"Competency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first, he was kindly, yet honestly told, his knowledge was too limited and inaccurate; yet, notwithstanding this, and some almost rude repulses afterward, he persisted in his application and his hopes. To give evidence of competency, he once told me he was arranging a new spelling-book, the publication of which would make him known as a literary man, and be an unspeakable advantage to "the rising generation." And this naturally brought on the following colloquy about ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... smart enough to drive a close bargain, they consider it only fair to take you in. A man loses very little in the public estimation by making over all his property to some convenient friend, in order to defraud his creditors, while he retains a competency for himself. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... made connect closely with basal studies of the actuating agencies that condition great enterprises. In the judgment of the writer, it is a false view to suppose that any short, superficial study of so vast a subject as the constitution and history of the earth can result in economic competency. In so far as time for study is limited, it should be concentrated on the great underlying factors that constitute the essentials of the science. It is here assumed that men who care to take a college course at all are seeking for a large success and are ambitious for a high personal career. ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... objections applied to the credibility, and not to the competency, of witnesses, which distinctions of the lawyers I endeavoured to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... native land. Her husband had ruined himself and disgraced his family, and she did not care to meet the obloquy which awaited her in the midst of her friends. The consul informed her, when she had stated her views, that she could make a good living, and perhaps a competency, by keeping a boarding-house in Melbourne. Mr. Watson promptly offered to assist her to the means for making a beginning. Before the yacht sailed on her home voyage, the consul had purchased for her such an ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... public riot. There were cuts and lumps on his head, and he would guide your forefinger through his short iron-grey hair and tell you how he had come by his trade-marks. He owned all sorts of certificates of extra-competency, and at the bottom of his cabin chest of drawers, where he kept the photograph of his wife, were two or three Royal Humane Society medals for saving lives at sea. Professionally—it was different when crazy steerage-passengers jumped overboard—professionally, McPhee does not approve of saving ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... be monks who have taken vows of modest competency (about 1000 pounds a year, derived from consols), who spurn popularity as medieval monks spurned money—and with about as much sincerity. Their great object is to try and find out what they like and then get it. They do not live ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... return, and the sum put in the other was lost through the incompetency of his honest but inexperienced friend. His wife brought him a small property, but at no time in his life was he possessed of more than a modest competency. But he had never any discontent with his fortune nor any desire ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... inclined to doubt. The claim put forward by public schools concerning the 'classical education' they provide seems to be more an awkward evasion than anything else; it is used whenever there is any question raised as to the competency of the public schools to impart culture and to educate. Classical education, indeed! It sounds so dignified! It confounds the aggressor and staves off the assault—for who could see to the bottom of this bewildering formula all at once? And this has long been the customary ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... society of the first literary men of the day. After the first and inevitable struggles of a poor author, had he possessed even half as much talent for business as capacity for intellectual effort, he might soon have obtained a competency by his pen; but, unfortunately, though he was not seriously addicted to intemperance, his convivial habits, and his attraction for the gaming table, soon scattered his hard-won earnings. His "knack of hoping," however, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... which no forbearance can go; and, thank heaven, we have no need of looking to Lady Griffin for sordid wealth: we have a competency without her. Is it not so, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was supposed to be a barrister, and had chambers in Fig Tree Court, Temple. He was a handsome, lazy, care-for-nothing fellow of seven-and-twenty, the only son of the younger brother of Sir Michael Audley, who had left him a moderate competency. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... restriction, modification, limitation; endowment, ability, eligibility, capability, fitness, competency; allowance, diminution, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... need not any mythical proof of its competency in this direction. Hyde, in his History of the Saracens, relates with authenticity, that Al Amin, the Caliph of Bagdad, was engaged at chess with his freedman Kuthar, at the time when Al Mamun's forces were carrying on the siege ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... C's: Cheerfulness, content, and competency. Cheerfulness in our cups. Content in our minds. Competency ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... eighteen years since I conceived the idea of fruit culture as a competency for old age, being then, as now, employed as representative for some concern and required to travel over this state, earning a livelihood for myself and family. The nature of my first work on the road ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... the Cross is the Man of the Throne. Note the expression "Because he is the Son of Man." That indicates His fitness to judge: He can sympathize. But He is equal with the Father. This too indicates His competency to judge, for it implies omniscience. The texts which speak of God as judging the world are to be understood as referring to God the Son. No appeal can be made from ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... man, as soon as you can buy such a place, even if you have to put on it a mortgage reaching from base to cap-stone. The much abused mortgage, which is ruin to a reckless man, to one prudent and provident is the beginning of a competency and a fortune, for the reason he will not be satisfied until he has paid it off, and all the household are put on stringent economies until then. Deny yourself all superfluities and all luxuries until you can say: "Everything in this house is mine, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... the human understanding. It has been the era, in short, when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal principle; when society has maintained its rights against military power, and established on foundations never hereafter to be shaken its competency to ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... learn something from transcribing it, I would do it for L20. He will call on you to-morrow morning, and then if you please you may recommend me. The character closely resembles the ancient Irish, so I think you can answer for my competency.