"Average" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spoken several times of the study of economy, and of the science of economy; and I used these words advisedly. However natural and comparatively easy it may be to some persons to form an accurate judgment of the general average of their ordinary expenses, and of all the contingencies that are perpetually arising, I do not believe that you possess this power by nature: you only need, however, to force your intellectual faculties into this direction to find that here, as elsewhere, they may be ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... what these considerations would lead us to expect, that eminent women have commonly been exceptional in training and position, as well as in their genius. They have excelled the average of their own sex because they have shared the ordinary advantages of the other sex. Take any department of learning or skill; take, for instance, the knowledge of languages, the universal alphabet, philology. On the great stairway at Padua stands the statue of Elena Cornaro, professor of six ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... by the conditions which confronted them on their return to peaceful and agricultural pursuits. The subdivision of farms among the many robust sons of the average New England household had reached its limit, and the young man who would found a home and family of his own, thenceforth must seek for cheaper and broader acres than were to be found already under cultivation. New Hampshire's liberal offer ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... for half a century all the laws have been adopted by the initiative system, the average of laws proposed has been only two and ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... this Journal. It marks the state of Scotland, and the feeling with which the most finely gifted Englishmen came to it seventy years since, at a time before the flood of English interest and 'tourism' had set in across the Border. The Wordsworths were of course not average English people. They came with an eye awake and trained for nature, and a heart in sympathy with nature and with man in a degree not common either in that or in any other age. They were north-country English too, and ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... and continued: "The successful railroad man begins at the bottom, and learns the first lesson well. Do you know how long this man Earling has been getting where he is today? Thirty-five years. More than the average age of man. The successful railroad man, if he begins telegraphing, gets so he can send or receive anything, with his eyes shut, and never makes a mistake. After a long time he gets a measly country station, where he does ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... anywhere, on the part of most people, as to just what the essential problem is which confronts the white inhabitants of the country because they have for fellow-citizens (nominally) ten million Negroes. Ask the average man, ask even the average editor or professor anywhere, what the race problem is, the heart of it; why, in this land with its millions of foreigners of all nationalities, THE race problem of problems should be caused by ten million Negroes, not ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... attained gradually; if we go back to 1848, we find that on the London and Birmingham Railway the number of trains in and out of Euston was forty-four per day. The average weight of the engines was 18 tons, and the gross loads were, for passenger trains 76 tons, and for goods 160. Now, the weight of an express engine and tender is about 65 tons, and gross loads of 250 to 300 tons for an express, and 500 tons for a coal train are not uncommon, while not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... before, when eastward; agreeing with the differences so frequently found in the azimuths and amplitudes, which had always been to show a greater east or less west variation when the head was on the west side of the meridian. The least average difference in any one of five sets of bearings was 5 deg., the greatest 61/2 deg., and the mean 5 deg. 54'; and according to the system adopted in correcting the variations, explained in the Appendix No. II. to the second volume, the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... mere a child for that honour—but he was taken or sent away; educated with great care under the first masters at home. When he was of age to enter the University, old Grayle was dead. Louis was sent by his guardians to Cambridge, with acquirements far exceeding the average of young men, and with unlimited command of money. My father was at the same college, and described him again,—haughty, quarrelsome, reckless, handsome, aspiring, brave. Does that kind of creature interest you, my ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... inserted into the hole, and the sap of the tree flows through it, and is caught in a pail or trough placed at the foot of the tree. The amount of sap which each tree yields varies considerably, but the average is from two to three gallons each day. It is said that some trees have yielded the enormous amount of twenty gallons in one day, while sometimes, on the other hand, the quantity is not more than a pint. The trees, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... peace with all the world and was agreeably conciliatory, as though he deprecated the existence of friction. He said that he would not do the members of the committee the injustice to suppose that they could seriously favor the passage of a bill which would deprive the intelligent average voter of one of his dearest privileges; but that he desired to put himself on record as thinking it a fortunate circumstance, on the whole, that the well-intentioned promoters of the bill had brought this matter to the attention of the legislature, ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... average bondwoman was of startling simplicity. It consisted of two pieces of stuff little wider than the greatest width of the wearer's body, tied by the corners over each shoulder, belted at the waist with a thong and laced together with fiber at the sides, from the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... often for a smoke and talk with me after dinner, and his favorite subject was Harry. As a subject of conversation, Harry was more successful than the average crime. In this respect he resembled a divorce or a murder. That's how it happened that Harry got on my mind. He is one of the most skilful riders of the human mind that I know of. He was wearing us out, and we were all bucking to get him off. Well, his father was thinking about him while ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... 486 m. higher up for vessels drawing 14 ft. of water, as far as Achual Point. Beyond that, according to Tucker, confirmed by Wertheman, it is unsafe; but small steamers frequently ascend to the Pongo de Manseriche, just above Achual Point The average current of the Amazon is about 3 m. an hour; but, especially in flood, it dashes through some of its contracted channels at the rate of 5 m. The U.S. steamer "Wilmington'' ascended it to Iquitos in 1899. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... embraces the facts of Christ's revelation of the Father, and of the will as it casts itself upon and submits to Him. But that exercise of faith is but the point which has to be drawn out into a golden line, woven into the whole length of a life. And it is in the continuity of that line that the average Christian so sadly fails, and because of that failure his acquaintance with God is so distant. How little time or thought we give to the character of God as revealed in Jesus Christ! We must be on intimate terms with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in which she was living with many devoted women who labored among the poor, and who prayed, as some people work, with an ardor which physically tired them. But nevertheless she had definitely retired from all that means life to the average woman of her type and class, with no intention of ever going back to it. She had taken a step towards the mystery which many people think of casually on appointed days, and which many people ignore, or try to ignore. Yet now she did not look as if she had the vocation. When she had lived ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... analysis of returns, more women vote in the better districts than in the slums, and the proportion of intelligent and refined voters to the ignorant and depraved is larger among women than among men. The average result, therefore, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... later becomes distasteful to her, and the duties of which she refuses to fulfil. Like the three preceding novels in our list, "A Social Experiment" is rather doleful, and seems to have been written for any other purpose rather than to cheer and stimulate the average reader who longs for pictures of life which rouse pleasant fancies and kindle tender sentiments. None of these books are in the least degree commonplace, but, by excluding what is chiefly dear and precious to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... course, for the ordinary all-around good dogs. With dogs that approximate perfection, and which only come in the same proportion as giants and dwarfs do in the human race (I believe the proportion is one in five thousand), and the advent of which would surprise the average kennel man as much as if the President had sent him a special invitation to dine with him at the White House, the price is problematical, and is negotiated solely by the demand for such a wonder by a comparatively ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... and to get rid of her he had finally given her a host of little cheap devotional books that had from time to time been sent to him from the publishers, and which he himself, disliking most modern books of devotion, had not troubled to read. He knew they were suited to the mentality of the average child of ten, and that therefore Annie with an effort might understand them and would certainly think ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... first from his astonishment. His bulging eyes sank back gradually into their orbits. His psychology, taking it all round, was really very creditable for an average sailor. He had been spared the humiliation of laying his ship to with a fair wind; and at once that man, of an open and truthful nature, spoke up in perfect good faith, rubbing together his brown, hairy hands— the hands of a master-craftsman upon ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... member of my church, you know—and always gives me things lots cheaper than I can get them anywhere else, because she's a member of my church, you know—she says to me that Brother Cameron said that the average church of to-day was the biggest fraud on earth. Now she was there and heard him. I don't know of course, whether he really said that or not; that is, I mean, you know,—I don't know whether he meant it that way or not. But ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... in wheelbarrows to the crusher platform, the run plank being never longer than 150 ft. Two men fed the stone into the crusher, and a bin-man helped load the wagons from the bin, and kept tally of the loads. The stone was measured loose in the wagons, and it was found that the average load was 1 cu. yds., weighing 2,400 lbs. per cu. yd. There were 40 wagon loads, or 60 cu. yds. crushed per 10-hr. day, although on some days as high as 75 cu. yds. were crushed. The stone was screened through a rotary screen, 9 ft. long, having three sizes of openings, -in., 1-in. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... two tubes, each capable of carrying the ordinary British railway, bored through a bed of cenomian chalk, two hundred feet thick on an average. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... customers, and in consequence they lose nothing. One would as soon believe the generality of Boers, as walk into the shaft of a coal mine. He has a reputation for lying, and he never brings discredit upon that reputation. When he lies, which, on an average, is every alternate time he opens his mouth, he does so with great enthusiasm, and the while he is delivering one lie, he is carefully considering the next. When he can't think of any more lies, he starts on the truth, but ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... argument that the average newspaper man would make," said Quinlan scornfully. "Mallard is news because the newspapers make news of him—and for no other reason. Let them quit, and he isn't news any more—he's a nonentity, he's nothing at all, he's null and he's void. So far as public opinion goes he will cease to exist, and ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... hundred thousand. 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 ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and inspiring experience, he returned to Oglethorpe as tutor: it was to be a year of hard work, especially in Greek. He described himself at this period as "a spare-built boy, of average height and underweight, mostly addicted to hard study, long reveries, and exhausting smokes with a German pipe." He did much miscellaneous reading and was busy with "hints and fragments of a poetical, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... why it gathered dust as it went the rounds. From the average commercial manager's point of view there is a question about that seamy kind of thing getting over with the playgoer. He wants to be entertained, not harrowed. That's pretty raw stuff. Except for the little woman and ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... meant a very different thing from what it does to the average English girl. She enjoyed herself with all her heart and soul, without one single reservation. To see her face at such moments was to behold pure sunshine; to hear her voice was to listen to the very essence of laughter and happiness. She ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... his remarks may be accurately judged by the reader, essay to define his own position and the sphere within which his observations extend. He is a born and bred Englishman and Londoner, of parentage partly Italian. His professional employment is that of a Government clerk, of fair average standing; he is also occupied a good deal in writing for publication, chiefly upon subjects of fine art. His circle of personal intimacy and acquaintanceship is mainly made up of artists and literary men, including especially several of those who have made themselves most prominent in these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... slow, as all travelling is in the desert. Camels can rarely exceed three miles an hour, and often make but two. We may calculate their average progress at two miles and a half, so that the reader will be pleased to bear in mind, that when I speak of a laborious day of twelve hours, he must not imagine us to have advanced more than ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... maiden, already in her thirteenth year, tall above the average. In his wanderings through the Pamunkey villages he had seen many young girls and squaws, but none of them had seemed to him so well built or with such clean-cut features as this damsel who gazed at him so fixedly. When Opechanchanough, catching ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... the characteristics of a saint and a martyr combined, and yet the average person is not attracted to him; but as soon as money and popularity flow towards him, then in his eyes he becomes next to a God; for people love to be touched on the material side of their nature rather than on the spiritual. They consider the spiritual well enough to talk about, and when a ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... rough estimate I reckon there are at least from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsies in the United Kingdom. Apart from London, if I may take ten of the Midland counties as a fair average, there are close upon 3,000 Gipsy families living in tents and vans in the by-lanes, and attending fairs, shows, &c.; and providing there are only man, wife, and four children connected with each charmless, cheerless, wretched abodes ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... of to-day offers an immense field for investigation. When we remember that five centuries ago the painters of the world could be counted by tens, and are told that now there is an average of twenty-five hundred painters in some foreign cities, we see that a lifetime is scarcely sufficient in which to study the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... had deserted him. Waldron was much better than the average amateur and now he gave Raymond fifty in two hundred and beat him by as much. They dined together presently, and Job Legg, who often lent a hand at 'The Tiger' on moments of extra pressure, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Helene Jegado is responsible for her actions you will acquit her. If you think that, without being devoid of free will and moral sense, she is not, according to the evidence, as well gifted as the average in humanity, you will give her the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... 20,000,000 pupils and students of all ages, from the toddlers in the kindergartens to the full-grown candidates for post-graduate honors, are registered in the schools, academies, colleges and universities of the United States. The average length of time which girls spend in school exceeds by nearly three years the average length of time which boys stay there; while the number of girls graduating from high-school courses, those which include United States history and civil government, is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... for a few minutes, and whistled a tune. Then he began again. "I've made a study of horses, Joe. Over forty years I've studied them, and it's my opinion that the average horse knows more than the average man that drives him. When I think of the stupid fools that are goading patient horses about, beating them and misunderstanding them, and thinking they are only clods of earth with a little life in ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... any of the Lavilettes presented a finer average than their new guest, who had come to give their feasting distinction, and what more time was to show. Indeed, the Hon. Mr. Ferrol had no morals to speak of, and very little honour. He was the penniless son of an Irish peer, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "but it never seems to occur to any one of you that every household has its different demands and regulations. The market fluctuates, the size of a family changes—fixed laws are impossible! No. Lizzie is no worse than lots of others, better than the average. I shall hold ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... constant strain of guiding over forty immature minds in the paths of knowledge will weigh upon the flesh, though the soul be patient and the heart light. Miss Willis's class comprised the children whose average age was twelve to thirteen—those who had been in the school three years. There were both boys and girls, and they remained with her a year. She had begun with the youngest children, but promotion had presently ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... for the voyage out: "For passage L1. For diet for eleven weeks at 4s. 8d. per week, total L3 11 4" [A rather longer passage than usual.] Constant Southworth came in the same ship and paid the same, L3 11 4, which may hence be assumed as the average charge, at that date, for a first-class passage. This does not vary greatly from the tariff of to-day, (1900) as, reduced to United States currency, it would be about $18; and allowing the value of sterling to be about four times ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... women being poorly paid, is that few know anything about either the principles or the practice of the most ordinary business affairs. We shall try in these articles to put girls in future on a better footing, and to make them in business equal, at any rate, to any average men. In this way there is a good chance of doubling their usefulness and value, and of more than ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... and men. However, none of these had made marked impression upon her. They had been mere incidents, pleasant, uninteresting, wearying, amusing. None had thrilled her.... So she had less experience to call to her aid than the average girl. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... almost identical with the Hebrew. A sarcophagus of Ezmunazar, king of Sidon, dating from the fifth century before Christ, was discovered a few years since, and is now in the Museum of the Louvre. It contains some thirty sentences of the length of an average verse in the Bible, and is in pure Hebrew.[345] In a play of Plautus[346] a Carthaginian is made to speak a long passage in his native language, the Punic tongue; this is also very readable Hebrew. The ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... you are the one to be considered." She had the self-sacrfficing devotion of the average woman. She fancied ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... party of rescue in the two punts would not have been able to reach the inundated farm, for it was only here and there that a firm place could be found for the poles, which generally sank deeply in the peat covered by the water to an average ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... and subject. Of these, Coppee devotes himself to domestic and social subjects; Louise Siefert indulges in the poetry of despair; Glatigny excels all in individuality of poetical treatment. The Parnassiens number three or four score poets; the average of their work is high, though to none can be assigned ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... in the British Isles, lies in the NE. of Ireland, touching the borders of five counties, is 16 m. long, and has an average breadth of 10 m. and a greatest depth of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... tomb. But in order that those who stopped outside the grating might make no mistake, the master had garlands of laurel, palettes surrounded with crowns, carved on the stone facade, and in the midst of this display of simple modesty a short inscription in gold letters of average size—"Renovales." Exactly like a store. Inside, in two studios where no one ever painted and which led to the real working studio, the finished pictures were exhibited on easels covered with antique textures, and callers gazed with wonder at the collection ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of wonder and amusement Selwyn watched the spectacle of these people of more than average education and intelligence contenting themselves with a perpetual routine of small-talk and genteel insularity, and he wondered how it was that a race so gifted with the blessed quality of humour could evolve a state of society offering ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... work at this time: I remember once writing for twenty-six consecutive hours without pausing or rising from my chair; and when, lately, I re-read the story then produced, it seemed quite as good as the average of my work in that kind. I hasten to add that it has never been printed in this country: for that matter, not more than half my short tales have found an American publisher. "Archibald Malmaison" was offered seven years ago to all the leading publishers in New York ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... fortunes of William Pitt the Elder were at full flood. England was in a fever of exultation—drunk with success. Just where the thought got abroad that the average Englishman is moderate in success and in defeat not cast down, I do not know. But this I have seen: all London mad, howling, exultant, savage drunk, because of the report that the Redcoats had subjugated this colony or that. To subdue, crush, slay and defeat, has caused shrieking ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... of Science is a set of six volumes written by the great scientists themselves, explaining the wonders of the telegraph, the camera, the steam engine, modern medicine, astronomy and natural laws. A vast scientific library condensed for the average reader—shipped subject ...
— Wholesale Price List of Newspapers and Periodicals • D. D. Cottrell's Subscription Agency
... LUBBOCK personally during his long membership of the House of Commons. He had neither grace of diction nor charm of oratory. But he had a way of getting Bills through all their stages which exceeded the average attained by more attractive speakers. In his references to Parliamentary life he mentions that GLADSTONE, when he proposed to abolish the Income Tax, told him that he intended to meet the deficiency partly by increase of the death duties. That was a fundamental ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... certainly too much. Such marvels are rare. But one thing or the other. For women of her stamp there are only two conditions, and no other—rapturous happiness and utter misery. She will be content with no average. It ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... continue for a long time after that period as rapidly as before, because our territory will not have become full. I do not state this inconsiderately. At the same ratio of increase which we have maintained, on an average, from our first national census, in 1790, until that of 1860, we should in 1900 have a population of 103,208,415. And why may we not continue that ratio far beyond that period? Our abundant room, our broad national ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... chimed in with the rough humor of the crowd. They were not bad-hearted men, but, though rough in their manners, not much worse on the average than an equal number of men in the Eastern States. They only thought of the fun to be obtained from the proceeding, and supposed they would be doing the Chinaman no ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... might easily be made, for the latter bird is nearly, if not quite, as large as the former. A specimen of the Californian vulture has been measured, which proved to be four feet eight inches in length, and nine feet eight inches between the tips of the wings! Now, this is actually larger than the average size of the condors; and it is not improbable, therefore, that individuals of the Californian species may yet be found quite equal to the largest ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... on the other side—left, it would be, if they considered the familiar northern hemisphere stars of Earth as showing "up" position. The old instruments had put them off-course. Still, they had to bear even farther left to try to match the direction and the average orbital speed—about twelve miles per second—of the Belt. Otherwise, small pieces of the old planet, hurtling in another direction—and/or at a different velocity—than themselves, ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... very well pleased with the way the men marched in this trip, doing 102 miles in six days, an average of seventeen miles a day; also with their excellent conduct and the cheerful way in which all difficulties were met. The results of the trip were over 1000 head of sheep and cattle and seven waggons captured, thirty barns ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... that the breath he drew seemed a fit measure of his earlier foreboding. For Fletcher outwardly was but the common type of farmer, after all, with a trifle more intelligence, perhaps, than is met with in the average Southerner of his class. "A plain man but honest, sir," was what one expected him to utter at every turn. It was written in the coarse open lines of his face, half-hidden by a bushy gray beard; in his small sparkling eyes, now blue, now brown; in his looselimbed, shambling movements ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... in mind we will not feel restricted to any part of the premises merely because it is out of sight behind the barn or garage. In the average moderate-sized place there will not be much choice as to land. It will be necessary to take what is to be had and then do the very best that can be done with it. But there will probably be a good deal of choice ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... decidedly un-American cast to his rich brown color, while his features, clean-cut and but slightly of the Negro type, with hands well shaped and nails quite clean, were a combination of conditions rarely met in the average slave. The first glance of suspicion was almost immediately lost to view in the smile of friendly greeting with which the officer's hand was extended. "I hope you may recover your goods," were the words he said and, rising, added: "I must be off." The captain had meanwhile ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... fit as usual," said Billy; "but Princeman is the chap who's going to carry off the honors for Meadow Brook. Bowled an average last night of two forty-five. I'm sorry ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... felt-hat factory, as 'trimmers;' that is to say, they finished hats by sewing in the lining, putting on the bands, and the like. In the busy season they could average together wages of about a pound a week; at dull times they earned less, and very occasionally had to support themselves for a week or two without employment. Since the age of fourteen Lydia herself had received help from no one; from sixteen she had lived in lodgings with Thyrza, independent. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... what may be called the "biography" of a book whereof, methinks, the writer has some reason to be proud, a work which, after occupying him for the third of a century, well nigh half the life of average man and the normal endurance of a generation, can show for result these sixteen volumes. A labour of such parts and magnitude deserves, in my humble opinion, some notice of the main features distinguishing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... by such men as these, to attack it was suicide. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that every shot told; and if several hit one man, on the other hand some single bolts struck two men, and that helped to bring up the average. For a good ten minutes the plucky fanatics persevered, thirsting like tigers for the blood of their foes; and the carnage was fearful. They had no artillery to shake the defence with before attacking, and the fire was uniform as ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... race of poets. We are the prosiest of the prosy. I have never in my life met with any race, except Icelanders and Norwegians, who are so completely the slave of hard fact. It is astounding how difficult the average Manxman finds it to put himself into the mood of the poet. That anything could come out of nothing, that there is such a thing as imagination, that any human brother of an honest man could say that a thing had been, which had not been, and yet not lie—these are bewildering difficulties to ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... splendid milkers. They are not allowed to roam the fields. They are much like the brown Swiss breed or red Devon, such as can be found in Devonshire. What struck me most was their splendid vigor. They are not placid and anaemic such as our average dairy cows, but full ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... 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 ...
— Report by the Governor on a Visit to the Micmac Indians at Bay d'Espoir - Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous. No. 54. Newfoundland • William MacGregor
... commercial pursuits, and become more extensive than it was in those days when it was defended by bishops and kings' sons in the British House of Lords. That this is not an unfounded opinion will be admitted by those who recollect that the London "Times," that representative of the average English mind, but recently published articles that could mean nothing less than a desire to revive the old system of slavery, with all that should be necessary to maintain it in force; that Mr. Carlyle is an advocate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... of parties. The queen has disappeared from them except in caricature, and the chivalrous face of Castelar and the heavy Bourbon mouth of Don Carlos are oftener seen than any others. A Madrid smoker of average industry will use a box a day. They smoke more cigarettes than cigars, and in the ardor of conversation allow their fire to go out every minute. A young Austrian, who was watching a senorito light his wisp of paper for the fifth time, and mentally comparing it with the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... name of Jesus is named, his ideas must to some extent be present, however much they are obscured and prevented from operating by lower modes of view. The Christianity of no country ought to be judged by the attitude of its most ignorant or even of its average adherents; and in every land where Christianity prevails, an influence connected with religion is at work, which makes for the emancipation and elevation of the human person, and for the awakening of the manifold energies of human nature. This, as we saw, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... upward; the fallen mass forming a sort of island in the centre of the stream, and crowding the waters on either side of it against the walls of the cave, so that they were worn out to twice the average width, and finally itself disappearing under the combined action of the current and the solvent properties ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... coldest, windiest, highest (on average), and driest continent; during summer, more solar radiation reaches the surface at the South Pole than is received at the Equator in an equivalent ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Just a shade over average height, he nevertheless conveyed the impression of a big man. His face, clean-shaven and exquisitely mobile, was stamped with an expression of power and force far beyond the ordinary. Magnetism seemed to radiate ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... only 10 pages a day? He who has read but that small amount daily, omitting Sundays, has read in a year 3130 pages, which is equal to six volumes of 521 pages each, enough to enable one to master a science. In five years he will have read 15,650 pages, equivalent to 30 large volumes, or to 60 of the average size. Now, we do not hesitate to say that 30 volumes of 521 pages each of history, biography, science, and literature, well chosen, well read, and well digested, will be worth to nine persons out of ten more than the average collegiate education is ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... as an indication of public sentiment is sometimes questioned, but it can hardly be doubted that the average man will read the newspaper with the sentiments of which he agrees. "I inquired about newspaper opinion," said Joseph Chamberlain in the House of Commons last May. "I knew no other way of getting at popular opinion." During the years between ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... credit of admitting to their homes products of intellectual industry and ingenuity beyond such matter as Family Bibles, Directories, Railway Guides, Charles Lamb's Biblia-a-Biblia, and sixpenny or threepenny editions of popular authors, which constitute the staple decorations of the average British middle-class household in this nonagenarian ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... of the Good, the True, and the Wronged. It had begun to view "The Basha's Favourite" in an extremely critical mood, and to manifest its keen sense of the utter impossibility of a play, which in years gone by had enchanted and moved to tears average audiences, not only in its native land, but in London as well, where it had been a sort of ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... men who mean to be head-gardeners before they are thirty, and eliminate woman from their lives as a dangerous obstacle to the successful career, pay a heavy penalty when they do fall in love. The average irresponsible young man who has hung about North Street on Saturday nights, walked through the meadows and round by the mill and back home past the creek on Sunday afternoons, taken his seat in the brake for the annual outing, shuffled his way through the polka at the tradesmen's ball, and generally ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... that, in every case, the spectators must be "shown" what happens in the working out of a plot, it is equally important that they be shown why it happens. This also has to do with sound and comprehensible motivation. "It is not so much a case of 'show me,' with the average American, as a common recognition that there must be a reason for the existence of everything created. He is inclined to give every play a fair show, will sit patiently through a lot of straining for effect, if there is a raison d'etre in the summing up, but his ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... quadratic equations, nor perform any of those feats which enchant and astonish the eyes of the citizens of London and elsewhere, where many dogs and hogs are devoutly believed to be vested with a degree of intelligence rather above than below the average range of human intellect. Far from this, honest Jean could do little or nothing more than eat, drink, sleep, and grunt; in which respects she was totally unrivalled, and the effect of her proficiency in these characteristic qualities became daily more manifest. At first, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... national, or cosmopolitan, and they are anonymous,—rising from among the multitude, and floating on their breath. They are generalizations of the average observation of a people. Undoubtedly, as a general thing, each one was first struck out by some superior mind. But usually this happened so early that the name of the author is lost. Proverbs—as the etymology hints—are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... when they were upstairs in the bedroom, "don't those folks ever go to bed? There was stuff enough to eat at that dinner to last the average family through three meals. Time I had finished the ice cream I was ready to curl up like a cat in front of the fire; but the rest of them seemed to be just startin' in to be lively. Are we goin' to keep this up very long? If we are, I'll have to sleep in the daytime, like a fo'mast ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the horns are periodically renewed, the drain on the constitution must be greater; the horns, for instance, of the moose weigh from fifty to sixty pounds, and those of the extinct Irish elk from sixty to seventy pounds—the skull of the latter weighing on an average only five pounds and a quarter. Although the horns are not periodically renewed in sheep, yet their development, in the opinion of many agriculturists, entails a sensible loss to the breeder. Stags, moreover, in escaping ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... felt it time to be gone. But the sense that their parting was near made her more anxious lest she should have unintentionally left some painful impression on Philip's mind. It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive; when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves floodmarks ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... but led off; and they made for the edge of the cliff, which ran along, on an average, three hundred feet above where the waves beat at their feet, but they had not gone far before Joe, who ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... simile! We mortals cross the ocean of this world 100 Each in his average cabin of a life; The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room. Now for our six months' voyage—how prepare? You come on shipboard with a landsman's list Of things he calls convenient: so they are! An India screen is pretty furniture, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... higher average as to height, to fix which at five feet ten would, I think, be a just estimate. It is rare, however, to find him attain the exceptional stature, quite commonly observed with the white, though, where he yields to the latter in this respect, there is compensation for it in the way ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... The average quatrain is in iambic pentameter with alternate lines rhyming. Sometimes the first and fourth lines rhyme and the second and third, and occasionally one sees a detached Omaric stanza. It all depends upon the thought and the way it is to be expressed. One thing ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... case that I incline to the belief that taxation so graded as to result in a maximum average of say 33-1/3 per cent. would produce at least as great a revenue as a maximum ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... Merriwell?" one of his classmates asked of another. "He was making right along at one time, and we all thought he would head the class, but now he is making an average of less ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... range of low mountains on the eastern edge of the central plateau of France, separating the basin of the Rhone from those of the Loire and Garonne; average height from 3000 to 4000 ft.; the chief scene of the dragonnades against the Huguenots under ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... had built up about him an organization of which he was somewhat afraid and with which he was vastly bored. On his staff there were five famous men, and he had made every one of them. At first it amused him to manufacture celebrities. He found he could take an average reporter from the daily press, give him a "line" to follow, a trust to fight, a vice to expose,—this was all in that good time when people were eager to read about their own wickedness,—and in two years the reporter would be recognized as an authority. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... know just as much about it as these other Johnnies do." (I am not defending their conversation either as regards style or matter: I am merely quoting.) "And even if you don't, what does it matter? The average reader knows less. How is ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... then, Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse to the life—certainly no more than an average sample of his kind; but as he is to go through a considerable variety of situation and circumstance, I thought you would like to have him as distinctly before your mind's eye as it was in my power to present him.—Well—he put his hat on, as I have said; ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... in human nature. The great Parrhasius is reported by Pliny to have painted licentious little pictures, "refreshing himself" (says the writer) by this means after more serious labors. Thus at the same time that painting was making great technical advances, its nobility of purpose was on the average declining. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... memorable among the colored people of the city; not alone for the dress and display, but for the high average of intelligence and culture that distinguished the gathering as a whole. There were a number of school-teachers, several young doctors, three or four lawyers, some professional singers, an editor, ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... hammocks were slung from tree to tree. Here and there, in openings in the forest, patches of cassava and indigo appeared; and there was a look of neatness and comfort about the little settlement superior to the average. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... defense of segregation, for example, cited the performance of the 92d Division. When asked whether a 15 percent black Army would reduce efficiency, he said, "from our experience in the past I think the time might come when it wouldn't, but the average educational standards of these men would not be up to the average of the white soldier. In modern combat a man is thrown very much on his own initiative."[14-39] This attitude was closely related to the Army's estimates of white morale: ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... able to rid himself of the impression left upon his mind when first he heard the story from his client's lips, that there was in it an element of coincidence—too like dramatic fiction, or that if taken ideally, it was above the average juryman's head. ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... this title, a series of the masterpieces of the English tongue, which, while well within the reach of the average buyer, shall be at once an ornament to the shelf of him that owns, and a delight to the eye ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... indicate incidentally that this desirable concentration of the energies of personality is so difficult a thing that we are compelled to resort to our memory of what we experienced in rare and fortunate moments in order to establish its results. I suggest that it is not to our average moments of insight that we have to appeal, but to our exceptional moments of insight; since it is only at rare moments in our lives that we are able to enter into what I ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... same time is it to foresee that if a man sits down before the Gospel with the deliberate intention of improving the style of the Evangelists by transposing their words on an average of seven (B), eight ([Symbol: Aleph]), or twelve (D) times in every page, he is safe to convict himself of folly in repeated instances, long before he has reached the end of his task. Thus, when the scribe ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... course of the average shooting experience in British East Africa the sportsman is likely to see between twenty and thirty different species of animals. From the windows of the car as he journeys from Mombasa to Nairobi, three hundred and twenty-seven ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... he was above the average height; his eyes were gray, his features regular and strong; his carriage that of perfect, robust health influenced by his years of ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the age of 36, which was considerably above the average age to which a pirate might expect ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... for the working out of the pronunciation of the more difficult names and words will be the only preparation for reading The Spartan Twins needed by the average fifth grade class. The story can usually be read at ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... the annual average addition of churches as five or six, raised the question whether the time had not come for doubling that rate. The Association is glad to recognize this worthy aspiration and itself to avow the spirit of it, and still further to remind the friends ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... own reputation as a leader among them, it was not in his conscience to encourage any woman whom he did not find especially attractive or useful. Why spoil her chances? Why make her discontented with the average male creature? Had Sara written to him in ordinary circumstances, inviting him, after some months of mutual coldness, to lunch, he would have replied, with sorrowful dignity, that it was wiser to leave things as they were. But the case had altered. The future Duchess ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... this malady of his is not permanent and incurable. The very violence with which the germ of loquacity has attacked him gives me hope. You must remember that before this seizure he was rather a noticeably silent man. Sometimes I think that it is just Nature's way of restoring the average, and that soon the fever may burn itself out. Or it may be that a sudden shock ... ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse |
