The cotton factor was harassingly responsible to a whole swarm of planter patrons, of whose feelings he had to be all the more careful when they were in his debt.
"Strange True Stories of Louisiana"
George Washington Cable
He cried when I said that I had not; but quietly, not harassingly.
"IT and Other Stories"
Gouverneur Morris
And while the anxiety of all is sufficiently acute, the man who is most worried is the one who is at the helm, for the behaviour of a craft under such circumstances is in one respect distinctly and harassingly peculiar: at the most perilous moment of all, which is the moment before she is actually overtaken by the breaking crest of the wave, she is apt to refuse to answer her helm, and he who is steering her loses all control over her; she seems to be seized with a perverse determination to take a broad sheer one way or the other, with disastrous results, despite a hard-over helm, and then the only thing to be done to retrieve the situation is to effect a lightning shift of helm against all your past experience and your better judgment.
"Turned Adrift"
Harry Collingwood