—Yours ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the Hague conference was the establishment of an absolutely impartial judicial tribunal." Some of the chief features of this permanent court of arbitration were as follows: (1) Each nation which agreed to the plan was to appoint, within three months, four persons of recognized competency in international law, who were to serve for six years as members of the International Court; (2) an International Bureau was established at The Hague for the purpose of carrying on all intercourse between the signatory powers ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... to say what, or whether, improvements of any kind might be made in connection with the Trinity Corporation. We do not pretend to be competent to judge whether or not that work might be better done. All that we pretend to is a certain amount of competency to judge, and right to assert, that it is well done, and one of the easiest ways to assure one's-self of that fact is, to go visit the lighthouses and light-vessels on the coast, and note their perfect management; the splendid adaptation of scientific ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... dishonest transactions of the bosses led to discontent among the labouring classes, and a railroad strike came, and went, in the winter of 1886. Its successful adjustment was a credit to capital and labour, to our police competency, and to general municipal common-sense. In Chicago and St. Louis, this strike lasted several days; in Brooklyn, it was settled in a few hours. The deliverance left us facing the problem whether the differences between capital and labour in America would ever be settled. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... competency of our Government to these beneficent duties might doubt it in trials which put to the test its strength and efficiency as a member of the great community of nations. Here too experience has afforded us the most satisfactory proof in its favor. Just ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... under the laws of the State or Territory from which such person owing service or labor may have escaped, with a certificate of such magistracy, or other authority as aforesaid, with the seal of the proper court or officer thereto attached, which seal shall be sufficient to establish the competency of the proof, also by affidavit, of the identity of the person whose service or labor is claimed to be due as aforesaid, that the person so arrested does in fact owe service or labor to the person or persons claiming him or her, in the State or Territory from which ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... but an abundant provision for their station in life; and they entered on their matrimonial duties with as good a prospect of happiness as the ills of this world can give to health, affection, and competency. Their union had been deferred by Dr. Ives until his son was established, with a view to keep him under his own direction during the critical period of his first impressions in the priesthood; and as no objection now remained, or rather, the only one he ever felt was removed by the ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... and thinks that as your royal highness is to go to the field, and will be exposed, as a brave commander, to the uncertain fate of battle, that you should assure the future of all those who are dear to you, and arrange a certain competency for them. A good opportunity now offers to you. Count Schmettau will sell his villa at Charlottenburg, and it would be agreeable to his majesty that you should purchase it, and assign it to those dearest to you. In order to give you as little trouble as possible, his ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the spring of the following year, having served for eighteen months as a naval cadet, I was promoted to the rank of midshipman, the captain and first lieutenant, having convinced themselves of my competency by asking me how I would manage to get a six-pounder to the top of a perpendicular hill, my answer to which question was that I would head it up in a cask and ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... quite Conversant with the French, German, and Italian Languages, and well acquainted with Botany and Entomology, is desirous of obtaining some permanent Employment. The most satisfactory References as to competency and respectability of family ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... she united consideration and frankness with singular success. For one instance among a thousand:—A lady with whom she had had friendly relations some time before, and who became impoverished in a quiet way by hopeless sickness, preferred poverty, with an easy conscience, to a competency attended by some uncertainty about the perfect rectitude of the resource. Lady Byron wrote to an intermediate person exactly what she thought of the case. Whether the judgment of the sufferer was right or mistaken was nobody's business ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... to what its acceptance would mean. It would mean gripping life again with the full strength of both hands. It would mean many anxious days and sleepless nights. It would mean spurring herself to a high degree of competency. You didn't get fifty dollars a week for anything that was easy to do. She knew that now, by hard experience. And then the transplantation to New York would mean an end of the cool healing peace of her present life. Things would ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... had been well thumped into them by some agency or other, and it led to many a quarrel with the minority who held free trade views. They were opposed to the introduction of Board of Trade examinations for the purpose of obtaining certificates of competency, which is another evidence of their undeveloped sense. And I have actually known instances where exception was taken by common sailors to the close scrutiny of Board of Trade surveyors into the defects of a vessel they had long sailed ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... seers, however, they are more important, and frequently more successful persons, attaining, of course, various degrees of proficiency and reputation. An accomplished dreamer has a sure competency in that gift. He is reverently consulted, handsomely paid, and, in general, strictly obeyed. His influence, when once established, is more potent even than that of a war chief. The dignity and profit of the position are baits sufficient to command the attention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... blind devotion of Laurel Run to John Baker's relict did not stop here. In its zeal to assure the Government authorities of the necessity for a post-office, and to secure a permanent competency to the postmistress, there was much embarrassing extravagance. During the first week the sale of stamps at Laurel Run post-office was unprecedented in the annals of the Department. Fancy prices were given for the ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... remarked, if I were required to superintend a Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I would narrow the matter down to a single question—the only one, so far as the previous controversies have informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable competency have testified: Was the author of Shakespeare's Works a lawyer?—a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? I would put aside the guesses, and surmises, and perhapses, and might-have-beens, and could-have beens, and must-have-beens, and we-are justified-in-presumings, ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Chelsea Bun House, in Jew's Row, was pulled down in 1839. Sir R. Philips, writing in 1817, said, "Those buns have afforded a competency, and even wealth, to four generations of the same family; and it is singular that their delicate flavour, lightness, and richness have never ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... whose long life thus triumphantly closed, was happy in many ways. She possessed rank and a competency and all the social advantages which such things involve. She was blessed with exceptional vigour of body, of mind, and of spirit. She was happy also in the time of her earthly life. Above all was she happy in the fact that she came so early and so completely under the power of saving faith in ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... help of one another, just as two drops of water on a leaf rush together and make one? Nothing but a miserable prejudice,—but a prejudice so strong that women will starve in any other mode of life rather than accept competency ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the world, and, as far as that will read, I desire it should. I would not have the world believe I married out of interest and to please my friends; I had much rather they should know I chose the person, and took his fortune, because 'twas necessary, and that I prefer a competency with one I esteem infinitely before a vast estate in other hands. 