can but turn of bravely, it will ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... sight the crowd began to return home, and such a confusion it is almost impossible for me to describe. A gang of pickpockets had contrived to block up the way, which was across a bridge, with carriages and carts, etc., and as soon as the people began to move it created such an obstruction that, in a few moments, this great crowd, in the midst of which I had unfortunately got, was stopped. This gave the pickpockets an opportunity and the people were plundered to a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... may be confounded with and must be differentiated from are obstruction, renal colic, hepatic colic, gastritis, enteritis, salpingitis, peritonitis due to gastric or intestinal ulcer, enterolith, obstipation, invagination or intussusception, hernia, external or internal, volvulus, stricture ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... Kaeside plantations; they make a beautiful outline, and also a sort of fence, and were not planted last year because the earth at the sunk fences was too newly travelled. This should be mixed with various bushes, as hollies, thorns, so as to make a wild hedge, or thickety obstruction to the inroads of cattle. A few sweetbriers, alders, honeysuckles, laburnums, etc., should be thrown in. A verdant screen may be made in this way, of the wildest and most beautiful description, which should never be clipt, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... Carlisle, General Wade gave orders for the immediate advance of the army on Hexham, in the hope of intercepting them by that route. They set out on their march amidst hail and snow; and in addition to the obstruction caused by the weather, they had to overcome the difficulties occasioned by the badness of the roads. The men were often three or four-hours in marching a mile, the pioneers having to fill up ditches and clear away many obstructions in making a practicable passage for the artillery and baggage. ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has taken care of all that. He is annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead noble boulevards as straight as an arrow—avenues which a cannon ball could traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible than the flesh and bones of men—boulevards whose stately edifices will never afford refuges and plotting places for starving, discontented revolution breeders. Five of these great thoroughfares ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in a sitting posture. Alarmed as they were to see their stores disappearing, the ludicrousness of the sight interested them. The mule came in contact with one of the high places—a rocky bump, which bounced him up into the air and turned him completely around. Down to the next obstruction the animal traveled, principally on ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin

... them into the stream above with equal rapidity, though from a less appalling height. Twice, in each tide, also, the sea was on a level with the river, which then flowed smoothly over the rocks, and at those times only, the dangerous obstruction was removed, and ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... his preceptor. And his preceptor said, 'Thou art welcome! What hath occasioned thy long absence?' And Utanka replied to his preceptor, 'Sir, in the execution of this my business obstruction was offered by Takshaka, the King of serpents. Therefore I had to go to the region of the Nagas. There I saw two damsels sitting at a loom, weaving a fabric with black and white threads. Pray, what is that? There likewise I beheld a wheel with twelve spokes ceaselessly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... back again for his pistol, whipped it out, and, coming to a standstill, aimed at the pup. Lad, waiting only to bound over an obstruction in his path, came to a corresponding pause, not ten feet ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... a matter both of experience and of philosophy, that life or death, in the main and in the long run, turns on the single pivot of atmospheric movement or obstruction. The resistance of mere rising ground or dense vegetation to a free movement of the air from low-lying levels performs an obstructive office similar to that of the walls and roofs of houses, and with like effect. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... time had been devoted to us in vain. This was like an Electrical shock to me. I rushed upstairs to my room where, without restraint, I could give vent to my tears. She said the same as that I had been the cause of the great obstruction in the school. If I am such a vile sinner, I would that I might feel it myself. Indeed I do consider myself such a bad creature that I can not see any who seems worse.—And we had a new scholar to witness ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... her blooming daughter of eighteen were the only persons whose acquaintance we had made at that time, for we were travelling under fictitious names, and people who wear aliases are not given to seeking society and bringing themselves under suspicion. But at this point in our talk we encountered an obstruction: we could not recall the landlady's name. We hunted all around through our minds for that name, using all the customary methods of research, but without success; the name was gone from us, apparently permanently. We finally gave the matter up, and fell to talking ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... imbibing religious ideas than in the dry process of acquiring the mere human knowledge of the alphabet. Indeed, he had been already a little shaken in his resolution by a brother Methodist, who assured him that the letter was a mere obstruction to the Spirit, and expressed a fear that Brimstone was too eager for the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... Sunday at a village called Nyangedi. Here on the evening of the 7th April our buffaloes and camels were first bitten by the tsetse fly.[5] We had passed through some pieces of dense jungle which, though they offered no obstruction to foot-passengers, but rather an agreeable shade, had to be cut for the tall camels, and fortunately we found the Makonde of this village glad to engage themselves by the day either as woodcutters or carriers. We had left many things ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... the wind, but Gregory, following her frightened glance, saw Robert Clinton elbowing his way through the crowd, forcing his progress bluntly, or jovially, according to the nature of obstruction. He did not see them ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... refrain mouldering the clay composition of my unworthy body to impalpable dust, by the refulgence of those bright stars vulgarly called eyes, till I have lawfully wreaked my vengeance upon this unobliging caitiff, for his most disloyal obstruction of your ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... personally prefer. The passiveness of our neighbors increases our sense of security, and plays into the hands of our wilfulness. Passive characters, if we do not happen to need their activity, seem an obstruction the less in our own path. A contented character is not a dangerous rival. Yet nothing is more certain than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the uncontented characters; and, moreover, that it is much easier for an active mind ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... the booths, and hats and handkerchiefs were every where waved in token of respect. As soon as her Majesty came in sight of the coronation platform and Westminster Abbey, she stopped for a few moments, apparently uncertain what course to take, as she had hitherto met with no obstruction, and yet had received nothing like an invitation to approach. At this moment the feelings of the spectators were wound up to a pitch of the most intense curiosity and most painful anxiety. The persons who immediately surrounded her carriage knew no bounds in expressing their enthusiastic ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... Peking as in Washington, a policy of his own, never disguised, and as little in harmony with his chief as with Hay; he made his opposition on fixed lines for notorious objects; but Senators could seldom give a reason for obstruction. In every hundred men, a certain number obstruct by instinct, and try to invent reasons to explain it afterwards. The Senate was no worse than the board of a university; but incorporators as a rule have not made this class of men dictators on purpose to prevent ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... beat. And get it back the policeman would, even if he had to make an Italian fruit dealer pay him a dollar a month for having a stand on the sidewalk, where the walk was supposed to be free from obstruction. ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer

... joint-stock companies and their management, will probably be least inclined to believe in the innate superiority of private enterprise over State management. If continental bureaucracy and centralization be fraught with multitudinous evils, surely English beadleocracy and parochial obstruction are not altogether lovely. If it be said that, as a matter of political experience, it is found to be for the best interests, including the healthy and free development, of a people, that the State should restrict itself to what is absolutely necessary, and should leave to the voluntary efforts ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... below flash the waters of Lake Morain, and beyond, to the southward, lie the Seven Lakes. Another turn of the track to the northward, and the shining rails stretch almost straight up what appears to be an inaccessible wall of almost peerless granite. But no physical obstruction is formidable enough to stop the progress of this marvelous railway; and passing the yawning abyss of the 'Crater,' the line proceeds direct to the summit. The grade here is one of 25 per cent., and timid passengers will not escape a thrill of fear as they gaze ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... should always be kept free from obstruction and extremes of heat and cold avoided as much as possible. In health, the care of the skin is a simple matter, massage being a great factor, assisted always by the use of pure creams. A good cleansing ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens

... certain back door, which added more to the cold in winter than to the convenience in summer, should be the entrance to the new chamber. The chimney was the chief difficulty; but all the materials being in the immediate neighbourhood, and David capable of turning his hands to anything, no obstruction was feared. Indeed, he set about that part first, as was necessary; and had soon built a small chimney, chiefly of stones and lime; while, under his directions, the walls were making progress at the same time, by the labour of Hugh ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... future, none left for that day; courage for the main campaign, but not a spark of it for that preliminary skirmish of the cabman's restaurant. I continued accordingly to sit upon my bench, not far from the ashes of Napoleon, now drowsy, now light-headed, now in complete mental obstruction, or only conscious of an animal pleasure in quiescence; and now thinking, planning, and remembering with unexampled clearness, telling myself tales of sudden wealth, and gustfully ordering and greedily consuming imaginary ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... when you give a cathartic remedy in a cathartic dose for constipation; in that case the reaction, if reaction follows, is not in the right direction, consequently the constipation is often aggravated. I have hardly ever seen, excepting in cases of mechanical obstruction, a severe and troublesome case of constipation that had not been caused by the use of cathartic remedies. So if we give an opiate, or an astringent, for a diarrhoea, we can see that it is a direct effort to restrain the disease by force, as it were, and we ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... But another kind of obstruction vexed Murtagh even more than the brakes of bamboo. This was the webs of huge spiders—ugly tarantula-looking animals—whose nets in places, extending from tree to tree, traversed the forest in every direction, resembling ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... speaking, and, it might almost be said, no one breathing, so strong was the general desire to catch the minutest sound that should come from the shore. But the same solemn, we might, indeed, say sublime, quiet reigned as before; the washing of the water, as it piled up against some slight obstruction, and the sighing of the trees, alone interrupting the slumbers of the forest. At the end of the period mentioned, the snapping of dried branches was again faintly heard, and the Pathfinder fancied that the sound of ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... and acts as an anti-putrescent; as likewise if taken at table with venison, or hare, or other "high" meats. This fruit especially suits persons of sanguine temperament. Both red and white Currants are without doubt trustworthy remedies in most forms of obstinate visceral obstruction, and they correct impurities of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... from the earth." "Thus on Maeander's flowery margin lies Th' swan, and as be sings he dies." Over a thousand people in the fire at the theater. "To , to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream." He to a lingering disease. "Aye, but to , and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot." "Wind my thread of life up higher, Up, through angels' hands of fire! I aspire ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... Two or three centuries later, it meant an engagement in unauthorized and illegal warfare against foreign States, in effect, piratical invasions. In time, it came into use to describe the supply of military material to revolutionists, and finally to obstruction in legislative proceedings. In his message of June 13, 1870, President Grant said that "the duty of opposition to filibustering has been admitted by every President. Washington encountered the efforts of Genet and the French revolutionists; John Adams, the projects of ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... pull out its two drawers, and in the opening thus made seek for the loophole at the back, through which, if you stoop low enough, you can catch a glimpse of the library hearth and its great settle. With these in view, slip your finger along the wall on your right and when it touches an obstruction—pass it if it is a handle, for that is only used to rewind the apparatus and must be turned from you until it can be turned no farther; but if it is a depression you encounter, press, and press hard on the knob ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... obstruction, he did not discover it by word or feature. He went on humming a tune without words as he worked, handing out biscuits and ham to the hungry crew. Jim had eaten his breakfast already, and was smoking a cigarette at his ease. Now and ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... the Bahr-el-Ghazal is liable to be choked by sudd. Gessi Pasha was imprisoned in it for some six weeks. The river became almost blocked by the accumulation of this obstruction during the rule of the Mahdists. In 1901 and following years the sudd was removed by British officers from the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the Jur and other rivers. Uninterrupted steamboat communication was thus established during the flood season between Khartum and Wau, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... citizens of the United States, and especially of the Territory of New Mexico, against aiding, countenancing, abetting, or taking part in any such unlawful proceedings; and I do hereby warn all persons engaged in or connected with said obstruction of the laws to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes on or before noon of the 13th day of ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson

... agitation increased; and on the 7th of January (1867), directly after the holidays, two Missouri representatives (Loan and Kelso) attempted in turn to introduce resolutions in the House proposing an Impeachment, but each was prevented by some parliamentary obstruction. At a later hour of the same day Mr. James M. Ashley of Ohio rose to a question of privilege and formally impeached the President of high crimes and misdemeanors. "I charge him," said Mr. Ashley, "with an usurpation of power and violation of the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... right and jolted over what seemed to be a shallow ditch. The road that followed was of the roughest character. If it was a road at all it was a wood-track; Evan heard the twigs crackle under the tires. They lurched and bumped alarmingly. Once they had to stop to allow the chauffeur to drag some obstruction out of the way. Evidently they had not had the car that way before, for ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... over without accident, and soon found ourselves at the stationhouse. This very neat and spacious edifice is erected on the site of the little wicket gate, which formerly, as all old pilgrims will recollect, stood directly across the highway, and, by its inconvenient narrowness, was a great obstruction to the traveller of liberal mind and expansive stomach The reader of John Bunyan will be glad to know that Christian's old friend Evangelist, who was accustomed to supply each pilgrim with a mystic roll, now presides at the ticket office. Some malicious ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... laws, the colonists employed their ingenuity in devising means to evade or nullify those which they deemed obnoxious or contrary to their interests, and constant practice soon perfected their perverted activities in this direction, until obstruction and procrastination were erected into a system, against which even royal decrees ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... strongest nature—and she was witness to how rapidly an inflexible will disintegrates if incessantly applied to an impossibility. When a strong arrogant man, unbalanced by long and successful self-indulgence, hurls himself at an obstruction, either the obstruction yields or ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... refused to convict, and the prisoners were discharged. The Government was compelled to act; and on January 24th Mr. Forster moved for leave to bring in a bill for the better protection of person and property in Ireland. After an unprecedented obstruction on the part of the Irish members, and after a continuous sitting of forty-one hours, the Speaker summarily closed the debate, and the bill, commonly known as the Coercion Bill, passed the first reading on February 2nd. On ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... and Luther Wit and Madness Colonization Machinery Capital Roman Conquest Constantine Papacy and the Schoolmen Civil War of the Seventeenth Century Hampden's Speech Reformed House of Commons Food Medicine Poison Obstruction Wilson Shakspeare's Sonnets Wickliffe Love Luther Reverence for Ideal Truths Johnson the Whig Asgill James I. Sir P. Sidney Things are finding their Level German Goethe God's Providence Man's Freedom Dom Miguel and Dom Pedro Working to better one's condition ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... summer of 1832, the Asiatic cholera appeared among us, appalling every heart. This plague, I said, is a disease of coldness and obstruction; and these doctors, wrong as they are on the subject of animal heat, can never understand it—though, if Lavoisier were living, he might. Let me, then, as best I may, consider anew the problem of heat as produced by respiration, and see whether I cannot find out something which has a bearing on the ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard

... stream. Then they themselves crossed, after losing about a hundred of their number. Anjou neglected the chance here afforded him of gaining an entire victory; and Coligny, after halting for a short time, drew off toward Moncontour, which he reached on the next day without further obstruction. The duke spent the night on the battle-field in token of victory, and then started in pursuit; but, in order to avoid attack while crossing the short, but deep river Dive, a tributary of the Loire which flows by the walls of Moncontour, he turned to the left, and, rapidly ascending to its ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... a heavy fish," reflected Arthur, and, even as he thought it, he saw a five-pound carp rise nearly to the surface, in order to clear the obstruction of the wall, and sink ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... treacherous crust dropped suddenly under it, and the sled was left with nothing but the hind part of one of the runners sticking up in sight. But though the sled was suddenly checked in its career, the Trapper and Wild Bill continued their flight. The former slid from the sled without meeting any obstruction, and with the same velocity with which he had been moving. Indeed, so little was his position changed, that one might almost fancy that no accident had happened, and that the old man was gliding forward to the end of the course with an adequate ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray

... youthful ken No cold obstruction fetters; He quickly learns the "types" of men, And all ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... survival of the last idea in the "Selections," and in Clause X. of the conditions under which, in 1873, the first leave to mine was granted by the Government of Mysore, it is declared that, "In the event of the grantee causing annoyance or obstruction to any class of the people, or to the officers of Government, the chief commissioner reserves the power of annulling the mining right thus granted." But such apprehensions, I need hardly say, have long since passed away, and certainly within my long experience they ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... not intended entering the hen yard, and I did not wish to stay there, so I kept on out, the wire netting not being what an automobile would call an obstruction. I never lose my head, and when I heard Araminta screaming in the barn, I called out cheerily to her, "I'll be back in a minute, dear, but ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various

... she became used to Garnet's attentions, and it pleased her self-love to be a subject of adulation, which she unmercifully snubbed in return. But Santos was pertinacious in his courtship. With the persistence of a fly which dashes against glass, trying a hundred times to pass through the obstruction, neither repulses, ridicule, nor rude remarks rebuffed him for long. He returned the next day, metaphorically speaking, to break his head against the cold disdain of the proud heiress. He really thought that the real obstacle ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... senator's son saw the obstruction. He set both the hand-brake and the foot-brake, and all heard the wheels and the chains scrape over the stones and dirt. But the car could not be stopped, and two seconds later crashed into the tree limb, a branch of which came up, striking ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... del Pianto the carriage was stopped by an obstruction. It had grown darker still and was thundering. The horses were frightened, and Maria looked anxiously out of the window. Jeanne, seated opposite Giovanni, asked him in a low tone if he had telegraphed to Don Clemente. Giovanni answered that Don Clemente had been at Villa ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... carefully followed the directions of his leader, and worked his way through the obstruction of the myrtle-bushes until he arrived at a small circular place, in the centre of which, shaded by tall olive-trees, was a turf-seat surrounded by tendrils of ivy, and before which was a small table of wood, yet retaining its natural covering ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... of the uterus, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound removes obstruction to the circulation as effectually as cutting the string relieves the congestion of the finger. When the circulation is perfectly natural through these parts, then the congestion and inflammation must disappear ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... slid over the ground as it were on their stomachs, balanced by a flimsy tail supported on two wheels. Weighing many tons, when the "tank" came to an obstacle, such as a house or wall, it rammed the obstruction with its full weight, and then climbing over the debris lumbered on its way. Through vast craters and muddy shell holes and over trenches the monsters waddled along, scattering death and destruction as they advanced. The German soldiers, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... led on the skirt of the forest along the border of the eastern marsh that bounded the island eastward. This was a defile so narrow, that the enemy could take no cannon with them, nor baggage, and could only proceed two abreast. Moreover, the Spanish battalions met with such obstruction from the deep morasses on one side, and the dark and tangled thickets on the other, and such opposition from the Indians and ambushed Highlanders, that every effort ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... attack, and a retreat, apparently threatening total destruction, from its varied dangers, was accomplished without the loss of a single man. At Strathbogie we halted but a short space, for finding no obstruction in our path, we hastened southward, in the direction of Inverury; there we pitched the tent for the king, and, taking advantage of a natural fortification, dispersed our men around it, still in a compact square. Soon after this ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... would not go, but continued to regard the object mentioned with dread, which was manifested by sundry restless pawings and unaccustomed snorts. Joe resolved to ascertain the cause of their alarm, and springing to the ground, moved cautiously in the direction of the dark obstruction, which still seemed to be a blackened stump, about his own height, and a very trifling obstacle, in his opinion, to arrest the progress of his redoubtable team. The darkness was intense, yet he managed to keep his eyes on the dim outlines of the object as he stealthily approached And he stepped ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones

... season, when the whole country was soaked with moisture The native paths were so neglected as to be often mere tunnels closed over with vegetation, and in such places there was always a fearful accumulation of mud. To the naked Papuan this is no obstruction. He wades through it, and the next watercourse makes him clean again; but to myself, wearing boots and trousers, it was a most disagreeable thing to have to go up to my knees in a mud-hole every morning. The man I brought with me to cut wood fell ill soon after we arrived, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... know that it need. Ye're an obstruction—the like of you—ye're in my path. And anyone in my path doesn't stay there long; or, if he does, he stays there on my terms. And my terms are chimneys in the Centry where I need 'em. It'll do ye a power of good, too, to know ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the very men who would otherwise be best fitted from position and opportunities for aiding a little in the long, difficult, and plainly inevitable work of transforming opinion. Consider the waste of intelligence, and what is assuredly not less grave, the positive dead-weight and thick obstruction, by which an official hierarchy so organised must paralyse mental ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... indulge in conversation and frolic. Sometimes they stopped to exchange a word with the guards who were stationed at certain distances along the canal. These men, in winter, attend to keeping the surface free from obstruction and garbage. After a snowstorm they are expected to sweep the feathery covering away before it hardens into a marble pretty to look at but very unwelcome to skaters. Now and then the boys so far forgot their dignity as to clamber among the ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... the surface of the Earth, would still be violent enough to dash the Projectile into a thousand pieces. But Barbican confidently expected by means of his powerful rockets to offer very considerable obstruction to the violence of this fall, if not to counteract its terrible ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... gloom of the night, that had now fairly descended, and the peculiar topography of the ground, made it an exceedingly difficult matter for both to keep their feet. The fugitive, catching in some obstruction, was thrown flat upon his face, but quickly recovered himself. Teddy, with a shout of exultation, sprung forward, confident that he had secured their persecutor at last, but the Irishman was caught by the same obstacle and "floored" even more completely ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... his interest, in the hands of his agents in America, whenever the interest was to be demanded; whereas, at present, he trusts him with the interest only. This single circumstance would put a total stop to all future sales of domestic debt at this market. Whether this, or any other obstruction, can or should be thrown in the way of these operations, is not for me to decide; but I have thought the subject ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... of board ceased to move to the suasion of his hand. He tugged at it with all his strength, changed the direction of its length all he could, but it had met some extended obstruction behind him and the end in front was still too far away to clear the pile of debris and reach the muzzle of the gun. It extended, indeed, nearly as far as the trigger guard, which, uncovered by the rubbish, he could imperfectly see with his right ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... bathing-dresses. She said they generally wore something when they bathed in public, but beyond the limits of the regular bath-houses, at the end of the Botanical Gardens, they seldom troubled themselves about matters of that kind; in fact, they preferred going in without any obstruction, because "they could swim ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... continued, and we were able to get a glimpse of the sun. This showed us to have drifted 84 miles north in six days, the longest drift we had made. For weeks we had remained on the 67th parallel, and it seemed as though some obstruction was preventing us from passing it. By this amazing leap, however, we had crossed the Antarctic Circle, and were now 146 miles from the nearest land to the west of us—Snow Hill— and 357 miles from the South Orkneys, the first land directly ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... moment Tom could be heard muttering rueful exclamations as he caressed his bruises. Jack who was next in line was trying to help him to his feet. His foot, too, struck an obstruction which caused him to lose balance. To avoid falling on Tom, he put out his arms toward the walls. Instead of meeting solid brickwork as before, however, he felt his hands encounter crumbling earth. He lurched forward, and his face was buried in ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... (named 'Bed of honour') with their bodies, in quarrels which are not theirs; their hand and toil is in every possession of man; but for themselves they have little or no possession. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed; to pine dully in thick obscuration, in squalid destitution and obstruction: this is the lot of the millions; peuple taillable et corveable a merci et misericorde. In Brittany they once rose in revolt at the first introduction of Pendulum Clocks; thinking it had something to do with the Gabelle. Paris requires to be cleared out periodically by the Police; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... quick turn about a rocky obstruction in his rapid path, he came almost full upon two others, a man and a woman. On the yielding sand his footfalls had made no sound, and they were unaware of his sudden approach. Donald stopped, and stepped hastily back out of ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... Indicators arranged under the levers tell the signalman when the desired movements at the points and signals have been completed. If any motion is not carried through, owing to failure of the current or obstruction of the working parts, an electric lock prevents him continuing operations. Thus, suppose he has to open the main line to an express, he is obliged by the mechanical locking-frame to set all the points ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... localised within some narrow circuit, and to which some trifling barrier (as a river—rivulet—or even a brook) offered a retarding force. In supercivilised England, a river, it may be thought, cannot offer much obstruction to the free current of words; ages ago it must have been bridged over. Sometimes, however, a bridge is impossible under the transcendent importance of a free navigation. For instance, at the Bristol Hotwells, the ready ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law. For the good of the service itself, for the protection of those who are intrusted with the appointing power against the waste of time and obstruction to the public business caused by the inordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong, I shall at the proper time ask Congress to fix the tenure of the minor offices of the several Executive Departments and prescribe the grounds upon ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson

... private property, though their consequences may impair its use, are universally held not to be a taking within the meaning of the due process clause."[664] Accordingly, consequential damages to abutting property caused by an obstruction in a street resulting from the authorization of a railroad to erect tracks, sheds, and fences over a portion thereof have been held to effect no unconstitutional deprivation of property.[665] Likewise, the erection over a street of an elevated viaduct, intended for general public travel and ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... slender pines in which the region abounded, and he gained on all of his pursuers except two, who, like himself, were superbly mounted. The thud of their horses' hoofs kept near, and he feared that he might soon come to some obstruction which would bring them to close quarters. Mayburn was giving signs of weariness, for his mettle had been sorely tried of late, and Graham resolved to ambush his pursuers if possible. An opportunity occurred ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe

... the reef which for the last five-and-twenty years has done so much to ruin and to wreck every artistic movement which the enthusiasm and intelligence of individuals have set on foot. The mere checking of the obstruction of the individual will not suffice; other aldermen will arise—equally ignorant, equally talkative, equally obstructive. And until the race is relegated to its proper function, bimetallism and sewage, the incidents I have described ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... healthier. Above Lardo he established at comparatively short stages further posts at, in their order, Rageef, Beddem, Kerri, Moogie, and Labore, immediately beyond the last of which occur the Fola Falls, the only obstruction to navigation between Khartoum and the Lakes. Above those Falls Gordon established a strong post at Duffli, and dragged some of his steamers overland, and floated them on the short link of the Nile between that place and Lake Albert, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... that imply a more radical unscrupulousness. But it would be harsh to urge any such impressions against one who was no more than a boy when he perished, and whose brief career had struggled through cold obstruction to its bitter end. The best traits in Chatterton's character appear to have been his proud spirit of independence and his ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... depth; the tooth in situ is white and clean. With the aid of the mouth and hand mirror he shows the condition to the patient, and, taking up an excavator, endeavors to pass it down between the tooth and gum, on the labial surface. After it gets down a little way the instrument meets with an obstruction, over which, calling the patient's attention to the fact, he carefully guides the instrument until it drops down on the tooth-substance beyond it; then, turning the instrument and pressing it upward, he breaks off a portion of the concretion; which proves to be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various

... could arrest all government. The first and the last step of plebeian progress was gained neither by violence nor persuasion, but by seceding; and, in like manner, the tribunes overcame all the authorities of the State by the weapon of obstruction. It was by stopping public business for five years that Licinius established democratic equality. The safeguard against abuse was the right of each tribune to veto the acts of his colleagues. As they were independent of their ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... nothing undone which industry could accomplish, and whenever he went wrong, failed from an almost pedantic desire to do too much—from a stiffness and stateliness of deportment, and an embarrassment of which he had begun to get rid but a few years before his death. Mr. Cooper labours under no obstruction of this kind. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various









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