"Mercantile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self-contradiction, while to others it is entirely intelligible. In his boyhood one gets a flavor of irreverence which was slow in disappearing. When yet a mere child he suggested to his father the convenience of saying grace over the whole barrel of salt fish, in bulk, as the mercantile phrase would be. By the time that he was sixteen, Shaftesbury and Collins, efficiently aided by the pious writers who had endeavored to refute them, had made him "a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine;" and while he was still his brother's apprentice ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... number of their attendants, their style of travelling, the imposing, and almost warlike, air of the armed men who surrounded them, place them far above the laird, who travelled with his brace of footmen; and as to rivalry from the mercantile part of the community, these would as soon have thought of imitating the state equipage of the Sovereign. At present it is different; and I myself, Peter Pattieson, in a late journey to Edinburgh, had the honour, in the mail-coach phrase to "change a leg" with a peer of the realm. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... to me in an eager, entreating glance, which induced me to propose myself as one of these confidential agents, and to be responsible for the other. I thought, as I spoke, of Singleton, to whom I knew I could explain my plans in full, and whose mercantile experience would make him a valuable coadjutor. The old gentleman accepted my offer eagerly. I told him that twenty-four hours were all I wanted to prepare myself. He immediately took measures for the charter of two little clipper ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... cornelian was a present from his friend Edleston, a Cambridge chorister, afterwards a clerk in a mercantile house in London. Edleston died of consumption, May 11, 1811. (See letter from Byron to Miss Pigot, October 28, 1811.) Their acquaintance began by Byron saving him from drowning. (MS. note by the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... and we moved up towards our host, I found myself between two groups; one discussing the mercantile depravity of a gentleman called Wilmot, of whom I had never heard, the other arguing on dark dilemmas connected with an Abyssinian loan. A vacant chair happening to be by my side, Adrian, glass in hand, came round the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... definite. They decided first, "That from the change of Times and other causes, the Education afforded at the Giggleswick Grammar School is at the present time insufficient for general purposes, and more especially for the purposes of Trade and Mercantile Business." ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... throughout Germany will cash forAmericansonly letters of credit and checks issued by good American banks in limited amounts. Included in this category are the checks of the Bankers' Association, Bankers' Trust Company, International Mercantile Marine Company, and American Express Company. All checks and letters of credit must, however, be stamped by American consuls, and consuls must see that the consular stamp is affixed to those checks and letters of ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... that workmen lose their employment in "bad times." Mercantile concerns become bankrupt, clerks are paid off, and servants are dismissed when their masters can no longer employ them. If the disemployed people have been in the habit of regularly consuming all their salaries and ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... that paid 8 per cent before the war, now paying 22-1/2 per cent (such as Messrs. Richard Dickeson & Co., the Army contractors) are able to pocket tens of thousands that ought to go to strengthen the resources of the nation. Others, like the Mercantile Steamship Co., increase their dividend from 20 per cent to 35 per cent; and some are able to pay dividends actually larger than the ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... so long been the subject and the tenant, and made up his mind to see her the wife of a man who, though of respectable parentage, could boast neither title nor pedigree, and was only the junior partner in a mercantile firm. But then young Hayforth bore the most honorable character; his prospects were said to be good, and his manners unexceptionable; and, above all, Emily was evidently much attached to him; and remembering the days of his own early love, the father's heart ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... constitution of the city, furnished a force of 3300 freemen; so that it must have numbered at least 10,000 free inhabitants. But further, every one acquainted with the Romans and their history is aware that it is their urban and mercantile character which forms the basis of whatever is peculiar in their public and private life, and that the distinction between them and the other Latins and Italians in general is pre-eminently the distinction between citizen and rustic. Rome, indeed, was not a mercantile ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... people on the finest, calmest night that was ever known in the North Atlantic—even if you have provided them with a little music to get drowned by. Sell less tickets! That's the solution of the problem, your Mercantile Highness. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... mercantile navy of Britain was better qualified than he to take his ship across the trackless main, and, if need be, carry her safely into port; but seamanship and knowledge of channels and bars and currents avail nothing when the sails and cordage ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... Holland and England. As in European literature Cathay became China, and Zipango or Xipangu was recognized as Japan, so also the curiosities, the artistic fabrics, the strange things from the ends of the earth, soon became familiar in Europe. Besides the traffic in mercantile commodities, there were exchanges of words. The languages of Europe were enriched by Japanese terms, such as soy, moxa, goban, japan (lacquer or varnish), etc., while the tongue of Nippon received an infusion of new terms,[2] and a notable list of inventions was imported ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... could not possibly become virtuosos slave year after year before an ivory and ebony tread-mill, when, if they realized their lack of personal qualifications, they could engage in teaching or in some other professional or mercantile line and take a delight in their music as an avocation that they would ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... force, and fear, and flattery, the Vraibleusians paid for their corn nearly its weight in gold; but what did it signify to a nation with so many pink shells." Popanilla is next introduced to an eminent bookseller, who craves the honour of publishing a narrative of his voyage: he informs the "mercantile Mecaenas" that he does not know how to write; who replies that "he never had for a moment supposed that so sublime a savage could possess such a vulgar accomplishment, and that it was by no means difficult for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... by the "Two Conservatives" is not altogether edifying reading. At a first glance it reminds us of a round-robin got up in the servants' hall for the purpose of springing a mine upon the steward and housekeeper, or of the whisperings sometimes heard in the lower ranks of a mercantile establishment where a conviction prevails that nothing but discreet promotion will save the firm. Some of the complaints set forth fall far beneath this level. They deal with tiffs and slights and rebuffs. Services have not been ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... experience but little trouble in getting some minor berths on coastwise vessels or other crafts sailing under American colors. The chief idea in establishing the two schoolships, St. Mary's and Saratoga, was to fit boys for the mercantile marine, and probably, if ever the trans-Atlantic liners sail under our flag, they will be given appointments on them. 2. The pay of the officers on steamship lines varies so greatly that no general average ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... those reservoirs and other works so necessary to the health and comfort of a large metropolis. A principal objection raised to the situation of Adelaide is its distance from the Port, but that we must remember is a disadvantage common to many other large and mercantile cities. The Surveyor-General seems to have been fully aware of the responsible duty that devolved upon him, and to have acted with great judgment. Port Lincoln, indeed, is a splendid harbour, one with which Port Adelaide, as far as size goes, cannot be compared, but having ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... I will call this nameless lane before alluded to—is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seem to have found their way thither and made an eccentric mercantile settlement. There is a bird-shop at one corner, wainscoted with little cages containing linnets, waxwings, canaries, blackbirds, Mino-birds, with a hundred other varieties, known only to naturalists. Immediately opposite is an establishment where they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... and not less than 20,000 guns. Here, then, is a fleet, built and ready for service, which is many times stronger than that which we have been able to gather after eighteen months of constant and strenuous effort. And behind this array there is a community essentially mercantile, unsurpassed in mechanic skill and productiveness, and full of sailors of the best stamp. What tremendous elements of naval power are these! One does not wonder that the remark often made is so nearly true,—that, if there is any trouble in the farthest port ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of all lands. Thoroughness is quite as necessary in the rice fields of China as in the wheat fields of America, as necessary in the banks of Rome as in the banks of New York, quite as essential to mercantile transactions in Cape Town as in Chicago, and quite as essential to home life in Tokyo as in San Francisco. If these big objectives are set up in the schools of all countries pupils, teachers, and people ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... undemonstrative ways, there is something very wonderful about naval discipline. I do not mean to say that the subordination kept up is more than is necessary, nor perhaps is it in reality greater than is to be found in a college, or a regiment, or a large mercantile house; but it is made so VERY obvious. You not only feel the bit, but you see it; and your bridle is hung with bells to tell ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... had ever read or heard in England, that so extensive a town could have been reared in that remote region, in so brief a period as that which had elapsed since its foundation. It is not, however, a distant or cursory glance that will give the observer a just idea of the mercantile importance of this busy capital. In order to form an accurate estimate of it, he should take a boat and proceed from Sydney Cove to Darling Harbour. He would then be satisfied, that it is not upon the first alone that Australian ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... included most of the prominent merchants of the city, and others interested in commerce, and Dr. Kennion, the Anglican Bishop of Adelaide. Mr. A.W. Meeks presided, and said that a special meeting of the Chamber had been called to hear Lord Brassey give an address on mercantile affairs. The Committee knew the great interest he (Lord Brassey) had taken in all matters referring to maritime and mercantile affairs, and the voyages made in the 'Sunbeam' had made Lady Brassey well known. Lord Brassey's father ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... expended fifty thousand roubles a year, and the ambassador from the French emperor over four hundred thousand, he maintained the simplicity of style suited at once to his salary and to the character of the country he represented. Loans to an indefinite amount were proffered to him by mercantile houses. These he uniformly declined, though under circumstances of great temptation to accept them. "The opportunities," he wrote, "of thus anticipating my regular income, it is difficult to resist. But I am determined to do it. The whole of my life has been one continued experience ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Arabia, where wild hyperbole is permitted by the genius of the language, and where people are accustomed to it in conversation, understand it perfectly, and make unconscious allowance for it. Displayed here in the United States, in a mercantile community, and in a tongue characterized by directness and simplicity, it makes the actors almost entirely incomprehensible to people outside their own set, as is shown by the attempts made to explain and understand the letters in the case. Most of the critics, both ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... Lucretia Clavering—condescends to notice the looks, good or bad, of Mr. Mainwaring? 'Sdeath, sir, he is the son of a land-agent! Sir, he is intended for trade! Sir, his highest ambition is to be partner in some fifth-rate mercantile house!" ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Africa, there was and could be no question of such a thing; it was an inert mass used at will by the despot. The Phoenician states, and Carthage in particular, were mere oligarchies, with commerce for their chief object, and slaves for mercantile or warlike purposes. In the republics of Greece and Italy, the aristocracy ruled, and when, after centuries of bloody struggles and revolutions, the subjects of Rome were finally granted the rights of citizenship, the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... associated with the Rev. Dr. Strachan as administrators of the will were all prominent in civic and provincial affairs. They were all Scotchmen and were connected with St. Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church. John Richardson, partner in the mercantile house of Forsyth, Richardson and Co., was a native of Banffshire, Scotland. He represented the East Ward of Montreal in the first Parliament of Lower Canada, which met in 1792, and he took his seat at the same time as James McGill, his colleague from the West Ward. With the latter, ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... Meavy, had been brought up in a stern school. His ideas of credit and of mercantile honor were pitched very high indeed. He imagined himself disgraced forever, and—he did ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... found three servants willing to risk a journey to the north; and a man of color named George Fleming, who had generously been assisted by Mr. H. E. Rutherford, a mercantile gentleman of Cape Town, to endeavor to establish a trade with the Makololo, had also managed to get a similar number; we accordingly left Kuruman on the 20th of November, and proceeded on our journey. Our servants were the worst possible specimens of those ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... from the Brigadier of Aden[23] did not arrive sooner, and keep him on a course of rectitude, for he was obliged to return to Aden and take his chance, as there he had not only a wife and family, but it was the headquarters of all his mercantile transactions. During this time, whilst I was in the old fort, an odd accident occurred to an Akil's wife. She was playing with my interpreter, who, for a frolic, snatched up one of my six-barrelled revolver ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... when Business rubs its eyes, and begins to plod sleepily through the town. The street, instead of running between lofty and continuous piles of brick, is but partially lined with wooden buildings of various heights and architecture, in each of which the mercantile department is connected with the domicile, like the gingerbread and candy shops of an after-date. The signs have a singular appearance to a stranger's eye. These are not a barren record of names and occupations ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... carried this piece of mercantile insolence off to his lawyer. The stout captain was, however, undoubtedly liable, and, with a heavy heart, he wrote to beg they would, with all despatch, sell the bird in London on his account, and charge him with the difference. 'The scoundrels!—they'll buy him themselves at half-price, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... national effort, he had, with a spirit worthy of an exiled patriot, made the best of his unchosen fortunes, and worked his way up, through a thousand difficulties and privations, to a respectable standing in the mercantile profession. At the period mentioned, Mr Charles had become almost naturalised in one of our great commercial towns, was a member of a British church, and the head of a British household; but when the conversation happened to turn on sporting ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... to satisfy, of any man among the creditors. He assumed dishonest intention at the outset, and made that a plea for the most rigid exaction; covering his own hard selfishness with offensive cant about mercantile honor, Christian integrity, and religious observance of business contracts. He was the only man among all the creditors, who made his church membership a prominent thing—few of them were even church-goers—and ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... group preserves its unified character and its distinctness from the other groups within the same inclusive association. The essential thing is the specific idea of honor in narrow groups—family honor, officers' honor, mercantile honor, yes, even the "honor among thieves." Since the individual belongs to various groups, the individual may, at the same time, be under the demands of several sorts of honor which are independent of each ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... disappointed, how little has reality answered to expectation in respect to the former. A successful rival has arisen, even in the immediate vicinity of this seeming favourite of nature, to defeat all the calculations of mercantile sagacity, and to add another to the thousand existing evidences "that the wisdom of ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... American pocket and consequently the American heart so deeply, was complicated by another question of equal, if not greater, import. The forcible impressment of men to man the British fleet had been for many years a necessary evil in view of the national emergency, and of the increase in the mercantile marine which attracted large numbers to its service. Great abuses were perpetrated in the operation of this harsh method of maintaining an efficient naval force, and there was no part of the British Isles where the presence of a press gang did not bring ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... stickle for; out bid, under bid; ask, charge; strike a bargain &c. (contract) 769. speculate, give a sprat to catch a herring; buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, buy low and sell high; corner the market; rig the market, stag the market. Adj. commercial, mercantile, trading; interchangeable, marketable, staple, in the market, for sale. wholesale, retail. Adv. across the counter. Phr. cambio non ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... demand from her sisters an absolutely merciful interpretation. For she was now simply attracting Sir Twickenham to Brookfield as a necessary medicine to her Papa. Since Mrs. Chump's return, however, Mr. Pole had spoken cheerfully of himself, and, by innuendo emphasized, had imparted that his mercantile prospects were brighter. In fact, Cornelia half thought that he must have been pretending bankruptcy to gain his end in getting the consent of his daughters to receive the woman. She, and Adela likewise, began to suspect that the parental transparency was a little mysterious, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... yet, however unpalatable and ungracious the fact may be to Englishmen, the ties of blood have little to do with the bond that holds Canada to England. This statement will arouse protest from a certain section of Canadians; but those same Canadians know there are hundreds—yes, thousands—of mercantile houses in the Dominion where employers practically put up the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... Hathorne had the advantage over fashionable society in Salem, in being a thorough patriot. Boston and Salem were the two strongholds of Toryism during the war for Independence, which was natural enough, as their wealthy citizens were in close mercantile relations with English houses, and sent their children to England to be educated. Daniel Hathorne, however, as soon as hostilities had begun, fitted out his bark as a privateer, and spent the following six years in preying upon British merchantmen. How successful he was in this line ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... exhibited a friendly interest in me and my welfare. He is president of a savings bank and is concerned in numerous mercantile and speculative enterprises. He belongs to many clubs and social organizations, and is president of the Sons of Vermont, the Sons of New York, the Sons of Rhode Island, the Sons of Michigan, and ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... a proper spirit," agreed Mr. Trimmer, with great enthusiasm. "I like to see it in a young man, but I've no doubt that we can arrange that little matter. Of course, we would have to incorporate, say, as the Burnit-Trimmer Mercantile Corporation, but while having that name on the front of both buildings, it might not be a bad idea, for business as well as sentimental reasons, to keep the old signs at the tops of both, just as they now are. Those are little details to discuss later; but as the stock of the new company, ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... case of America there was a further evil. Being a new country, she ought in her times of financial want to borrow of old countries; but the old countries were frightened by the probable issue of unlimited inconvertible paper, and they would not lend a shilling. Much more than the mercantile credit of America was thus lost. The great commercial houses in England are the most natural and most effectual conveyers of intelligence from other countries to Europe. If they had been financially interested in giving in a sound ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... exclaimed Captain Gildrock. "There are more merchants and traders in the country now than can get a living, and mercantile life is a desperate struggle in these ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... than the munificence and promptitude of their contributions on this occasion. At a meeting of bankers and merchants held in the open square of the Royal Exchange, upwards of forty-six thousand pounds were collected on the spot; the King subscribed L20,000; the Queen L5,000; numerous mercantile firms and private individuals contributed large sums, varying from L3,000 to L10,000; and the Bank of England, the noble tribute of L200,000. That this urgent necessity should have pressed heavily upon those public men whose position made a heavy ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... commenced his work as a grammarian, and his other writings, after disease had fixed upon his declining years. Having successively engaged in the practice of law, and in mercantile pursuits, and having retired from the latter with some property, he fell into ill-health, which compelled him to go abroad, and kept him an exile through the remainder of his long life. The disease with which he was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the main facts of the great tobacco speculation, in reference to which there were so many rumors last week. It appears that an agent of a New York mercantile house, whose name it is deemed inexpedient to publish at this time, proposed to certain parties in this city to contract with them for the delivery of a specific quantity of manufactured tobacco at Fredericksburg, he undertaking ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... to you, gentlemen, that I have no fear from the accumulations of vast mercantile wealth when under the benign constraints of religion. Wealth is the handmaid of religion. Such wealth has beautified the face of society, has advanced to this consummation those great philanthropic enterprises which have ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... examined from the outside the scene of my future triumphs—for I had now resolved to settle down and make my fortune in Montevideo— Ibegan seriously to look out for employment. I visited in turn every large mercantile establishment in the place, and, in fact, every house where I thought there might be a chance of lighting on something to do. It was necessary to make a beginning, and I would not have turned up my nose at anything, however ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the divergence. The coasting traffic inclines to the north; the deep-water ships steer east with a southern inclination, on through the Downs, to the most remote ends of the world. In the widening of the shores sinking low in the gray, smoky distances the greatness of the sea receives the mercantile fleet of good ships that London sends out upon the turn of every tide. They follow each other, going very close by the Essex shore. Such as the beads of a rosary told by business-like shipowners for the greater profit of the world they slip one by ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... are always seven stages: (1) that of racial tutelage, when sanitation becomes conscious and receives the sanction of law; (2) the introduction of sanitary comfort, well-paved streets, public sewers, extensive waterworks; (3) the period of commercial sanitation, when the mercantile classes insist upon such measures as quarantine and street-cleaning to check the immense ravages of epidemics; (4) the introduction of legislation against nuisances and the tendency to extend the definition of nuisance, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... to be broad; our ideas on social subjects were reformatory, progressive, experimental. Scientific subjects were a speciality of the household; and, living in a manufacturing district, mere neighbourhood kept us with the great current of mercantile interests. We argued each other into a general unfixity of opinions; and, full of youthful dreams of golden ages, were willing to believe this young world—where not yet we, but only our words could fly—to be but upon the threshold of true civilization. ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... also. He had an excuse. His father was a man in extensive business, was considerably past the prime of life, had a number of agents and clerks under him, but began to grow unable to attend to the various and burthensome duties and demands of a mercantile life. ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... finest wines in the world are to be found collected at the suppers given by the clerks, in the large mercantile houses of Madeira. By an established custom, when one of their corps is about to leave the island, he gives an entertainment, to which every guest contributes a bottle or two of wine. It is a point of honor ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... squalid highway known as the New Road, a thoroughfare lined with third-rate Chinese shops and thronged with rickshaws, carriages, bicycles, motors, street-cars, and Asiatics of every religion and complexion, and you will come at length into a portion of the city as different from the mercantile district as Riverside Drive is from the Bowery. Here you will find broad boulevards, shaded by rows of splendid tamarinds, lined by charming villas which peep coyly from the blazing gardens which surround them, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... never performing, seeing his more fortunate brother rising to the highest distinction in the priesthood, and finding himself irretrievably condemned to exist in the affluent obscurity ensured to him by his mercantile pursuits. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... surrounding foliage, and the gray-blue tints of the water. This house owed its name, the Red Inn, to this external decoration, imposed upon it, no doubt from time immemorial by the caprice of its founder. A mercantile superstition, natural enough to the different possessors of the building, far-famed among the sailors of the Rhine, had made them ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... being Europeans. Half the islanders were Christians, eight or ten per cent. Mohammedan, perhaps ten per cent. heathen. One considerable fraction were Chinese, another of mixed extraction. Probably none of the races were of pure Malay blood, though Malay blood predominated. Mercantile pursuits were largely in Chinese hands. The Moros disdained tillage and commerce alike, living on slave labor and captures ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Poor Hamilton on his back with the gout. So was obliged to have the assistance of Rolland[310] from the Second Division. Saw Cadell on the way home. I was right: he had been disappointed in his expectations from Glasgow and other mercantile places where trade ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... vain did every new Free State, year after year, vote with the Slave Power; in vain did every great railroad and manufacturing corporation of the North obey the political behests of the lords of the plantations; in vain was the mercantile aristocracy of all the great cities the fast friend of the slave aristocracy; and vainly did almost the entire immigrant population fall politically into its control. All this was as nothing against the irresistible natural tendency ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the abode of the primitive inhabitants of those countries? We ask at Teneriffe what is become of the Guanches, whose mummies alone, buried in caverns, have escaped destruction? In the fifteenth century almost all mercantile nations, especially the Spaniards and the Portuguese, sought for slaves at the Canary Islands, as in later times they have been sought on the coast of Guinea.* (* The Spanish historians speak of expeditions made by the Huguenots of Rochelle to carry off Guanche slaves. I have ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... and it was given to the Turks, who made it the capital of a vital empire. All the good which resulted to Europe from the temporary possession of Constantinople was the introduction into Europe of Grecian literature and art. Its political and mercantile importance was not appreciated, nor then even scarcely needed. It will one day become again the spoil of that nation which can most be benefited by it. Such is the course events are ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... Mercantile Marine Association," and is intended chiefly to supply officers for the merchant navy. Boys are received from 12 to 16 years of ago. The average number of boys on board was 138, of whom 54 joined the merchant service. The number of boys received since the commencement ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... went to the gardens and other workshops, closing the day with a visit to one of the large mercantile establishments ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... Exchequer), and finally got the petition presented to the House of Commons by Alexander Baring (afterwards Lord Ashburton). Tooke remarks that the Liverpool administration was in advance, not only of the public generally, but of the 'mercantile community,' Glasgow and Manchester, however, followed in the same steps, and the petition became a kind of official manifesto of the orthodox doctrine. The Political Economy Club formed next year at Tooke's instigation (April 18, 1821) was intended to hasten the process ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... threw themselves, either for investment or temporary speculation, on the fluctuations of the share-market. One venture was ennobled by a prince of the blood figuring as a director; another was sanctified by an archbishop; hundreds were solidified by the best mercantile names in the cities of London, Liverpool, and Manchester. Princes, dukes, duchesses, stags, footmen, poets, philosophers, divines, lawyers, physicians, maids, wives, widows, tore into the market, and choked the Exchange up so tight that the brokers could not get in nor out, and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... come on urgent mercantile business, and he crowds in a few days with us," Coronado presently explained. "I have told him of my little cousin's good fortune, and ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... powerful world empire of the 16th and 17th centuries ultimately yielded command of the seas to England. Subsequent failure to embrace the mercantile and industrial revolutions caused the country to fall behind Britain, France, and Germany in economic and political power. Spain remained neutral in World Wars I and II, but suffered through a devastating civil war (1936-39). In the second half of the ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... domains, taxes, revenues, public institutions, etc. The rebels claim to be sovereigns—that is each freeman in each respective State is a respective sovereign. The area of such revolted State, with all the lands, cultivated or uncultivated, with the farms, and all industrial, mercantile or mining establishments whatever, is the property of the sovereign, or of the sovereigns. Property of a, or of many sovereigns, is in its whole nature a public property, and as such, ipso facto, is liable to ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... degree by the action of the United States, but she had her own specific reason in the sinking of three of her merchant vessels by German submarines; Brazil possesses an enterprising and good mercantile marine, has been carrying coffee and frozen meat to Europe during the war and her ships have thus been constantly exposed to risk. The sinking of her vessels raised a storm of anger, the popular voice warmly supporting the acts ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... mouth of Hohora, one of our attendants (the same for whose pearls, little King Peepi had taken such a fancy), that he made the following overture to purchase its contents: namely: one tooth of the buyer's, for every three of the seller's. A proposition promptly rejected, as involving a mercantile absurdity. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... prince was in leaving Kerika; he looked at his sabre, hung his gun against the wall, and set sail with M. Bonfils, a clerk in a mercantile house, who sent him home every year with the gold dust stolen from the ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... feeling—and in their admiration he found his reward. It is for this class that public libraries are obliged to provide themselves with an extraordinary number of copies of his works: the number in the Mercantile Library in this city, I am told, is forty. Hence it is, that he has earned a fame, wider, I think, than any author of modern times—wider, certainly, than any author, of any age, ever enjoyed in his lifetime. All his excellences are translatable—they pass readily into languages the least allied ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the full enjoyment of release from the bustle and excitement of public life, he had paid little attention to passing events. He was preparing definitively to abandon political pursuits and to follow some kind of mercantile business, or take up some land speculation and study law in his intervals of leisure. It was not a year since he had given hostages to fortune. He was now in the full tide of domestic happiness, which was always to him the dearest and most coveted. He might well have hesitated before ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... is situated on the lake Genasereth, from which, according to the most generally received opinion of the Talmud, the Messiah is to rise. The greater part of the Jews who reside in these holy places do not engage in mercantile pursuits; but are a society of religious persons occupied solely with their sacred duties. There are among them only two who are merchants, and men of property, and these are styled Kafers or unbelievers by the others, who do nothing but read and pray. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... and eating-houses, in great plenty. The chief diversions are puppets, rope-dancing, and music booths. To this Fair, people from Bedfordshire and the adjoining counties still resort. Similar kinds of fairs are now kept at Frankfort and Leipzig. These mercantile fairs were very injurious to morals; but not to the extent of debauchery and villany, which reign in our present annual fairs, near the metropolis and large cities." See an account of this fair in Hone's ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... It lasted little more than a hundred years, but it transformed Europe and launched the Middle Ages. When it had passed, Normandy stood confirmed for centuries (and is still confirmed) in a character of its own. No longer adventurous but mercantile, apt, of a resisting courage, sober in thought, leaning upon tradition, not imperially but domestically strong: the country of Corneille and of Malesherbes, a reflection of that spirit in letters; the conservative ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... the deepest interest, not only to themselves, but to the civilized world, since it is scarcely possible that a war could exist between them without endangering the peace of Christendom. The immediate effect of the treaty upon ourselves will be felt in the security afforded to mercantile enterprise, which, no longer apprehensive of interruption, adventures its speculations in the most distant seas, and, freighted with the diversified productions of every land, returns to bless our own. There is nothing in the treaty ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... aristocracy. There is already war, in this case literally to the knife, between the Commons with a large C and the commons with a small one. Talking about the knife, it is notable that the murderer of Tyler was not a mere noble but an elective magistrate of the mercantile oligarchy of London; though there is probably no truth in the tale that his blood-stained dagger figures on the arms of the City of London. The mediaeval Londoners were quite capable of assassinating a man, but not of sticking ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... further talk between the two General Brady said: "There is another matter I wish to mention. Mrs. O'Callaghan has set her heart on having Pat graduate from the public school. He could do so easily in another year, but with his strong mercantile bent, and taking into consideration the struggle his mother is obliged to make to keep him there, I don't think it best. For, while Pat supports himself, he can do nothing to help at home. I ask you to give him one evening out a week, Mr. Farnham, and I will direct his reading ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... have not, being an outlaw and having only just returned. Recently a very bad fit has come over the Queen. You know that for some years past there have been a few French people living in Antananarivo, who by their knowledge and skill in mechanics and mercantile matters have made themselves useful to our government. These men lately tried to dethrone the Queen, on pretence of delivering the country from her cruelties, and establishing a 'French Protectorate.' They gained over some of our chief men, collected in one of ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... fragments of the Occident had been magically brought oversea: bits of Liverpool, of Marseilles, of New York, of New Orleans, and bits also of tropical towns in colonies twelve or fifteen thousand miles away. The mercantile buildings—immense by comparison with the low light Japanese shops—seem to utter the menace of financial power. The dwellings, of every conceivable design—from that of an Indian bungalow to that of an English or ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... in seizing every opportunity that offers for promoting your own interest, and a plodding, persevering industry in making the most of the advantages you have already obtained, are the most effectual as well as the safest ingredients in the composition of the mercantile character. The world is a book in which the Chapter of Accidents is none of the least considerable; or it is a machine that must be left, in a great measure, to turn itself. The most that a worldly-minded man ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... supports that of foreign nations in their own ports with success. This is readily explained by the fact that the vessels of the United States can cross the seas at a cheaper rate than any other vessels in the world. As long as the mercantile shipping of the United States preserves this superiority, it will not only retain what it has acquired, but it will constantly ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... expected to return to Fulton no more. His father was a merchant in one of the cities of the Upper Province, and in the fall Robert was to enter the store, in order to obtain a practical knowledge of business, as his tastes also led him to mercantile pursuits. When I entered the school, a stranger to all, Robert Dalton was the first youth who bestowed kind attentions upon me, and we soon became firm friends; together we studied and mutually assisted each other, and always shared ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... were received by Governor Long, at the State House. He made a short speech, in favor of woman suffrage, in reply to Mrs. Hooker. We also called on the Mayor, at the City Hall, and went through Jordan & Marsh's great mercantile establishment, where the clerks are chiefly young girls, who are well fed and housed, and have pleasant rooms, with a good library, where they sit and read in the evening. We went through the Sherborn Reformatory Prison for Women, managed entirely by women. We found it clean and comfortable, more ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... now him, now the other brothers, partly about domestic matters, and partly about affairs of the heart. One brother studies theology, and writes a very formal Latin, to which he often adds a Greek postscript. To another brother, holding the place of mercantile clerk at Hamburg, the English correspondence naturally falls; while a still younger one at Marseilles has the French. For the Italian was found a musician, on his first trip into the world; while the youngest of all, a sort of pert nestling, had applied himself to Jew-German,—the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... friends exclaimed upon the folly of permitting these unprincipled men to plunder us of our rightful property. The sum itself was large, and the claim having been made, my mother thought that my father's memory was interested in its being enforced, especially as the defences set up for the mercantile society went, in some degree, to impeach the ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... funny stories in their thick jerseys and sou'-westers; now they are part and parcel of the British Navy, proud of the blue uniform and brass buttons and—when they have them—of the wavy gold bands on their sleeves. There are others who were officers and so forth in the mercantile marine in pre-war days. They have sailed the seas from John o' Groats to Tokio: and to them New York is ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... course—strongly, perhaps. Well, though my dear girl is worthy of any station; and a man like me, devoted to mercantile interests, may hold his head up anywhere as one of the props of this commercial country," (he ran his fingers rapidly through his hair, and tried to look independent), "still I am prepared to admit, under all the circumstances—I say ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... these routes adequately, and to guard the food and troop ships, hastening in large numbers to the aid of the Motherland from the most distant corners of the earth; to protect the 1500 miles sea frontier of the British Isles; to give timely aid to sinking or hard-pressed units of the mercantile fleet; to hound the submarine from the under-seas and to sweep clear, almost weekly, several thousand square miles of sea, from Belle Isle to Cape Town and the Orkneys to Colombo, required ships, not in tens, but in thousands. To find these in an incredibly ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... is the best policy" has lost its original force by much repetition. And it does not go far enough, either. I am speaking of more than mere mercantile honesty; I am speaking of political sincerity, of intellectual sincerity. Never attempt to fool anybody. We live at such a rate of speed, our perceptions have become so abnormally sensitive and acute, that it is next to impossible ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... rudimentary rules of contract or tort are tucked away under the head of Railroads or Telegraphs or go to swell treatises on historical subdivisions, such as Shipping or Equity, or are gathered under an arbitrary title which is thought likely to appeal to the practical mind, such as Mercantile Law. If a man goes into law it pays to be a master of it, and to be a master of it means to look straight through all the dramatic incidents and to discern the true basis for prophecy. Therefore, it is well ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... obtained was the proceeds of the sale of labels, which he made and peddled from shop to shop. One of the wealthiest men we know, a Christian man distinguished for his large benevolence, commenced his mercantile career by peddling goods that he carried in a band-box from one milliner's shop to another. "You must creep before you can walk," is an old maxim, and the lives of all distinguished men verify the proverb. He who creeps well, will walk so much the better by and by; but he who is ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... Hero and Leander, from the Greek; but none such appeared, nor is it clear whether Dryden ever executed the version, or only had it in contemplation. The contribution, although ample, was not satisfactory to old Jacob Tonson, who wrote on the subject a most mercantile expostulatory letter[8] to Dryden, which is fortunately the minutiae of a literary bargain in the 17th century. Tonson, with reference to Dryden having offered a strange bookseller six hundred lines for twenty guineas, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... return, the Mare Nostrum anchored at Barcelona to take on cloth for the army service, and other industrial articles of which the troops of the Orient stood in need. Ferragut did not make this trip for mercantile reasons. An affectionate interest was drawing him there.... He needed to see Cinta, feeling that in his soul the past was again coming ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... those of former days, in case of any sudden emergency arising to call for great and unusual expenditures. In consequence of the vast accumulation of capital in the hands of private individuals, and the confidence which is felt in the mercantile honor and good faith of most established governments at the present day, these governments can procure indefinite supplies of gold and silver at any time, by promising to pay an annual interest in lieu of the principal borrowed. It is true that, ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... ships-of-the-line and frigates to replace those lost or worn out; but although American privateers wrought more injury to British interests than was caused or could be caused by the American navy, the pride of England cared little about mercantile losses, and cared immensely for its fighting reputation. The theory that the American was a degenerate Englishman—a theory chiefly due to American teachings—lay at the bottom of British politics. Even the late British minister at Washington, Foster, a man of average intelligence, thought it manifest ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and daring exploits in history. With this as the groundwork of his story Mr. Henty has interwoven the adventures of an English youth, Roger Hawkshaw, the sole survivor of the good ship Swan, which had sailed from a Devon port to challenge the mercantile supremacy of the Spaniards in the New World. He is beset by many perils among the natives, but is saved by his own judgment and strength, and by the devotion of an Aztec princess. At last by a ruse he obtains the protection ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... the company entered into a contract with the Mississippi Valley Trust Company, the Lincoln Trust Company, the Mercantile Trust Company, and the St. Louis Union Trust Company, as trustees, under which it assigned all subscriptions which were at that date wholly or partly unpaid, together with all further subscriptions which might be received, and the premium to be received on ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission |
