"Average" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of daily papers, greatly modifies the total of the nation's speech; and the speech and reading, taken together, form the efficient educational medium of youth. A good man or woman may keep a youth some little while in clearer air; but the contemporary atmosphere is all-powerful in the end on the average of mediocre characters. The copious Corinthian baseness of the American reporter or the Parisian chroniquear, both so lightly readable, must exercise an incalculable influence for ill; they touch upon all subjects, and on all with the ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to have revised all the figures, but of little advantage to our readers. For example, it is encouraging to the citizen to know that the average wheat yield per acre has increased more than two bushels since the first edition of this book, but it would not help the garden maker. The increase of possible products tends to counterbalance the increased cost of labor. So only the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... influenced perhaps by the merest trifles, that a man's life is made great or small; just such narrow forkings of the trail may divert him into strange adventurings, or into worlds undreamed of. Kirk Anthony, twenty-six years old, with a heritage at hand, and with an average capacity for good or evil, chose the turning that led him swiftly from the world he knew ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... the time they entered the flattening kiln before they came out thoroughly annealed. They were then carried to the warehouse for inspection and the especially fine ones were selected to be polished into patent glass. The sheets were rated as bests, seconds, thirds, and fourths, and their average size was 48 x 34 or 36 inches, although the foreman said that sometimes sheets as large as 82 x 42 or 75 x 50 had been made. These, however, were exceedingly difficult to handle, as they were in constant danger of being broken. The mass of ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... brought to the field. At other times it is added when the grain has been put in the seed-box of the drill. This method of sowing is adapted to certain soils of the Western prairies and to very open soils in some other localities, but under average conditions it buries seeds too deeply. There is the further objection that they all grow in the line of the grain plants and are more shaded than they would be otherwise. Nevertheless, under some conditions this method of sowing the ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... and neighbors called Jim Hastings "Big Jim," he was no more than average size—compact, vigorous, reared in the Wyoming cattle lands, and typical of the country. He was called Big Jim simply to distinguish him from Little Jim, who was as well known in Laramie as his father. Little Jim, when but five years of age, rode his own pony, jogging alongside ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... remote place, which the delightful mail coach roads had not then reached—where the post came in only three days in the week—and where the mail cart either broke down, lost a wheel, had a tired horse, was overturned, or robbed, at an average once a fortnight—our hero had no alternative but patience, and the amusement of calculating dates and chances upon his restless sofa. His taste for reading enabled him to pass agreeably some of the hours of bodily confinement, which men, and young men especially, accustomed ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... would have bewildered rather than illumined the mind of an ordinary man. But the quack was not an ordinary man. He was endowed with a certain rude power of divination which enabled him to see in a single instant, by swift intuition, more than the average man discovers by an hour of reasoning. By this natural clairvoyance he saw at a glance that this face of exquisite delicacy could no more have been coined in a gypsy camp than a fine cameo could be cut ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... enamel insulation for magnet wire is its thinness, and the high coefficient of space utilization which may be secured by its use. In good enamel wire the insulation will average about one-quarter the thickness of the standard single silk insulation, and the dielectric strength is equal or greater. Where economy of winding space is desirable the advantages of this may readily be seen. For instance, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... ruck of field hands of all types. The average field hand in California is a cross between a hobo and a labourer. He works probably about half the year. The other half he spends on the road, tramping it from place to place. Like the common hobo, he begs his way when he can; catches ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... their transportation for all articles, except in the winter months ... and every effort has been made by this corporation to afford every facility, it was hoped and believed, to the entire satisfaction of the Lowell proprietors. The average annual amount of tolls paid by these proprietors has been only about four thousand dollars. It is believed no safer or cheaper mode of conveyance can ever be established, nor any so well adapted for carrying heavy and bulky articles. To establish therefore ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... The necessary reforms were made to proceed from the officers of State themselves, and the enforcement of the new regulations was carried out by a Master of the Household, who resided permanently in the palace which the Queen occupied. Eventually each royal establishment was brought to a high average of order and efficiency. If possible, still greater caution had to be practised in the Prince's dealing with political affairs, for here the jealousy of foreign influence was national, and among the most deeply rooted of insular prejudices. In the beginning of their married life ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... know all about that. It costs about twenty-five dollars to learn a horse that way, and it costs about five dollars to break him cowboy way. An average horse is worth only about twenty-five dollars. The cowboy way is good enough for our job, so I don't see any prospect of change till we get a price that ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... civilization," said the stranger. "I don't approve of everything that has been done, by any means. Some of the armies have treated women rather badly, but no English-speaking soldiers have done that. In fact, your army has hardly been up to the average in effectiveness. You and the Japs have been culpably lenient, if you will permit me ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... of the atavism of races, the study of heredity, the study of the influence of the welfare of the mother upon her unborn child, are all useful and expanding studies for ordinary thinking minds, and are quite within the scope of the average intelligence. But the modern hatred of all restraint—another failing born in the good of desire for freedom—makes it difficult to preach any course of action which would involve curtailment ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... really, Mr. Jones," began Jepson earnestly, "I'd much prefer to have a dry camp. Of course you are right about the average miner—but it's better not to have them ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... the sign and considered his average of ninety-seven per cent. Followed in sequence these events: (a) Twenty-two wheeled back to the parlour, where old Mr. Simond's cane leaned against a table, and, while engaging that gentleman in conversation, possessed himself of the cane. (b) Wheeled back to the elevator. ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have never been submitted to the test of experiment: they belong to the domain of political metaphysics. The facts which we have before us show, on the contrary, that wherever the Russian peasants, owing to a concurrence of favourable circumstances, are less miserable than they are on the average, and wherever they find men of knowledge and initiative among their neighbours, the village community becomes the very means for introducing various improvements in agriculture and village life altogether. Here, as elsewhere, mutual aid is a better leader ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... with, I admit the facts alleged. They are overstated; there is considerable departure from an exact average: but let this pass. I will go farther, and admit, what no one has attempted to show, that an average in these common and outward matters proves the like regularity in all that men do and think and feel. This to concentrate attention ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such overplus as there may be do ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... very difficult for an American to comprehend this Prussian conception of Divine-right, as a political principle—but it should not be difficult from the point of human experience. Bismarck had no illusions concerning the power of the average man, and he held that the phrase "the people" was used by every political quack in Europe for any one of a thousand ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... standard of courage and training, but armed with deadly weapons, are directed against one another, under varying strategical conditions. Before they can rebound, thousands are slaughtered and a great battle has been won or lost. The average courage of the two nations may perhaps have been decided. The essence of the continental ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... extensively subsidizes agriculture, fishing, and areas with sparse resources. Norway also maintains an extensive welfare system that helps propel public sector expenditures to slightly more than 50% of the GDP and results in one of the highest average tax burdens in the world (54%). A small country with a high dependence on international trade, Norway is basically an exporter of raw materials and semiprocessed goods, with an abundance of small- and medium-sized firms, and is ranked among the major shipping nations. The country ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... there are three rooms full of paintings by the first masters, the property of private persons. Every one of them, no doubt, was worth studying for a long, long time; and I suppose I may have given, on an average, a minute to each. What an absurdity it would seem, to pretend to read two or three hundred poems, of all degrees between an epic and a ballad, in an hour or two! And a picture is a poem, only requiring ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shows its love of home and gardens. Those great tulip beds are real and luscious. Family life in the Netherlands is shown in several fine interiors, and the portraits by Dutch artists are more graceful than those of the average modernist. The grand prize in the Netherlands section went to Breitner's snowy "Amsterdam Timber Port" (17). Bauer's "Oriental Equestrian" (7) won the medal of honor. Gold medals were given to seven artists, named in the list ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... to say that I think the piece above the average of second-class poetry, and that a few of the lines touch the first-class standard. You have caught something of the 'divine afflatus' that the drunken old fellow said he could not cage. But I do not think that you will ever be popular as a writer ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... in his nature was certainly as far above the average as were his splendid abilities, and Ideala was right when she declared that she could answer for his principles. It is impulse that is beyond calculation, and for his own or another's impulses no ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... for gunpowder or salt. The fixed fisheries for thunny, round the Sicilian coast, are upwards of a dozen, the most famous being that of Messina. At Palermo, however, they sometimes take an immense strike of several hundred in one expedition. The average weight of a full grown thunny, is from 1000 to 1200 pounds; of course the men with poles who land him, can carry him but a little way, and he reaches the market by relays. Every bit of him is eaten, except his bones and his eyes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... afternoon. It is always help when a woman who is not an idiot lets an embarrassed man take up her time. If he too is not an idiot, that does n't diminish the service; on the contrary his superiority to the average helps him to profit. Ambrose Tester had said to me more than once, in the past, that he was capable of telling me things, because I was an American, that he would n't confide to his own people. He had proved it before this, as I have hinted, and I must say that being an American, with ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James
... Micmac settlement is on a reservation situated on the eastern side of the Conne arm of the bay, with a frontage to the water of 230 chains, with an average depth of about 30 chains. It is on the slope of a wooded hill which is generally steep down to the sea, and at most places hard and rocky, covered by spruce forest. Most of the Micmac houses are on an area of about a quarter of a mile, where the ground is ...
— Report by the Governor on a Visit to the Micmac Indians at Bay d'Espoir - Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous. No. 54. Newfoundland • William MacGregor
... a great game, and you are the man for it, no doubt. But there are others who can play it, for soldiering today asks for the average rather than the exception in human nature. It is like a big machine where the parts are standardized. You are fighting, not because you are short of a job, but because you want to help England. How if you could help her ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... how he would have been first only for his "coulter blunting on a muckle granite stane." He would relate with exactness how many queys his father had, the records of mortality among the wintering sheep, the favourable prospects of the spring lambs—"abune the average—aye, I will not deny, clean abune ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... in writing for the young, or they may get a wholly different meaning from the language than that intended. The Bishop of Hereford was examining a school-class one day, and, among other things, asked what an average was. Several boys pleaded ignorance, but one at last replied, "It is what a hen lays on." This answer puzzled the bishop not a little; but the boy persisted in it, stating that he had read it in his little book of facts. He was then told to bring the ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... average process, but almost every bleacher has his own methods, differing from the above in some of the details and this applies to all bleaching processes. It is obvious that the details may be varied to a great extent without changing the principles ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... the average American millionaire while he remains outside the city limits is frequently remarked upon. And even the mighty overlords of Chicago, falling in with the prevailing fashion, have forsaken the shores of the great inland ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... the best, and I don't claim to be any better than the average, but all I'm asking for now is a chance to make myself worthy of you—to be the sort of husband a woman ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... sweet from his table. But as soon as he heard of his illness, he showed an active interest in him, sent for a doctor, and tried remedies, but the disease turned out to be incurable. The fits occurred, on an average, once a month, but at various intervals. The fits varied too, in violence: some were light and some were very severe. Fyodor Pavlovitch strictly forbade Grigory to use corporal punishment to the boy, and began allowing him to come upstairs to him. He forbade him to be taught anything whatever ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... six months shipping was sunk at an average rate of 600,000 tons per month, three times as fast as before, and two or three times faster than it was being replaced. The highwater mark was reached in April, when 800,000 tons of shipping were destroyed. Unless this loss could be greatly ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... seemed to him different, indeed, from the average Southerner. Very few Southern men at that time sought to conceal their feelings. Whatever their faults they were open, but Mr. Sefton wore his mask always. Prescott's mind went back unconsciously to the stories he had read of the agile Italian politicians of the Middle Ages, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... full of human interests and sympathies. He rarely spoke of himself, even in the most casual way. Most of those with whom he mingled knew merely that he was an agent of the government, and that he kept his own counsel. His wife was to him a type of the average American woman,—pretty, self-complacent, so nervous as to require kind, even treatment, content with feminalities, and sufficiently intelligent to talk well upon every-day affairs. In her society he smiled at her, said "Yes," good-humoredly, to almost everything, and found slight incentive ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... and editor of the New York Clipper, offered a series of prizes to be contested for by the leading clubs of the country, a gold ball being offered for the champion club, and a gold badge to the player in each position, from catcher to right field, who had the best batting average. The official award gave the majority of the prizes to the Athletic club. McBride, Radcliff, Fisler, Reach and Sensenderfer, having excelled in their respective positions of pitcher, catcher, first base, second base, ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... overpowering dirt, and his vicious life. He was full of delightful and racy stories about poets and painters, policemen and prisons, of which he had wide experience. He might have written a far more diverting book of memoirs than the average Pre-Raphaelite volume to which we look forward every year, though it is usually silent about poor Simeon Solomon. Physically he was a small, red man, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... and not bother strangers. He said he did not know where his father was. They told him, and he started to walk—a distance of fifty miles. I ask you to bear in mind, gentlemen, that he was only seven years of age. It is the age when the average boy is beginning the third reader, and when he is shooting marbles and ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... for being 'heap smart'?" she bantered. "Can't even let me believe I thought of something beyond the ken of the average person? Not," she amended ironically, "that I consider YOU an average person! Would you mind"—she became suddenly matter of fact—"waiting here while I go and rummage for a book I want? I'm almost sure I have one on mining laws. Daddy had a good deal of that in his business, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... rounded and fleshy than we see in the north. Our athletes are less harmoniously built, with more prominent sinews, more harsh and wiry in type. An American trainer who is also a sculptor, Dr. Tait McKenzie, working as some of the Greek sculptors worked, from the average measurements of a number of young men, has produced types of strength and beauty, by no means exactly like the statues of Greece, but in their way almost equally beautiful. I instance the beautiful fifth-century figures of Greek boxers, softened by idealism, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... very much too ready to speak of men's work being ordinary, when we consider that, properly considered, every man is extraordinary. The average man is a tribal fable, like the Man-Wolf or the Wise Man of the Stoics. In every man's heart there is a revolution; how much more in every poet's? The supreme business of criticism is to discover that part of a man's work which is his and to ignore that ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... characteristics of Procyron III as recorded a century before. The Cerberus was a semi-freighter, Candless type. Procyron III was a water-planet with less than ten per cent of land. Which was unfortunate, because its average temperature and orbit made it highly suitable for human occupation. Had the ten per cent of solid ground been in one piece, it would doubtless have been colonized. But the ground ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... waging our campaign, we should be careful not to run against the prejudices or the pecuniary interests of that class. As I have said before, if it were a Prohibition amendment which was pending I should think it exceedingly unwise to run that campaign under the banner of woman suffrage. The average human mind is incapable of taking in more than one idea at a time. The one we want to get into the heads of the voters this year is woman's enfranchisement, and we must pull every string with every possible individual ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... should increase with a decrease in the radius of the curve and should also increase as the square of the speed of the vehicle. On account of the variation in speeds of the vehicles, the superelevation for curves on a highway can only be designed to suit the average speed. At turns approaching ninety degrees, the curve is likely to be of such short radius that it is impossible to maintain the ordinary road speed around the curve, even with the maximum superelevation ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... here we may read in plain popular language, written by a man whose genius for popular exposition has never been surpassed among men, a brief account of the origin and meaning of England as it seemed to the average Englishman of that age. When subtler views of our history, some more false and some more true than his, have become popular, or at least well known, when in the near future Carlylean or Catholic or Marxian views of history have spread ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... that mythical year or so. He looked at once self-reliant and reserved. At first glance one might have thought him conceited, in which case one would have done him an injustice. Kenneth had traveled a good deal and had seen more of the world than has the average boy of his age, and this had naturally left its impress on his countenance. I can't honestly say that he was handsome, and I don't think you will be disappointed to hear it. But he was good-looking, with nice, quiet gray eyes, an aquiline nose, a fairly broad mouth whose smiles ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... to take with me on my hunt the same two natives whom I had had the year before. My head man's name was Fedor Deerinhoff. He was about forty years of age, and had been a noted sea otter and bear hunter. In size he was rather larger than the average of his race, and absolutely fearless. Many stories are told of his hand-to-hand encounters with these big bears. I think the best one is of a time when he crawled into a den on his hands and knees, and in the dark, and at close quarters, shot three. He was unable to see, and the bears' heavy ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... On an average of once a week Captain Dan Cullen caught glimpses of the sun. Once, for ten minutes, the sun shone at midday, and ten minutes afterward a new gale was piping up, both watches were shortening sail, and all ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... scouting plane from five hundred yards to less than two hundred, almost while one drew an average breath. Evidently the German misunderstood. He thought that the now reckless foe, casting discretion to the wind, was bent upon something desperate. But — what? Again and again he tried to train his own gun on the American, but the latter kept edging just out of range, while ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... rode away at a leisurely trot. Haste had little to do with trailing a herd, where eight miles was called a good day's journey and six an average achievement. The fallen ox was unyoked by the mellow-voiced but exasperated Ezra, and since he would not rise, the three remaining oxen, urged by the gad and Ezra's upbraiding, swung the wagon to one side and moved it a little farther after the slow-moving herd, so that the exhausted animal ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... Arrowhead Village society, similar opinions were entertained of Miss Euthymia. The fresh-water fisherman represented pretty well the average estimate of the class to which he belonged. "I tell ye," said he to another gentleman of leisure, whose chief occupation was to watch the coming and going of the visitors to Arrowhead Village,—"I tell ye that girl ain't a gon to put up with any o' them ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... matter of precaution it was strictly forbidden ever to be used—at least in that part of it which crossed the village street. For such projectiles as laden toboggans, passing across the trunk line of the village traffic at an average rate of a mile a minute, were hardly less dangerous than cannon-balls, and ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... effectual ones, from the very unimportant decisions to which only his authority extended). And when he came home at night, after dispensing justice for the whole day (to wit—three hours on the average) she looked with almost holy reverence on his broad brow, under which there must lie such a store of legal knowledge, and thought what a blessed and honored woman she was to have been allowed to mate with so much ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Lack of shame occurs in the best and in the worst men through different causes, as stated in the Article. In the average men it is found, in so far as they have a certain love of good, and yet are not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... three novels, 'Prudence Palfrey,' 'The Queen of Sheba,' and 'The Stillwater Tragedy.' 'The Story of a Bad Boy,' frankly but quietly humorous in its record of the pranks and vicissitudes of a healthy average lad (with the scene of the story localized at old Portsmouth, under the name of Rivermouth), a less ambitious work, still holds a secure place in the affections of many mature as well as younger readers. Besides these books, Mr. Aldrich has published a collection of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... The word is not polite, nor am I in a mood of politeness. I consider such phrases as the "progress of art," the "improvement of art" and "higher average of art" distinctly and harmfully misleading. I haven't the leisure just now to demonstrate these mistaken propositions, but I shall ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... but in the more temperate and better regulated regions, it is found in the long run more advantageous for the educational interests of the young, to dispense with food, and to renew the Specimens every month—which is about the average duration of the foodless existence of the Criminal class. In the cheaper schools, what is gained by the longer existence of the Specimen is lost, partly in the expenditure for food, and partly in the diminished ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... size that Smolts are when they leave the river for the sea; for supposing them to be hatched the last week in March, and that they lived a month, this would bring us to the time when they are about to migrate, at which time they average more than six inches long; many of them are eight inches, and at this period they are fond of feeding upon worms, flies, maggots, and caddis worms, as is known to every schoolboy living on the banks of a river frequented by Salmon. It is also my opinion ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... same education in a public school as any other American child. I read the same newspapers and watch the same TV shows as anyone else. My Apache ancestry means as little to me as the nationality of his immigrant ancestors means to the average American. I certainly don't consider myself to be part of a nation still at ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... heels. In them he could move with the softness and the speed of a cat. Next he dressed in a dark-gray suit, knowing that this is the color hardest to see at night. His old felt hat he had discarded long before in favor of the prevailing style of the average New Yorker. For this night expedition he put on a cap which drew easily over his ears and had a long visor, shadowing the upper part of his face. Since it might be necessary to remain as invisible as possible, he obscured the last bit of ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... over her, for, though she was taller than the average, he was head and almost shoulders above her, "Jeanne, you could ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... turn their obesity to good account. In exchanging food for beads it is usual to purchase a certain quantity of food, which shall be paid for by a belt of beads that will go round the waist. The women of Karague being on an average twice as large round the waist as those of other districts, food practically rises a hundred per cent, in price. Notwithstanding their fatness their features retain much beauty, the face being oval and the eyes fine and intelligent. The higher class of women are modest, not only ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... asked Zulu with a grin that revealed an unusually large cavern full of glistening teeth, mingled with more than an average ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... good-looking young fellow of about six-and-twenty; he looks his profession all over, and is a good type of the average young barrister of the present day. He has fair hair, and small, close-cropped whiskers; his face is retrieved from boyishness by strongly-marked and rather heavy features; he studiously affects a solemn and imposing gravity of face and manner, and ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... to the acre, of 100 years' standing, and the quantity in each tree to be a load and a half, it would require forty acres of oak forest to build one seventy-four; and the quantity increases in a great ratio, for the largest class of line of battle ships. The average duration of these vast machines, when employed, is computed to be fourteen years. It is supposed, that all the full grown oaks now in Scotland would not build ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... age, is no bar to the union of very distant regions. When the telegraph, that modern miracle, brings the shores of the Pacific within three hours' time of the Atlantic seaboard—when railroads contract States into counties, and counties into the dimensions of an average farm, as to the time taken to traverse them—when spaces are thus brought into the closest union, it is but the counterpart and prophecy of the close moral and industrial union of the people who inhabit the spaces. When slavery, that relic of barbarism, that demon of darkness and discord, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... highest and largest of the three cubes that together make up the fortress. It was a spacious battlemented floor, of rectangular but irregular outline, having an extreme length of perhaps one hundred and fifty feet, with an average width of seventy-five to one hundred.[7] On its eastern side it overlooked a deep, wide moat, intended to protect the wall from an assault made along the crest of the promontory, while on the other three sides one might look down hundreds of feet to the wide blue plain of the ocean, the narrow ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... most difficult enterprise. How boys who could scarcely be got to behave quietly under the strictest schoolmasters could ever be brought to obey the rebuke of their equal and schoolfellow: how a heterogeneous pack of average schoolboys could organise themselves into a self-governing republic, these were problems of real and stupendous difficulty. The fines of a penny and of twopence, which were instituted at the first meeting, were found hopelessly incompetent ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... an hour we continued to haul up fish after fish till our arms ached. The smallest weighed about three pounds, the largest about seventeen pounds, and the average weight of the lot was about eight pounds. Then we knocked off for breakfast. That finished, we lit our pipes and settled down to work again. Alas! a swarm of ugly brown and yellow 'leather-jackets' had arrived on the scene, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... They set up codes that it takes lawyers to interpret, and so they perpetuate themselves. I don't mean to say you're extraordinary in having a chance to wander. Don't get the big-head over it. You're a pretty average young American. There's plenty of the same kind. Only, mostly they get tied up to something before they see what a big world there is to hike in, and I want to keep you from that. I'm not roasting lawyers——Yes, I am, too. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... master. "Two hours! Then you'll have to make allowance, sir, for an average set to seaward of two miles an hour all the way across, or ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... divided into splendid educations, thorough classical educations, and average educations. All very old men have splendid educations; all men who apparently know nothing else have thorough classical educations; nobody has an ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... match play, and only did the first dozen holes; but my average round is somewhere in the ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... few thousands of his father's faithful subjects in order to secure himself the reversion of his father's throne. No man likes losing his job, and when at long last the inner history of this war comes to be written, we may find that the people we mistook for principals and prime agents were only average incompetents moving all Hell to avoid dismissal. (For it is absolutely true that when a man sells his soul to the devil he does it for the price ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... mainly with Californiacs; but the Californiacs are by no means confined to California. They have, indeed, wandered far afield. New York, for instance, has a colony so large that the average New Yorker is well acquainted with the symptoms of California. The Californiac is unable to talk about anything but California, except when he interrupts himself to knock every other place on the face of the earth. He looks with pity on anybody ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... from the extraordinary, the politics of Elgin's daily absorption were those of the town, the Province, the Dominion. Centres of small circumference yield a quick swing; the concern of the average intelligent Englishman as to the consolidation of his country's interests in the Yangtse Valley would be a languid manifestation beside that of an Elgin elector in the chances of an appropriation for a new court house. The ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... final details. When the clock struck again, she reckoned that he must be nearly at his destination; perhaps he was there already, pacing the room as she paced this one? She laughed. Not a tinge of remorse discoloured the pleasure of her outlook—her "au revoir" to her husband was quite careless. The average woman who sins longs to tear out her conscience for marring moments which would otherwise be perfect. This woman had ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... close the room permanently. Examples, identical even in details, have been found in the Mancos canyon, and one is described and illustrated by Chapin,[15] who states that the slab was 141/2 inches wide at one end, 151/2 at the other, and 25 inches high, with an average thickness of an inch. He mentions staples on both sides. Nordenskioeld[16] illustrates another or possibly the same example. He notes, however, an inner frame composed of small sticks and mud against which the slab rested. He thinks the notched doorways belonged to rooms most frequented in daily ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... description, is futile." The Cabinet was discovered by Mr. Patten, of Louisville, and Mr. Craig, of Philadelphia, accompanied by the guide Stephen, and extends in nearly a direct line about one and a half miles, (the guides say two miles.) It is a perfect arch, of fifty feet span, and of an average height of ten feet in the centre—just high enough to be viewed with ease in all its parts. It is incrusted from end to end with the most beautiful formations, in every variety of form. The base of the whole, is carbonate (sulphate) of lime, in part ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... "Take the average murderer, for instance. He seems to look forward to his execution with happy anticipation. He may have been a hopeless dyspeptic who killed his wife in an agony of indigestion, following a repast of hot biscuits and flannel cakes, such as 'mother ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... it will be seen that there was little in Mr. Coffin's life and surroundings that could not be easily told of the average New England youth. Besides summer work on the farm, and "chores" about the house, he had taken several terms at the academy in Boscawen. During the winter of 1841-42, while unable to do any outdoor work, on account of sickness, he bought ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... rather proud of the opportunity to display myself before Washington with you. I've been called indifferent to women. I'm hoping now that the gossips will say, 'Aha! Huntingdon's a deep one! No wonder he's been indifferent to the average woman!'" ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... must, from the above data, deduce some such conclusions as the following. First that, on the hypothesis that the slaves who were freed in 1838—full fifty years ago—were all on an average fifteen years old, those vengeful ex-slaves of to-day will be all men of sixty-five years of age; and, allowing for the delay in getting the franchise, somewhat further advanced towards the human life-term ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... first because the face is like a face. Perhaps you think there is something particularly handsome in the face, which you can't see in the photograph, or can't at present appreciate. But there is nothing of the kind. It is a very regular, quiet, commonplace sort of face; and any average English gentleman's, of good descent, would be ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... courage, and self-denial are the qualifications of a public servant, and the average Indian was keen to follow this ideal. As every one knows, these characteristic traits become a weakness when he enters a life founded upon commerce and gain. Under such conditions the life of Crazy Horse began. His mother, like other mothers, tender and watchful of her boy, would never once place ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... billiard-balls. What little hair they have is dyed an orange red with henna. They look like witches in Macbeth, or at least as if they had been called up from out of the lower regions. They sit chatting with little bundles of sweets and narghilehs before them. An average Englishwoman would look like an houri amongst them; and their customs were beastly, to use the mildest term. The Hammam was entered by a large hall, lit by a skylight, with a huge marble tank in the centre and four little fountains, and all around raised divans covered with ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... replied. "And with such a short haul—for it will average nearer a quarter than half a mile—I should think we might even collect stones enough for the purpose this winter, provided there doesn't come a big fall of ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... William Smith, of South Carolina, estimated that in 1818 the real exports of South Carolina and Georgia amounted to "more than half as much as that of the other states of the Union, including the vast and fertile valley of the Mississippi." The average annual amount of the exports of cotton, tobacco, and rice from the United States between 1821 and 1830 was about thirty-three million dollars, while all other domestic exports made a sum of but twenty million dollars. [Footnote: Ibid., ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... and a little farther south,—in the flat-woods behind New Smyrna,—I saw other flowers, but never anything of that tropical exuberance at which the average Northern tourist expects to find himself staring. Boggy places were full of blue iris (the common Iris versicolor of New England, but of ranker growth), and here and there a pool was yellow with bladderwort. I was taken also with the larger ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... firmly. "Of course we can do it. Why, even with going out of our way as we did, we won't have covered more than eighteen miles to-day. And we set twenty as an average." ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... reduce to figures the additions in plant food which clovers add to the soil other than in a comparative way. Dr. Voelker has stated that there is fully three times as much nitrogen in a crop of clover as in the average produce of the grain and straw of wheat per acre. Dr. Kedzie is on record as having said that in the hay or sod furnished by a good crop of clover, there is enough nitrogen for more than four average crops of wheat, enough phosphoric acid for more than two ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... That is still the average. In the year of the Coronation of the Virgin the figure rose to five hundred thousand. But to bring that about an exceptional occasion was needed with a great effort of propaganda. Such vast masses cannot be collected ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... mill, where the mind is extracted from the matter, and the former is sold, on public account, to the editors of the daily journals. This is the reason our Leaplow journalists are so distinguished for their ingenuity and capacity, and the reason, too, why they so faithfully represent the average ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... their adventures by the dozen, there are many more who confine themselves to two or three incidents of passion and some to a single one in their whole life, so that we have in accordance with the statistical method taken the average. Now if the number of celibates be multiplied by the number of their excesses in love the result will be three millions of adventures; to set against this we have only four hundred thousand ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... raised the proportion of works of art in the general pictorial output from about one in five hundred thousand to one in a hundred thousand, the Post-Impressionists (for after all it is sensible to call the group of vital artists who immediately follow the Impressionists by that name) have raised the average again. To-day, I daresay, it stands as high as one in ten thousand. Indeed, it is this that has led some people to see in the new movement the dawn of a new age; for nothing is more characteristic of a "primitive" ...
— Art • Clive Bell |
