"Last half" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had forgotten that he implies that my views explain the universe; but it is a most monstrous exaggeration. The more one thinks the more one feels the hopeless immensity of man's ignorance. Though it does make one proud to see what science has achieved during the last half-century. This has been brought vividly before my mind by having just read most of the proofs of Lubbock's Address for York (307/3. Lord Avebury was President of the British Association in 1881.), in which he will attempt to review the progress ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Bacchus,—"With those slamming doors I lost the last half dist—(hic!) Mos' bu'ful se'ments! what's the Chor's? My voice shall not be missed—(hic!)" His words woke Hermes; "Ah!" he said, "I so love moral theses!" Then winked at Hebe, who turned red, And smoothed her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... own is an example of the fault he himself pointed out. It is too short to give us clear ideas of all he evidently had in his mind. We notice, also, that it is rhymed in couplets, that is, every two lines are rhymed together. Now the couplets in the last half of the poem seem to strike the ear with more satisfaction than those in the first part. For instance, we are pleased with the sound ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... of propagating Sinn Fein, the writer lays stress upon "example being better than precept," and then he remarks: "If the average professing Nationalist had been a perceptibly finer character than the average professing Unionist during the last half-century, all the noble men and women in Ireland would by the law of their natures have been ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... a severely reproving voice behind them, "why are you tarrying here? It is high time you were all on your homeward way. Miss Rosie Travilla, Miss Evelyn Leland, and Miss Raymond, the Viamede carriage has been in waiting for the last half-hour." ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... once that he had recently discovered a genuine Rembrandt—a quite undoubted Rembrandt, which had remained for years in the keeping of a certain obscure Dutch family. It had always been allowed to be a masterpiece of the painter, but it had seldom been seen for the last half-century save by a few intimate acquaintances. It was a portrait of one Maria Vanrenen of Haarlem, and he had bought it of her descendants at ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... In the last half-century—nay, I might say, within the last two decades—there has been a mighty impulse in the direction of scientific investigation, of mechanical invention, of preventive medicine, of economic improvement, and the like. Germany, in some respects, has led, but our own country has not ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... chapel at last such a model of worship as Laud desired. If he could not exact an equal pomp of devotion in other quarters, he exacted as much as he could. Bowing to the altar was introduced into all cathedral churches. A royal injunction ordered the removal of the communion table, which for the last half-century or more had in almost every parish church stood in the middle of the nave, back to its pre-Reformation position in the chancel, and secured it from profanation by a rail. The removal implied, and was understood ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... vast intersecting mountain ranges, the greatest of the earth, but the climate is too cold in winter to permit of continuous work. The people have a natural dislike for foreigners, and the political events of the last half century have not tended to ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... Douglas regarded her taunts—almost amounting to open insult—with a patient and mild curiosity. It was a little bit of psychological study, and more interesting than book-keeping by double entry. Meantime, things were becoming very serious; with all his penuriousness, he had arrived at his last half-sovereign. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... speech of the day," and said of Lincoln: "He is a very able, acute, uncouth, honest, upright man, and a tremendous wag, withal.... Mr. Lincoln's manner was so good-natured, and his style so peculiar, that he kept the House in a continuous roar of merriment for the last half hour of his speech. He would commence a point in his speech far up one of the aisles, and keep on talking, gesticulating, and walking until he would find himself, at the end of a paragraph, down in the centre of the area in front ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... a tone of such contempt that I disliked him intensely. For the last half hour Aiken had been jumping unfeelingly on ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... no time to dwell upon our personal fascinations, or to speculate upon the cause of their increase within the last half hour; no eyes have we save for that Lucullian salmi steaming before us; and, like ourselves, all around us are absorbed in absorbing. Though every table is full, there is little noise in the crowded apartment. Men go to the Maison Doree ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... because you never fell in love with Lora. And how much she is ahead of me—well, you know, and it's no use talking of it. What all don't I owe to Lora!... If it hadn't been for her...!—Well, it's with them I have been living the last half year. ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... ill, and Manuel, who was weak from loss of blood, to hold the summit, the rest of us descended to fetch up our horses, and a hard hour's job we had of it, for we packed on our backs the load of the dead pack horse and those of his mates the last half of the ascent, rather ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Eight of the strongest men of the party then undertook the task of carrying the injured man a distance of four miles, and up a hill 1,700 feet high. It is indicative of the extraordinary formation of the Grand Canon that the last half mile was an angle of 45 degrees, up a loose rock slide. The stretcher had to be attached to ropes and gently lifted over perpendicular cliffs, from ten to twenty feet high. The dangerous and tedious journey was at last accomplished, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... history of science there is nothing more remarkable than the rapidity of the growth of biological knowledge within the last half- century, and the extent of the modification which has thereby been effected in some of the fundamental ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... long cloak forcefully, and arose with a haughty air from the rocking-chair where she had pointed her remarks for the last half-hour by swaying noisily back and forth and touching the toes of her new high-heeled shoes with a click each ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... pitcher. Spread the plums out on large dishes, and cover them with half the sugar you have allotted to them, (it must be previously powdered,) and let them lie in it all night. Next morning pour the juice out of the pitcher into a porcelain preserving kettle, add the last half of the sugar to it, and let it melt over the fire. When it has boiled skim it, and then put in the plums. Boil them over a moderate fire, for about half an hour. Then take them out one by one with a spoon, and ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... with all their might. She wrenched them away, felt for the handle blindly, opened the door, and, shutting it in his face, went slowly, swaying a little, down the stairs. She trailed a gloved hand along the wall, as if its solidity could help her. At the last half-landing, where a curtain hung, dividing off back premises, she stopped and listened. There wasn't a sound. 'If I stand here behind this curtain,' she thought, 'I shall see him again.' She slipped behind the curtain, close drawn but for a little chink. It ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... manuscript, and can hear the news from beyond the seas, whereas in the country there is nought to talk about save beeves and sheep. I like the journey well enough, though I would that the animal I bestrode were more gentle in his paces. He has for the last half-hour been fretting on the rein to place himself by the side of yours. Horses are well enough for nobles and fighting men, but for a peaceful scrivener like myself a chair makes a far more ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... hour, one of Don Benigno's slaves enters with a large flat basket containing a quantity of small two-penny loaves, which the negro places upon the marble floor in front of the open door. Soon a crowd of beggars of all shades and castes, who during the last half-hour have been squatting in a row under the broad shade of the opposite houses, approach, and, without bidding, help to empty the capacious bread-basket. Further up the street they go, picking up more ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... to perceive something else, which added the last half-witted touch to my mystification. The Rev. Ellis Shorter, of Chuntsey, in Essex, was by no means behaving as I had previously noticed him to behave, or as, considering his age and station, I should ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... and are inclined to compose one bar at a time instead of phrase by phrase. They will produce a tune of seven bars—they will end on a weak beat—they will come to a full stop in the middle of an eight-bar tune on the tonic chord, root at the top—the last half of the tune will have nothing to do with the first half. We could write a page of their ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... last bit of snooze which is so enjoyable. One goes to bed because it is time, and after a good deal of waiting sometimes one goes to sleep; but it is not the delicious, easy-going sleep of the last half-hour in the morning—a sleep so enticing to most people: at all events, boys feel as if they would barter all the rest of the night for that half-hour—the ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... all of that dull, heavy, uniform lead-colour, which house-painters daub in the first instance over a street-door which is gradually approaching a state of convalescence. It had been 'spitting' with rain for the last half-hour, and now began to pour in good earnest. The wind was freshening very fast, and the waterman at the wheel had unequivocally expressed his opinion that there would shortly be a squall. A slight emotion on the part of the vessel, now and then, seemed ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... faddists have produced some extraordinary things in the way of literature, but nothing more freakish has made its appearance in the last half-century than ...
— The Purple Cow! • Gelett Burgess
... just had an experience with a lodger who had been quartered on him, a captain of cuirassiers, who made a practice of going to bed with his boots on and when he went away left his apartment in an unmentionably filthy condition, when in the last half of September Captain de Gartlauben came to his door one evening when it was raining in torrents. The first hour he was there did not promise well for the pleasantness of their future relations; he carried matters with a high hand, insisting that he should be ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... passed, closed in again behind them. But the men themselves felt neither lonely nor afraid. Used to victory over hardship and danger, their spirits rose high as they began the ascent of the second river, the last half ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... III., and his last name-sake, had succeeded so much that was unsettled in the previous hundred years, that the last half of the 18th Century was a period almost of comparative quiet in home affairs. Abroad were stirring events in abundance in which England played its part, for the century gives, at a rough calculation, 56 years of war to 44 ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... into slices, and the flour, which has been mixed with a little cold water. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer gently an hour longer. Have the toasted bread in the tureen. Turn the soup on it and serve. A pint of green peas, cooked in the soup the last half, is a great addition. When the butter is used, let it melt in the soup ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... who was busy coiling down the various halliards, etcetera, "I've been expectin' that any time this last half-hour, and I only wonder it didn't happen afore. Well, that's a good endin' to a good job well begun, and I reckon them chaps ashore there may's well make up their minds to stay where they be for ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... more unlucky than usual—and when the big race was run last Wednesday, so thick was the rain, that the horses could only be seen for the last half mile! Of course this made all the difference to the horse I selected—Windgall—who finished second;—as he only gives his best performances in public, and as he doubtless knew he couldn't be seen, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various
... storm of self-contempt and bitterness that I had been holding in abeyance for the last half hour swept over me like a flood. I could have ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... has made wonderful progress in the arts and sciences including new inventions, during the last half century. The scope of the "Natural Philosophy" and "Familiar Science" of a few years ago ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... cold again in seven or eight minutes he sprang out, ran up and down the bank, and rubbed himself with bunches of leaves until he was dry. After he had dressed, he felt that he had actually grown in size and strength in the last half hour. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... medieval laws has continued in Europe from 1776 till the present time, yet custom still is stronger to-day in Europe than in America. Serfdom was not abolished until the first half of the nineteenth century in Austria and southeastern Europe, and not until the last half in Russia. Many economic and cultured forces furthered this movement, but the most powerful intellectual force in its favor was the work of Adam Smith. So strong an impression did Smith's book make, that in the minds of men "free trade" became almost identical in thought with political economy, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... opened, glanced hastily around and closed again. Dr. Hardy was not surprised. For the last half hour he had been expecting this, but he had given no sign. When her eyes again opened, he put some drops to her lips, which she readily swallowed. By-and-bye she gave a look of thorough consciousness, accompanied with an effort ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... long a period, of wild and unlicensed enjoyment, for both burgeois and voyageur engaged in the perilous and adventuresome business of the fur trade. Those who speak of its history during the last half of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, depict the periods of the annual return of the traders from their wintering stations in the great panorama of the wilderness, east, west, north, and ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... of that, I believe that on the whole there is far more good than evil in the enormous military growths that have occurred in the last half century. I cannot estimate how far the alternative to war is lethargy. It is through military urgencies alone that many men can be brought to consent to the collective endowment of research, to public education and to a thousand interferences ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... going, every chapel being directly worth two shillings sterling to them, give the dean a good deal of trouble. Other officers are the vice-master, the bursar or treasurer, lecturers, assistant-lecturers, assistant-tutors, four chaplains, and the librarian. Prayers last half an hour; after which the student walks in the college grounds, and by 8, he is seated by his comfortable fire over his hot rolls and tea. At 9, lectures begin, and continue till 12, some ten or eleven going ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... to bed, and Miss Bethia betook herself to the kitchen and Debby, thinking, to herself, it would be well for all concerned if it should fall to her to straighten out things after all; for Mr Oswald had been walking up and down the room in silence for the last half-hour, "looking as black as thunder," Miss Bethia said, in confidence, to Debby, and no one else had spoken a word. It was a very painful half-hour to Mr Oswald. He had only begun his walk when it seemed to him impossible ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... have any more, Master Mather. You have broken your promises to me over and over again. That money you owed me last half ain't been paid yet. If it had only been the money for the cakes and sweets I shouldn't ha' minded so much, but it's that ten shillings you borrowed and promised me solemn you would pay at the end of the week and ain't never paid yet. I have got to make up my rent, ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... It all seemed—that last half hour—a dream to Henry and Paul. They had moved in a kind of mist, now red, now black. They had seen the black hills lowering above them, and the innumerable flashes of fire. They had heard the roar of the tempest ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century), declare that in his understanding any proper division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. To those who now so declare, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... and even of community decadence, in some portions of the Union. But these facts merely add to the importance of the farm question. And it should not be forgotten that there has been a large and constant growth both of our agricultural wealth and of our rural population. During the last half-century there was a gain of 500 per cent. in the value of farm property, while the non-urban population increased 250 per cent. Agriculture has been one of the chief elements of America's industrial greatness, it is still our dominant economic interest, ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... used the whip once, Father, but I thought it was better to get them on as fast as I could, for I have felt and seen ever so many snowflakes in the last half-hour," Katherine said penitently. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... last half-year, Dinky-Dunk had been on the wing, hurrying over to Calgary, and Edmonton, flying east to Winnipeg, scurrying off to the Coast, poring over township maps and blue-prints and official-looking letters from land associations and banks and loan companies. I had been ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... into a moral sense as of some inner dignity continually violated. Once the petty round of school tasks had been felt as a molestation; but now, at last, as a degradation. Constant conversation with grown-up men for the last half year, and upon topics oftentimes of the gravest order,—the responsibility that had always in some slight degree settled upon myself since I had become the eldest surviving son of my family, but of late much more so when circumstances had thrown me as an English stranger upon the society ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... in our own day, say in the last half-century; during which time a mort of books have been written about a mysterious figure turning up in some modern city, whom you could not fail to recognise by certain infallible signs. Generally speaking, the chief of these were: long hair, and a tendency to make lugubrious remarks ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... speak. He stood a moment, then lifted the last half inch of a cigarette to his lips, took a long, meditative inhalation, turned half round on his heel, dashed the remnant with fierce emphasis into a spittoon, ejected two long streams of smoke from his nostrils, and extending his fist toward ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... of the old Archbishopric of Cologne and other small ecclesiastical and temporal States, the important provinces of Westphalia and the Rhineland, which have made possible for her the industrial growth of the last half century. Cologne, Duesseldorf, Elberfeld, Essen, and other great industrial centres of Western Germany will next year be celebrating the centenary of their Prussian connection. But the chief State in the Confederation and its undisputed head was Austria, which ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... foregoing prediction may seem, the facts of the last half century will, we think, justify it. If the Manhattan towns, or Manhattan, as we shall not scruple to term the several places that compose the prosperous sisterhood at the mouth of the Hudson—a name that is more ancient and better adapted to the history, associations, and convenience ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... and those few too weak to make their friendship effectual. At such a time, and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric which for the last half century as been the fondest hope of the lovers ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... last half of the 7th with the 8th forms one sentence. It is certainly pleonastic. Ranavaranais of the Bengal texts is preferable to the Bombay reading Varavaranais. Toranas are the wooden edifices placed on the backs of elephants ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... speed and accommodation, in the energy which pushes railways into remote districts, and in the skill which creates a traffic where no traffic existed before, they stand to-day in the front rank, as they have stood for the last half century. To say that they are very far from perfect is nothing; it is only to say that they are worked by human agency. Their worst enemies will scarcely deny that they are at least alive; so long as there is life there may be growth, and we may hope to see them outgrow the faults of their ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... this book to describe a few of the more important earthquakes that have occurred during the last half century. In judging of importance, the standard which I have adopted is not that of intensity only, but rather of the scientific value of the results that have been achieved by the study of the shocks. Even with this ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... of uncanny. Before their time, despite the great examples of prose fiction produced by Bunyan, Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, and the remarkable determination towards the life of ordinary society given, or instanced, by Miss Burney; despite the immense novel-production of the last half of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth—it is hardly too much to say that "the novel," as such, had not found its proper way or ways at all. Bunyan's was an example of genius in a peculiar kind of the novel: as, in a very different ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... promise on our parts to pay all expenses, and succeeded in wheedling another zwanziger in advance out of our cashier, the military Lubecker. This piece of money, however, on being proffered in payment of a last half-pint of beer, was instantly confiscated by the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... an immensely large rambling loft at top, I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished, but sparely. Some of the furniture—say, a third—was as old as the house; the rest was of various periods within the last half-century. I was referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the county town to treat for the house. I went that day, and I ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... articles written during the last half of the war, and some during the armistice, were held back on grounds which were presumably patriotic. I share with those who were instrumental in keeping them from the public the moral portion of the reward which consists in ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... ought to go back before Christmas, Violet," said Mrs. Tempest, continuing a discussion that had been dragging itself slowly along for the last half-hour. ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... ask, do not hope, that He will give them to you before you are able to profit by them. Believe that he has kept them from you hitherto, because they would have been curses, and not blessings. Oh! look back, look back, at the history of English Radicalism for the last half century, and judge by your own deeds, your own words; were you fit for those privileges which you so frantically demanded? Do not answer me, that those who had them were equally unfit; but thank God, if ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... is the glory of the American church to entertain, there were great numbers who had become as captivated with Schleiermacher's word, feeling, as if it had been a harp-note from heaven. The people had thought so little about their own hearts within the last half century that they seemed to have forgotten their stewardship of the treasure. The whole land had been converted into a colossal thinking machine. And when the German people were told by a stentorian voice that man is emotional as well as intellectual they arose as ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... steel-shiny, needle-lookin' gun, and I says to myself: 'Eddie boy, you miss us about twice more and Alec Corning'll be buying you more than one drink next time we meet,' for I knew the end was near. Ahead of me I see a passage making an island of the last half mile o' that point o' land, and it looked like water enough in the passage to ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... give her orders to the footman, who had been standing bolt upright within the door for the last half minute, and had heard the latter part of her animadversions; and, of course, made his own reflections upon them, notwithstanding the inflexible, wooden countenance he thought proper to preserve in the drawing- room. On my remarking afterwards that he must have heard her, she replied—'Oh, no ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... centralized government. But it is undoubtedly responsible for much of the difficulty of meeting with adequate legislation the new problems presented by the total change in industrial conditions on this continent during the last half century. In actual practice it has proved exceedingly difficult, and in many cases impossible, to get unanimity of wise action among the various States on these subjects. From the very nature of the case this is especially true of the laws affecting the employment of capital ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... it that I can never get an answer when I ring? Here have I been ringing for the last half-hour. I have rung twenty times." (This is a falsehood. You have rung only six times, and the "half-hour" is an absurd exaggeration; but you feel the mere truth would not be adequate to the occasion.) "I think it disgraceful," you continue, "and I shall complain ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... their needs now attract more attention through the extension of newspapers and cheap books, the condition of the laboring-class is certainly better than it was fifty years ago. See Mr. Robert Giffen's "Progress of the Working-Classes in the Last Half-Century" (1884), referred to in Book IV, Chap. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... of this publication was mostly compiled during the leisure hours of the last half-year of a Senior's collegiate life, and was presented anonymously to the public with ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... say that within the last half hour, living or dying had become of little moment to him; but he doubted the truth or efficacy of this timeworn heroic of passion. He felt, too, that anything he said was a mere subterfuge for the real reason of his sudden departure. And how was he ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... interview; and it was a long while before he could restrain his laughter, as Vronsky described how the government clerk, after subsiding for a while, would suddenly flare up again, as he recalled the details, and how Vronsky, at the last half word of conciliation, skillfully maneuvered a retreat, shoving ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the last half century, every thing has been done to deprive the peasant of any interest in the preservation of public order; of any wish to maintain the existing constitution of society; of all hope of raising himself in the world, or of improving his condition in life; of all ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... We're discussing you not me... . I'm a man of no talent, and can only give my blood, nothing more, like every man without talent; never mind my blood either! I'm talking about you. I've been waiting here two years for you.... Here I've been dancing about in my nakedness before you for the last half-hour. You, only you ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... class of politicians, the men of my own craft and cloth, whom in my own land, and my own experience, I have found no less worthy than other men of love and admiration. I could name among them those who seem to me to come near even to him. But I will shut out the last half century from the comparison. I will then say that if, among all the pedestals supplied by history for public characters of extraordinary nobility and purity, I saw one higher than all the rest, and if I were ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... religious life under the Wesleys. In the middle of the last century one wiseacre said, "In fifty years your Christianity will have died out"; yet, for all our failures, probably Christianity in all its history has never made more progress than in the last half century. If you ask why, one reason is clear: man cannot live in a universe of uninterpreted facts. The scientific approach to life is not enough. It does not cover all the ground. Men want to know what life spiritually means and they want to know that it "means intensely, and means good." Facts ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... ears boxed, you rogue!" he began; but at that moment in surged a torrent of rather frightened, very wrathful boys, who had been unprofitably spending the last half-minute in striving with penknives to force the lock of the ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... they shall go forth as beggars. I've said it now, father, and I'll stick to it. You know the stuff I'm made of." As he finished speaking, he swallowed down the last half of a third glass of hot spirits and water, and then glared on his father with angry, blood-shot eyes, and a red, almost lurid face. The unfortunate father was beginning to know the son, and to feel that his son would become ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the expression of their countenances, but failed in discovering any thing that could be traced into evidence of a guilty recognition. Still he conceived his original impression to have been too forcibly borne out, even by the events of the last half hour, to allow this to have much weight with him; and his determination to carry the thing through all its fearful preliminary stages became more and ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... belong. Illusions of this kind are scarcely retained by even the young—perhaps, indeed, least of all by the young—of our generation. Moreover, the changes which society has undergone during the last half century have rubbed out much that was distinctive in the actor's life, and have given to manners and habits in general a uniformity that leaves little that is striking and piquant to describe. The adventures and the eccentricities of actors and actresses of a bygone time were paralleled or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Elkan went on blandly. "Naturally he couldn't keep his eye on all them people at oncet—ain't it? I am watching them fellers, which they are working them big brass machines, for the last half hour, and except for five or ten minutes they sit there doing absolutely ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... to her ear. So the curate gave up the lecture, and placed a little programme of studies to be conned during his absence in her reluctant hand; and Sultan, who had been wistfully licking his paws for the last half-hour, sprang up and caracoled once more into the garden; and the old priest and the young woman left the works of man for those ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... doubting that the sympathies of the others would be as warm as his own, "Penn, you wicked brute, you have stolen that bottle of scent. Here, Mrs Hart, you shan't suffer at any rate if there is a fellow so base and wicked," and he at once pulled out his last half-crown, and insisted on her taking it in ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Mr. Plymdale and Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity which almost counterbalanced Mr. Hawley and his associates who sat for Pinkerton at the Green Dragon. Mr. Brooke, conscious of having weakened the blasts of the "Trumpet" against him, by his reforms as a landlord in the last half year, and hearing himself cheered a little as he drove into the town, felt his heart tolerably light under his buff-colored waistcoat. But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... reader knows; but, then, the minutes flew: whereas, now, this combat appeared drawn out to an interminable length. I have said, an hour thus passed before we could even guess at the probable result. At the end of that time, the firing entirely ceased. It had been growing slacker and slacker for the last half-hour, but it now stopped altogether. The smoke which appeared to be packed on the ocean, began to rise and disperse; and, little by little, the veil rose from before ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... kissed their hands and stammered out words of gratitude, his uncultured but upright spirit told him that he had been blind ever to have rejoiced for a moment at the news that Melissa had been chosen to be empress. All that he had seen during the last half-hour had convinced him, as surely as if he had been told it in words, that his beloved young mistress scorned her imperial suitor, and firmly intended to evade him—how, Argutis could not guess. And, recognizing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and Golden Pen, Clophonion Sets on his sign, to shew, O proud, poor soul, Both where he wonnes, and how the same he won, From writers fair, though he writ ever foul; But by that Hand, that Pen so borne has been, From place to Place, that for the last half Yeare, It scarce a sen'night at a place is seen. That Hand so plies the Pen, though ne'er the neare, For when Men seek it, elsewhere it is sent, Or there shut up as for the Plague or Rent, Without ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... give petite an honest name to bear,—honest as I could, at least; and would have lavished wealth upon her, as I mean to do; and made the last half of my life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... of stating, as evidence of the conveniency of this portion of Borneo for a commercial intercourse with China, that down to within the last half century a considerable number of Chinese junks were engaged in trading regularly with Borneo, and that trade ceased only when the native government became too bad and weak to afford it protection. Without the least doubt this trade would again spring up on the erection of the British flag at Labuan. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... of game," declared Walter, "in the last half mile, I have seen coons, possums, deer, and a wild-cat, to say nothing of the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Fowler had thudded the ball away with a long swing of his foot and the last half ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... education. Moreover the publicity of our life in this era of print too easily teaches the workingman that his master may be neither better nor wiser than he and his comrades. And finally, the political and economic discussions of the last half century have made it perfectly clear to him that the removing of the material misery lies in the realm of practical possibility, and that even without bombs a new economic order may be created almost as ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... about three centuries old. Horticulturally its experience has scarcely reached the century mark. Practically all the commercial fruit industry of the United States is the product of the last half century. Relatively speaking we are quite young and therefore there are a great many things about nut-growing that we may not be expected to know. In the older lands of Europe and Asia they have a horticultural experience going back from ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... it came to pass that, for the last half century, there had been two influences at work in Morningquest: that of the chime, full fraught with spiritual suggestion; and that of the duke, which was just the opposite. They were the influences of good and evil, and, needless to say, the effect of the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... become somewhat dimmed in the grave half-lights of the room, in the graver, deeper dignity of the erect, soldier-like figure before her. The bright color born of the tempest within and without had somehow faded from her cheek; the sauciness begotten from bullying her horse in the last half-hour's rapid ride was so subdued by the actual presence of the man she had come to bully, that I fear she had to use all her self-control to keep down her inclination to whimper, and to keep back ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... will be justified by the interest of the separate papers, and that their result will be such a view of the main features as to leave a distinct impression of the general life and advancement, especially of the last half of the century. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... from them. They introduced into the Peninsula various tropical plants and vegetables, whose cultivation has departed with them. Sugar, which the modern Spaniards have been obliged to import from foreign nations in large quantities annually for their domestic consumption, until within the last half century that they have been supplied by their island of Cuba, constituted one of the principal exports of the Spanish Arabs. The silk manufacture was carried on by them extensively. The Nubian geographer, in the beginning of the twelfth century, enumerates six hundred villages in Jaen as ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... to such views by now; and yet the sight that had been unrolling itself gradually during the last half-hour had held him fascinated for minute after minute. They had taken ship in Rome after a day or two more of sight-seeing, and had moved up the peninsula by stages, changing boats soon after crossing the frontier, for one of the high-flying, more leisurely and ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... formerly a trumpeter in the Ninth Lancers—the regiment of Mora and of Monpavon—"pardon me. Twenty years ago, during the last half year of my service, I was in barracks in the Military School, and I remember very well that near the fortifications there was a dirty dancing-hall known as the Jansoulet Rooms, with a little furnished flat above and bedrooms at twopence-halfpenny ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... along the road the old man pointed out to me with his stubby whip so many examples of his work that it seemed finally as if he had borne a hand in nearly everything done in this neighbourhood in the last half-century. He has literally built himself into the country and into the town, and at seventy years of age he can look back upon it all with honest pride. It stands. No jerry-work ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... a pause, and each could hear the beating of the other's heart. The November wind had risen within the last half hour, and now howled dismally past the window, seeming to Rosamond like the wail that young girl must have uttered when she first learned how her trust had been betrayed. The clock struck four! Rosamond counted each stroke, and thought, "One hour more, and he will be here." ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... marriage between the two. As to the Hussar, he was quite equal to the occasion, and from all that could be gathered from his imperturbable manner, might have been entertaining his companion with his meteorological views for the last half-hour. But with poor Sylla it was different. However good an actress the girl might be theatrically, she was a lamentable failure in the affairs of real life now that she found herself the leading lady; and both her quick-eyed aunt and the lynx-eyed Mr. Cottrell felt just as certain ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... Genji was amused at her girlish mode of expression, and earnestly said, "Which of us is a fox?[55] I don't know, but anyhow be persuaded by me." And after repeated conversations of the same nature, she at last half-consented. He had much doubt of the propriety of inducing her to take this step, nevertheless her final compliance flattered his vanity. He recollected very well the Tokonatz (Pinks) which To-no-Chiujio spoke of, but never betrayed that he had ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... lady's service—for a price,' was what I said. I didn't say, 'I will.' I shall not be able to tell you until to-night." The patronizing tone in which Anthony spoke this sentence was worth to me everything I had gone through in the last half hour. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... forward into the circle of the firelight, stared down at him incredulously. It was unbelievable! She had been giving him all the best that was in her—the work of her brain, the interpretation of her hands—baring her very heart to him during the last half-hour. And he had slept ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... carried out to somewhat greater length, corresponding nearly to the last half of the first part of "Elijah," from the point where the challenge is given to the prophets of Baal. In the opening passages of mingled recitative and arioso, Peter is forewarned that he shall deny his Master, and his half-indignant remonstrance is sustained, with added emphasis, by ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... street. Again the ranks parted and closed again, this time to admit three carriages driven rapidly. As they came to a stop the muskets all around the square leaped to the "present." So disconcerting was this sudden slap and rattle of arms after the tenseness of the last half hour, that men dodged back as though from a blow. With admirable precision, Olney's men, obeying a series of commands, moved forward from the gun to form a hollow square around the carriages. Only the man with the burning slow match was left standing ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... laws which have governed the New Englander, I took pride in remembering that the President also was a graduate of our law school. These three are the little contributions which Cinderella has been preparing in the last half-century, for the first dinner-party of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... my last sheet of paper, so I am reduced to my last half-sheet. What a strange mysterious faculty is that thing called imagination! We have no ideas almost at all of another world; but I have often amused myself with visionary schemes of what happiness might be enjoyed ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... have wearied every Court and Government in Europe and America with our protests and remonstrances, until we goaded them into at least ostensibly coperating with us to prevent the enslaving of the negro—we, who for the last half century have spent annual sums, equal to the revenue of a small kingdom, in blockading the African coast, for a cause in which we not only had no interest, but which was contrary to our pecuniary interest, and which many believed would ruin, as many among us still, though ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... another long walk—22 miles, to Besilsleigh, Fyfield, Kingston, Bagpuize, Frilford, Marcham, and Abingdon. The last half of the way was in the face of wind, rain, snow, and hail. Was too lame to ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... In the last half of the 19th century, Russian literature took a further step in the way of democracy. It passed from the hands of the nobility into the hands of the middle class, as the conditions under which it existed brought it closer ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... in any utopian dreams as to the possibility of inaugurating an era of universal peace, it may, I think, be held that, in spite of the wars which have occurred during the last half century, not merely an ardent desire for peace, but also a dislike—I may almost say a genuine horror—of war has grown apace amongst the civilised nations of the world. The destructiveness of modern weapons of offence, the fearful personal responsibility devolving on the individuals who order ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring |
