That obligation of military service is exceedingly irksome; and it is not only the Finns who desire to fight shy of it, nor can one discover any specially dangerous symptom in their wish to preserve the privileged position which they have hitherto enjoyed as to the way of discharging their military duties.

He was never allowed to leave the cluster of tepees for the forest, except with the warriors, but he took part in the fishing on the lake, being a willing worker there, because idleness grew terribly irksome,

The idle life of Rosedale had grown unbearably irksome to Merry, too.

All these traders naturally felt the Spanish control of the navigation, and the intermittent but always possible hostility of the Spanish officials, to be peculiarly irksome.

This, too, in the face of many pleasant days, which made the close confinement doubly irksome.

I should render my narrative unduly irksome, were I to set down carefully every single man put to death by this ruler,all that he despatched because of false information, because of unjustified suspicions, because of notable wealth, because of distinguished family, because of unusual education, or for any other excellence.

When are they coming, that I may be let out?" We had endeavored to lighten his confinement by seeing that he was well supplied with food, and his Father and Paquette had paid him occasional visits; but, notwithstanding these attentions and the kindness he had received at the Fort, his confinement was inexpressibly irksome.

If I may judge from the later direction of his studies, and from remembrance of a morning's conversation, his mind seemed expanding in every way, and ripening into full maturity of taste and elevated judgment, with that generous ambition which makes confinement to lesser departments in the art painfully irksome and annoying.