"Computation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shilling was near a fifth heavier than ours, and a Saxon penny near three times as heavy [r]. As to the value of money in those times, compared to commodities, there are some, though not very certain, means of computation. A sheep, by the laws of Athelstan, was estimated at a shilling; that is, fifteen pence of our money. The fleece was two fifths of the value of the whole sheep [s]; much above its present estimation; and the reason probably was, that the Saxons, like the ancients, were little ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... exchangeable within the powers of Howe. Under this agreement an exchange took place to a considerable extent; but as the Americans had lost more prisoners than they had taken, unless the army of Burgoyne should be brought into computation, many of their troops were still detained ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... greet his ears with their ringing acclamations. At a moderate estimate, again, just as we have seen that each Reading represented 1500 as the average number of the audience, that audience represented, in its turn, in cash, at the lowest computation, nett proceeds amounting to fully $3000. At Rochester, for example, in the State of New York, was the smallest house anywhere met with in the whole course of these American Readings, and even that ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... verge of a precipice more than three thousand feet in height,—a sheer granite wall, whose terrible perpendicular distance baffled all visual computation. Its foot was hidden among hazy green spiculae—they might be tender spears of grass catching the slant sun on upheld aprons of cobweb, or giant pines whose tops that sun first gilt before he made gold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... had nevertheless some antecedents. M. Cauchy, a few years previously President of the Chamber of the Royal Court of Paris, an amiable man and easily frightened, was the brother of the mathematician, member of the Institute, to whom we owe the computation of waves of sound, and of the ex-Registrar Archivist of the Chamber of Peers. M. Delapalme had been Advocate-General, and had taken a prominent part in the Press trials under the Restoration; M. Pataille had been ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... of frankness Gretchen also confided to him that Roeschen had written to a lady friend in America—a former pupil at the Conservatory who had boarded in the family—and had received from her a complete biography of his humble self, besides a computation of his income and economic prospects. It then required very little ingenuity, on his part, to conjecture why the sisters, in spite of their somewhat ostentatious amiability, frequently appeared to have been at loggerheads just as he entered. He had often heard the word Phoenix ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... is the root of all wisdom. Besides, every man, high and low, wants to make a fortune, and associations connected with addition and multiplication are always pleasing. Who, then, is the sage at computation most universally known? Unquestionably Cocker! He must take to that, Cocker, Cocker" (commandingly),—"C-o-c-k-e-r" ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... power, and it occasioned sneers and ridicule on the part of the King's treasurer and accountant at Sassa's supposed lack of wisdom and judgment. However, astonishment and chagrin succeeded before they were half way through their computation, for when the total was arrived at, it was found to exceed all the wealth of the world, and the King knew not which to admire most, the ingenuity of the game itself, or that ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... instruments and pulled out a special slide rule designed for use in space. He had Koa stand by with stylus and computation board and take down figures as he ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... to confirm the suspicion that there was some irreconcilable discrepancy between the results of his computation and what he had actually observed; and yet, if he had been called upon to say, he would have sooner insisted that there was derangement in the laws of celestial mechanism, than have owned there was the least probability of error in any of his own calculations. Assuredly, ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... says, 60,000 volumes: but I have more faith in the first, than in the second, computation: not because it comes from myself, but because a pretty long experience, in the numbering of books, has taught me to be very moderate in my numerical estimates. I am about to tell the reader rather a curious anecdote connected with this subject. He may, or he may not, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... advice. Be this as it may, I adopted his recommendation, and I had no cause to repent it. The bargain was struck upon the spot; and for twenty-seven Louis I became master of a horse, upon whom, taking into the computation crossroads and occasional deviations, I performed a journey not less than two thousand miles; and in the whole of this course, without a stumble sufficient to shake me from my seat. The Norman horses are low and thick, and like all ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... scope than the mere relief of the poor and suffering.* In the daily intercourse of life there are unnumbered opportunities for kindness, many of them slight, yet in their aggregate, of a magnitude that eludes all computation. There is hardly a transaction, an interview, a casual wayside meeting, in which it is not in the power of each person concerned to contribute in an appreciable degree to the happiness or the discomfort of those whom he thus meets, or with whom he is brought into a relation ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... begin to realise the difficulties of their statesmen. A careful computation shows us that in England, where indeed the lavish promises had been most picturesque, and where the tough idea of personal liberty took longest to kill, it required just four years of severe disciplinary measures and dry bread to reduce the masses generally to a pale, obedient, ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... have ignored in the above computation, because its whole appearance gives no ground for definitive statements. It seems really to be an annex, and in fact the whole building seems to have progressed, in its construction, from south to north, in point of ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... he has been busy with the computation of the orbit of a distant star up to the very minute when his wife brought in his tie and collar. And then arm and arm they have set out for the party, where they will sit until ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... hell," retorted Wright, kicking the bar with his foot, "nine feet of it, by Master Percy's computation, and, I warrant, as many years will be required to see the further side. Try it, good Catesby, 'tis a nut a giant could scarce crack, though he ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... there is no appreciable future left for such manners—an urbanity so comprehensive, a form so transmitted, as those of such a hostess and such a host? The future is for a different conception of the graceful altogether— so far as it's for a conception of the graceful at all. Into that computation I shall not attempt to enter; but these representative products of an antique culture, at least, and one of which the secret seems more likely than not to be lost, were not common, nor indeed was any one else—in the circle ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... such and such a one."—["feu Monsieur un tel."] Peradventure, as the saying is, the term we have lived is worth our money. I was born betwixt eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon the last day of February 1533, according to our computation, beginning the year the 1st of January,—[This was in virtue of an ordinance of Charles IX. in 1563. Previously the year commenced at Easter, so that the 1st January 1563 became the first day of the year 1563.]—and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... double commissions, and are not all the other charges attending a voyage (to say nothing of additional duties,) ordinarily doubled by means of this circuitous course? Will not the price of such American commodities be increased by these means when they arrive in Russia, at the most moderate computation, at the rate of twentyfive per cent? Will not Russia, therefore, necessarily lose at that same rate, upon all her commodities sold to Great Britain in exchange for such American commodities? And will not this contribute in a great measure to ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... circumference of the city has been variously estimated, some writers including in their computation a part of the suburbs; according to Pliny it was near twenty miles round the walls. In consequence of this great extent the city had more than thirty gates, of which the most remarkable were the Carmental, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... modesty and self-denial that she industriously informed those whom it might concern, that she was no less than three years older than the bride; though had she added ten to the reckoning, she would have committed no mistake in point of computation. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... perhaps that gave a fairer comparison. In the binary figures she made three additions in between seven and eight minutes, with but one place wrong in the three. With four of the observers the binary notation required nearly double the time. These observers were all well practiced in computation. Their best record, five minutes eighteen seconds, was made by one whose best record was two minutes forty seconds in ordinary figures. The author's own best results were two minutes thirty-eight seconds binary, and three minutes twenty-three seconds usual. He thus proved ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... mounted it; slept at its foot; and on the following day penetrated some miles westward or inland of it until we were stopped by a mountainous country, which our scarcity of provisions, joined to the terror of a river at our back, whose sudden rising is almost beyond computation, hindered us from exploring. To the elevation which bounded our research we gave the name of Knight Hill, in honour of the trusty sergeant who had been the faithful indefatigable companion of ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... Had placed his staff across the broad smooth stone That overlays the pile, and from a bag All white with flour the dole of village dames, He drew his scraps and fragments, one by one, And scann'd them with a fix'd and serious look Of idle computation. In the sun, Upon the second step of that small pile, Surrounded by those wild unpeopled hills, He sate, and eat his food in solitude; And ever, scatter'd from his palsied hand, That still attempting ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... some strange wild-fowl among his authorities—and above all for a gentle and unobtrusive humour which seasons all the narrative. Westcote gives a list of the fish afforded by the Devon seas (a very imperfect list by modern computation), and adds: ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... out the government were matters of infinite computation among the leaders. The liberal whip after the election gave his own party a majority of fifteen, but the treasury whip, on the other hand, was equally confident of a majority of ten. Still all was admittedly uncertain. The prime perplexity was whether if a new administration ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... rights of a people trampled on! But his praaetorship in Sicily has crowned his career of wickedness, and completed the lasting monument of his infamy. His decisions have violated all law, all precedent, all right. His extortions from the industrious poor have been beyond computation. Our most faithful allies have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. Men the most worthy have been condemned and banished without a hearing, while the most atrocious criminals have, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... within half a cable's length of the ship; but the wind was so strong that we were driven directly upon it and immediately split. Six of the crew, of whom 15 I was one, having let down the boat into the sea, made a shift to get clear of the ship and the rock. We rowed, by my computation, about three leagues, till we were able to work no longer, being already spent with labor while we were in the ship. We therefore trusted ourselves to the mercy of the waves, and in about half an hour the boat was overset by a sudden ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... disagreements. An obvious method, if we could depend on Columbus's dead reckoning, would be to see for what island the actual distance from the Canaries would be nearest to his computed run; but currents and errors of the eye necessarily throw this sort of computation out of the question, and Captain G. A. Fox, who has tried it, finds that Cat Island is three hundred and seventeen, the Grand Turk six hundred and twenty-four nautical miles, and the other supposable points at intermediate ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... can't," said Ives flatly. "Survey traverses those boxes through second-order space. They materialize near a planet and drop in. No computation on earth or off it could trace their normal-space trajectory, let alone what happens in the second-order condition. The elements the box is made of are carefully averaged isotopic forms that could have come from any of nine galaxies ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... very great, especially as regards the instruction of women; yet the period has not been noticeably fruitful of literature in the highest sense. In the world of fiction there is much that looks like degeneration; the lighter magazines and serials have multiplied past computation, and form all the reading of not a few persons. To counteract the unhealthy "modern novel" has arisen the Scottish school, the "literature of the kailyard," as it has been termed in scorn; yet a purer air breathes in the pages of J. M. Barrie, "Ian Maclaren," and Crockett. Their many imitators ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... with a long breath, to the afternoon's drowsy routine. Arrant nonsense that! the boundary of British America and the conjugation of the verb to be! Who that might loll away the hours upon a bank in silken ease, needed aught even of computation or the tongues? He ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... Computation of Catalan's constant using Ramanujan's Formula, by Greg Fee, ACM 1990, Proceedings of the ...
— Catalan's Constant [Ramanujan's Formula] • Greg Fee
... Perhaps it may be so; but you cannot be so if it is not really your disposition; and how can you be so unless love itself has seized hold of you? which is not usually generated by any accurate computation of advantage, but is self-produced, and born spontaneously from itself. But, you will say, I am guided by prospects of advantage. Friendship, then, will remain just as long as any advantage ensues from it; and if it be a principle of advantage which is the foundation ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... short, was that Charlotte and he had, by a single turn of the wrist of fate—"led up" to indeed, no doubt, by steps and stages that conscious computation had missed—been placed face to face in a freedom that partook, extraordinarily, of ideal perfection, since the magic web had spun itself without their toil, almost without their touch. Above all, on this occasion, once more, there sounded through their safety, as an undertone, the very voice ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... cool. There had been a long interval of average peace and goodwill between English and natives, and there seemed good reason to suppose that Christianity and civilization would keep them friends, if not fuse them together. There were eleven hundred Christian Indians, according to Eliot and Gookin's computation, with six regularly constituted "churches" after the fashion of Natick, and fourteen towns, of which seven were called old and seven new, where praying Indians lived, for the most part, in a well-conducted, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... was quick to reply. "Unless you know anything. He has stated that he awaits money remittances. He has, in fact, overrun the constable, and my brother Albert says, the constable is very likely to overrun ham, in consequence. Only a joke! But an organist with, at the highest computation—poor absurd thing!—fifty-five pounds per annum: additional for singing lessons, it is true,—but an organist with a bookseller's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... most popular form of discourse. Between one fourth and one third of all books published are stories; and more than one half of the books issued by public libraries belong to the narrative class. Such a computation does not include the large number of stories read in our papers and magazines. In addition to being the most popular form of discourse, it is the most natural. It is the first form of connected discourse of the child; it is the form employed by the uncultured in giving his impressions; ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... kings and emperors; besides dukes, marquises, earls, countesses, etc., innumerable. The order has produced a vast number of authors and other learned men. Their Rabanus set up the school of Germany. Their Alcuin founded the University of Paris. Their Dionysius Exiguus perfected ecclesiastical computation. Their Guido invented the scale of music; their Sylvester, the organ. They boasted to have produced Anselm, Ildefonsus, and ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... regularity, and was lavish as ever, but took note of all expenditures, however irregular. He was one of those men whom the possession of money seems to have energized; his life, so purposeless long before, grew by good fortune to a strict computation with the world. Yet what availed so sudden reformation, and of what use was the gaining of wealth, to throw one's life so soon away, and leap from competence to ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Phil rather a slender cause for compliment, but he said nothing, since it seemed clear that the computation was ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... sick-room, walked about bootless to make no sound, and fretted with impatience at thought of the length of days which must elapse before Chris could return to Chagford. Telegrams had been sent to Martin Grimbal, who was spending his honeymoon out of England; but on the most sanguine computation he and his wife would scarcely be home again in less than ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... is fixed on a moderate computation at 50,000 persons. For this number of persons the barge represents the only fixed home, and the year passes in ceaseless movement across the inland waters of the country or on the great German river, excepting for the brief interval when the canals are frozen over ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... that a large academy be erected, capable of containing nine thousand seven hundred and forty-three persons: which, by modest computation, is reckoned to be pretty near the current number of wits in this island," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... which she had pretended as well as her sickness, though she doubted not the virtue of the draught; the majesty of the fairy seated on a throne, brilliant with jewels, the value of which exceeded all the riches of the kingdom of the Indies, and all the other treasures beyond computation ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the very same time the Russians or the Moscquites without any ciuill regiment possessed large and spacious territories towards the north, the foresayd three brethren, vpon the perswasion of one Gostomislius the chiefe citizen of Nouogrod, in the yeare since the worldes creation (acording to the computation of the Greekes) 6370, which was in the yeare of our Lord 572, were sent for, to beare rule. And so ioyning their kinsman Olechus vnto them, and diuiding these huge countreys among themselues, they laboured to reduce the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... inch of the country within a forty-mile radius of London will discourse at intervals on the respective merits of each popular district. A list of the principal residents in each will be available, together with a computation of the chances of a newcomer being called on by any ladies with a title. In order to make this department really efficient the intending new resident must of course give true particulars as to his or her social history. Districts where new residents who have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... computation; if four persons lose respectively $10, $20, $30, and $40, the average loss is $25. The word is used figuratively by Dr. O.W. Holmes in "The average intellect of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is not very high." In the sense of "usual," "common ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... attenuated for computation, is here able to effect such a change in a pinch of dust that it becomes a free avenue instead of a barricade. Through that avenue a powerful blow from a local store of energy makes itself heard and felt. No device of the trigger class is comparable ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labour: nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... into the final battle of the caucus much after the manner wherewith a horse approaches a drum, that is, with a deal of prance and but little progress, and, for the most part, wrong end foremost. Even then the count of Senator Hanway—a cold-blooded computation—gave that gavel to the violent Mr. Hawke. So much for being a House leader, a tariff monger, and a friend ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... disposed to work out his political prospects by mathematical computation, he would have arrived at some interesting conclusions from the balloting in the convention. Indeed, very probably he drew some deductions in his own intuitive way, without any adventitious aid. Of the three rivals, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... in this wilderness of barn and byre they would have fled wraith-like from her gaze. At last, turning a corner quickly, she came upon a living thing that did not fly from her. Astretch in a pool of mud was an enormous sow, gigantic beyond the town-woman's wildest computation of swine-flesh, and speedily alert to resent and if necessary repel the unwonted intrusion. It was Sylvia's turn to make an unobtrusive retreat. As she threaded her way past rickyards and cowsheds and long blank walls, she started suddenly at a strange sound—the echo of a boy's laughter, golden ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Division of Time at Otaheite; Numeration, Computation of Distance, Language, Diseases, Disposal of the Dead, Religion, War, Weapons, and Government; with some general Observations for the Use ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... 'Tis every country-bubble's cant; Am I the patroness of vice? Is't I who cog or palm the dice? Did I the shuffling art reveal, 105 To mark the cards, or range the deal? In all the employments men pursue, I mind the least what gamesters do. There may (if computation's just) One now and then my conduct trust: 110 I blame the fool, for what can I, When ninety-nine my power defy? These trust alone their fingers' ends, And not one stake on me depends. Whene'er the gaming board is set, Two classes of mankind are met: But if we count the greedy ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... must be known, although the french always calculate by livres, as we do by pounds sterling, that the livre is no coin, but computation. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... to-morrow. I observe by a letter from Mr. Cadell that I had somewhat misunderstood his last. It is he, not Longman, that wishes to publish the thousand copies of St. Ronan's Series, and there is no immediate call for Napoleon. This makes little difference in my computation. The pressing necessity of correction is put off for two or three months probably, and I have time to turn myself to the Chronicles. I do not much like the task, but when did I ever like labour of any kind? My hands were fully occupied to-day with writing letters and adjusting papers—both ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... peasants buried two thousand two hundred and fifty; while Bentivoglio, an Italian writer in the interest of Spain, makes the number exactly half that amount. Grotius says that the loss of the Dutch was four men killed. Bentivoglio states it at one hundred. But, at either computation, it is clear that the affair was a brilliant one on ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... Bourdeau, a disciple of this school, looks forward to the time when historical science will become entirely quantitative. The actions of prominent individuals, which are generally considered to have altered or determined the course of things, are obviously not amenable to statistical computation or explicable by general laws. Thinkers like Buckle sought to minimise their importance or explain ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... method by the adoption of a zero, which was one of the most important improvements effected by the Hindoos. In China, the words ancient and modern are almost synonymous; their usages and customs being so unchangeable, as appears by their instrument of computation, the swanpan, which is still used in all their calculations. The Oriental scholar will find much curious and interesting information connected with this subject in the Sanscrit Vija Ganita and Lilivati of Bhaskara Acharya: the former was translated into Persian at Agra, or Delhi, in 1634, ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... to make itself a thought, "In the long run it pays," it was but little to his discredit, since he could scarcely have descended from a line of shrewd, far-sighted Anglo-Saxon forefathers without making some such computation. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the East, the Guardian had come through least scathed, its withers unwrung. Thanks to the raiding of its Boston business by the Salamander, the Guardian's loss, which was confined wholly to three-year and five-year lines unexpired, would not much exceed, according to Smith's computation, $100,000, even if all its ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... other. He tried to cast them up; those said during the days spent at the Grotto and during the nights spent at the Rosary, those said at the ceremonies at the Basilica, and those said at the sunlight and the starlight processions. But this continual entreaty of every second was beyond computation. It seemed as if the faithful were determined to weary the ears of the Divinity, determined to extort favours and forgiveness by the very multitude, the vast multitude of their prayers. The priests said ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... on the ground that he had held all day. In the afternoon he had once more driven back the head of the enemy's columns, inflicting a further loss of 3,200 killed and wounded at the lowest computation; but the enemy's camp-fires can still be plainly made out with a field-glass, in the same position as the night before. This is scarcely to be called success, although it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pilot, and the master of the galiot consulted together for some time. The jib and foresail, and a portion of the standing and running rigging, had been saved, and the Belgian and the Dutchman made a computation of the cost of ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... are but a day, nay, but an hour, nay, but a minute, in the eyes of spirits. In my computation, it was yesterday that the fair Spirit of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... perhaps obtain by my Interest in the present Emperor's Court, as it has been preserv'd ever since, and constantly repair'd, riding at Anchor in a great Lake, about 100 Miles from Tonquin; in which all the People of that City were preferv'd, amounting by their Computation to about a ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... which are necessarily complicated, and even by using logarithms of addition and subtraction and one or two subsidiary tables—such as for log. sin squared([theta]/2) specially constructed for this work—the computation of each set of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... Horn-book," though dated two years earlier, will hardly give so much entertainment to any probable reader in our own time as "The Misery of a Prison, and a Prisoner," will give him pain to read of in the closing pages of the same pamphlet, when he remembers how long—at the lowest computation—its author had endured the loathsome and hideous misery which he has described with such bitter and pathetic intensity and persistency in detail. Well may Dr. Grosart say that "it shocks us to-day, though so far off, to think of 1598 to 1616 onwards covering so sorrowful and humiliating ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Prussian state to come to her assistance. Prussia threw off the mask and disavowed her treaty obligations; and the Poles were left to their own resources. Their numbers equalled, according to Kosciuszko's computation, one single column of the Russian army. An empty treasury, an empty arsenal, were behind them; they were pitted against seasoned soldiers, trained in successful war; but the fire of patriotism ran ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... part. A new invention concealed no mysteries from him; he looked into it; understood, calculated its scope. A strange piece of news from any part of the world found him unsurprised, explanatory. He liked mathematics, and was wont to say jocosely that an abstract computation had a fine moral affect, favouring unselfishness. Music was one of his foibles; he learnt an instrument with wonderful facility, and, up to a certain point, played well. For poetry, though as a rule he disguised ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... within the defiles of the mountain, that no effort which Auchenbreck or Ardenvohr thought it prudent to attempt, could ascertain his probable strength. They were aware, however, that, at the utmost computation, it must be inferior to their own, and they returned to Argyle to inform him of the amount of their observations; but that nobleman refused to believe that Montrose could be in presence himself. He said, "It was a madness, of which even James Grahame, in his height of presumptuous frenzy, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... towns where he had preached to meet him on the plain of Paquara, in the country of Verona. The 28th of August was the day fixed for this great national assembly. More than four hundred thousand persons, according to the computation of Parisio di Cereta, appeared upon the scene. This multitude included the populations of Verona, Mantua, Brescia, Padua, and Vicenza, marshaled under their several standards, together with contingents furnished by Ferrara, Modena, Reggio, Parma, and Bologna. Nor was ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... were not scattered, but flying as compactly as a free movement of their wings seemed to allow; and during a full hour and a half, this stream of petrels continued to pass without interruption, at a rate little inferior to the swiftness of the pigeon. On the lowest computation, I think the number could not have been less than a hundred millions; and we were thence led to believe that there must be, in the large bight, one or more uninhabited ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... become a temporary token coinage, a token coinage of full value for the day of conversion at any rate, if not afterwards, under the new standard of energy, and to be replaceable by an ordinary token coinage as time went on. The old computation by Lions and the values of the small change of daily life were therefore to ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... arithmetical computation will abundantly satisfy any person who is acquainted with the composition of the atmosphere, the influence of respiration upon its fitness to sustain animal life, and the quantity of air that enters the lungs ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... soldier may do," answered Hereward; "make your own computation, and then reckon this single arm worth two against any man the Emperor has, not ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... quantity of liquor, and knocks down the rest of the company. I was the other day with honest Will Funnell, the West Saxon, who was reckoning up how much liquor had passed through him in the last twenty years of his life, which, according to his computation, amounted to twenty-three hogsheads of October, four ton of port, half a kilderkin of small-beer, nineteen barrels of cyder, and three glasses of champaigne; besides which he had assisted at four hundred bowls of punch, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... necessary arrangements were made for the review. The first thing was to ascertain the numbers of the troops; and as the soldiers were too numerous to be counted, Xerxes determined to measure the mighty mass as so much bulk, and then ascertain the numbers by a computation. They made the measure itself in the following manner: They counted off, first, ten thousand men, and brought them together in a compact circular mass, in the middle of the plain, and then marked a line upon the ground ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the precious cargo, must often have been tempted to cry, "Oh that I had a sound digestion, and were some part of a dunce!" In truth, we are a nation of health-hunters, betraying the want by the search. It were to be wished that an accurate computation could be made how much money has been paid in the United States, within a score of years, for patent medicines. It would buy up a kingdom of respectable dimensions. So eager is this health-hunger, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... average line length here | | (including pauses within the line, excluding those at the | | end of the line) is 2.8, and the first line is therefore | | only .32 shorter than the average. If additional allowance | | (omitted in Miss Snell's computation) be made for the | | theoretical initial [U][U] the average would be 2.85 and l. 1| | would total 2.92. If the end pause is included the average | | would be 3.38 and l. 1 2.78—a difference of .66; or with | | the additional allowance ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... flower in an album, or make a painting of it, and preserve its scent by chemical distillation or what not—and thereby preserve the whole story of all the forces that went to the production of that bloom—and they are, I suppose, in number beyond human computation—so you might express the history of a race in a symbol as simple as a bloom... And that there is a power, an unfolding faculty, in the soul, which, seeing such a symbol, could unravel from it, by meditation, the whole ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... yourself, my man," he said, as I got him the sherry—a fresh bottle from the outer cellar. "Ha! at a moderate computation that old gold plate is worth a hundred thousand pounds; and a hundred thousand pounds at only three per cent in the funds, Burdon, would be three thousand a year. So you see I lose that income by letting this heap of old gold plate lie locked up ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... presenting several hundred square feet of surface within the space of a cubic inch, is brought into a limited volume of gas, we may understand why that volume is diminished, why all gases without exception are absorbed. A cubic inch of charcoal must have, at the lowest computation, a surface of one hundred square feet. This property of absorbing gases varies with different kinds of charcoal: it is possessed in a higher degree by those containing the most pores, i.e. where the pores are finer; and in a lower ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... three million two hundred thousand years; and they hold that the life of man was extended in that age to one hundred thousand years; but there is a difference amongst the Indian writers of six millions of years in the computation of this era." (Voyage de Gentil. vol. i. p. 244—260. Preface to the Code of Gentoo Laws, p. 57; quoted by Dr. Robertson, p. 320.) and in these, or prior to these, is placed the history of their divinities. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... Neel said. Dropping the papers on a table and kneading the tired furrow between his eyes. "Get wrapped up in the computation. Sorry. I tend ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... that there was no great inequality, and that each party brought some fifteen thousand men into the field. The number of slain is also very uncertain, some historians placing the total at ten thousand, others as low as one thousand; but from the number of nobles who fell, the former computation is probably nearest to the truth. Warwick, his brother Montague, and many other nobles and gentlemen, were killed, the only great nobles on his side who escaped being the Earls of Somerset and Oxford; many were also killed on Edward's side, and the slaughter among the ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... house was occupied by several families. "This town," he remarks, "contains about forty houses, and can send out upwards of a hundred warriors, many of whom are fine young men." This would give, by the usual rule of computation, five hundred persons, and an average of twelve persons to a house. [Footnote: ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... present Constitution, which I have by amendment proposed to render unalterable, is that provision in the first article of the Constitution which provides the rule for representation, including in the computation three-fifths of the slaves. That is to be rendered unchangeable. Another is the provision for the delivery of fugitive slaves. That is to ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... there can be no doubt, since the epitaph inscribed on the tomb-stone, copied in Stow's Survey, clearly states him to be so. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to observe that the date mentioned in the extract is the old style, and, therefore, according to our present computation, he was buried ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... looked at each other and grinned. The ignorance of the army grew dense beyond all computation. Long afterward, "I don't know," became a favorite and convenient reply, even when the knowledge ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... water bubbling and hissing under the bows of the schooner as she clove her way through. Though the wind was strong, there was, at the same time, little sea. The two miles had now been decreased to one and a half, by Fairburn's and my computation; and we hoped soon to be able to get a shot at the chase to bring down some of ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... what is left; and the poor women, "marrying for a home," take anything. As a consequence the inferior male is as free to transmit his inferiority as the superior to give better qualities, and does so—beyond computation. In modern days, women are freer, in some countries freer than in others; here in modern America freest of all; and the result is seen in our improving standards of ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... present, wells that were formerly pumped at a profit are biding their time; for at present prices of oil operations upon them would be ruinous. This renders the computation of the weekly yield of the Oil Creek region comparatively easy. There are at the present time not far from one hundred flowing wells along the valley of the creek, producing probably on an average about forty thousand barrels per week. A portion of this ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Another instance of computation carried to paradoxical length, in order to illustrate a method, is the solution of x^3 - 2x 5, the example given of Newton's method, on which all improvements have been tested. In 1831, Fourier's[142] posthumous work on equations showed 33 figures of solution, got with enormous labor. Thinking ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... very small groups and limited associations, an animal rather self-centred and fierce, and he is still but imperfectly adapted either morally or physically to the wider social life his crowding interactions force upon him. He still learns speech and computation and civility and all the devices of this artificially extended and continually broadening tribal life with an extreme reluctance. He has to be shaped in the interests of the species, I admit, to the newer conditions; the growing social order must be protected from the keen edge of his still savage ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... lit, his limbs reposing in the easy-chair, Mutimer became expansive. He requested Adela's attention whilst he rendered a full account of all the moneys he had laid out, and made a computation of the cost of living ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... allow an umbrella to about one person in six, according to the census computation which places the population of the United States at 40,000,000 of people. And one umbrella for every six persons is certainly not a very generous distribution. Added to the number made in this country, are about one-half million which are imported, ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... of the cave, a superb portal, upwards of seventy feet high, and one hundred and fifty wide, according to the computation of a learned traveller—the rocks which support the great arch so symmetrically disposed as to resemble a work of art. The sun was already high in the heavens, shining with intense brightness on the wild scenery that surrounded us, the rocks and trees ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... year ago, aristocrate implied one who was an advocate for the privileges of the nobility, and a partizan of the ancient government—at present a man is an aristocrate for entertaining exactly the same principles which at that time constituted a patriot; and, I believe, the computation is moderate, when I say, that more than three parts of the nation are aristocrates. The rich, who apprehend a violation of their property, are aristocrates—the merchants, who regret the stagnation of commerce, and distrust the credit of the assignats, are ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the whole I am satisfied with things the way they are. There is a prejudice against the spoken lie, but none against any other, and by examination and mathematical computation I find that the proportion of the spoken lie to the other varieties is as 1 to 22,894. Therefore the spoken lie is of no consequence, and it is not worth while to go around fussing about it and trying to make believe that it is an important matter. The silent colossal ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
