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More "Characteristic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... talked with his hands, using his fingers to accentuate his words, and the way in which he shrugged his shoulders—the shrug of a Frenchman, although not a drop of their blood could be found in his veins—and in the quick lifting of the hand and the sidelong glance of the eye, all so characteristic of Richard when some new thought or theory reached his brain for the first time. Gradually and unconsciously she began to compare each feature of Oliver's face with that of the father who stood beside him: the alert blue, eyes; overhanging brow and soft silkiness of the hair—identically the name, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... prevail, called the dry or east monsoon, is slightly warmer than the remaining six months which make up the rainy season. The heaviest rainfall is in the months of December, January, and February. The chief characteristic of the climate of Java is, therefore, not so much its heat as its equability: it is rarely wet all day long even in the wet season, and at least one shower may be expected each day ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... much beyond those of a battle, that the loss of life, when the St. George, the Defence, and the Hero, were wrecked in the North Seas, in 1811, was far greater than that on the part of the English in any naval action of late years. In order to place the qualities of obedience and endurance—so characteristic of the British seaman—in the strongest light, and to show by contrast that the possession of them is the greatest security in danger, whilst the want of them ensures destruction, I commend the following statement to the attention of all who ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... It was characteristic of him that, having worked out his problem, he wasted no thought on futile regret or selfish repining at the fortune which had smiled on her. It should smile on him, too, and then, and not till then, he would ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... been silenced by some sceptical bystander with the well-known quotation from a popular beast-fable: "'What has become of all the cats?' inquired the drunken mouse." Of the Caucasian beast-fables the following is a characteristic specimen: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... which established themselves between Palstrey and The Kennel Farm were marked by two characteristic features. One of these was that Lord Walderhurst did not develop any warmer interest in the Osborns, and that Lady Walderhurst did. Having acceded to Emily's wishes, and really behaved generously in the matter of providing for his heir presumptive and his wife, Lord Walderhurst felt impelled ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a slight whimsical droop at the corner of his mouth as he spoke, which might have been thought characteristic of him. He was an odd-looking boy, not ill-made, though very thin and not tall. His pallor was clear and even, as though constitutional; the features were delicate, almost childlike, but they were ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... was sent to school and, "then sent back again," to use his own words. He was restive under what he called the "iron discipline." A number of years ago, he spoke of these early educational beginnings in phrases so picturesque and so characteristic that they ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... but with characteristic decision and wholly without excitement. Jack jumped, and threw back his head as if he had received a blow across the mouth. Swift ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... developments result from the wearing of the horn-like trimmings either in velvet or jet. If the face above which they flare has less of the spiritual than the coarse propensities in it, the grotesque turns and twists in the head-gear emphasize the animality in the lines characteristic of low-bred tendencies, and the whole countenance is vulgarized. One face acquires the look of a fox, another of a certain type of dog, and ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... voluntarily attended by the principal Orators of the country with whom I renewed my rhetorical Exercises. The chief of them was Menippus of Stratonica, the most eloquent of all the Asiatics: and if to be neither tedious nor impertinent is the characteristic of an Attic Orator, he may be justly ranked in that class. Dionysius also of Magnesia, Aeschilus of Cnidos, and Xenocles of Adramyttus, who were esteemed the first Rhetoricians of Asia, were continually with me. Not contented with ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... vivid vignettes of the countryside which Mr. Fox knows so well, told with the utmost economy of speech and with a fine sense of atmospheric values. These stories are a happy illustration of the better regionalism that is characteristic of contemporary American fiction, and like "Ommirandy" will prove valuable records to a later generation of a life that even now is ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was built by the bishop himself in 1520. Its style is not unlike the chantry of Bishop Fox at Winchester with octagonal shafts, (similar to those of the Salisbury Chapel at Christchurch,) which impart a semi-Oriental touch that is so characteristic of this final development of Gothic art. The images it once enshrined are lost, but the original rich colouring is still distinguishable on the fan tracery of the roof. The arms and initials of its founder ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... come the twentieth of July," said he. His eyes were on hers, his characteristic smile on his lips. It was a challenge ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Adelaide Lacey in the paper, with her hair done this way. She's going to marry a duke, you know." It was characteristic of Rosetta Muriel thus to excuse her lapse into simplicity, but though the ingenuous explanation was the truth, it was not the whole truth. Even Rosetta Muriel was not quite the same girl for having come in contact ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... faded roses of the chintz, the delicate curve of her cheek towards him, as she swayed gently back and forth and seemed to gaze peacefully out of the window at the hollyhocks blooming against the green hill. It was characteristic of the man's dreams that the girl's face in them was turned a little from him. She never saw him when he entered, she never broke the sweet silence of her own dreams within dreams, for him, and he never, even in dreams, touched the soft curve of that averted cheek, or even ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... necessity of this truism, that if our painters and sculptors would not be mere imitators of the exponents of another age, there would be soon established a national school of art. We do not mean by this a mere conventional type in finish and mode of treatment, but certain marked, characteristic excellences and features that would identify it with the history of our country and the peculiarities of our people. There are a few native artists who have struggled to achieve this consummation, and preeminent among these is Erastus D. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... about 5.30, and lay awake reading. I had drawn the blinds up, but kept the candle in as long as it was required. At intervals between twenty minutes to six o'clock and ten minutes past I heard the sounds characteristic of No. 8., viz., footsteps of a man, and pattering of a dog. Miss Moore awoke, and heard the later sounds. About 6.10 we both heard the thud, which seems to occur generally beyond the wardrobe nearer ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... figure and a face with the contours and expression, the fresh color, of a pleasant and apple-like boy; and Peyton. They had been at their university together; and, Lee Randon saw, they were making, with a characteristic masculine innocence, an effort to secure their wives in the same bond of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... allocation (1% of GDP) helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and the third-largest economy in the world after the US and China, measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. One notable characteristic of the economy has been how manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors have worked together in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... life to the language—so also it gives repose to the action; but it is that beautiful and lofty repose which is the characteristic of a true work of art. For the mind of the spectator ought to maintain its freedom through the most impassioned scenes; it should not be the mere prey of impressions, but calmly and severely detach itself from the emotions which it suffers. The commonplace objection ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the need of defense in immemorial cities on the east and south shores of the Mediterranean, was carried thence by the Moors to Spain, to go in turn with the conquerors of the New World, and became a characteristic of the civic and ecclesiastical architecture of Latin America. Hence it is not without meaning and reason that this historic architectural form, the blank exterior of the walled city, has found its finest ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... letter, on evil in general, he observes, that, "it is the solution of this important question, whence came evil? alone, that can ascertain the moral characteristic of God, without which there is an end of all distinction between good and evil." Yet he begins this inquiry by this declaration: "That there is a supreme being, infinitely powerful, wise, and benevolent, the great creator and preserver of all things, is a truth ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... 1902, he entered the office as assistant editor of Outing. Here was a new field and another opportunity for testing his fitness. He threw himself into the work with characteristic energy and enthusiasm, and his influence on the magazine was marked from the first. He soon succeeded in projecting into it something of his own passionately human personality. In the fall of that year a noted angler commented to him on the change ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... take place? How, and through what transitions? Have no books ever treated of this subject in England? Have none of your great writers, philosophers, politicians, or historians, ever noticed this characteristic and pregnant fact, tried to account for it, and ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... paragons of diligence and promise. In their school books and college text books everything German was lauded in the superlative; everything foreign was decried as inferior, undesirable. Nearly every human discovery, invention, improvement, was somehow traced to a Teuton origin. Even characteristic German vices were held to be better than many virtues in ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... progress was slow through the scrub and trees in the darkness, but little relieved by the light of a waning moon. Feeling sure that I had gone far enough, I was preparing to rest awhile and find our camp in the morning, when the welcome glow of a fire shot up through the branches. Jim and Paddy, with characteristic thought and resource, had climbed to the top of two tall and dead gum trees and there built fires, fanned by the fierce draught through the hollow trunks, knowing well at what a short distance ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... 'Robinson Crusoe,' have succeeded in passing themselves off for veritable narratives. The 'Memoirs of Captain Carleton' long passed for De Foe's, but the Captain has now gained admission to the biographical dictionary and is credited with his own memoirs. In either case, it is as characteristic that a genuine narrative should be attributed to De Foe, as that De Foe's narrative should be taken as genuine. An odd testimony to De Foe's powers as a liar (a word for which there is, unfortunately, no equivalent that does not imply ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... it for a chief characteristic of Captain Price— his quiet, unresting watchfulness. Forty years of sun and brine had bunched the puckers at the corners of his eyes and hardened the lines of his big brown face; but the outstanding thing about him was still that silent wariness, as of a man who had warning of something ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... the political balance, which had been the characteristic of its first two years; but its position was much changed. Since its last coup-d'etat, it could no longer be an impartial government, because it was no longer a constitutional government. With these pretensions of isolation, it dissatisfied every one. Yet it lived on in this way till ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... the Veiled Being might be indicated without impropriety. Mr. Wells, as we have seen, hints that his reticence may be due to the fact that he does not know. In that case this "modern" God is suspiciously like all the ancient Gods, whose most unfortunate characteristic was that they never knew anything more than their worshippers. The reason was not far to seek—namely, that they were mere projections of the minds of these worshippers, fashioned in their own image. But Mr. Wells assures us that this is not the ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... justify it, but everything to condemn it. The person subject to it evinces a mind devoid of the breadth, strength, and independence characteristic of true manhood; and the sooner he disposes of rumour and ignorance as the creator of words on his tongue, the better for his reputation. Before he speaks of persons or things he will act wisely to "come and see" by ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... market-place, reminded me more of the shady groves of Oxford than of anything which I have observed on the Continent. Count Thun, moreover, having visited England, and seen and justly appreciated, the magnificent parks which form the characteristic charm of our scenery, seems willing, as far as the different situations of the two countries will allow, to walk in our foot-steps. He has enclosed a rich meadow that runs by the bank of the Elbe, and treats it as his demesne. All this is the more ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... literary studies, according to Professor Gates, is the appreciative critic; and he it is who shall fulfill the true function of criticism. He is to consider the work of art in its historical setting and its psychological origin, "as a characteristic moment in the development of human spirit, and as a delicately transparent illustration of aesthetic law." But, "in regarding the work of art under all these aspects, his aim is, primarily, not to explain, and not to judge or dogmatize, but to enjoy; to realize ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... for the information about Gray's Ode, I send an entertaining and very characteristic circumstance told in Mrs. Bigg's (anonymous) Residence in France (edited ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... earlier disturbances in Spain a party of Carlists were sent to the Philippine Islands; they were welcomed by the reactionary Spaniards, for devotion to King Carlos had been their characteristic ever since the days when Queen Isabel had taken the throne that in their opinion belonged to the heir in the male line. Rizal frequently makes mention of this disloyalty to the ruler of Spain on the part of those who claimed to be most ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... churchyard where we had left the old man's unlamented grave, and Paragot, as usual, was washing his throat with beer. It must be noted, not to his glorification, that about this time a chronic dryness began to be the main characteristic of Paragot's throat, and the only humectant that seemed to be of no ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... The New Chemical Light (17th century) says: "Simplicity is the seal of truth.... Nature is wonderfully simple, and the characteristic mark of a childlike simplicity is stamped upon all that is true and noble in Nature." In another place the same author says: "Nature is one, true, simple, self-contained, created of God, and informed with ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... the low eastern plains, and when now tempted down by high wages to the gold-washings, they suffer a frightful rate of mortality. Nevertheless Mr. Forbes found a few pure families which had survived during two generations: and he observed that they still inherited their characteristic peculiarities. But it was manifest, even without measurement, that these peculiarities had all decreased; and on measurement, their bodies were found not to be so much elongated as those of the men on the high plateau; whilst their femora had ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... a moment. Unequivocal as the confession was, Miss Rebecca, reluctant to believe her ears, asked with characteristic bluntness: ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... a curious, old-world picture that the two children made, but the scene was quite characteristic of the age. ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... should have mentioned it," said the doctor above his soup plate. The rudeness of the reply was characteristic ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... Love.—This is the highest and most distinctive feature of the divine personality. It is the sum of all the others; as well as the special characteristic of the Fatherhood of God as revealed by Christ. 'God is love' is the crowning statement of the Gospel and the fullest expression of the divine nature. The essential of all love is self-giving; and the peculiarity of God's love is the communication and imparting ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... proceed to discuss the types of aliphatic compounds; then, the characteristic groupings having been established, an epitome of their derivatives will be given. Carbocyclic rings will next be treated, benzene and its allies in some detail; and finally ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... our literature, the wretched Guido, at the point of death, cries out in the last extremity not upon God or the Virgin, but upon his innocent and murdered wife—"Abate,—Cardinal,—Christ,—Maria,—God, ... Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" Thus we can imagine Browning, with his characteristic perception of the profound significance of a circumstance or a single word even, having written of the knocking at the door in "Macbeth," or having used, with all its marvellous cumulative effect, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... with a good grace, though she seemed dejected and sad. As they were leaving the Tournelles, she stopped to let Mary go before her, saying, "Pass on, madame; it is your turn to take precedence now." Mary went before her, but she stopped in her turn, with a sweetness of disposition so characteristic of her, to let Queen Catharine enter first into the carriage which awaited them at ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... can only be judged by noting how far it has succeeded in reproducing the original tone, colors, style, the delicacy of sentiment, the force of inert strength, the peculiar expressions native to the language with which the original is written, or whatever is its marked characteristic. The ablest can do no more, and to want more than this will be demanding something impossible. Strictly speaking, the only way one can derive full benefit or enjoyment from a foreign work is to read the original, for any ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... invited forty people to hear Mrs. Farrinder speak, and now Mrs. Farrinder wouldn't speak. But she had such a beautiful reason for it! There was something martial and heroic in her pretext, and, besides, it was so characteristic, so free, that Miss Birdseye was quite consoled, and wandered away, looking at her other guests vaguely, as if she didn't know them from each other, while she mentioned to them, at a venture, the excuse for their disappointment, confident, evidently, that they would agree with her ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... generally cut their way have, for the most part, been the beds of immense natural lakes;[17] and there rivers sink so deep into their beds, and leave such ghastly chasms and ravines on either side, that their waters are hardly ever available in due season for irrigation. It is this characteristic of the rivers of Central India that makes such lakes so valuable to the people, particularly in seasons of drought.[l8] The river Nerbudda has been known to rise seventy feet in the course of a couple ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... was seated in his own comfortable arm-chair before the fire, in his own cheerful little parlour, in his own snug house, at Red River, with his own highly characteristic breakfast of buffalo steaks, tea, and pemmican before him, and his own beautiful, affectionate daughter Kate presiding over the tea-pot, and exercising unwarrantably despotic sway over a large gray cat, whose sole happiness seemed to consist in subjecting Mr. Kennedy ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... that knowledge should not arise when its means, i.e. the texts conveying knowledge, are once present. And we observe that even when there exists an antagonistic imagination (interfering with the rise of knowledge), information given by competent persons, the presence of characteristic marks (on which a correct inference may be based), and the like give rise to knowledge which sublates the erroneous imagination. Nor can we admit that even after the sense of texts has been apprehended, the view of plurality may continue owing ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... his chimney corner or tended his cattle. Few thought of fertilizing their land; terracing against rains and floods was almost unknown, and for most farmers plowing was done up and down the hills, which only hastened the washing-away process so characteristic of the Southern agriculture. Very few farmers thought it worth while to rotate their crops when fresh lands were to be had at a few dollars an acre. The area of the United States seemed limitless, and hardly a tenth of its ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... the time when he should realize his ambition to work beside his father in the glass factory. Maria, too, was growing up: already her fingers were almost as deft as her mother's in making lace, under whose guidance she could even fashion the beautiful roses, the special characteristic of Venetian point. ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... hesitation. It was common enough for the pickets on either side to grow friendly both before and after those terrific but indecisive battles so characteristic of the Civil War, a habit in which the subordinate officers sometimes shared while those of a higher rank closed their eyes. It did no military injury, and contributed somewhat to the smoothness and grace of life. The thunder of the guns, each coming ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... characteristic. It was officered entirely by women; not a man was allowed to sit on the platform, to speak, or vote. Never did men so suffer. They implored just to say a word; but no; the President was inflexible—no man ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... have no longer the verisimilitude which is characteristic of the Phaedrus and the Timaeus, or even of the Statesman. We can hardly suppose that an educated Athenian would have placed the visit of Epimenides to Athens ten years before the Persian war, or have imagined that a war with Messene prevented the Lacedaemonians ...
— Laws • Plato
... tried, I presume that nitrogen is absorbed by the glands; but the modified, brownish, more or less shrunk, and aggregated contents of the oblong glands were never seen by me or by my son to undergo those spontaneous changes of form characteristic of protoplasm. On the other hand, the contents of the larger spherical glands often separated into small hyaline globules or irregularly shaped masses, which changed their forms very slowly and ultimately coalesced, forming a central shrunken ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... this, from an unwillingness to affront them, they were uneasy and dissatisfied till I had given them something in return, though their hands were full of the presents which I had just made them. Selfishness is, in fact, almost without exception their universal characteristic, and the main-spring of all their actions, and that, too, of a kind the most direct and unamiable that ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... case with the brutes or not, something quite different occurs in us. No particular experience can satisfy us; we accordingly say, not "I am an experience," but "I have an experience." To be able to throw off the bondage of the moment is the distinctive characteristic of a person. When Shelley watches the skylark, he envies him his power of whole-heartedly seizing a momentary joy. Then turning to himself, and feeling that his own condition, if broader, is on that very account more liable to ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... common characteristic by which the NORMAN style is distinguished, is the semicircular or segmental arch, though this is to be met with also in the rare specimens of Anglo-Saxon masonry; but the Norman arches were more scientifically constructed: in their early state, indeed, quite plain, but generally concentric, ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... believed to be a divine elephant who takes this course through the heavens. The elephant eats so much grain that only a comparatively rich man can afford to keep one; and hence it is easy to understand how the attribute of plenty or of wealth was associated with the divine elephant as his special characteristic. Similarly the rat is connected with overflowing granaries, because when there is much corn in a Hindu house or store-shed there will be many rats; thus a multitude of rats implied a rich household, and so this animal too came to be a symbol ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... barbarism disappear. Everything would bear witness to this barbarism to whosoever should look closely. One would see that the number vingt comes from viginti, and that formerly this g and this t were pronounced with a roughness characteristic of all the northern nations; of the month of Augustus has been made the month of aout. Not so long ago a German prince thinking that in France one never pronounced the term Auguste otherwise, called King Auguste of Poland ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... rather annoyed by Mimi's tears, but in his dangerous characteristic desire to please, he could not keep kindness out of his tone, and Mimi, reassured and comforted, began feebly to smile, and also Mr. Prohack remarked that her mouth ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... through this summer better than the last, for his bodily frame had long been affected by the increased amount of toil in an ungenial atmosphere, and every access of cold weather had told on him in throat and chest attacks, which, with characteristic buoyancy, he would not believe serious. He never deemed himself aught but 'better,' and the invalid habits that crept on him by stealth, always seemed to his brave spirit consequent on a day's extra fatigue, or the last attention to a departing cough. Alas! when every ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... p. 285. "Insensible of the designs now forming by Philip."—Goldsmith's Greece, ii, 48. "The improved edition now publishing."—BP. HALIFAX: Pref. to Butler. "The present tense expresses an action now doing."—Emmons's Gram., p. 40. The distinguishing characteristic of this participle is, that it denotes an unfinished and progressive state of the being, action, or passion; it is therefore properly denominated the IMPERFECT participle. If the term were applied with ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... people, the railroad runs its trains for them. If there are only a few, though they be heroes and prophets, Dantes, Savonarolas, and George Washingtons, trains shall not be run for them. The railroad is the characteristic property and symbol of property in this modern age, and the entire value of a railroad depends upon its getting control of a crowd—either a crowd that wants to be where some other crowd is, or a crowd that wants a great many tons of something ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... therefore to read sive here, as did Turn. Lamb. Dav. and others. Quam nos ... probamus: cf. Introd. p. 62. Erit explicanda: for the separation of these words by other words interposed, which is characteristic of Cic., see 11, 17. I am surprised that Halm and Baiter both follow Ernesti in his hypercritical objection to the phrase explicare Academiam, and read erunt against the MSS., making illa plural. If erunt is read, erit must be supplied ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the subject invited Pennsylvania to furnish a block for the Washington Monument in this city, they asked also for a motto, to be inscribed upon it, which should express some idea characteristic of Pennsylvania. What was the motto selected in behalf of that great State? Did we go to Germantown and invoke the memories of the mighty dead? Did we ask the motto of Valley Forge? No, brothers, no! Pennsylvania stood by the side of the grave of Penn, the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... insignificant. Indeed, his biographers have recorded the expression of his fancy in coats and small-clothes as patiently and enthusiastically as they have applauded his courage. And truly the love of magnificence, which he shares with all artists, is sincere and characteristic. When an accomplice of Jonathan Wild's robbed Lady M——n at Windsor, his equipage cost him forty pounds; and Nan Hereford was arrested for shoplifting at the very moment that four footmen awaited her return with ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... fully aware that a decisive battle would soon take place. Melas was rapidly, from all points, concentrating his army. The following laconic and characteristic order was issued by the First Consul to Lannes and Murat: "Gather your forces at the river Stradella. On the 8th or 9th at the latest, you will have on your hands fifteen or eighteen thousand Austrians. Meet them, and cut them to pieces. It will be so many ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... praise of ancestors—all these were not primitive customs in Rome, but were borrowed from the Greeks at a very early period, for in Cato's time these usages were already common and had in fact partly fallen into disuse again. We must therefore place their introduction in this period at the latest. A characteristic feature also was the erection of statues to "the wisest and the bravest Greek" in the Roman Forum, which took place by command of the Pythian Apollo during the Samnite wars. The selection fell—evidently ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... January, 1854, will be published, price Twopence, the First of a Series of Works, entitled ORR'S CIRCLE OF THE