'Tis much easier, sure, to get a good fortune than a good husband; but whosoever marries without any consideration of fortune shall never be allowed to do it, but of so reasonable an apprehension the ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... personal interest in the success of their government, that places would not be given away on irrelevant considerations. Their system, with all its faults, insured the acquisition of a certain considerable competency in administration before a servant reached an elevation at which he could do ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Considering education, then, as a producer of wealth, it follows that the more educated a people are, the more will they abound in all those conveniences, comforts, and satisfactions which money will buy; and, other things being equal, the increase of competency and the decline of pauperism will be ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... at last my domestic hearth seemed to be established with every possible prospect of a comfortable competency. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... cheerily, and did not appear to notice the bareness of the room. They asked something of her history, and told of their grandmothers, who also had seen much sorrow; and in this way drew her out till she told of her former competency, of her early advantages in England, and of all the misfortunes which had brought her to her present position. "And yet," she said, "I have little to complain of while I have the love and tender care of such a son ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... among the atolls (low coral islands) of the Gilbert group, and reached Samoa towards the close of '89. By that time gratitude and habit were beginning to attach me to the islands; I had gained a competency of strength; I had made friends; I had learned new interests; the time of my voyages had passed like days in fairyland; and I decided to remain. I began to prepare these pages at sea, on a third cruise, in the trading steamer Janet Nicoll. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... soon as it was suggested. Perhaps Dion and she had been altogether too Doric. She began to think so. But then she thought: "Robin's with his father. What harm could come to him with his father, and such a competent father too?" That thought of Dion's strength, coolness, competency reassured her; she dwelt on it. Of course with Dion Robin must be ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... they had ever tried to do without it. He knew that the lack made a man petty, mean, grasping; it distorted his character and caused him to view the world from a vulgar angle; when you had to consider every penny, money became of grotesque importance: you needed a competency to rate it at its proper value. He lived a solitary life, seeing no one except the Athelnys, but he was not lonely; he busied himself with plans for the future, and sometimes he thought of the past. His recollection dwelt now and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... patient refused to put confidence in the physician of his own race, notwithstanding the closer intimacy of social contact. It was not until after he had demonstrated his competency to treat disease as well as his white competitor that he was able to win recognition among his own people. The colored physician is everywhere in open competition with the white practitioner, who never refuses to treat Negro patients, if allowed to assume the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... success;—but we are differently constituted, and while I honor your spirit and enterprise, and do justice to the honest and intelligent business men of your city, I am contented with my own lot, which is that of a farmer, whose object is to earn a competency from his native soil, or, in other words, from ploughing and planting. I have no desire for speculation, no courage for it; neither do I think, with a family like mine, I have a right to risk ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... of which he had an enormous holding. But it took years longer than he had calculated to make good his plans, and in the interval came a financial storm that compelled him to submit to a heavy loss. He bore his misfortune with fortitude, and still had a competency ample for him, when there came a torrent of ill-fortune—the loss of his beloved wife, and the failure of his sons, under circumstances that bore the distressing stamp of insanity in one of them, a taint of madness that was in the blood which had been ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... nothing better than to make a scrivener of or a clerk in some Government department. The poor fellow had a good handwriting —this, indeed, deteriorated later. Through his parents' influence, it was thought he might ultimately attain a moderate competency. Perhaps Laure, the favourite sister and early confidante of the novelist, may have used persuasion at this juncture with her father and mother. At any rate, as the issue of a great deal of lively discussion, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... work again before the neighbors are out of bed." No trade rules or customs limited or levied toll on his productiveness. He speedily became by far the most successful printer in all the colonies, and in twenty years was able to retire from active business with a competency. ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... regular average rate of remuneration was five guineas. But I was young and inexperienced; and after living in the Quartier Latin for nearly a year on fifteenpence a day, cultivating French literature on petits noirs, four guineas a week was a competency. "Trois de cafe" is what Daudet in his "Trente ans de Paris" calls this sip of nectar. "C'est a dire," he explains, "pour trois sous d'un cafe savoureux balsamique raisonnablement edulcore." But Daudet must have frequented aristocratic ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... I worked under the conditions I have described to you till I was nearly thirty. Then. I broke down physically. At the same time it happened that I inherited a small competency. I went abroad, lived in Italy for a couple of years. I left England with the firm intention of getting my health and then returning to work harder than ever. But during those two years I educated myself. When I reached England again ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Everybody remembers it—how for six weeks it was the daily food of Calaveras County; how for six weeks the intellectual and moral and spiritual competency of Mr. James Byways to dispose of his property was discust with learned and formal obscurity in the court, and with unlettered and independent prejudice by camp-fires and in bar-rooms. At the end of that time, when it was logically established that at least ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... LANDS lying along the whole line of their Railroad, 700 MILES IN LENGTH, upon the most Favorable Terms for enabling Farmers, Manufacturers, Mechanics and Workingmen to make for themselves and their families a competency, and a HOME they can call THEIR OWN, as will appear ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... instance of Colonel Campbell, the regimental-surgeon, Dr Stuart, appointed Jackson acting hospital or surgeon's mate—a rank now happily abolished in the British army; for those who filled it, whatever might be their competency or skill, were accounted and treated no better than drudges. Although discharging the duties that now devolve on the assistant-surgeon, they were not, like him, commissioned, but only warrant-officers, and therefore ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... twelvemonth the son-in-law of Mrs. Ascott Larkfield. Through Carnaby people learnt as much of his friend's history as it concerned anyone to know: that Harvey Rolfe had begun with the study of medicine, had given it up in disgust, subsequently was 'in business', and withdrew from it on inheriting a competency. They were natives of the same county, and learnt their Latin together at the Grammar School of Greystone, the midland town which was missed by the steam highroad, and so preserves much of the beauty and tranquillity of days gone by. Rolfe seldom ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... there had been, and a great deal less. The investments had not turned out as they promised; not only had dividends been passed, but there had been permanent shrinkages. What was once an amiable competency from the pooling of their joint resources had dwindled to a sum that needed a careful eye both to the income and the outgo. Alice's becoming a young lady had increased their expenses by the suddenly mounting cost of her dresses, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... complexion of the April landscape. She surveyed the scene from Isabelle's motor with complacent superiority. How much better she had arranged her life than either Margaret or Isabelle! After the talk with Percy the previous evening, she felt a new sense of power and competency, with a touch of gratitude for that husband who had so frankly and unselfishly "accepted her point of view" and allowed her "to have her own life" without a distressing sense of wrecking anything. Conny's conscience was ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... wolf-gnawings of great hopes, which have withered and daily grown less when the difficulties of maintaining an honourable and illustrious career have unfolded themselves within his sight. Before him still lie the attractions of a moderate competency to be shared with the one whose absence would make even the Upper Region unendurable, and after having this entrancing future once shattered by the tiger-like cupidity of a depraved and incapable Mandarin, he is determined to welcome ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... which availed them still less. By the former course they would probably have delayed the final sentence, and in the time thus gained the powerful intercession of their friends might perhaps have not been ineffectual. By obstinately persisting in denying the competency of the tribunal which was to try them, they furnished the duke with an excuse for cutting short the proceedings. After the last assigned period had expired, on the 1st of June, 1658, the council of twelve declared them guilty, and on the 4th of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... bankrupt stock of kings. According to their intellectualities their talk is of labor and capital, of working-girls' clubs and model tenement-houses, of Buddha and Zola, of foreign titles, and transplanted fox-hunting. To-day a hundred thousand dollars is barely a competency, and a building less than a dozen stories high dwarfs the highway of trade. The vestibule limited, the ocean grey-hound, the Atlantic cable, and the voice-bearing telephone have made all nations kin, and ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... the drudgery stage to the remunerative and agreeable stage, the skilful stage. They spend their lives at the beginning of occupations, which are always most agreeable. These people rarely reach the stage of competency, comfort, and contentment. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... is dependent for her support on such efforts as she is still capable of making. These, were she a person of common fortitude, energy and hopefulness, would be very small, for to her great privation is added very imperfect general health. Yet she has struggled on in the hope of gaining such a competency as should ultimately secure 'a home that she may call her own.' I commend Miss Davenport to all who feel for the afflicted and who ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... married one month and would remain in the South until the end of winter. He was recalled by the rehearsals of his drama. The notary who had charge of his affairs gave him twelve thousand pounds' income, a large competency, which enabled him to work for the pure and disinterested love of art, and without concessions to common people. The young poet furnished an elegant apartment in an old and beautiful house on the Quai d'Orsay, and sought out some of his old comrades—among others Paul Sillery, who now held a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... her own title was open to grave objection, and unwilling to admit even a reversionary right in her rival and enemy the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament to pass a law, enacting that whoever should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, with the assent of the Estates of the realm, to alter the succession, should suffer death as a traitor: But the situation of James was widely different from that of Elizabeth. Far ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which I would recommend to those who are in trade, and who know their own habits of life, and the extent of their families, would be to fix upon a certain sum, which they may think sufficient for a future decent and moderate competency, and to leave off business, as soon as this should be obtained. Such a step would be useful. It would be making room for others to live as well as themselves. It would be honourable, for it would be generous. And it would operate as a certain preventive of the money-getting spirit, as well ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... whether it would not have been as well, in this particular case, for Hawthorne to have remained in his own country. If he could have written five or six romances more, this would have secured him a good competency, and would have assured a sufficient income for his family after his death. As it happened, the Liverpool consulate did not prove ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... retreat where the owner of the terrible clock which drove him crazy is walking under the shelter of the high walls? Has the young Doctor's crown yet received the seal which is Nature's warrant of wisdom and proof of professional competency? And Number Five and her young friend the Tutor,—have they kept on in their dangerous intimacy? Did they get through the tutto tremante passage, reading from the same old large edition of Dante which the Tutor recommended as the best, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Resolutions therefore mean TO ESTABLISH the equity and justice of a taxation of America by grant and not by imposition; TO MARK the legal competency of the colony Assemblies for the support of their government in peace, and for public aids in time of war; TO ACKNOWLEDGE that this legal competency has had a dutiful and beneficial exercise; and that experience has shown the benefit of their grants, and the futility of Parliamentary taxation ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... financially, and in his latter years he was for the first time relieved from pressing obligations by an afflicting event—the death of his only son, who was a surgeon in Washington's army. The money paid to the son by the Government for his services gave the father the only financial competency he ever knew. Two daughters survived him, but with him died ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... compared to the money of some commonplace adversary? Preston Cheney, the native-born American directly descended from a Revolutionary soldier, would be handicapped in the race with some Michael Murphy whose father had made a fortune in the saloon business, or who had himself acquired a competency as a ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Pitt Crawley might have become very wealthy—if he had been an attorney in a country town, with no capital but his brains, it is very possible that he would have turned them to good account, and might have achieved for himself a very considerable influence and competency. But he was unluckily endowed with a good name and a large though encumbered estate, both of which went rather to injure than to advance him. He had a taste for law, which cost him many thousands yearly; and being a great ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... now. You have given up business, from ill health, and exhibit a ripe old age, possibly a little over-ripe, at thirty-five. Your dreams of the forthcoming ten years have not been exactly fulfilled; you have not precisely retired on a competency, because the competency retired from you. Indeed, the suddenness with which your physician compelled you to close up your business left it closed rather imperfectly, so that most of the profits are found to have leaked out. You are economizing rather strictly, just now, in respect to everything ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... most ingenuous and sweet spirit, a sharp and season'd wit, a straight judgment and a strong mind. Fortune could never break him, nor make him less. He counts it his pleasure to despise pleasures, and is more delighted with good deeds than goods. It is a competency to him that he can be virtuous. He doth neither covet nor fear; he hath too much reason to do either; and that commends ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... misery at this moment, eating the hearts of thousands of Englishmen? For, within these few days, the Victor of Waterloo expressed his conviction that England was the only country in which "the poor man, if only sober and industrious, WAS QUITE CERTAIN of acquiring a competency!" And it is this man, imbued with this opinion, who is to be hailed as the presiding wisdom—the great moral strength—the healing humanity of the Tory Cabinet. If rags and starvation put up their prayer to the present Ministry, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... money," were the first words she heard. "Quite a different errand, Mr. Campion. It is some weeks since I left you now, and I left you because I had a competency bequeathed ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... requisite to Union success was a commander for the Army of the Potomac in whose competency the Administration, the people, and most of all the soldiers would have confidence. In the judgment of military men it was idle to intrust another battle to the generalship of Hooker; and as the army moved across Maryland to meet Lee on the soil of Pennsylvania, General Hooker was relieved ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... not created by the subdivision of the officer corps into grades on a basis of relative rank. Such subdivision is for the purpose of classification from the standpoint of potential competency and capacity for responsibility, and carries no authority to command by virtue of rank alone. Organization, systematized connection for a specific purpose, ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... the clerk, but not to consecrate the church. The 123rd Novel of Justinian, promulgated about the end of the 5th century, decreed "that if any man should erect an oratory, and desire to present a clerk thereto by himself or his heirs, if they furnish a competency for his livelihood, and nominate to the bishop such as are worthy, they may be ordained.'' The 57th Novel empowered the bishop to examine them and judge of their qualifications, and, where those were sufficient, obliged him ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... enlightened citizenship. Then, with rare exceptions, women were everywhere remanded to poverty and servile dependence, being precluded from following those avocations and engaging in those pursuits which make competency and independence not a difficult achievement. Now, there is scarcely any situation or profession, in the arrangements of society, to which they may not and do not aspire, and in which many of them are not usefully engaged; whether in new and varied industrial employment, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... ability, competency, expertness, readiness, aptitude, dexterity, faculty, skill, capability, efficacy, force, strength, capacity, efficiency, might, susceptibility, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... ready for shearing, and preserving law and order in this hustling frontier town. Money was still easy in the town, and had Sergeant Crisp been minded for the mere closing of his eyes or turning of his back upon occasion he might have retired early from the Force with a competency. Unhappily for Sergeant Crisp, however, there stood in the pathway of his fortune the awkward fact of his conscience and his oath of service. Consequently he was forced to grub along upon the munificent bounty of the daily pay with which Her Majesty awarded the faithful service ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... wherever she has political power. Man has long overcome the superstitions that still engulf woman. In the economic competitive field, man has been compelled to exercise efficiency, judgment, ability, competency. He therefore had neither time nor inclination to measure everyone's morality with a Puritanic yardstick. In his political activities, too, he has not gone about blindfolded. He knows that quantity and not quality ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... spoil, he resigned his dictatorship, after having enjoyed it but fourteen days. The senate would have enriched him, but he declined their proffers, choosing to retire once more to his farm and his cottage, content with competency and fame. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... severe attack he had of bronchitis, too, two months ago. I just saw Helen for a minute, she reported him to be unconscious. If he dies, he must surely leave Helen something; it may not be all, but it will be at least a competency; and I was thinking, John, that if you did not want Kynaston, and would let them live there, the marriage might come off at last; they have been attached to each other a long time, and to live rent free would ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... towered above these earthly distinctions; that, in his judgement, the CAUSE gave dignity to the institution, and not the wealth of its endowment or the renown of its scholars; that this door and not another was opened to him by Providence, and he only wished to be assured of his competency to fulfil his trust and this to make his few remaining years a comfort and blessing to his suffering country. I had spoken to his human feelings; he had now revealed himself to me as one 'whose life was hid with Christ in God.' ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... of the citizens' army of France during the Revolution—was necessary; so that every young man in Germany physically competent to bear arms might receive the training of a soldier, whether he wished it or not, and remain at the call of the Government for military duty during all his years of competency, even if he were the only son of a widow, or a widower with little children, or the sole support of a family or other dependents. In order to the completeness of this military ideal the army became the nation and the nation became the army ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... between men, but suddenly she looked up and smiled. It came out on her face fresh and delicately as an apple orchard breaking to bloom, and besides making it quite spring in the room, discovered in herself a new evidence of the competency of Mr. David Dassonville to advise the way of riches. She looked fragile and expensive as she sat in her silken shawl, her dark hair lifted up in a half moon from her brow, her hands lying in her lap half-covered with the lace of her sleeves, white and perfect like twin flowers. ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... was fond of talking about him. He was, he said, tall and thin, habitually wore, in winter, a cap of white wool, and one of cotton in summer. He wore over his clothes an apron of white leather when he worked, and as he was always working, his costume scarcely ever varied. He had acquired more than competency by labour and economy, for the inhabitants of Cremona were accustomed to say, 'As rich as Stradivari!'"[29] The house he occupied stands in the Piazza Roma, formerly called the Square of San Domenico, in the centre of which was the church ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... irritated those whom it condemned to avoidable hardship, and their name was legion. It was also part of an almost imperceptible revolutionary process similar to that which was going on in several other countries for transferring wealth and competency from one class to another and for goading into rebellion those who had nothing to lose by "violent change in the politico-social ordering." The government, whose powers were concentrated in the hands of M. Clemenceau, had little ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... of law shall not take cognizance of any suits which arise out of the allegations that rights have been infringed by illegal action on the part of the executive authorities, and which fall within the competency of the court of administrative ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... friendship, where he professed it, went much beyond his professions; and I have been told of strong and generous instances of it by the persons themselves who received them, though his hereditary income was little more than a bare competency. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... while another has been condemned to eat the bitter bread of poverty. He may reply that he has been industrious and provident, that he has passed a life of anxious labor to amass the wealth or the competency he enjoys. But can he forget that all his success must at last be referred to the great disposer of events? Can he be ignorant that it is God who has filled his basket and his store, who has given the genial heat and refreshing showers to his harvest, and ...
— A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of the Boston Female Asylum for Destitute Orphans, September 25, 1835 • Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright
... hand. Feeble as he was, she seemed to adopt him willingly for her protector. And the Doctor never afterwards shrank from his duty nor quailed beneath it, but bore himself like a man, striving, amid the sloth of age and the breaking-up of intellect, to earn the competency which he had failed to accumulate even in ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... open to women, thereby to enable them to earn their livelihood with better success than is attainable by mere school education only: to give special training to females to qualify them to enter special industrial avocations with such competency as will enable them to be successful in obtaining employment: to apprentice females, or to employ them directly into trades where such employers will receive them beyond the limits of the industrial ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... found, at his death, to be much impaired in value. Enough was left to insure the family a competency, but it became necessary to give up the mansion where so many years of his life had been passed. The dwelling went, accordingly, into other hands, and it was not a long while after that it burned down. Part of the grounds ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... 'but I have been blessed with what I may call a small competency since I saw you last. Of the two hundred francs you gave me I risked fifty at the tables, and I have multiplied them, how many times do you think? More than four ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... distinguished character and ability. Its investigation of the charges of which it found the accused guilty was thorough and conscientious, and its findings and sentence were in due course of law approved by Abraham Lincoln, then President of the United States. Its legal competency, its jurisdiction of the accused and of the subject of the accusation, and the substantial regularity of all of its proceedings are matters which have never been brought into question. Its judgment, therefore, is final and conclusive ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... fortifications. Some went, to be sure, who had failed in the old place, but were ready to make new hazard; some wanted greater freedom than the more highly socialized and conventionalized life within the fortifications would permit; some longed for adventure; some sought a fortune or competency perhaps impossible in the old settlements; some had only the inherited promptings of the nomad savage in them, and kept ever moving on, making their nameless graves out in the gloom of the forest ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... this subject to the exhaustive monograph published in 1905 by Bozzano (1) and written with the special competency and clearness that distinguish the well-known ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... charges of university education—the costly chambers in the Inn of Court—the clerk and his maintenance—the inevitable travels on circuit—certain expenses all to be defrayed before the possible client makes his appearance, and the chance of fame or competency arrives. The prizes are great, to be sure, in the law, but what a prodigious sum the lottery-ticket costs! If a man of letters cannot win, neither does he risk so much. Let us speak of our trade as we find it, and not be too eager in ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the question: he suffered besides very badly from dyspepsia. However he was able to preach regularly, to make speeches in public, to work in his garden and write perhaps three hours a day. Such a person is not greatly to be pitied, and if he had fortunately possessed a small competency we might now look upon him as a prosperous man: but his only property consisted of a good working library and five hundred dollars which a friend had given him. The next eight years were the best and most productive of his life; and he might ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... which we have is that written by Peron and Freycinet, who were plainly at enmity with him. If the facts were as related by them, Baudin was not only an absurdly obstinate and ungenial captain, but we are left with grave doubts as to his competency as a navigator on service of this description. Yet even facts, when detailed by those who hate a man, take a different colouring from the same facts set down by the man himself, with his reasons for what he did. We have no material for forming an opinion from Baudin's point of view. If his manuscript ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... ago, to be in company with a retired shipmaster in Liverpool, who, after spending forty-five years of his life chiefly in command of vessels from that port, had retired to enjoy the fruits of a well-deserved competency. The conversation turned upon the difficulty, nay, almost the impossibility, of being able, in this highly-civilised and moral country, in the ordinary business of life, to trust only to the word or honour of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... a stern being by nature, to be able to tear himself from such friends, in order to encounter enemies, hardships, dangers and toil, and all without any visible motive. Such was my case, however, for I wanted not for a competency, or for most of those advantages which might tempt one to abandon the voyage. Of such a measure, the possibility never crossed my mind. I believed that it was just as necessary for me to remain third-mate of the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... had also had a good deal of gold given to her in specimens. I asked her if she liked that kind of a life, so contrary to her early training. She answered me: 'It's not what we choose that we select to do in this world, but what chooses us to do it. I have made a competency, and gained a rich and varied experience. If life is not what I once dreamed it was, I am content.' But she sighed as she said it, and I couldn't believe ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... early connection between the County Palatine of Chester and the Principality of Wales," which he read before the County Antiquarian Society. {99a} After many years' residence in Chester, he retired on a competency to Epsom, in Surrey, where his mother, brother and sister resided with him; and where he acted as Chaplain to the Union, until his ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are. And yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. It is no small happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean; superfluity comes sooner by white hairs,[17] but competency lives longer. ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... "patronage." It relieves the president of much needless work and wearisome importunity. The president and the heads of departments appoint (in many cases, through subordinates) about 115,000 officials. It is therefore impossible to know much about their character or competency. It becomes necessary to act by advice, and the advice of an examining board is sure to be much better than the advice of political schemers intent upon getting a salaried office for their needy friends. The examination system has made a fair ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... when for that act she was threatened with a renewal of the war on the part of Mexico she naturally looked to this Government to interpose its efforts to ward off the threatened blow. But one course was left the Executive, acting within the limits of its constitutional competency, and that was to protest in respectful, but at the same time strong and decided, terms against it. The war thus threatened to be renewed was promulgated by edicts and decrees, which ordered on the part of the Mexican military the desolation of whole tracts of country and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... proventus terrae et aquae useful ones; and Petty, On Taxes (1679), 47, says: "Labour is the father and active principle of wealth, as lands are the mother. Land and labour together are the sources of all wealth; without a competency of lands there would be no subsistence, and but a very poor one without labour." Harris, Upon Money and Coins, 1757, P.I. Adam Smith, also, in spite of the well known passage at the beginning of his work, very frequently ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of competency and a question of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty of their political metaphysics. Let them be their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rich! rich! God forbid! rich I am not exactly. One has one's competency, thank God! One has wherewith to live. I can honestly maintain myself and a family. I sow two hundred bushels of wheat; and what do you think, Cousin Louise—but where is ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... her mother, who was ever an invalid, and who kissed her with pale lips, without speaking. No gleam of the sun penetrated into her little room. Hard work went on around her; only by dint of toil did her father gain a workingman's competency. That summed up her early life, and till her marriage nothing intervened to break the monotony of days ever the same. One morning, returning from market with her mother, a basketful of vegetables on her arm, she jostled against young Grandjean. Charles turned round ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... a board whose duty it will be to inquire into the competency, qualifications, and conduct of volunteer officers. The other members are Colonels Scribner, Hambright, and Taylor. We called in a body on General Rousseau, and found him reading "Les Miserables." He apologized for his shabby appearance by saying that he had become interested ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... was an illegitimate son of the Earl of Clandennie by the daughter of a surgeon of the Sixty-seventh Regiment of Scots, and he had inherited a very considerable fortune upon the death of his father, from which he now enjoyed a comfortable competency. ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... speaking to me, he was only speaking before me, in a dispute with an invisible personality, an antagonistic and inseparable partner of his existence—another possessor of his soul. These were issues beyond the competency of a court of inquiry: it was a subtle and momentous quarrel as to the true essence of life, and did not want a judge. He wanted an ally, a helper, an accomplice. I felt the risk I ran of being circumvented, blinded, decoyed, bullied, perhaps, into taking ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... of the marked and unremitting attention which I have heretofore invariably paid to the scholars committed to my care, and the astonishing proficiency which, generally speaking, will be an accompaniment of competency, instruction, assiduity and perseverance, devised this detestable and fiendish course in order to tarnish and injure my unsullied character, it being generally known and justly acknowledged that I never ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... competency which I am about to recover. It will be sufficient for the indulgence of those simple and intellectual tastes I propose to cultivate for the future." In spite of himself the judge sighed. This was hardly in line ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... meet them on middle ground, and therefore moved a resolution, which premised, that there were but seven states present, who were unanimous for the ratification, but that they differed in opinion on the question of competency; that those however in the negative, were unwilling, that any powers which it might be supposed they possessed, should remain unexercised for the restoration of peace, provided it could be done, saving their good faith, and without importing any opinion of Congress, that seven states ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... principles and form of our constitution. The nation is, at this time, so strong and united in its sentiments, that it cannot be shaken at this moment. But suppose a series of untoward events should occur, sufficient to bring into doubt the competency of a republican government to meet a crisis of great danger, or to unhinge the confidence of the people in the public functionaries; an institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... come down to the plains and the work of the English in Imperial India. Thence we pass to India herself. Concerning native India Mr Kipling's principle thesis—a thesis illustrated with point and competency in many excellent tales—is that for the people of the West there can be no such thing as the real India—only here and there an understanding that wavers and frequently expires. Mr Kipling does ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... The machines we operated were close to each other, so that I had the good fortune to have constant opportunities of conversing with her. Her name was Effie Logan, and she was one of three daughters of a merchant who had acquired an ample competency. In company with his wife, he came once or twice a week to visit the school and see his daughter at work. With great consideration for me, Miss Effie introduced me to her parents, at the same time adding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... been the condition of his pardon, or his offence might have been a misdemeanour, and not involve the corruption of blood;[127] and, except for perjury or subornation of perjury, the King's pardon might restore his competency to give evidence, or hold property. On these grounds the courts of New South Wales were enabled to evade the plea of attainder in bar ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... sometimes be timely? Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young widow had a .. delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... on to amass dollar upon dollar, until the shining heaps of garnered gold and silver become a god, and a faith, that the rich wretch worships with the tenacious devotion of the most frenzied fanatic. In the accumulation of a competency, against the odds and chances of advanced life, a man may be pardoned for a degree of economical prudence; but for parsimonious meanness, there is certainly no excuse. I have heard my father speak of an old miserly fellow, who owned a great many blocks ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... neighbors was an aged pair, a brother and sister, whose simple, old-fashioned ways and quaint conversation he much enjoyed. He thought they worked harder than they had need to do, as the infirmities of age fell upon them, for they had accumulated a competency, and on one occasion he suggested that they leave for younger hands some of the labor to which they had been accustomed. But the sister said, "We must lay by something for our last sickness, and have enough left to bury us." Whittier replied, "Mary, did thee ever know any ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... against the "experiment" of an elective judicial system, since the election of the judges "is calculated to disrobe our Courts of Justice of their sacred character." Mr. Clarke would not "deny the right or the competency of the people to elect their judicial officers;" but he pointed out that the effect would be "to place upon the bench political partisans," and "to elevate to the judiciary second or third rate men in point of ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... indisputable fact of the renewed excellence of their army, but should regard Jugurtha as a fugitive and Metellus as master of his land.[1027] It was equally natural that the senate should embrace the chance of shaking off the last relics of suspicion which clung to its honour and competency by exalting the success of its general. It decreed supplications to the immortal gods, and thus produced the impression that a decisive victory had been won. Everywhere the State displayed a pardonable joy mingled with a less justifiable expectation that this was ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the animal he rides; or as counsel in a court, each to procure the victory of his client, without respect to any other interest or right: then this boasted Constitution of ours is neither more nor less than a heap of absurdities. The undoubted competency of each reaches even to the paralysis or destruction of the rest. The House of Commons is entitled to refuse every shilling of the Supplies. That House, and also the House of Lords, is entitled to refuse its assent to every Bill presented to it. The Crown is entitled to make a thousand ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the Superior Council for having, at the preceding Easter, preached at Montreal a violent sermon against the corvees (enforced labor) to build up Fort Frontenac, &c. He refused to acknowledge the competency of the tribunal to try him, appeared before it with his hat on, &c. Frontenac had him committed for contempt. Altogether it was a curious squabble, the decision of which was ultimately left to the French King.— (Parkman's Frontenac, p. 37, M. Faillon, La Colonie Francaise, Vol. III, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... powerfully over me, as we drove to the summit of an elevation in the road, that commanded a view of the vale and buildings of Clawbonny. What a moment was that in my existence! I cannot say that I was born to wealth, even as wealth was counted among us sixty years since, but I was born to a competency. Until I lost my ship, I had never known the humiliating sensations of poverty; and the feeling that passed over my heart, when I first heard that Clawbonny was sold, has left an impression that will last for life. I looked at the houses, as I ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... (which I intend to do to-night,) I shall continue my remarks in the usual form. You will find even more than my customary incorrectness and want of method since we left Peronne; but I shall not allow your competency as a critic, until you have been a prisoner in the hands ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... twenty years of his life Dr. Shurtleff spent in dignified retirement, in the enjoyment of a competency, and in full exercise of his faculties. He especially enjoyed the visits of former pupils, no one of whom seemed to be lost from his retentive memory, and the annual commencements were always exhilarating reunions to him. ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... against all Scotch graduates, even those from the unoffending Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. A case seemed to be brought home even to Edinburgh in the year 1771. The offender—one Leeds—had not, indeed, got his degree from Edinburgh without examination, but he showed his competency to be so doubtful in his duties at the London Hospital that the governors made it a condition of the continuance of his services that he should obtain the diploma of the London College of Physicians, and he failed to pass this London examination and was deprived of his post. This case created ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... from assimilating their position to that of the law-courts, Privy Council, and other such bodies, at the very opening of the reign of James the Commons declared "there is not the highest standing court in this land that ought to enter into competency either for dignity or authority with this high court of Parliament which with your Majesty's royal assent gives laws to other courts, but from other courts receives neither laws nor orders." [Footnote: Apology of the Commons, 1604; Petyt, Jus ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... forced themselves, or been forced, to exercise self-denial, and resolutely given up all those expenses the indulgence of which would have been imprudent. Those who indiscriminately gratify every taste for expense the moment it is excited, can never experience the comforts of competency, though they may have the name of wealth and the reality ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... panic-stricken chief would round up the halt, the blind, and the sick. By an hour after the stipulated time they were assembled in the village, a motley crew. Those of the most powerful physique he selected to man the soldiers' canoes, and the next in competency he allotted ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... caligraphy I was contented, but was certain that I should come to the ground among the figures. But when I got to "The Grand," as we used to call our office in those days, from its site in St. Martin's le Grand, I was seated at a desk without any further reference to my competency. No one condescended even to look at ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... that is all I ask. Then," resumed the lawyer, "the road by which a young man of education can, by perseverance, hope to earn for himself a competency and a good position in the social scale, is that of the church, the navy or in the military service of his country. As for the pulpit, unless the aspirant has a special tendency for it, or some good friend who has a living to bestow, he will hardly realize a sufficient income to support ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... aid, Almighty Father of the Universe, to this, our present convention; and grant that this candidate for Masonry may dedicate and devote his life to Thy service, and become a true and faithful brother among us! Endue him with a competency of Thy divine wisdom, that by the secrets of our art, he may be the better enabled to display the beauties of holiness, to the honor of Thy holy name. ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... unmoved; he had no pity for me.—"You are no fool," said he, "and you chose your course." I showed him that he had misconceived his duty, that certificates were things of form, attendance a matter of taste. Two things, he replied, had been required for graduation: a certain competency proved in the final trials, and a certain period of genuine training proved by certificate; if he did as I desired, not less than if he gave me hints for an examination, he was aiding me to steal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if he had any greater ambition than to become a good farmer, as good as was his father before him, and like him, attain to a competency. He was already fairly well to do the year he became of age, for his father, after providing generously for the other children, had bequeathed to him and his brother David the homestead, house and farm attached. His mother was to have a home there so long as she desired; ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... works worthy of posterity, and was little careful of popularity while he lived; having acquired a competency by his labours, he retired to Stratford, and spent the remainder of his life in ease and retirement, like a private gentleman. His income was estimated at L200. The epitaph—not that on his monument, but on the rude stone actually covering his remains ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... made use of, and those that were of his neighborhood, and when he traveled on any road in Italy, he could readily name and show the estates and seats of his friends and acquaintance. Having so small an estate, though a sufficient competency for his own expenses, it was much wondered at that he took neither fees nor gifts from his clients, and more especially, that he did not do so when he undertook the prosecution of Verres. This Verres, who had been praetor of Sicily, and stood charged by the Sicilians of many evil ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... in 1712, son of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah Bernard, citizens. My father's share of a moderate competency, which was divided among fifteen children, being very trivial, his business of a watchmaker (in which he had the reputation of great ingenuity) was his only dependence. My mother's circumstances were more affluent; she was daughter of a Mons. Bernard, minister, and possessed a considerable ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau |
