He became one of the "
mettlesome souls" that "broke out of these confining molds" of what the blind were thought to be capable, who "made places for themselves in the world at large." (3)
Against the background of Europe Howells examines what a contemporary admirer of Howells calls the 'emotional anarchy' in America, where 'an emotion is so sacred a thing that no outsider but not even its possessor may presume to undertake its regulation', so that no 'emotional code' prevails." (21) Its absence leads to 'the national reproach of Daisy Millerism', the problem of 'the innocently adventurous
mettlesome American maiden' who, when travelling in Europe, unknowingly becomes a cause of social scandal and emotional havoc (Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham, XII, 21).
Well boys, I unhitched my Well boys, I soon unhitched my
mettlesome steed.
Hendrickson's thesis is that the Founding Fathers were driven to the Constitutional Convention, and to the innovative federal Constitution drafted there, by the fear of instability tending toward war among the newly independent states and
mettlesome foreign powers.
On another occasion we were using this Woodsman to depopulate his surrounding pasture of
mettlesome prairie dogs, which kept on digging holes that threatened to trip Chucks favorite horse, Mare.
Situational realism is somewhat damaged by Foley's weighted inverse analogizing of the activities of the foursome with what one chapter, descriptive of Derry, calls "the widely used sobriquet 'Maiden City.'" Early on, the "spectre of the sluggish matron" becomes in Marie the "radiance of the
mettlesome maid"; Helen has, pointedly, kept her maiden name; ever the epigrammatist, Foley tells us that "Ignominy is the most faithful handmaiden of Eros." While this is contrived irony, the true irony of the novel concerns the eventual lapse of libertinage into personal insecurities and anxieties over foreplay, impotence and venereal disease.
Indeed Weaver's reviews crackle with a pungent and
mettlesome censoriousness too seldom seen in our unmanned and invertebrate age: "His position as a whole is so confused that one cannot be certain what he had in mind"; "this is an essentially softheaded book"; "A mid a perfect forest of banality and truism there are but a few shoots of original perception"; "This essay is an amazing tissue of presumption and innuendo"; "Filled with halting sentences and fumbling diction, many passages of this work are a torture to get through." But meritorious work receives glowing accolades: "one may admire the magnitude of his conception and the profundity of his reach...the work of an intellect of the first or der"; "...a fine piece of biographical research and execution.
Fried has written a
mettlesome book that ranges all over the oeuvre.
So much of this wonderful music hasflash-back narrative that mere concert-performance of such a substantial quota risks repetitiousness, but Oramo and his
mettlesome players kept matters constantly alive.
serves him so well as the buffalo - as
mettlesome as if check-reined - free neck stretching out, and snake-tail in a half twist on the flank; nor will so cheerfully assist the Sage sitting with
In Consilience, Wilson offers his latest and most
mettlesome rejection of that dualistic denial.
Frederick and Mary's
mettlesome sons were Regency bucks, devoted to hunting and womanising, and ready with their fists.
Its politics mirror its tortured history: under the Ottoman Empire peopled by Maronite Christians, Druze and Syrians; then a French mandate when Beirut was the capitalist Switzerland of the Middle East; now faction-ridden but of interest to Syria, Jordan, the PLO, Israel and a US, for whom the British legacy of Imperial peace-keeper has become the politics of
mettlesome mediation everywhere.
But McKibben seems a peacefu and God-fearing person, declaring himself a practicing Methodist; there is some discussion of religious values in The End of Nature, though the book does not attempt to address the question of whether God is a component of pure nature or another
mettlesome intellect.
