"Mere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come to the orators. Isocrates, the eldest of those who have survived, is a mere scholastic rhetorician: for he was a timid man, and did not dare to confront the terrors of a stormy political audience; and hence, though he lived about an entire century, he never once addressed the Athenian citizens. It is true, that, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... charm and all his knowledge, a man at once of no pretensions and of unfailing natural dignity. Nothing, so far, had served his cause and his influence so well as these moments of free discursive intercourse. The mere orator, the mere talker, indeed, would never have gained any permanent hold; but the life behind gave weight to every acute or eloquent word, and importance even to those mere sallies of a boyish enthusiasm which were still common enough ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... across the ridge, the bushes of huckleberry and sweet fern swarmed at it in two curling waves until it was a mere winding line traced through a tangle. There was no interference by clouds, and as the rays of the sun fell full upon the ridge, they called into voice innumerable insects which chanted the heat of the summer day in ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... incapable of looking before and after; he had no motive to do it; he was a mere passive instrument in the hands of others to be used at their discretion. Though living, he was, dead as to all voluntary agency; though moving amidst the creation with an erect form, and with the shape and semblance of a human being, he was ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... French officers taken in Belgium are presumably in German detention camps, it would seem that Germany should first substantiate its defense by names, dates, and places, although even then the mere capture of French officers in Belgium after the invasion had begun does not necessarily indicate that they were in Belgium before ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... lady, "I am by no means convinced that the affair is anything but a mere boy and girl friendship, or that it is ever likely to be more than that. But I did think I ought to tell you about it and that you should meet the young man. You have met him, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... under wat circumstances, and to whom. Wen, in my infancy, I wuz inkarseratid in the common jail uv my native village, in Noo Gersey, a victim to the prejudisis uv twelve men, who believed, on the unsupportid testimony uv three men, and the mere accident uv the missin property bein found in my possession (notwithstandin the fact that I solemnly asshoored em that I didn't know nothin about it, and if I did it, it must hev bin in a somnamboolic state), that I hed bin guilty uv bustin open ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... admirably exposed in Swift's 'Meditation on a Broomstick.' Hall's method is, in general, the opposite of this. The objects on which he muses seem to have sought him, and not he them. He surrounds himself with his thoughts unconsciously, as one gathers burs and other herbage about him by the mere act of walking in the woods. Sometimes, indeed, he is quaint and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... best beloved, to you—to order my life in accordance to your pleasure—to marry you the day I set foot in Harmouth—or to wait impatiently till you are pleased to give yourself to me. I trust your love too entirely to fear that you will needlessly prolong the time. You are too fair-minded to let mere conventions weigh with you as against my happiness. Between you and me there must be no shams, and yet I would not shock or hurry you ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... must be confessed that he lingered most over the thanks and admiration he set to haunt his dream-steps, and hover about his dream-person, it must be remembered that he was the only real person in the dreams, and that he regarded lovingly the mere shadows of his fellow-men. His dreams were not of strength and destruction, but of influence and life. Even his revenges never-reached further than the making of ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... no harm in petitions, and if Grassini gets one up I'll sign it with all the pleasure in life. But I don't think mere petitioning and nothing else will accomplish much. Why can't we have both ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... years of professional contact with mankind and consequent knowledge of their general cussedness! Huh! I have helped too many hundreds of children into this world, and have carried too many of them through the measles, whooping-cough, chicken-pox and the like to be so moved by a mere boy." ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... She had gone to the post-office for the last mail, and all the time there had been over her a premonition of something unwonted of much import to her. The very dusty flowers and weeds by the way-side seemed to cry out to her as she passed them. They seemed no longer mere flowers and weeds, but hieroglyphics concerning her future, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the world—in America, India, and the Colonies. I don't believe there are half a dozen of the old fighting regiments available, and even their ranks are half-filled with raw recruits. Almost all the regiments at home are mere skeletons. Surely they will never be sending us away at ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... the world with level, dispassionate eyes in which there was none of Virginia's uncritical, emotional softness. Temperamentally she was uncompromisingly honest in her attitude toward the universe, which appeared to her, not as it did to Virginia, in mere formless masses of colour out of which people and objects emerged like figures painted on air, but as distinct, impersonal, and final as a geometrical problem. She was one of those women who are called "sensible" by their acquaintances—meaning ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... much for the good opinion of men, when I should be quietly serving them without report? (For Mrs. Carrack and her son:) And what are pomp and fashion, but the painted signs of good living where there is no life? These (he continued,) are all outward, mere pretences to put off our duty, and the care of our souls. Yea, we may have churches, schools, hospitals abounding—but these are mere lath and mortar, if we have not also within our own hearts, a church where the pure worship ever goeth on, a school where the true knowledge is taught, a hospital, ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... answered, "to a mere man woman always will be an everlastin' puzzle and a riddle; but even a man kin appreciate, in a poor, faint way, the depths of mother love. It's ez though he looked through a break in the clouds and ketched a vision of the glories of heaven. But you ain't told me yit how you come to ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the limits of its immediate usefulness. But here, though the first hint leading to remarkable discoveries was a direct consequence of his astronomical work, the novelty and interest of the phenomena observed induced him to follow the investigation very far beyond the mere solution of the practical question ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... were tending to improve, if not at Rome yet in many parts of Christendom. If objectionable practices of the priests had been a sufficient cause for the secession of whole nations, the Reformation would have come long before it actually did. Again, there is good reason to doubt that the mere abuse of an institution has ever led to its complete overthrow; as long as the institution is regarded as necessary, it is rather mended than ended. Thirdly, many of the acts that seem corrupt to us, gave little offence to contemporaries, for they were universal. If the church ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... (subjunctive) are often used, regardless of their original meaning, as mere interjections. Translate: come now, well, etc. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... and Edouard with comical severity all the rest of the time she was there; and, when she retired, she kissed Rose affectionately, but whispered her eldest daughter, "I hope you are not serious. A mere boy compared ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... the Hobby-horse not forgotten. Their host had entrusted to Lord Henry the restoration of many old observances; and the joyous feeling which this celebration of Christmas had diffused throughout an extensive district was a fresh argument in favour of Lord Henry's principle, that a mere mechanical mitigation of the material necessities of the humbler classes, a mitigation which must inevitably be limited, can never alone avail sufficiently to ameliorate their condition; that their condition is not merely 'a knife and fork question,' to use ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... could not forget that he was a murderer, and she wondered what she was expected to do if he should try to escape. It was absurd to suppose that Panfilo, her own hired man, could be capable of treachery; the mere suspicion was a sort of ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... after he had separated from the Empress and wedded Maria Louisa of Austria, an heir soon came. Yet Josephine had children by Beauharnais, her previous husband. But as all is not known as to the physical condition of Josephine during her second marriage, it cannot be assumed that mere lack of adaptability was the cause of unfruitfulness between them. There may have been some cause that history has not recorded, or unknown to the state of medical science of those days. There are doubtless many cases of apparently causeless ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Her mere entry dazzled him. There is no knowing with a woman like Belvane; and I believe she had purposely kept herself plain during these last few days so that she might have the weapon of her beauty to fall back upon in case ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... said Mr. Geoffrey Langford, as if it was a mere casual observation, though in reality it was the announcement that the fatal twelve hours had ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... biographer may suppose to have conspired to his crime, have never been used by the novelist as excuses for its enormity, nor indeed, lest they should seem as excuses, have they ever been clearly presented to the view. The moral consisted in showing more than the mere legal punishment at the close. It was to show how the consciousness of the deed was to exclude whatever humanity of character preceded and belied it from all active exercise, all social confidence; how the knowledge of the bar between the minds of others and ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... allow for it? YOU DIDN'T. Who can look at this scrawl, and not see that the poor heart-broken creature was not herself when she wrote it? This is not a letter, it is a mere scream of agony. Put yourself in her place. Imagine yourself a woman—a creature in whom the feelings overpower the judgment. Consider the shock, the wound, the frenzy; and, besides, she had ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Glancing about me here at the worthless-looking things by which I was surrounded, my eye was caught by a bundle of rags lying on the counter, as if they had just been brought in and left there. From mere idle curiosity, I looked close at the rags, and saw among them something like an old cravat. I took it up directly and held it under a gaslight. The pattern was blurred lilac lines running across and across the dingy black ground in a trellis-work form. I looked at the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... opinion, dear," her mother said. "Our police system nowadays is a mere farce. The foreigners are far ahead of us, even in the detection of crime. Surely the mystery of your poor husband's death might have been solved, if they ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... "It is a mere trifle when you think of the details and cost of setting it up; for it will take six months," said Vitelot. "Here is the estimate and the order-form—seven thousand francs, sketch in plaster ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... tired, and his eyes were heavy; he noticed this as he glanced into his glass, but after all it did not matter. His social importance was small, and for to-night he was nothing more than an adjunct of Hartley, a mere postscript put in out of formal politeness. He was not going in order to please Mrs. Wilder—though, as she appeared on his mental list of names, she had her place in the structure that filled ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... things that hang on trees. They are both pretty and both furry, and both declare the glory of God. And this abstract exultation in all living things is truly to be called Love; for it is a higher feeling than mere affectional convenience; it is a vision. It is heroic, and even saintly, in this: that it asks for nothing in return. I love all the eats in the street as St. Francis of Assisi loved all the birds in the wood or all the fishes in the sea; not so much, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... danger to get him out of a house where I thought he was ill-treated? Has he any reason to complain of and abuse me? This is what one gets by serving unthankful people. He accuses me of being a prattling fellow, which is a mere slander: of seven brothers, I speak least, and have most wit to my share; and to convince you of this, gentlemen, I need only relate my own story and theirs. Honour me, I beseech ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... warren, give-away, freebee [coll.]; run of one's teeth; nominal price, peppercorn rent; labor of love. drug in the market; deadhead[obs3]. V. be cheap &c. adj.; cost little; come down in price, fall in price. buy for a mere nothing, buy for an old song; have one's money's worth. Adj. cheap; low, low priced; moderate, reasonable; inexpensive, unexpensive[obs3]; well worth the money, worth the money; magnifique et pas cher[French]; good at the price, cheap at the price; dirt cheap, dog cheap; cheap, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have employed the day in correcting the history for Cyclopaedia as far as page 35, exclusive, and have sent it off, or shall to-morrow. I wish I knew how it would run out. Dr. Lardner's measure is a large one, but so much the better. I like to have ample verge and space enough, and a mere abridgment would be discreditable. Well, nobody can say I eat the bread of idleness. Why should I? Those who do not work from necessity take violent labour from choice, and were necessity out of the question I would ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the cottage, but said not a word of the result of their examinations in the mine, so that to the rest of its inhabitants, the bursting in of the vaulted roof of the caverns continued to be regarded as a mere accident. There was but a loch ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... well of him. We had an elephant, a horse, abundance of shawls, and other fine clothes placed before us as presents; but I prayed the old gentleman to keep them all for me till I returned, as I was a mere voyageur without the means of carrying such valuable things in safety; but he would not be satisfied till I had taken two plain hilts of swords and spears, the manufacture of Datiya, and of little value, which Lieutenant Thomas ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... suppose that as you had no brothers or sisters they taught you to pray for your cousin, didn't they? Oh, I know all about it. It is my unfortunate sex that is to blame; while I was a mere tom-boy it was different. No one can serve two masters, can they? You have chosen to serve a machine that won't go, and I daresay that you are wise. Yes, I think that it is the better part—until you find someone that will make it go—and then you ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... that the dreary course of seventy winters has not erased the memory of my boyish follies, David, I should esteem you mad. Think you, because I am old, I am enamoured of disgrace, and love a house of bondage? If life were a mere question between freedom and slavery, glory and dishonour, all could decide. Trust me, there needs but little spirit to be a moody patriot in a sullen home, and vent your heroic spleen upon your fellow-sufferers, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... they actually considered the holy ikons to be mere planks of wood, Chouev answered,—"Just look at the back of any ikon you choose and you will see what they are ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... in September 1991, Macedonia was the least developed of the Yugoslav republics, producing a mere 5% of the total federal output of goods and services. The collapse of Yugoslavia ended transfer payments from the central government and eliminated advantages from inclusion in a de facto free trade area. ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... himself. His fury was foolish, a mere generalization of discontent from very little data. Still, it was a relief to be out in the purring night sounds. He had passed from the affluent stone piles on the boulevard to the cheap flat buildings of ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... London, interviewed his publisher, made researches into seventeenth century documents at the British Museum, and somehow managed in his rapid way to acquire those glimpses of life and character which he afterwards turned to such good account. All was grist that came to his mill, and at first the mere sight of his old home, London, seemed to revive him. Of course at the very first opportunity he called at the Probyns', and we both of us had an invitation to go there on the following Wednesday to see the march past of the troops and to lunch. ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... exhibit for mere lads," Jack's father was heard to say on his way home; "If we could bring into this little village a few more men like our boys' Chief there would be no question about a boy's coming up all right. It makes me ashamed to think that ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... in Africa, but was quelled by his lieutenant. But the mere rumour of it set Rome in a turmoil. The Senate found something of its ancient spirit. So did the Italian people. They would not be for ever bullied by the legions. As Maximin approached from the frontier, with the sack of ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of "those holy fields." But a few hundred years ago, it might have cost a throne. To-day we may have either Testament printed in our daily newspaper and put upon our table before breakfast. So free is the word of God that only the mere wish to have it is necessary to secure at once the greatest of spiritual boons and the most perfect piece of writing in our language, or in any other tongue. The beauties of the Bible have charmed the critical of all ages. The young have departed ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... 'becoming-inward' of what is manifested to the 'reader's' eye and mind as the objective nature of colours. So, in one realm of the sense-world, Goethe succeeded in closing the abyss which divides existence and consciousness, so long as the latter is restricted to a mere onlooker-relationship towards ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... smell is too much for his new-born virtue. He will go in just for a moment to pass the time of day with his friend the publican and see his last brand of books, but not to buy—I mean to drink—and then he comes across a little volume, the smallest and slimmest of volumes, a mere trifle of a thing, and not dear, but a thing which does not often turn up and which would just round off his collection at a particular point. It is only a mere taste, not downright drinking; but ah me, it sets him on fire again, and I who had seen him go in and then by a providence have ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... awaiting you anxiously—not out of mere curiosity to know what your attitude will be, but to lead it, to give it direction. The public opinion which you developed in favor of the "square deal" is stronger to-day than when you left, and your personal following is ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... brutality by the commandant. The frigate at once opened fire, but after four hours' bombardment had failed to silence a single gun in the fort. At midnight it was carried in an attack led by young Channing, then a mere lad, and who, although two-thirds of his small force fell ere the walls were reached, refused to draw back and abandon Reay and his men. From that day Reay became his warm and ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... on a little further and tell them more about the burden of proof and the preponderance of evidence. He may say that the weight of evidence does not mean the number of witnesses. The mere fact that one side has six and the other side only two does not mean that the jury are to believe the side who has six. The jury know that when probably they are all exaggerating somewhat they are going to decide the way the thing happened. Then ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... to nobler enjoyments, and finds all the scattered excellencies of the female world united in a woman, who prefers his addresses to wealth and titles; he is afterwards to engage in business, to dissipate difficulty, and overpower opposition: to climb, by the mere force of merit, to fame and greatness; and reward all those who countenanced his rise, or paid due regard to his early excellence. At last he will retire in peace and honour; contract his views to domestick pleasures; form the manners of children like himself; observe how every ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... one species in South America, and another in Europe. He loves the mountain stream, with its dashing rapids and cascades. Indeed, he will erect his oven-like cottage nowhere else, and it must be a fall and not a mere ripple or rapid. Then from this point as a centre—or, rather, the middle point of a wavering line—he forages up and down the babbling, meandering brook, feeding chiefly, if not wholly, on water insects. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... anything that is to be made of their testimony. And, finally, when the question arises as to what was the condition of mankind more than a paltry two or three thousand years ago, history and archaeology are, for the most part, mere dumb dogs. What light does either of these branches of knowledge throw on the past of the man of the New World, if we except the Central Americans and the Peruvians; on that of the Africans, save those of the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... contemptuous pity, almost equally unbecoming, speaking of him as "the poor man" whom she had made a tool of to further some views of her own, though Mercy assured the empress that her assertion of having so treated him was a mere fiction of her imagination, to impart a sort of lively tone to her letter; that, in spite of occasional outbursts of levity, she had in reality the firmest affection and esteem for Louis; and that nothing could be more ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... winter." Then she told the boys how the little train toiled up the sheer face of a great mountain to the clouds. And it had to descend, also, which was worse far. Clary shuddered and hid her blue eyes as she described that coming down, while the eyes of the boys fairly bolted over the mere thought of a journey so full of ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade
... signifies yellow-beak ("bec jaune"), seems to have been given almost everywhere to the freshman, and the custom of receiving the fledgeling into the academic society was, towards the close of the Middle Ages, no mere tradition of student etiquette, but an acknowledged and admitted academic rite. The tradition, which dates from very early times, and which has so many parallels outside University history, was so strong that the authorities seem to have deemed it wisest ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... reward. Elsie grew up with a kind of filial feeling for him, such as her nature was capable of. She never would obey him; that was not to be looked for. Commands, threats, punishments, were out of the question with her; the mere physical effects of crossing her will betrayed themselves in such changes of expression and color that it would have been senseless to attempt to govern her in any such way. Leaving her mainly to herself, she could be to some extent indirectly influenced,—not otherwise. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... threatening, marked their slow progress up and down the walk; in the clear spaces of the little park they trotted freely after hoops and balls, rolled and ran over the green, and hid, shouting, behind the bushes. It was a giant nursery, and the mere man who trespassed on its borders smiled deprecatingly, and steered a careful course among the parasols and tricycles, stooping now and then to rescue some startled adventurer, sprawling from the disgusted shock of encounter with this large ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... into the camp, then examined Grace's wound, which, as the Overland girl had said, was a mere scratch over the left temple. Miss Briggs washed the wound where a bullet had barely grazed the skin, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... charge us soon enough," I replied. But it seemed as if they never would, for what promised to be an attack along our whole line dwindled down to a mere exchange of shots. Hour after hour went by, and yet they never advanced beyond a certain point except when a company or so would dash forward and a sharp skirmish would break forth for a moment or two, and then die away again. But far over to our left the sound ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... It was charming to hear the little happy twitterings of the downy babes, how they gobbled and sputtered and talked to each other over their repast, swimming to and fro as if they had been ducks of mature age and experience, instead of mere yellow fluffs of a day old; and, finally, they seemed to remember they had a warm, comfortable mother somewhere, and sought refuge under her kindly wings, where I left them exchanging confidences in ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... publication, thus far, of the details of the campaign, and the causes of our defeat,—may stand as excuse for one more attempt to make plain its operations to the survivors of the one hundred and eighty thousand men who there bore arms, and to the few who harbor some interest in the subject as mere history. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... there was much. The discipline proceeded from the candidate's influence, from his harmonizing personal leadership. This he exercised not through oratory, for he had none of the tricks of speech, not even the knack of story-telling, but by the mere force of his will and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... stone replied with assurance, "why are you so excessively dull? The dynasties recorded in the rustic histories, which have been written from age to age, have, I am fain to think, invariably assumed, under false pretences, the mere nomenclature of the Han and T'ang dynasties. They differ from the events inscribed on my block, which do not borrow this customary practice, but, being based on my own experiences and natural feelings, present, on the contrary, a novel and unique character. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... so has the little old woman who once danced at the opera; so have old Bibi La Puree, and Alphonse, the gray-haired garcon, and Mere Gaillard, the flower-woman. They have seen the gay boulevards and the cafes and generations of grisettes, from the true grisette of years gone by, in her dainty white cap and simple dress turned low at the throat, to the ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... from fifteen to twenty are aware of the glamour they cast over the straggling, awkward boys whom they regard and treat as mere children? I wonder, now. Young women are so keen in such matters. I wonder if Miss Nelly Glentworth never suspected until the very last night of her visit at Rivermouth that I was over ears in love with her pretty self, and was suffering pangs as poignant ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... said simply, "that is to be feared. They meddle in everything. As for my interest, monsieur, I only referred to it by mere chance,—the mere chance of finding myself in the same train with you, and in the same compartment of the ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... of the third day were given, and of these the accounts were very succinct. The movements of the mobs and the conflicts with them were so similar in character, that a detailed description of them would be a mere repetition of what had gone before. After the police force, and the troops under General Brown had become organized so as to move and act together, each fight with the rioters was almost a repetition of its predecessor. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... writing this letter, on the mere chance of its reaching you, and fastening it to a stone. Perhaps, one day, I shall be able to throw it over the wall and some peasant will pick ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... creation more credible? Nay, hath it not furnished the atheists and infidels of all ages with the most plausible arguments against a creation? That a corporeal substance, which hath an absolute existence without the minds of spirits, should be produced out of nothing, by the mere will of a Spirit, hath been looked upon as a thing so contrary to all reason, so impossible and absurd! that not only the most celebrated among the ancients, but even divers modern and Christian philosophers have thought Matter co-eternal with the Deity. Lay these things ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... sentence is not a mere empty scarecrow, designed to terrify me, to punish me through fear and intimidation, to humiliate me, that he may then raise me again ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... robber of the treasury by Hadding is a variant of the world-old Rhampsinitos tale, but less elaborate, possibly abridged and cut down by Saxo, and reduced to a mere moral example in favour of the goldenness of silence and the danger of letting the tongue feed ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the morning. In the afternoon we were sent to graze our horses outside the town with a warning to look out for sniping. As I write I am sitting under a rock, the reins secured to one of my legs, which accounts for bad writing. Lindley is below, a mere little village with a few stores, which nevertheless was for a proud week the capital of the Free State. For some time past it has been closely besieged by the Boers, and entirely dependent on one ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... own men was on post at the south-east corner, and his yell for the corporal, instantly following the distant shot, was so excited and vehement that the infantry non-commissioned officer, who went at a run, was minded to rebuke him for raising such a row over a mere shooting scrape among the Mexican packers. "Packers, your granny!" said Number Six. "It's Lieutenant Willett that's shot, and I know it! He came down out of the office not twenty minutes ago and went straight out south for Craney's shack, and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... token of admiration. True artists never fail generously to recognise each other's greatness. Thus Beethoven's admiration for Cherubini was regal: and he ardently hailed the genius of Schubert: "Truly," said he, "in Schubert dwells a divine fire." When Northcote was a mere youth he had such an admiration for Reynolds that, when the great painter was once attending a public meeting down in Devonshire, the boy pushed through the crowd, and got so near Reynolds as to touch the skirt of his coat, "which I did," says Northcote, "with great satisfaction to ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... of music, beyond that derived from its mere execution, is greatly influenced by the amount of electricity infused into the sounds by the performer; and in our planet the human voice has often been known to soothe, and sometimes to restore, a disordered brain, by awakening ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... freshness of early morning. One's nerves seem peculiarly strung for exquisite impressions in the first dewy hours of the day, there is a virginal sensitiveness and purity about all our senses, and the mere delight of the eye in the printed page is keener than at any other time. "The Muses love the morning, and that is a fit time for study," said Erasmus to his friend Christianus of Lubeck; and, certainly, if early rising agrees with one, there is no better time for getting the ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... say? Would she divulge the crime, and try to hold him as her accomplice? Who would believe her? How could she prove that he, who loved and had married another woman, had any interest in Sauvresy's death? People don't kill their friends for the mere pleasure of it. Would she provoke the law to exhume her husband? She was now in a position, thought he, wherein she could, or would not exercise her reason. Later on, she would reflect, and then she would be arrested by the probability of those dangers, the certainty of ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... Trestrail," said the Marchesa, "an education in cookery does not mean the teaching of a certain number of recipes. Education, I maintain, is something far higher than the mere imparting of facts; my notion of it is the teaching of people to teach themselves, and this is what I have tried to do in the kitchen. With some of you I am sure I have succeeded, and a book containing the recipe of every ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... himself up to his full height, "I would have you understand that, uneuphonious as the name may seem, the Daddleskinks sat in the seats of the mighty when our best-known American families of to-day, such as the Murphys, the Cohens, the Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons, were mere nebulous films ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... seat, and Camus, with a turn and a step, reached the window, where, resting his hands on the mullions, he leaned far out. I was on his heels; but the window was narrow, a mere slit, and so I could see nothing below. Late as it was the cry had, however, reached other ears than ours as well. Here and there a dim light glowed for an instant or so in an overhanging window. Here and there a ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the Constitution. But we ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... thickest. When we came within a town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the dial-faces choked with snow, and the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed as if the whole place were overgrown with white moss. As to the coach, it was a mere snowball; similarly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town's end, turning our clogged wheels and encouraging our horses, were men and boys of snow; and the bleak wild solitude to which they at last ...
— The Holly-Tree • Charles Dickens
... arid and terrible, repose is a dream, prudence is useless; mere reason alone serves simply to dry up the heart; there is but one virtue, the ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... no mere hare-brained radical. I did not go to Russia, did not join the revolutionary circles of Paris, did not yet seek out Prussia. That is folly. My father was right. It must be the years, it must be the good heritage, it must be the good environment, ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... not, like Suetonius, a mere military conqueror. He saw that Britons would never unfeignedly submit so long as they were treated as slaves; and he set himself to remedy the grievances under which the provincials so long had suffered. Military licence, therefore, and civil corruption alike, he put ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... back frequently in a half curious, half wistful way. Vic, if you will stop to think of it, had been transplanted rather suddenly from the midst of many happy-go-lucky companions to an isolation lightened only by a mere sister's vicarious comradeship. If he yearned secretly for a share of Starr's interest, surely no one can blame him; but that he should voluntarily remove himself from Starr's presence in the belief that he had come to see Helen May exclusively, proves ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... bonnet that told of a high pressure of narrative. The bearded Dublin tourist on her left was but little behind her in the ardour of giving information. His wife, a beautifully dressed lady with cotton-wool in her ears, remained abstracted, whether from toothache, or exclusiveness, or mere wifely boredom, we cannot say. Among the swift shuttles of Irish speech the ponderous questions and pronouncements of an English fisherman drove their way. The talk was, we gathered, of sport and ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... great controversies which agitated the fourteenth century. Pope John XXII. ruled at Avignon, a shameless truckster in ecclesiastical merchandise, a violent oppressor of his subjects, yet obliged by force of circumstances to be a mere subject of the King of France. The Emperor Ludwig IV. ruled in Germany in spite of the excommunication pronounced against him by the Pope. Many voices were raised in support of Louis denouncing the assumptions of the occupant ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... the little all I have to write. Can it interest you? To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, mere stops. Yet I suppose it is not so to the absent. At least, I have read things written about Niagara, music, and the like, that interested me. Once I was moved by Mr. Greenwood's remark, that he could not realize this marvel till, opening his eyes the next morning after he had seen it, his ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... four francs a day at his trade; but as they had three children, it was all that they could do to gain an honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in this man and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere Vaillant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and some oranges for me—she that had never a sixpence to put by! Want had drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece, and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will perhaps explain my promise ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... different sphere of life; but even in their hearts, there was an open truthfulness which gave signs of real nobility; and a full flowing sympathy, a solid common sense, a love of principle, a love of the good and noble, against which mere surface refinement and polite words, empty of soul and meaning, would weigh but as feathers in ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... it denotes uncertainty, possibility, or mere futurity.[4] (a) Concessive clauses (introduced by ah, though) and (b) temporal clauses (introduced by :r, :r :m e, before) are rarely found with any other mood than the subjunctive. The subjunctive ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... him almost alone to represent the old school of thought, but he adds, "the solemn convictions of my judgment, sustained by some pride of character, admonish me not to hazard the disgrace of continuing in office a mere inefficient pageant."[Footnote: Proceedings Massachusetts Historical ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... quit his pleasant home in the beautiful valley of the Tomhannock, for the privations, hardships, and dangers of military life, have always proved him to be a true and warm sympathizer in his country's cause. It was evidently not the mere love of adventure, or the mere pageantry or glory of war, that led him to make the great sacrifice. He has been with us in every conflict, and shared with us the varied fortunes of the Harris Light. His death, which he would rather have met on the field of strife, battling manfully ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... proposal, whatever its exact terms, led however to no result. Rome declined to do as Kobad desired; and thus another ground of estrangement was added to those which had previously made the renewal of the Roman war a mere ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... to sell. They did a thriving business and when their papers were disposed of desired to return to the city. But they were so bright and intelligent that he suspected their visit involved other purposes than the mere selling of papers, and held them until the command was across the river and then permitted them to go. There is an interesting coincidence between this story and the one told to the writer by St. George Tucker, of Richmond, and which appears on page ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... Culture at the University Farm, which has charge of teaching, demonstration, extension work, research, queen rearing, correspondence, statistics and model apiaries, $6,500. Minnesota beekeepers should be grateful to those men who have helped them to raise their industry from a mere nothing, until we have become the acknowledged leaders in beekeeping among all the states of the Union. They, however, are rapidly following, nearly all states now have efficient bee inspection laws, and twelve universities have followed our lead ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... present form) the behaviour of anthranilic acid, yet Hewitt has shown that his theory goes far to explain the fluorescence of substances in which a double symmetrical tautomerism is possible. This tautomerism may be of a twofold nature:—(1) it may involve the mere oscillation of linkages, as in acridine; or (2) it may involve the oscillation of atoms, as in fluorescein. A theory of a physical nature, based primarily upon Sir J.J. Thomson's theory of corpuscles, has been proposed by J. de Kowalski (Compt. rend. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... and more unprofitable under the sun, nothing more nearly approaching to a state of addle, than a builder's brains. Your regular builders (and, indeed, not a few of your architects) are the sorriest animals twaddling about on two legs; mere vivified bags of sawdust, or lumps of lath and plaster, galvanised for a while, and forming themselves into strange, uncouth, unreasonable shapes. A mere "builder" has not two ideas in his head; he has only one; he can draw only one "specification," as he calls ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... was the same, but he was strong enough to restrain his nature, and wise enough to know that his magnificence was incompatible with ordinary interests. As he got to be older he broke down, and took up with mere mortal gossip. But I think it must ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... this is not apparent, since he might have gone direct from Hastings to Wilhelmshoehe without any necessity for invoking the Chancellor's offices. It seems extremely probable that the request for a pass was a mere pretext to gain an interview, and the more so since Bismarck made no allusion to the subject, but after a few moments, according to Regnier, addressed that ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... which we once had. Desperate is not too strong a word. We shall let this impulse to snatch markets carry us whither it will, whither it must. To-day it is successful burglary and disgrace, to-morrow it may be mere defeat and disgrace. ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... then, at a later hour, at four o'clock in the morning, when we of the Sixth corps heard brisk picket firing in front of the Eighth and Nineteenth corps, we were scarcely aroused from our slumbers, for we thought it to be a mere picket skirmish, in which none but those directly engaged had any particular interest. But when the firing became general along the whole line of these two corps, and we saw hundreds of men going with hasty steps and lengthy strides to the rear, we were at length aroused to the truth ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... under consideration may be developed from oversensitiveness to sound, colour, or form, and the man of the twenty-first or twenty-second century may be a being of pure intellect whose organization of mere nervous pulp would be shattered by a strong emotion, like a pumpkin filled with dynamite." (vide "Pollen Therapy in Pollinosis," reprinted from the Medical Record, March 18, 1916; and many thanks to Mr. H.L. Mencken, fellow sufferer, for sending me a ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... this point, the play, so far as the mere incidents are concerned, is little else than a dramatized version of the tale: henceforth the former diverges more widely from the latter, though many of the incidents are still the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... two persons entirely beyond exception, namely Quintus Silius Bassus and Marcia Sabina. A match has been made between these parties, perhaps several years before the actual marriage can take place, and while the intended bride is a mere child of ten: even the future groom may be but a boy. When the go-between has done his or her work to the satisfaction of both families, there takes place a betrothal ceremony, of which the original purpose was, of course, to bind each party morally to carry out the ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... curiously, but, the other three were relieved to notice, without any of that overwhelming interest which the mere name of it had ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... went upon the walls afterwards, as we had three hours upon our hands. I had a great desire to plant my foot in Wales, and so we crossed the river Dee. I stopped to look at the river Dee. It is a mere brook in comparison to our great rivers, though the Concord is no wider in some places. It was flowing peacefully along; and I remembered that Edgar the Peaceable was rowed in triumph by eight kings from his palace on the south bank to the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the term "Christianity" used as a point of view, a mere mental attitude, would include such a man, and it is equally evident that we have only to imagine him to see that he had nothing to do with the Christian religion of that day. For the Christian religion (then as now) was a thing, not a ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... Fewson there was much friendly strife with regard to the solving of hard arithmetical problems. This contest was no mere private matter. It was entered into with great zest by the men of both the villages concerned; the Catwickians and the Ristonians each backing their man to win. "A straw shows which way the wind blows," we say, and herein we may feel a breathing of the Holderness man's love of ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... down his pen and pictured it. The terrific force of that conviction cannot fairly be set before the intelligence of average cultured people, because, whatever they profess to believe in their hearts, the truth is that, even with forty-nine Christians out of fifty, hell appears a mere vague conceit meaning nothing. They affirm that they believe in eternal torment; they confess all humanity is ripe for it; but their pulses are unquickened by the assertion or admission; they do not believe in it. Nor can educated man so believe, for that way madness lies, and he ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... mere to the same effect, and it is sad to think that all this trouble, all this expenditure of ink and English grammar, was thrown away. Papa Bonham could not pay down the fortune demanded by the prince without injuring the other members of his family; [Footnote: Mr. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... not a thing that has evolved from a simple germ, by a mere process of expansion. It is the coalescence of several things. In different countries and periods you will find schools taking over this function and throwing out that, and changing not only methods but professions and aims in the most remarkable manner. What has either been teachable ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... be of sympathy, mere humanity would suggest that it would be pleasanter, far pleasanter, to record that this day of all days in Simon Varr's life was peaceful and calm, but the truth is exactly the reverse. It was destined to be a day of bitterness and strife, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... sensitive and delicate pride of her own—and then, if she had succeeded in forgiving Lightmark, it had not been without an effort which had made it difficult for her to pardon herself. Sometimes, though she would scarcely have confessed it, her husband's mere approbativeness had almost shocked her. It was good, no doubt, to be popular, harmless even, to care for popularity—at least, one's traditions declared nothing to the contrary; but to care so exorbitantly ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... traveller sets out on a journey, he provides himself with a new pair of straw sandals; these last him for a tramp of from ten to twenty miles, according to the nature of the road. When worn out, his foot-gear may be readily renewed at any village for a mere song. The same may be said of his horse or buffalo, although several extra shoes are generally carried along ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the Mere, close to the hall where the Blood Council hold their sittings, when who should I see hobbling away but old Dame Trond! She cast a suspicious glance at me, which I could not help feeling meant mischief. ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... "The mere landing on the mole was a perilous business. It involved a passage across the crashing and splintering gangways, a drop over the parapet into the field of fire of the German machine guns which swept its ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... duty at Deane and rented the parsonage while his own was under repair. It seems impossible now to unravel this skein. The story of the move to Steventon, in 1771, is connected with a statement that the road was then a mere cart-track, so cut up by deep ruts as to be impassable for a light carriage, and that Mrs. Austen (who was not then in good health) performed the short journey on a feather-bed, placed upon some soft articles of furniture in the waggon which held their household goods. This story ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... to vibrate and emit the same note, although there was no interrupted current to make it. A few experiments soon showed that his reed had been set in vibration by the magneto-electric currents induced in the line by the mere motion of the distant reed in the neighbourhood of its magnet. This discovery led him to discard the battery current altogether and rely upon the magneto-induction currents of the reeds themselves. Moreover, it occurred to him that, since the circuit was ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Leary came, endeavouring while coming to wear a manner combining an atmosphere of dignified aloofness and a sentiment of frank indifference to the opinion of this loutish busybody, with just a touch, a mere trace, as it were, of nonchalance thrown in. In short, coming out he sought to deport himself as though it were the properest thing in the world for a man of years and discretion to be wearing a bright pink one-piece article of apparel on a public highway ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... made some tough camps in my time, "carried the banner" in infernal metropolises, bedded in pools of water, slept in the snow under two blankets when the spirit thermometer registered seventy-four degrees below zero (which is a mere trifle of one hundred and six degrees of frost); but I want to say right here that never did I make a tougher camp, pass a more miserable night, than that night I passed with the Swede in the itinerant saloon at Council Bluffs. In the first place, the ...
— The Road • Jack London
... appears to have borrowed it from his neighbour Adwaita Acharjya, whose custom it was, after performing his daily ritual, to go to the banks of the Ganges and call aloud for the coming of the god who should substitute love and faith for mere rites and ceremonies. This custom is still adhered to by Vaish.navas. The Charitamrita veils the priority of Adwaita adroitly by stating that it was he who by his austerities hastened the coming of K.rish.na in ...
— Chaitanya and the Vaishnava Poets of Bengal • John Beames
... unholy devices, of which the issue of contaminating cartridges was one. The seeds of disaffection had been sown by agitators, who thought they saw an opportunity for realizing their hope of overthrowing our rule, maintained as it was by a mere handful of Europeans in the midst of a vast population of Asiatics. This feeling of antagonism, only guessed at before, was plainly revealed in these letters, never intended to meet the European eye. Some corps did not appear to be quite so guilty as others, but ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... the rebuilding of the old capital of the Euphrates. The reverent student quietly notes the movements taking place in that part of the world, but restrains mere curious speculation, as he continues fervently to pray, "Thy ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... do not belong to any particular province. As for its power and influence, we may fairly say that it is of just the same consequence to a man's immediate society, how he talks, as how he acts. Now of all those who furnish their share to rational conversation, a mere adept in his own art is universally admitted to be the worst. The sterility and uninstructiveness of such a person's social hours are quite proverbial. Or if he escape being dull, it is only by launching into ill-timed, learned loquacity. We do not desire of him lectures or speeches; ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... this moment I have expiated all my faults, whatever they have been; for to-night you have made a heart in one who had it not, made it and broken it.—But let that pass. I may have wrecked my own life, but I will not let you wreck yours. You- -why, you are a mere girl, you would be lost. You haven't got the kind of brains that enables a woman to get back. You have neither the wit nor the courage. You couldn't stand dishonour! No! Go back, Lady Windermere, to the husband who loves you, whom you love. You have a child, Lady Windermere. Go back ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... wonderful and admirable in the parables, not readily grasped, but specially indicated by the Lord himself—their unintelligibility to the mere intellect. They are addressed to the conscience and not to the intellect, to the will and not to the imagination. They are strong and direct but not definite. They are not meant to explain anything, but to rouse a man to the feeling, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... words than any in the tribe. And her talk was a terrible thing to hear. Sometimes she screamed and moaned incoherently, and sometimes the shape of her guttural cries was the mere phantom of thoughts. But she conveyed to Eudena, nevertheless, much of the things that were yet to come, of the Lion and of the torment he would do her. "And Ugh-lomi! Ha, ha! Ugh-lomi ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... city of Holguin. The former is only one of a number of such places found along the coast. Most of them are attractive in point of surrounding scenery, but little or not at all attractive in themselves, being mere groups of uninteresting structures of the conventional type. Holguin is perhaps two hundred years old, quite pleasantly situated, but affording no special points of interest for the tourist. The city is now easily reached ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... Library, which has prospered as only the result of the most careful selection could prosper, are "Lovers in London," by A.A. Milne, brightest and most promising of the younger humorists, and "The Loot of Cities," by Mr. Arnold Bennett, the mere name of whom is a sufficient guarantee of entertainment. As for general literature, "The Soul of London," by Ford Madox Hueffer, may be justly described as worthy of a place in every library. The author in his introduction, remarks that he has tried to ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... of Kernan as a speaker and presiding officer exaggerated by contrast the feebleness of Herman J. Redfield, the permanent president of the convention. Redfield was an old man, a mere reminiscence of the days of DeWitt Clinton, whose speech, read in a low, weak voice, was directed mainly to a defence of the sub-treasury plan of 1840 and the tariff act of 1846.[793] He professed to favour a vigorous prosecution of the war, but ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Burk, Smith, Campbell, and Neill gave 1619 as the date.[121] But we are persuaded to believe that the first slaves were landed at a still earlier date. In Capt. John Smith's history, printed in London in 1629, is a mere incidental reference to the introduction of slaves into Virginia. He mentions, under date of June 25, that the "governor and councell caused Burgesses to be chosen in all places,"[122] which is one month later than the occurrence of this event as fixed ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... simply as a story, we have not for a long while read anything more intensely dramatic. It would compel notice for the mere manner of its telling. Not often has an author who has boldly departed from the traditional lines of the writer of fiction so completely vindicated his method. There is high quality in this book, with its vivid glimpses of life, and its clever characterization.... Altogether, ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... district, in Sussex, in fluviatile accumulations. Was it fitted to live exclusively in water? Such an idea was at one time entertained, in consequence of the biconcave character of the caudal vertebrae, and it is often suggested by the mere magnitude of the creature, which would seem to have an easier life while floating in water, than when painfully lifting its huge bulk, and moving with slow steps along the ground. But neither of these arguments ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... main entrance to the house at Point Helen, she appeared in the doorway, her face really beautiful with mother-pride. For Janet she cared as it is the duty of parent to care for child; Ross she loved. It was not mere maternal imagination that made her so proud of him; he was a distinguished and attractive figure of the kind that dominates the crowds at football games, polo and tennis matches, summer resort dances, and all those events which gather together the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... certain characteristics in a certain region, then moves on, leaving the old abode but not all the accretions of custom, social organization and economic method there acquired. These travel on with the migrant people; some are dropped, others are preserved because of utility, sentiment or mere habit. For centuries after the settlement of the Jews in Palestine, traces of their pastoral life in the grasslands of Mesopotamia could be discerned in their social and political organization, in their ritual and literature. Survivals ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... collision, I say; but I am tempted to believe otherwise. I am tempted to believe the threat to arrest Fletcher was the last mutter of the declining tempest and a mere sop to Knappe's self-respect. I am tempted to believe the rumour in question was substantially correct, and the steamer from Wellington had really brought the German consul grounds for hesitation, if not orders to retreat. I believe ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