SCIENCES; consisting of Short Treatises on the Fundamental Principles and Characteristic Features of Scientific and Practical Pursuits. With ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... promised. All the suffrage societies were working harmoniously for the same Bill and the Women's Liberal Federation were cooperating with the suffrage societies, when suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, Mr. Asquith dealt us a characteristic blow. In reply to a deputation from the People's Suffrage Federation early in November he announced his intention of introducing during the coming session of 1912 the Electoral Reform Bill which he had foreshadowed in 1908; ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... mentioned show that to mere curiosity, the characteristic passion of our sex and so often its ruin, I am to ascribe the introduction, which was only prevented by events unparalleled in history from proving the most fortunate in my life as it is the most ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... hooked inwards: now, in rude sculpture, and even in some of the best of the Egyptians, we find little attempt at giving a character of decided variation; but, on the contrary, we see the foot split up with toes of an equal length and thickness; while, in Greek sculpture, these points characteristic of man are increased, that the affinity to animals may be diminished. In the Greek marbles, the great toe is large and apart from the others, where the strap of the sandal came; while the others gradually diminish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... results when they came to the adjoining Moki reservation. Here, however, they were happily disappointed, for they arrived at the pueblo of Oraibi, one of the prettiest villages on the mesa, on the eve of one of their characteristic snake dances, and decided to remain over night and see the performance. Now I am not sure but the "Snake Dance" was so opportune because Uncle John had a private interview with the native chieftain, at which the head Snake Priest and the head ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... curious characteristic of the press comments and magazine articles and book studies of the War during these months that while varied fighting was going on in the various Colonies of these Powers and in the case of Great Britain, notably, ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... best describe the characteristic quality of Four Blind Mice (LANE) as geniality. The scene of it is Burmah—astonishing, when you consider the host of novels about the rest of India, that so few should employ this equally picturesque setting—and it is quickly apparent that what Mr. C.C. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... My Uncle Toby, if of any man, it might have been predicted that he would not hurt a fly. To me this trivial action of his is more than merely sentimental. But, be this as it may, I am sure it is honestly characteristic. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his mother attended evenings in his company, it was enough for him to recite a fable or get off some piece of learning characteristic of a studious child eager to bring his school work into the conversation, for the women to rush upon him ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is a mistake for the pupil to narrow his purchase to a very few foods such as meat, potatoes, and pastry. Too often pupils get in the habit of choosing foods which furnish too little variety in composition. Learning to like many different foods is a characteristic one should strive to develop. When one abolishes food prejudices and "eats everything" that is wholesome, the possibility of securing a well-balanced meal to meet the needs ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... ego vel victor regno, vel morte tenebo Victus, humum.——The speeches (de Bell. Get. 479-549) of the Gothic Nestor, and Achilles, are strong, characteristic, adapted to the circumstances; and possibly not less genuine ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... quarter of the globe. This plan of a monarch's purchasing his own ransom and peace for his realm from a band of roaming robbers, by offering the leader of them his daughter for a wife, however strange to our ideas, was very characteristic of the times. Imogena must have found it a hard alternative to choose between such a husband and ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... oppression and retaliation, though characteristic in the sense that they reveal the worst faults and the best excuses of the communal movement, were happily exceptional in Northern France; not because oppression was rare, but because rebellions defeated their own object. No seignorial concessions ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Referring to this address of Jove, Coleridge remarks: "Although the supremacy of Jove comes far short of the true conception of almighty power, the characteristic point which seems to be fairly established is, that he is the active and ruling power of the popular mythology, the supreme and despotic chief of an aristocracy of weaker divinities, accustomed to consult with them and liable to their opposition and even violence, yet, upon ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... me) his astonishment that the Prime Minister should hold such language, and that, if he had an ambassador who was likely to act in such a manner so much at variance with his political views, he did not recall him or supersede him by a special mission. This, however, was very characteristic of Melbourne; and I told Clarendon, urging him to insist that some positive understanding should be come to, upon the conduct to be adopted by Ponsonby. There can be no doubt that Palmerston and Ponsonby between them will do all they can to embroil ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... directed by a grace that could neither be taught nor imitated. If any defect could be discovered in her face, it consisted in a somewhat undue thickness of the lips, especially of the lower lip, which had for some generations been the prevailing characteristic of her family. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... adherents of the Reformed Dutch and German churches, and even a few Episcopalians. About the beginning of the nineteenth century sectarian ascendancy passed to the Methodists and Baptists, whose ranks were rapidly recruited by means of one of the most curious and characteristic of backwoods institutions, the camp-meeting "revival." The years 1799 and 1800 brought the first of the several great waves of religious excitement by which the West—especially Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee was periodically swept until ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... trembling like a captured bird. He threw up his office. Nature, in her indifference, or perhaps her irony, implants in people all sorts of faculties and tendencies utterly inconsistent with their means and their position in society; with her characteristic care and love she had moulded of Tihon, the son of a poor clerk, a sensuous, indolent, soft, impressionable creature—a creature fitted exclusively for enjoyment, gifted with an excessively delicate sense of smell and of taste...she had moulded him, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... brightest blue. Maraton watched them, at first idly and then with interest. Lady Elisabeth, in her cool muslin gown and simple hat, seemed to be moving in a world of her own, into which her companion's chatter but rarely penetrated. She walked with a slow and delicate grace, not without a characteristic touch of languor. Once or twice she looked around her—one might almost have imagined that she was seeking escape from her companion—and on one of these occasions her eyes met Maraton's. She stopped short. They were within a few feet of one another, and Maraton rose to his feet. She lowered ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... some form of public service by doing it as he went along has always been Ames' strongest characteristic. He had eyes for the homely, sometimes mean, job under his nose. There was an evangelism about him. Why? Because he was a citizen. Where did he live? In Montreal. No man can be a reforming citizen in Montreal unless he has plenty ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... and irregular streets. We found a cathedral there, not very large, but with a high and venerable interior, a nave supported by tall pillars, from the height of which spring arches. This loftiness is characteristic of French churches, as distinguished from those of Italy. . . . . We likewise saw, close by the cathedral, a large monument with four arched entrances meeting beneath a vaulted roof; but, on inquiry of an old priest and other persons, we could get ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... distinction can only be comprehended upon this basis. Shakespeare put no construction upon life, and by virtue of this very reserve accomplished an art of surpassing fidelity and vividness. The absence of philosophy in Shakespeare, and the presence of the most characteristic quality of his genius, may both be imputed by the one affirmation, that there is no ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... small dinners I had such a characteristic answer from an English diplomatist, who had been ambassador at St. Petersburg. He was really a charming talker, but wouldn't speak French. That was of no consequence as long as he only talked to me, but naturally all the people ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... history through a mutual friend, he decided, with his usual characteristic impulse, that here was the very man for him—a gentleman by birth, rumored to be an excellent scholar,—and he at once offered him the post he had in view,—that of private secretary at a salary of 200 pounds per annum. ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... two typical groups of ruins, viz, that of Canyon de Chelly, in northeastern Arizona, and that of the Chaco Canyon, of New Mexico; but it has been necessary for the writer to make occasional reference to these ruins in the present paper, both in the discussion of general arrangement and characteristic ground plans, embodied in Chapters II and III and in the comparison by constructional details treated in Chapter IV, in order to define clearly the relations of the various features of pueblo architecture. They belong to the same pueblo system illustrated by the villages of Tusayan and Cibola, ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... the Athenaeum for these piquancies: they are in the right true Attic vein, and are therefore characteristic of that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... proper delay, the king made his appearance in all the paraphernalia of African court-dress. A few fathoms of check girded his loins, while a blue shirt and red waistcoat were surmounted by a dragoon's cap with brass ornaments. His countenance was characteristic of Ethiopia and royalty. A narrow forehead retreated rapidly till it was lost in the crisp wool, while his eyes were wide apart, and his prominent cheek-bones formed the base of an inverted cone, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... in greater amounts, in the skins of races who live in or near the tropics, gives rise to the characteristic coloring of the black, brown, and yellow races. The pigment, or coloring matter, is of exactly the same kind in all, from the negro to the white. The brown race having a little less of it than the negro, the yellow race a little less yet, and the white least of all, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... scurvy became developed at the end of January; and a few of several cases of cutaneous eruption under treatment at the time closely resembled the symptoms characteristic of that disease. the only anti-scorbutic dietary available, viz.,—preserved meats and potatoes, compressed vegetables and lemon juice, was issued at once, and continued on the salt-meat days for three weeks, when all the indications of scurvy having disappeared, the ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... are a striking characteristic: they are palmated or flattened out like shovels, while along the edge rise the points or antlers. The width from horn to horn at their tops is often more than four feet, and the breadth of a single one, antlers included, is frequently above thirty inches. A single pair ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... in characteristic language expressed his opinion of the whole Jensen tribe, while Harry calmly glanced through some letters ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... "The Young Man," Mr. William T. Stead hit off the prominent characteristic of the hero's life when he said: "General Gordon taught the world that it is possible to be good without being goody-goody. That it is possible to live like a Christ and to die like a Christ for your fellow-men, without going out of the world ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... gangway, where the children made a nest for themselves in a coil of rope, and the father and mother, she suckling the youngest, discussed family affairs as peaceably as if they were in perfect retirement. I think the most noticeable characteristic in the eight hundred as a mass, was their exemption ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... it. To come across anything with the slightest claims to literary merit, was so unusual, that this was a perfect feast to me. The brilliancy of the book, the succession of capital hits, lively and characteristic sketches, kept me in a constant state of pleasing sensations. It was far too good for a sailor. I could not expect such fine times to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the country; had had fears and doubts on the subject of his comfort. He was disturbed, as it were, only FOR him, and had positively gone away to ease him off, to let him down—if it wasn't indeed rather to screw him up—the more gently. Seeing him now fairly jaded he had come, with characteristic good humour, all the way to meet him, and what Strether thereupon supremely made out was that he would abound for him to the end in conscientious assurances. This was what was between them while the visitor remained; so far from having to go over old ground he ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... relief or sympathy? It must be in the general expression of his features, which seemed made only to mirror the emotions of a soul full of vitality and purpose—a soul which, if clouded by wrongs and embittered by heavy memories, possessed at least the characteristic of force and the charm ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... as well hear this, all of you, since I've called you to a council of war. I want you to realize"—and she gave each of us a look in turn: a lovely, characteristic "Mrs. Bal" look—"that I'm on my knees to you. I've thrown myself on your mercy. You've got to help me out. The truth is"—she began taking off her gloves and looking down at her own hands, her rings sparkling as the pink and white fingers were bared—"the truth is, I'm a little—a tiny ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... purpose to dwell further on incidents connected with the close of the war, as the book may be considered too long already. It only remains for me now to get all my people happy as soon as possible. Zany and Chunk 'make up,' and a good deal of their characteristic love-making will be worked in to relieve the rather sombre state of things at this stage. Whately returns with his empty sleeve, more of a hero than ever in his own eyes and his mother's. Miss Lou thinks him strangely thoughtful and considerate in keeping away, as he does, after a few short ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the demon of Socrates; the visions of Saint Anthony, and of many others; the vision which Lord Herbert of Cherbury describes himself to have seen; Colonel Gardiner's vision, as related in his life, written by Dr. Doddridge. All these may be accounted for by a momentary insanity; for the characteristic symptom of human madness is the rising up in the mind of images not distinguishable by the patient from impressions upon the senses. (Batty on Lunacy.) The cases, however, in which the possibility of this delusion exists are divided from the cases in which ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... The little chick, for example, does not know the value of water when he sees it, as essential as water is to his life; but he depends upon imitation of his mother's drinking, or upon the mere accident of wetting his bill, to stimulate his partial instinct of drinking in the peculiar fashion characteristic of fowls, by throwing back the head. So in other functions which are peculiar to a species and upon which their very lives depend, we find the delicate adjustment between intelligent adaptation by conscious action and the partially formed ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... hope that a fine easterly breeze which had been blowing for some days would carry him well down channel and then chop round from the southward in good time to baffle his old friend during the passage of the Flying Cloud through the Downs. A somewhat curious and amusing characteristic of the friendly rivalry between the skippers was that, whilst each implicitly believed in his own ship, he affected a faith in the superior qualities of the other, and framed his remarks accordingly. So when the little farewell ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... defense allocation (1% of GDP) helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically-powerful economy in the world after the US and third-largest economy after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features are ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... fertile imagination, of rhetorical and even poetical genius, and a powerful declaimer. Burr's ruling passion was an ardent love for military glory. Next to the career of arms, diplomacy, no doubt, would have been his choice, for which not only his courtly and fascinating manners, but every characteristic of his mind peculiarly adapted him. It is idle now to speculate upon what he might have been had Washington yielded to the importunities of Madison, Monroe, and others, and appointed him minister to the French republic. Our country, before which ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... every single thing you hear. The worst sin in a schoolgirl—at least, the worst minor sin—is to be breaking confidences. No schoolgirl with a shade of honor in her composition would ever do that, and certainly no girl trained at Haddo Court ought to be noted for such a characteristic. Now, Sibyl, you are no fool; and, when I talk to you, you are not to repeat things. I may possibly want to talk to you again, and then there'll be more chocolates and—and—other things; and as you are in the upper school, and are really quite a nice girl, I shouldn't be at all surprised ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... called Batrachians, as frogs or newts, which breathe, in the first stage, by gills, and afterward by gills and lungs, or by lungs only. The Batrachians, again, are the only exception to another great characteristic of the reptile class, the hard, dry covering of plates or scales. The reptiles all produce their young from eggs, or are "oviparous"—some hatch their eggs within the body, and produce their young alive, or are "ovo-viviparous." These are the characters belonging to all members of the reptile-class. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the Prometheus idea, it is not a man's senses, as in Tennyson's poem, but the outward necessity of things, the heavy and cruel powers of nature around him, that prove too much for his aspirations. In this respect the story is singularly characteristic of the Greek spirit. That spirit was always daring with truth, feeling the risks of knowledge and gladly taking them, passionately devoted to the love of knowledge for ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... The characteristic of Bontoc transportation is that the men invariably carry all their heavy loads on their shoulders, and the women as uniformly transport ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... SHAHSTEAD (a gentleman of whose patronage he is proud) not a man you may take liberties with. For SCHEHERAZADE, taking mean advantage of a French agglomeration of letters which did not represent his name, to hail him as "JACK" was characteristic, and therefore undesirable. But, as everybody knows, DINARZADE, at the approach of each successive morning, was obliged to make this appeal to his brother, in order to circumvent the bloodthirsty designs of the Sultan (for particulars of which, see original). ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... work, Nance threw herself into it with characteristic vehemence. Speed seemed to be the quality above all others that one must strive for, and speed she was determined ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... reason, from an agricultural point of view, for this. The district, with its capital city, Fleeceborough, really is distinct, well marked, and defined. The very soil and substrata are characteristic. The products are wheat, and cattle, and sheep, the same as elsewhere, but the proportions of each, the kind of sheep, the traditionary methods and farm customs are separate and marked. The rotation of crops is different, the agreements ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... some five miles from their starting-point, and setting out at daybreak on the following day, they pushed on with pain and difficulty, harassed at every step by the galling attacks of the Syracusan troops. [Footnote: Thucydides, with characteristic brevity, leaves this to be inferred from the slowness of their progress.] A march of two miles and a half brought them to a village, situated on a level plain, and here they halted, wishing to supply themselves with food, and replenish their water-vessels; for the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... Miss M———'s trunk had been substituted for it, and, there being the proper number of packages as registered, it was impossible to convince the officials that anything was wrong. We, of course, began to generalize forthwith, and pronounce the incident to be characteristic of French morality. They love a certain system and external correctness, but do not trouble themselves to be deeply in the right; and Miss M——— suggested that there used to be parallel cases in the French Revolution, when, so long as the assigned number were sent out of prison ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this generation, and now in "Clayhanger" and its promised collaterals, he undertakes that complete, minute, abundant presentation of the growth and modification of one or two individual minds, which is the essential characteristic of the Continental movement towards the novel of amplitude. While the "Old Wives' Tale" is discursive, "Clayhanger" is exhaustive; he gives us both types of the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... a bit of ghastly humor characteristic of the speaker. But at any rate it is not without precedent in the two greater Greek tragedians. In a chorus of the Seven against Thebes ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... consider what effect the knowledge of her doubtful birth may have on her decision: devoted as she is to us, with all the intensity of her noble mind, and with that perfect sacrifice of self which, in all matters, great or trifling, has always been her characteristic.' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... present condition of the art is to exploit the man and not the machine; dare-devil exhibitions seem to be more important than perfecting the mechanism; and such useless attempts as flying upside down, looping the loop, and characteristic displays of that kind, are of no value to the art. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... search for the characteristic, which distinguishes the memory from the imagination, we must immediately perceive, that it cannot lie in the simple ideas it presents to us; since both these faculties borrow their simple ideas from the impressions, and can ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... friends around his bed were passing in review the great achievements of his life, and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for so many victories. The dying patriot quietly interrupted with the characteristic sentence: "What you praise in my life belongs partly to good fortune, and is, at best, common to me with many generals. But that of which I am proudest, you have left unnoticed—no Athenian has ever put on mourning ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... these words only because they happen to contain six of the letters most characteristic of the antique chancery hand of the seventeenth century,—t, h, e, r, g, and b,—within a space suited to the columns for which we write. The words themselves need none of ours added to them to set forth their modern ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... place was a charnel-house. The bones of men and animals mingled in weird confusion. Most were mere skeletons. A few bodies—nine the sailor counted—yet preserved some resemblance of humanity. These latter were scattered among the older relics. They wore the clothes of Dyaks. Characteristic hats and weapons denoted their nationality. The others, the first harvest of this modern Golgotha, might have been Chinese coolies. When the sailor's fascinated vision could register details he distinguished yokes, baskets, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... that is, he is allowed three hits at the ball, and if in any one of these he can make the entire round of the bases, all the players of his side are reinstated as batters. No such feature as this was ever heard of in base-ball, yet, as said, it is the characteristic which gives to rounders its name, and any derivation of that game must certainly have ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... unsupported statement is open to question. It is certain, however, that in the House of Commons the Whigs habitually alluded to Washington's army as "our army," and to the American cause as "the cause of liberty;" and Burke, with characteristic vehemence, declared that he would rather be a prisoner in the Tower with Mr. Laurens than enjoy the blessings of freedom in company with the men who were seeking to enslave America. Still more, the Whigs did all in their power to discourage enlistments, and in various ways so thwarted and vexed ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... the physiognomist unless it be the great gift of self-possession. His hair was cut short, and he wore no beard beyond an absolutely black moustache. His teeth were perfect in form and whiteness,—a characteristic which, though it may be a valued item in a general catalogue of personal attraction, does not generally recommend a man to the unconscious judgment of his acquaintance. But about the mouth and chin of this man there was a something of softness, perhaps in the play of the lips, perhaps ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... were dark and bright, the forehead broad and low, with lines of strong determination marked on it. The mouth, that most characteristic feature, was somewhat large and expressive. But the successful prima donna's face wore a not altogether happy expression, though when she spoke the sad look went out of it; only when in repose it was ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... still retains some traces of its former copious flow; it has not yet been pressed tight into the short sententiae, which were its final and most characteristic development, and which in the Annals dominate to the exclusion of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... single woman gets a gaudy Russian dress, every other woman in the village feels envious and impatient till she has done likewise. I remember once visiting a Mordva village when this critical point had been reached, and a very characteristic incident occurred. In the preceding villages through which I had passed I had tried in vain to buy a female costume, and I again made the attempt. This time the result was very different. A few ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... It is characteristic of his passion for doing things thoroughly that he learnt nearly the whole of the Odyssey and the Iliad by heart. He had a Pickering copy of each poem, which he carried in his pocket and referred to in railway trains, both in England and Italy, when saying the poems over to himself. These two ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... used to come in their carriages from all parts of Georgia, from South Carolina, and even from Virginia—some of them remaining for weeks at a time, and giving to the otherwise dull neighborhood long seasons of riotous festivity, which were at once characteristic and picturesque. The old days had gone to come no more, but there was something in the atmosphere that seemed to recall them. The stately yet simple architecture of the house, the trees with their rugged and enormous trunks, the vast extent of ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... sophisticated speaker to the public—not to that of genuine conversation. In fact in some cases it would require only the very slightest change to make those exercitations of the rhetors which are not called "epistles" definite letters in form, while some of the best known and characteristic of ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Connie, and as he walked toward the opera house he had sense of a premonition almost occult in power that the terrible destiny which had her in its clutch was gathering energy for some pitiless catastrophe. With characteristic patience he searched his own conscience, the incidents of his daily life, and held himself rather than his wife to account. After all, he was the stronger of the two, and yet when had he put forth his strength or his pity on her behalf? In the closer human relations ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... replied, that he had read both Old and New Testament, and had not found an ill epistle or ill gospel in any part of them. The extreme attachment to the Scriptures was regarded, in those days, as a sure characteristic of heresy; and Forrest was soon after brought to trial, and condemned to the flames. While the priests were deliberating on the place of his execution, a bystander advised them to burn him in a cellar; for that the smoke of Mr. Patrick ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... the Earl of Marque were headed westward. A week later no news of either pursuer or pursued having been received, considerable uneasiness was manifested in court and suffragette circles, and it was freely rumoured that Lady Guernsey had made a rather rash but thoroughly characteristic vow that she would never relinquish the trail until she had forced Lord Marque to eat his own words, written in frosting upon a plum cake of her ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... can he not learn that the individual nations are subject to the same rule? If arbitration is best for each man, surely it must be best for all. If the child be taught that self-restraint is the boasted characteristic of the model American, should he not learn that the model American nation should be self-restraining? Let us learn this lesson, and surely we will never war. Herein shall we find the solution of this great problem. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... this provision: "It established the important republican principle, not then introduced into all the states, of the equal distribution of landed as well as personal property." All these forces combined made the wide dispersion of wealth, in the early days of the nineteenth century, an American characteristic, in marked contrast with the European system of family prestige and vast estates based ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... client is right and his cause is just." On the contrary, Lord Brougham declared that "the conscientious lawyer must be at the service of the criminal as well as of the state." And this great lawyer proceeds to argue with characteristic ability that it is as much the duty of the lawyer to work for the cause he knows to be wrong as for the cause he knows to ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... temperaments operate against mental development, progress and happiness. In the human species among individuals of equal mental calibre, the sanguine individual is due to rise higher and go farther than his nervous or lymphatic rivals. A characteristic temperament may embrace the majority of a whole species, or be limited to a few individuals. Many species are permanently characterized by the temperament common to the majority of their individual members. Thus, among the great apes the gorilla species is either morose or lymphatic; ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... field, and is willing to risk the fortunes of war. Norse poetry loses its vigor when the secure establishment of Christianity abolishes piracy and puts fighting upon an allowance. Its muscle was its chief characteristic. We ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... young and handsome, dressed with a scrupulousness and elegance which even the stress of travel had not deranged, and he was looking at her with a smile of recognition, mingled with that careless audacity and self-possession which seemed to be the characteristic of his face. ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to impute the success of prosperous men to some unpleasant source. The secret history of the Porteous Mob has been till this day unravelled; and it has always been quoted as a close, daring, and calculated act of violence, of a nature peculiarly characteristic ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... silver-forkisms, and this portion of his demeanour, if it did not escape undetected, passed away unnoticed. Not so, however, with the peculiarity already mentioned as an exception. This touch of deportment, (or management, perhaps, is the better word,) being characteristic of the man, it deserves to be mentioned a ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... and throwing a light cloak about him, the Count of Monte-Cristo departed on his mission, a mission certainly altogether characteristic of the marvellous man. ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... service, previous to my getting on board the Niagara, and, being a seaman, since the action has rendered essential service in taking charge of one of the prizes. Of Captain Elliot, already so well known to the government, it would be almost superfluous to speak; in this action, he evinced his characteristic bravery and judgment; and, since the close of the action, has given me the most able and ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... distinct periods of life. The Pigeon offers a more remarkable case, because the aboriginal parent species does not undergo any change of plumage with advancing age, excepting that at maturity the breast becomes more iridescent; yet there are breeds which do not acquire their characteristic colours until they have moulted two, three, or four times; and these modifications ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... irrevocably. The poor and vulgar may interest us, in poetry, by their situation; but never, we apprehend, by any sentiments that are peculiar to their condition, and still less by any language that is characteristic of it. The truth is, that it is impossible to copy their diction or their sentiments correctly, in a serious composition; and this, not merely because poverty makes men ridiculous, but because just taste and refined sentiment are rarely to be met with among ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... it chanced that he was forced to deal with subjects as vast and complex as ever vexed a statesman or a jurist, under difficulties at least equal to the difficulties of the task itself. If the modern mind has developed one characteristic more markedly than another, it is an impatience with prolonged demands on its attention, especially if the subject be tedious. No one could imagine that the New York press of to-day would print the ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... REASON.—The doctrine of the Rational Social Will might very properly be called the Ethics of Reason. It is not to be confounded with the so-called "tribal" or "group" ethics. To be sure, it has to do with man as a social being; but this is characteristic of ethical systems generally. Man is a social being; he is one essentially, and not accidentally. That he should be a member of a tribe, or of any lesser group than the whole body of sentient and reasonable beings, may not unjustly be regarded as an ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... the scanty remnants of Celtic religion are examined, the clearer it becomes that many of its characteristic features had been evolved during the vast period of the ages of stone. During these millennia, men had evolved, concomitantly with their material civilisation, a kind of working philosophy of life, traces of which are ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... a catholic, genial, loving spirit. This characteristic is not generally thought to have been prominent in the spirit of illustrious reformers and suffering confessors. Luther, Calvin, and Knox, have been represented as unsocial, morose fanatics, and gloomy ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... of us, men and boys and dogs, leave hoeing or haying, and drive them out. And, by the way, the frequency with which most of us have had occasion to leave important labors to drive back unruly cattle, rendered lawless by neglect of our fences, well illustrates a national characteristic. We are earnest, industrious, and intent on doing. We can look forward to accomplish any labor, however difficult, but lack the conservatism which preserves the fruit of our labors—the "old fogyism" which puts ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... better, but it required my own zeal and affection to thoroughly restore him, and bring him back to his characteristic interest and alertness, which made him so original and delightful a companion. At length, by a week's nursing, during which Miss Dodan and myself were frequently together, becoming more and more attached to each other, my father renewed ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... least reflecting of preceding writers, of this general term, as if the pointed buildings of Italy could in any wise be arranged in one class, or criticised in general terms. It is true that so far as the church interiors are concerned, the system is nearly universal, and always bad; its characteristic features being arches of enormous span, and banded foliage capitals divided into three fillets, rude in design, unsuggestive of any structural connection with the column, and looking consequently as if they might be slipped up ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... God, but the woman is the glory of the man," says the great Book. This is so true that most of the charities and mercies for which mankind gets credit in his own moral intelligence are inspired by the charitable and merciful attributes so characteristic of true womanhood. Campbell, in the "Pleasures of Hope," speaks thus ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... points of view her countenance still had a grace, a sweetness, all the more noticeable because of its threatened extinction. For she was rapidly ageing; her lax lips grew laxer, with emphasis of a characteristic one would rather not have perceived there; her eyes sank into deeper hollows; wrinkles extended their network; the flesh of her neck wore away. Her tall meagre body did not seem strong enough to ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... direction her chief characteristic lay, that of describing "psychologic character." Here she was no imitator, but she made a way of her own, and developed a new method. The method of science she applied to literature. Science has adopted the method of analysis, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... the characteristic and simple little note, Guly slipped a piece of money into Richard's hand, thanking him warmly for the service he had done him, and the little man swung himself away, talking pleasantly ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... and their delight, as though they were people in a play expressing themselves in this extravagant manner for their entertainment, until they understood how poverty-stricken their lives had been and that they were not only enjoying the music for itself, but because it was characteristic of all that they had left behind them. It was pathetic to hear them boast of having read of a certain song in such a paper, and of the fact that they knew the plot of a late comic opera and the names of those who had played in it, and that it had ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Anaximander, like that more familiar Greek solution which transformed the cone, or cylinder, into the giant Atlas, is but another illustration of that substitution of unwarranted inference for scientific induction which we have already so often pointed out as characteristic of the primitive stages ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... this order. Each member of this peculiar household had been "told off," as Dick expressed it, to a special duty, which was performed with all the precision of discipline characteristic of a man-of-war. ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... remarkable for general quiet and for an absence of excitement of any kind, rather than for events either of political or general interest. It has often been noted as characteristic of the American Republic, that, however fierce and menacing popular excitement may appear to be, it disappears with the immediate event which gave it birth. A presidential election, for instance, calls forth the most embittered and apparently dangerous contests between different sections of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... and some lighter shoes. Would she be expected to dance with the Bear Canyon forest ranger and his brethren from Cinnamon Creek and Sagebrush Point—with Dick and William and Mr. Crusoe? They were picturesque, and she would enjoy describing them as characteristic of the West when she returned home, but as for dancing with them, that—she was careful not to admit to the others—was ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... provincial girls, in Bury-Fair, La Roch, "a French peruke-maker" succeeds in deceiving Mrs. Fantast and Mrs. Gertrude under the name of Count de Cheveux. The Count is very amusing, and though a coward to boot, pretends to be a great warrior. His description of war is characteristic; he states that "de great Heros always burne and kille de Man, Woman, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... small defense allocation (1% of GDP) helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically-powerful economy in the world after the US and third-largest economy after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... been recommended for it by former Lord-Lieutenants, Lord Temple thought the opportunity favourable for such a creation. Mr. Townshend's answer, conveying the substance of a note he had received from the King in reply, is curiously characteristic of the imperative interest taken by His Majesty in all matters of a personal nature. After expressing His Majesty's confidence that "Lord Temple will be as sparing as possible in his list of peers," Mr. Townshend adds, "Mr. Pennington must be included in the ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... of Madame Rognon. Lassalle opened the door to hand over the telegrams, and saw the woman who had brought Helene's letter lingering uneasily, and he had the unhappiest yet not least characteristic inspiration of his life. "These to the telegraph office," he said aloud, and in a whisper: "Tell the Baroness von Doenniges that we ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... now that the emotional impression made upon me by people and things was the only sure guide I still possessed as to their connection or association with my past history. And the rooms at The Grange had each in this way some distinctive characteristic. The library, of course, was the chief home of the Horror which had hung upon my spirit even during the days when I hardly knew in any intelligible sense the cause of it. But the drawing-room and dining-room both produced upon my mind ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... straight to a mirror, remove his hat, arrange his hair with a little comb which he took from his pocket; after which he went to a porcelain basin with a reservoir above it, took a towel which was there for the purpose, and bathed his face and hands. Not until these ablutions were completed—characteristic of a man of elegant habits—not until these ablutions had been minutely performed did the stranger sit ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... the next and distinguishing characteristic of bad company and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that. Proverbial expressions and trite sayings are the flowers of the rhetoric of ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... fair in love and war!" Deceit, trickery, lying, every kind of skulking underhand effort to get information; ceaseless endeavor to outwit and overcome "the enemy"; besides as cruelty and destruction; are characteristic of the military process; as well as the much praised virtues of courage, endurance ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... treachery, they are roused to spasmodic anger, rush to act in some spasmodic way—generally futile, and then relapse into helplessness again. They lack the vision that inspires every moment, discerns a sure way, and heightens the spirit to battle without ceasing, which is characteristic of the great years. They tacitly accept that theirs is a useless generation, that the enemy is in the ascendant, that they cannot unseat him, and their action, where any is made, is but to show their attitude, never to convince opponents that the battle is again beginning, that this is ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... had occurred, and what my ideas and intentions were, requesting her to give me her advice and opinion as to the best plan I could follow. In a few days I received from her the following reply, which I insert as characteristic ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... fortune. When he retired and returned to "civilization" he found his greatest reward In the discovery of three charming nieces, all "as poor as Job's turkey" but struggling along bravely, each in her individual characteristic way, and well worthy their doting uncle's affectionate admiration. Mrs. Merrick had recited some of the advantages they had derived from the advent of this rich relative; but even she could not guess how devoted the man ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... quite as much as we reflect them. They lend dignity, subtlety, force, each to the other, and what beauty, or lack of it, there is, is shot back and forth from one to the other as a shuttle in a loom, weaving, weaving. Cut the thread, separate a man from that which is rightfully his own, characteristic of him, and you have a peculiar figure, half success, half failure, much as a spider without its web, which will never be its whole self again until all its dignities ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... youth I felt an ardent desire to travel into distant regions, seldom visited by Europeans. This desire is characteristic of a period of our existence when appears an unlimited horizon, and when we find an irresistible attraction in the impetuous agitations of the mind, and the image of positive danger. Though educated ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... the husband she would tremble at the danger she had escaped. Their home, their table, their fireside; protection from evil, now all wild winds might rage—they would be safe. The vision was constitutional and characteristic of his soul. He was out of thought of all but himself, his dream evolved in pure idea, removed from and independent of all limitations—out of concern of the world's favour—Mount Rorke, Mr. Brookes, or even the girl's grace. As this temper passed, as reality again interposed, ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... stop growing. Anybody engaged in the cotton business has to be at his post every minute, always ready to take a given opportunity. Exact information concerning the conditions in America, as well as personal connections in that country, are of great value. It is characteristic of the German merchant to follow up a business once he has commenced it, and this close attention, from early youth to ripe old age, has contributed materially to the success of the ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer
... them from the common sod. They had the look of deeper peace, the long, untroubled peace of sleepers who have passed out of the memory of living, worrying men. These churchyards for the dead were characteristic features in country circuits, and I mention this one because ever after it seemed to me to be just inside the gateway of the Methodist itinerancy, and because, in the end, it came to be the home place of ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... have shown no disposition to roam from place to place. A tendency to rove about, is thought by many to be a characteristic of the negro; he is not allowed even an ordinary share of local attachment, but must leave the chain and staple of slavery to hold him amidst the graves of his fathers and the society of his children. The experiment in Antigua shows that such sentiments are groundless prejudices. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sentiments; whence they content themselves, for the dull remainder of life, with the pursuit of more innocent, but I am afraid more childish amusements, the bare mention of which would ill suit with the dignity of this history. In my humble opinion, the true characteristic of the present beau monde is rather folly than vice, and the only epithet which it deserves is ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of Sherlock Holmes, nor the keen brilliancy of Monsieur Lecoq. Muller is a small, slight, plain-looking man, of indefinite age, and of much humbleness of mien. A naturally retiring, modest disposition, and two external causes are the reasons for Muller's humbleness of manner, which is his chief characteristic. One cause is the fact that in early youth a miscarriage of justice gave him several years in prison, an experience which cast a stigma on his name and which made it impossible for him, for many years after, to obtain honest employment. But the ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... closely analagous to the Second, that an analysis of it would be in the nature of repetition. If there were any distinctions between them, they were so finely drawn that they amounted simply to a distinction without a difference—a characteristic, indeed, of a large part of the eleven Articles of Impeachment—a characteristic so conspicuous that it was not deemed worth while by the majority to go further in their ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... with his characteristic modesty in a letter dated Singapore, June 9th, 1823. The letter is too long to quote in extenso, but we give the following extracts from it. After acknowledging the receipt of their address, and remarking upon the impossibility of his being indifferent to any of the interests, especially the ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... of the saloon (1-34.) They are of the time of the third Amenophis, and were discovered at Mount Barkal by Lord Prudhoe, in 1829. As specimens of the mechanical skill of ancient Egyptian sculptors, they are worth particular remark. Here there is little of that angular stiffness characteristic of the statues the visitor has already examined. And now, making one more progress through the saloon, the visitor may rapidly notice the varieties of strange animal forms—all of which, in ancient Egypt, had their religious meaning. They were, at all events, symbols of divine instincts, and ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... Carlos. "Nothing is more characteristic of her; she's at home everywhere. When I first saw her dance three years ago in the garden of the old Posada at the birthday fete of Senora Fernandez, I knew instantly that she was either possessed of the devil or the ancient muse of dance; also, why Don ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... character of the Roman Church gives us an insight into the causes which, in addition to the ignorance of the time, induced men to refer all remarkable events to supernatural influence, and prepared their minds for the unquestioning belief in the fictions which are so important a characteristic of the romances of chivalry. The low standard of morality also, which is reflected in the same pages, is due quite as much to the predominance of the dogmatic over the moral element of Christianity, as to the unrefined and rude ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... was reluctant to have it appear since he was unable then to read the proof, and because he felt that the material present might not be suitable for publication in a clinical journal. To those who knew him, this painstaking attention to detail and desire for accuracy presents itself as a familiar characteristic. Though actual publication was postponed, the type forms were held, and when the Cleveland Medical Journal suspended publication, its editorial board informed the Council of the Cleveland Medical Library Association of the valuable ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... the Fair, "took it all in," and Samantha relates their experiences in her well-known quaint style. The characteristic illustrations of their adventures by ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... you thus endeavoring to cure one species of wickedness by the instrumentality of another? But if they are to be left with their parents and brought up under their care, then either they will be imbued with the faults and degeneracies that are characteristic of slavery, and consequently be as unfit for freedom as those who have not been disenthralled: or they will be well nurtured and well instructed by their parents, and this implies a confession that their parents themselves are sufficiently ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... twenty years ago the Baroness Burdett Coutts made a loan of L10,000 to the fishermen of Baltimore, with a view to the development of their industry, and the unfailing punctuality with which payments were made afforded another instance of the reliability which is a characteristic of the Irish peasant. This brings one to note in passing that of all others the fishing industry has probably suffered most from the lack of proper means of transit. The 2,500 miles of coast line offer great scope, but the catch of fish off the Irish coast is only one-eighth of that off ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... life of quiet and retirement; simplicity had ever been his chief characteristic. He was always very religious; his greatest works voice ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... a number as great as 500, and as a result he might have respecting that number an idea less distinct than a trained mathematician would have of the distance from the earth to the sun. De Quincey[50] incidentally mentions this characteristic in narrating a conversation which occurred while he was at Carnarvon, a little town in Wales. "It was on this occasion," he says, "that I learned how vague are the ideas of number in unpractised ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... considered independently by the worm-eaten condition which is a consequence of navigation in these seas, and apart from the rottenness attendant upon age. It will appear perhaps an observation somewhat over-curious, but this wood would have every characteristic of Spanish oak, if Spanish oak were distended ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was hailed with such joy as reconciled him to domestic life. He forgot little Atala Judici, for excesses of profligacy had reduced him to the volatility of feeling that is characteristic of childhood. But the happiness of the family was dashed by the change that had come over him. He had been still hale when he had gone away from his home; he had come back almost a hundred, broken, bent, and his ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... same, Nov. 20.-King of Prussia's victory at Rosbach. General dissatisfaction. Troubles in Ireland. Inquiry into the failure at Rochfort. Characteristic traits of' Mr. Conway. Richard the First's poetry. Bon-mot ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Confederate commanders also hastened the fall of the place. On February 16, General Buckner, to whom the senior officers had turned over the command, proposed an armistice, and the appointment of commissioners to agree on terms of capitulation. To this Grant responded with a characteristic spirit of determination: "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." Buckner complained that the terms were ungenerous and unchivalric, but that necessity compelled him to accept them; and Grant telegraphed Halleck on ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... in Rose's ears with a characteristic variation. It was no longer "and the Queen laughed," it was "and Miss Rose Millar laughed," then alas! alas! as a fit pendant, "and Miss ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Posies of 1830. The line of the motto from La Fontaine is from the one-act comedy Clymene, line 35. Catullus 87-47 B.c.) was a Latin poet whose lyrics show intensity of feeling and rare grace of expression. The lines here quoted are from the Carmina, xlvi. The idea of the poem is quite characteristic of Gautier, who delighted especially in the picturesque aspects of travel, as his famous descriptions of foreign lands show (Voyage en Espagne, Voyage en Russie, Voyage ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... by a devious route, to Paris in July. By this time Kleist had become clearly conscious of his vocation; the strong creative impulse that had hitherto bewildered him now found its proper vent in poetic expression, and he felt himself dedicated to a literary career. With characteristic secretiveness he kept hidden, even from his sister, the drama at which he was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with a hand which, I hope, has acquired a little steadiness from long practice, the people and the scenery of Northern Europe, to colour my sketches with the tints of the originals, and to invest each one with its native and characteristic atmosphere. In order to do this, I have adopted, as in other countries, a simple rule: to live, as near as possible, the life of the people among whom I travel. The history of Sweden and Norway, their forms of Government, commerce, productive industry, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... with practical directions for so doing. Stories with a moral are not usually interesting, but this one is an exception to the rule. The narrative is lively, the incidents probable and amusing, the characters well-drawn, and the dialects various and characteristic. Mrs. Campbell is a natural storyteller, and has the gift of making a tale interesting. Even the recipes for pickles and preserves, evaporating fruits, raising poultry, and keeping bees, are made poetic and invested with ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... it one feels the influence of that faint air of overwrought delicacy, almost of wantonness, which was so strong a characteristic of the poetry of the Troubadours. The Troubadours themselves were often men of great rank; they wrote for an exclusive audience, people of much leisure and great refinement, and they came to value ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... about the worn capitals of pillars, or craning forth over the church-leads with the open mouths of gargoyles. About them all there is that sort of stiff quaint unreality, that conjunction of the grotesque, and even of a certain bourgeois snugness, with passionate contortion and horror, that is so characteristic of Gothic art. Esmeralda is somewhat an exception; she and the goat traverse the story like two children who have wandered in a dream. The finest moment of the book is when these two share with the two other leading characters, Dom Claude and Quasimodo, the chill shelter ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the world of fact it is the rarest thing to encounter this absolute alternative; S1 is pink, but S2 is pinker, S3 is scarcely pink at all, and one is in doubt whether S4 is not properly to be called scarlet. The finest type specimen you can find simply has the characteristic quality a little more rather than a little less. The neat little circles the logician uses to convey his idea of P or not P to the student are just pictures of boundaries in his mind, exaggerations of a natural mental tendency. They are required ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... It is very characteristic of Paul's impetuous fervour and exuberant faith that he begins this letter with a doxology, and plunges at once into the very heart of his theme. Colder natures reach such heights by slow degrees. He gains them at a bound, or rather, he dwells there ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... It was thoroughly characteristic of Lee that he would not after the war leave the country, as a few eminent Confederates did, and also that he refused all mere titular positions with high salaries, several of which were urged on him out of consideration ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... had been founding their Yoga discipline mainly on the basis of a system of morality indicated by the yamas, and the opinion expressed in Alberuni's Patanjal that these cannot give salvation marks the divergence of the Hindus in later days from the Jains. Another important characteristic of Yoga is its thoroughly pessimistic tone. Its treatment of sorrow in connection with the statement of the scope and ideal of Yoga is the same as that of the four sacred truths of the Buddhists, namely suffering, origin of suffering, the removal of suffering, and of the path to ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Yet it was characteristic of Pete that he did not regret anything that he had done, in a moral sense. He had made mistakes—and he would have to pay for them—but only once. He would not make these mistakes again. A man was a fool who ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... flesh;" would that I could say, she was more fascinating in the "spirit!" but alas, truth, from which I never may depart in these "my confessions," constrains me to acknowledge the reverse. Most persons in this miserable world of ours, have some prevailing, predominating characteristic, which usually gives the tone and colour to all their thoughts and actions, forming what we denominate temperament; this we see actuating them, now more, now less; but rarely, however, is this great spring of action without its moments of repose. Not so with her of whom I have been speaking. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... to the institution of a government. Every nation that governs itself, under what form soever, without any dependence on a foreign power, is a sovereign state. In every society there must be a sovereignty. 1 Dall. Rep. 46, 57. Vatt. B. 1. ch. 1. sec. 4. The powers of war form an inherent characteristic of national sovereignty; and, it is not denied, that Congress ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Balls, illuminations, and pageants ensued in the evening. For many days these unnatural and chilling nuptials were celebrated with all the splendor of national festivities. Among these entertainments there was a tournament, singularly characteristic of the times, and which certainly sheds peculiar lustre either upon the humility or upon the good-nature of ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the wits of France, and who has since, through all the trying scenes of the revolution, through the varieties of unprincipled change, preserved unaltered the integrity and frankness of his character; retaining even to his eighty-seventh year all his characteristic warmth of heart and clearness of understanding—le doyen de la litterature Francoise—the love, respect, and admiration, of every honest heart in France. May he live to receive among all the other tributes, which ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... step into the office to inquire after my comrades. One of the whey-faced clerks said with the supercilious asperity characteristic of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... finished this characteristic letter with something very like tears in his eyes. "The dear, generous fellow!" he thought to himself; "how could he ever bring himself to do it? for it is a denial, because Ned is so fond of a horse! And he claimed, ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... that the trap was skillfully baited. I am sure that you cannot fail to be delighted with the traces of heredity shown in the p's and in the tails of the g's. The absence of the i-dots in the old man's writing is also most characteristic. Watson, I think our quiet rest in the country has been a distinct success, and I shall certainly return much invigorated to Baker ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... After another characteristic silence, Mose said slowly: "Anyhow, I want you to understand that I'm much obliged for your good will; I'm not worth a cuss at putting things in a smooth way; I think I'm getting worse every day, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... of English self-consciousness. Solomon, the elder one, sat at her Beethoven sonata, an adagio movement, with a patch of dull crimson on the pallor of the cheek she presented to the room, but she played with a heavy fervour, preserving throughout the characteristic marching staccato of the bass, and gave unstinted value to the shading of each phrase. She made Miriam feel nervous at first and then—as she went triumphantly forward and let herself go so tremendously—traction-engine, thought Miriam—in ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... narrow at the loins. The back should rise behind the shoulders in a graceful curve to the loins, the top of which should be higher than the top of the shoulders, thence curving again more suddenly to the tail, forming an arch known as the "roach" back, which is essentially a characteristic of the breed, though, unfortunately, many leading prize-winners of the present day are entirely deficient in this respect. Some dogs dip very considerably some distance behind the shoulders before the upward curve of the spine begins, and these are known as "swamp-backed"; others rise in an ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... honest advocacy of the great principles of free government have been my lot. The duties have been mine, the consequences God's." Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire, who was present on the occasion, said with characteristic wit, that "Johnson seemed willing to share the glory of his achievements with his Creator, but utterly forgot that Mr. Lincoln had any share of credit in the suppression ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... difficulty is to be found in the character of Desdemona. Shakespeare alone could have made her as interesting as Imogen or Cordelia; though these have so much to do and dare, and she after her first appearance has simply to suffer: even Webster could not give such individual vigor of characteristic life to the figure of his martyr as to the figure of his criminal heroine. Her courage and sweetness, her delicacy and sincerity, her patience and her passion, are painted with equal power and tenderness of touch: yet she ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the English have given to this last is strangely characteristic. The Bay of Hope (Baie d'Espoir) of the French has been changed into the Bay of Despair of the English. It was really a Bay of Hope to the French; for from the head of one of its fiords, deep enough for the largest of our modern ships, an Indian trail ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... sensations to which few men can refuse to yield, in the immediate prospect of a long and distant separation from the land of their fondest and earliest recollections. With my gallant shipmates, indeed, whose elasticity of spirits is remarkably characteristic of the professions to which they belonged, hope appeared greatly to predominate over sadness. Surrounded as they were by every circumstance that could render their voyage propitious, and in the ample enjoyment of every necessary that could contribute either to their health or their comfort, ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... Baronne de Vibray, adding with a characteristic touch of malice, "you mean to make a match ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... rest of that day he was exceedingly busy, and he did not attempt further explanations to himself. He overhauled the bunk and spread the blankets out on the wild rose bushes to sun while he cleaned the floor. Billy's way of cleaning the floor was characteristic of the man, and calculated to be effectual in the main without descending to petty details. All superfluous objects that were small enough, he merely pushed as far as possible under the bunk. Boxes and benches he piled on top; then he brought buckets of water and sloshed it upon ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... scene; the variable star ARGUS had increased to the first magnitude, just above the beautiful constellation of the southern cross, which slightly inclined over the river, in the only portion of sky seen through the trees. That very red star, thus rapidly increasing in magnitude, might, as characteristic of her rivers, be recognized as the star of Australia, when Europeans cross the Line. The river gradually filled up the channel nearly bank high, while the living cataract travelled onward, much slower than I had expected to see it; so slowly, indeed, that more than an hour after its first ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... convey more information regarding the types of Greek, Roman, and English Coins, than can be obtained by many hours' careful reading Instead of a fac-simile Engraving being given of that which is already an enigma to the tyro, the most striking and characteristic features of the Coin are dissected and placed by themselves, so that the eye soon becomes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... acting is not confined to those who are actors by profession; the love of improvising little scenes in daily life may be said to be characteristic of them. To suppose that they do this from a love of lying would be to simplify unduly; they have the artist's power of seeing a thing in two senses at once, and they assume that they will not be misunderstood, at all events, they are not going to give it all away by ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... pontiffs. The temper of the Jews was incapable of contenting itself with such a cold and languid assent as might satisfy the mind of a Polytheist; and as soon as they admitted the idea of a future state, they embraced it with the zeal which has always formed the characteristic of the nation. Their zeal, however, added nothing to its evidence, or even probability: and it was still necessary that the doctrine of life and immortality, which had been dictated by nature, approved by reason, and received by superstition, should obtain the sanction of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... highly characteristic of the author is the Somniorum Synesiorum, a collection of all the remarkable dreams he ever dreamt, many of which have been already noticed. To judge from what specimens of his epistles are extant, Cardan seems to have been a good letter-writer. One of the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... messages conveyed to him, to the effect that a rumour was abroad charging him with treachery; and to John Mitchel, perhaps by the same agents of dissension, it was stated that he, too, was suspected. It is unfortunately characteristic of Irishmen to be suspicious; and it was the object of one of Mr. O'Connell's eternal lessons to perpetuate and extend this degrading national vice. Whether the representations made to either of ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... drawn by six horses, to the palace at Kensington. They were received at the door by the body guards, and then, by the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain, presented to his Majesty, whom Tomo Chichi addressed in the following characteristic terms. ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... little Hottentot, smothered as he was in blood, stood up. In the simple, dramatic style characteristic of his race, he narrated all that had happened since he met the woman on the veld but little over twelve hours before, till the arrival of the rescue party. Never have I seen a tale followed with deeper interest, and when at last Hans pointed to me lying on the ground and ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... different version. Callender evidently did not understand the old Norman expression—GENITMENT TEURCHES, which means "nicely ornamented," and translated it by the word that appeared to him more akin in form, TRESSES, hence, "the hair neatly tied up in tresses", which is a characteristic custom of the native women of the island ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... with the characteristic discourtesy of the Caracunan lower class, and jerked his head backward toward ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and the third-largest economy in the world after the US and China, measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. One notable characteristic of the economy has been how manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors have worked together in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... his schoolmasters. He stole at his parents' table, in the kitchen, and in the cellar. But he stole like a man of quality, to make presents and to win over his playfellows: he ruled the other boys by his presents—a noteworthy characteristic in this future ruler of souls. Morals like these, a little rough, shape free and bold natures. Those African children were much less coddled, much less scolded, than to-day. Monnica had something else to do than to look after the boys. So for them it was a continual ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... he confessed. "I did make her feel contrary. It seems to be a characteristic of mine. Maybe her true little self is the one Jo saw and she can be made worthy of ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... At one time Clarence completely abandoned the idea, throwing the watchful and silent Rachael into utter consternation. Carol was alternately bored by the plan and wearily interested in it. Their characteristic absorption in their own comfort was a great advantage to Rachael at this particular juncture; she had been included in Mrs. Villalonga's invitation as a matter of course, but such was the life of the big, luxurious establishment known as the "camp" that all three of the ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... (who died 804) and by later writers; he is to be identified with the Norse Forseti, the son of (probably at first an epithet of) Baldr, but no legend of him is told. It is disappointing that these writers should have said so little of any God except the chief one. A very characteristic touch survives in Gregory of Tours (died 594), when the Frank Chlodvig tells his Christian wife that the Christian God "cannot be proved to be of the race of the Gods," an idea entirely in keeping with the Eddic hierarchy. Before leaving the Continental historians, ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... I give the names of some who came afterward. All of them are among my earliest recollections, and I can remember each by some peculiarity of speech or characteristic anecdote. In my old age I find myself dwelling upon these recollections of my early years with pleasure, till the flight of time is forgotten, and in fancy I am back again at the old fort, a happy, light-hearted, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... had handed down like an heirloom through the centuries. Among them he saw the comely, high-coloured features of that gallant cynic, Bolivar, the man who had stamped his beauty upon threegenerations, and his gaze lingered with a gentle ridicule on the blithe candour in the eyes and the characteristic touch of brutality about the mouth. Then he passed to his father, portly, impressive, a high liver, a generous young blood, and then to the classic Saint—Memin profile of Aunt Susannah, limned ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... military way, as those who 'studied new things,' that is, desired constantly a renewal of public affairs, or renovation of government. He found these men, moreover, his most ready tools, even in his designs against their country's liberties; and it would seem as though this revolutionary characteristic of the early inhabitants of Gaul had remained impressed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to point to that life from which my thoughts have taken their start in this sermon. Surely if there was any one characteristic in it more distinct and lovely than another, it was that self was dead and that Christ lived. There may be sometimes a call for the actual—which is the lesser—surrender of the bodily life, in obedience to the call of duty. There have been Christian men who have wrought themselves to death in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the animal may be represented realistically or the head alone may be shown. The animal head is frequently attached to a human body. The animal may appear conventionalized to a greater or less extent and the head in turn may change in the same way until only a single characteristic of the animal remains by which to identify it as, for example, the spots of the jaguar or the feathering around the eye of the macaw. In the case of the glyphs, a term employed to designate the regular and usually square ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... by this time entered the policies of the Duke. A figure walked alone in the obscurity, with arms in a characteristic fashion behind its back, going in the direction they themselves were taking. For a second or two the Chamberlain ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... outlasted her inclinations, they were, indeed, nothing else than an abandonment to her desires. And these desires were the directors of her reason, which, aided by an exuberant imagination, was never at a loss to justify any act, be it ever so cruel and abject. In short, the chief characteristic of George Sand's moral constitution was her incapacity of regarding anything she did otherwise than as right. What I have said is fully borne out by her Ma Vie and the "Correspondance," which, of course, can be more easily and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... neighbor. Not only was the old feud between the Fort and the people thus bridged over, but there was no doubt that the discipline of the Fort had been strengthened by Maggie's extravagant reputation as a mediator among the disaffected rank and file. Whatever characteristic license the grateful Dennis M'Caffrey—let off with a nominal punishment—may have taken in his praise of the "Quane of the Marshes," it is certain that the men worshiped her, and that the band pathetically begged permission to serenade her the ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... The special characteristic of the equipment of these houses is that it is adapted for children and not adults. They contain not only didactic material specially fitted for the intellectual development of the child, but also a complete ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... Louis and Xavier, the French Canadians, were looking through the spyglass by turns and making characteristic comments on the fleet. Mr. Murray and Braithwaite were standing by ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sort of fixed vision with him, which I suppose he'll never be cured of believing in. He still thinks it a great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it is, a nest of commonplace schoolmasters whose characteristic is timid obsequiousness ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... chief characteristic of this place was the silence that brooded there. Apparently they kept no dogs, for none barked, and no poultry, for I never heard a cock crow in Pongo-land. Cattle and native sheep they had in abundance, but as they did ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... distinguishing characteristic should be a diffusion and equalization of its benefits and burdens the advantage of individuals will be augmented at the expense of the community at large. Nor is it the nature of combinations for the acquisition of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... the pardon of sin, in private confession and the sacraments; and this may possibly be one of the reasons why this Puseyite, semi-Romish system is more popular with the clergy than with the laity. But Protestant ministers should never forget, that the Saviour himself asserted it as his peculiar characteristic, "that the Son of man hath power upon earth to ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... white as snow, and his face had a dry and withered expression. His voice was always keyed on a whining tone, except when some great cause, such as the demand of prisoners for an extra bucket of water, excited him, and then it rose to a hoarse scream. Avarice was his predominant, almost his only, characteristic. He seemed to think his accommodations were vastly too good for negroes and Yankees, and that when they were admitted within his precincts, they should be thankful, and give as little trouble as possible. With such notions, it was not wonderful that ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... accounts for its high durability, and from the fact that it may be worked with a higher current than probably any other form of incandescence lamp. M. Desroziers in a series of experiments obtained as much as 250 carcel spherical luminous value per horse-power; this characteristic is one likely to be of great value in electric lighting by incandescence of high intensity. At present only 20-candle lamps are made on the Cruto system. The carbon filament, when properly prepared, is gray in hue and of metallic appearance; it is built up in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... symbols have become transparent, and man is again in contact with the hard facts of nature, it will be found that the "Virtues" which the Romans made into gods contain in them the essence of true religion, that in them lies the special characteristic which distinguishes human beings from the rest of animated things. Every other creature exists for itself, and cares for its own preservation. Nothing larger or better is expected from it or possible ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... removed from the library." The date, which was added, referred to a period of ten years since. Miss Pink now stood revealed as a retired schoolmistress, and Mr. Troy began to understand some of the characteristic peculiarities of that lady's establishment which had puzzled him up ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... the reha earth, which I sent to him from Oude, is identical with the sujjee muttee of Bengal, and contains carbonate of soda and sulphate of soda as its essential characteristic ingredients, with silicious clay and oxide of iron. But in Oude, the term "sujjee" is given to the carbonate and sulphate of soda which remains after the silex has been removed from the reha. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... may be burned up in the same way. In our first lecture the combustibility of zinc was mentioned. Placing a strip of sheet-zinc at this focus, it is instantly ignited, burning with its characteristic purple flame. And now I will substitute for our glass lens (L) one of a more novel character. In a smooth iron mould a lens of pellucid ice has been formed. Placing it in the position occupied a moment ago by the glass lens, I can see the beam brought to a sharp focus. At the focus I place, a bit ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... droop at the corner of his mouth as he spoke, which might have been thought characteristic of him. He was an odd-looking boy, not ill-made, though very thin and not tall. His pallor was clear and even, as though constitutional; the features were delicate, almost childlike, but they were very slightly distorted, through ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Italians hastened to Constantinople as soon as they heard of its danger, eager to defend so important a depot of Eastern commerce. The spirit of enterprise and the love of military renown had become as much a characteristic of the merchant nobles of the commercial republics as they had been, in a preceding age, distinctions of the barons in feudal monarchies. All the nations who then traded with Constantinople furnished contingents to defend its walls. A short ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Period Death of Maurice Grau His Managerial Career An Interregnum at the Metropolitan Opera House Filled by Damrosch and Ellis Death of Anton Seidl His Funeral Characteristic Traits "La Bohme" 1898-1899 "Ero ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a new invasion of Scotland. On both sides the strongest efforts were made—on the one side to relieve the castle, on the other to strengthen its besiegers. The opposing forces met in battle at Bannockburn, June 24, 1314, an action which has never been better described than in this characteristic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... about to that end, the party entered the Yarra at the Bay's head, ascended its roundabout course, and found ample water to drink above "the Falls," they at once disembarked there, and there in consequence arose Melbourne. Fawkner, following in October, confirmed the choice, and with his characteristic energy commenced the work of colonization. The immediate needs decide many things "for better, for worse." A good many have since thought that this has been a costly and inconvenient site for the colony's capital, and ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... commonplace inactivity of mind there was one strong characteristic, one bit of colour in all these grey tints: Kate was dreamy, not to say imaginative. When she was a mere child she loved fairies, and took a vivid interest in goblins; and when afterwards she discarded ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Australia, finally to Calcutta, and thence home to New York, after a prolonged tour through India, Siam, and China. The incidents of the latter tour formed the basis of his first book, the "Land of the White Elephant," the success of which encouraged him to this, his second venture. The chief characteristic of Mr. Vincent's second work is its freshness and interest. He seems to be profoundly impressed with the truth of the saying of Thales of Miletus, that "the half is sometimes more than the whole." The taste and judgment of the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... a strong work ethic, mastery of high technology, and a comparatively small defense allocation (1% of GDP) have helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most powerful economy in the world. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force; this guarantee is eroding. ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... photography when the subject is a delicately tinted mushroom; but if with it we should lose detail in structure then the wish would be renounced. The colors can be, approximately, described, often not so the characteristic markings, shapes and forms. The halftones from the photographs will, we anticipate, prove a valuable feature of the book, especially if the plants be most carefully examined before turning to the pictures. For half an hour the pages may be turned and the illustrations ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... was forced and husky, but Lucia dared not disobey. She had only a few words to add, but her description had nothing characteristic in it, except the utterly degraded and brutal expression of the countenance, which had so vividly ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... are enabled, by the kindness of their possessor, to lay before our readers copies of the following characteristic letters from the well-known Richard Rigby, Esq., who was for so many years the leader of the Bedford party in the House of Commons. They were addressed to Robert Fitzgerald, Esq., a member of the House of Commons in Ireland, and Judge of the Court ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... mock-modesty would at once have undermined her arguments. According to her own theories, there was no reason why she should not think and speak as unhesitatingly as men, when her sex was as vitally interested as theirs. And therefore, with her characteristic consistency, she did so. But while her language may seem coarse to our over-fastidious ears, it never becomes prurient or indecent. In her Dedication she expresses very distinctly her disgust for the absence of modesty among contemporary ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... addressed in Joyce's writing, and stood by while I read it, thoughtfully scratching his head with the peak of his cap. It was only a short note, but beautifully characteristic of Joyce. ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... he had been lately deprived. Upon the faith of this promise, Simon worked harder for his patron than he ever was known to do upon any previous occasion; and he was not deficient in that essential characteristic of an electioneerer, boasting. He carried this habit sometimes rather too far, for he not only boasted so as to bully the opposite party, but so as to deceive his friends: over his bottle, he often persuaded his patron that he could command voters, with whom he had no manner of influence. For ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... drawings, indigo and Indian ink; screens, ornamented with moss and dried leaves; paintings on velvet, and such faintly ornamental works were displayed on one side of the shop. It was always reckoned a mark of characteristic gentility in the repository, to have only common heavy-framed sash-windows, which admitted very little light, so I never was quite certain of the merit of these Works of Art as they were entitled. But, on the other side, where the Useful Work placard was put up, there ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... town, too—one of the few capitals in Europe that remain characteristic of their countries, and nothing else—wholly or nearly unaffected by the current of life outside. But," he went on, unexpectedly, "I wonder what a man like you can see in it—to ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... carpenter's bench and fishing boat. While Montcalm was capturing Oswego, Loudon was licking his rough recruits into shape, "making men out of mud" for the campaign of 1757. Indeed, it was said of Loudon, and the saying stuck to him as characteristic of his campaign, that he resembled the wooden horse figure of a tavern sign,—always on horseback but never rode forward. Instead of striking at Lake Champlain or on the Ohio, where the French were aggressors, Loudon planned to repeat the brilliant capture of Louisburg. July of ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Spaniards, they began their march for the capital. So ill was the army provided, that many died on the road for want of food; and others who had fainted with the heat must also have perished, had not Essex, with characteristic generosity, caused all his baggage to be thrown out, and the carriages to be filled with the sick and weary. Instead of the troops of nobility and gentry by whom don Antonio had flattered himself and his companions that he should be joined and recognised, there only appeared upon their march a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... between them in their subsequent correspondence. There are two published letters from Holbach in Mr. Hedgecock's recent study of Garrick and his French friends, excellent examples of the happy spontaneity and sympathy that were characteristic of French sociability in the eighteenth century. [19:27] Holbach in turn spent several months with ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... taken the field, and is willing to risk the fortunes of war. Norse poetry loses its vigor when the secure establishment of Christianity abolishes piracy and puts fighting upon an allowance. Its muscle was its chief characteristic. We speak ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... bushrangers, which we deny, and can prove that we are honest miners, like yourselves. [Sensation.] We do not propose to bandy words with him, because he is a contemptible coward, and dare not impose upon any one but a little boy. That is not characteristic of the miners of Ballarat, for long before we reached this part of the country, we were told they were foes to tyranny. [Faint indications of applause.] We tell the man who called us bushrangers that he is a liar, and that we require satisfaction, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... His way of talking inclined to the quietly humorous, and was as little self-assertive as man's talk can be; but he kept his eyes fixed on anyone who conversed with him, and that clear, kindly gaze offered no encouragement to pretentiousness or any other idle characteristic. Dyce Lashmar, it might have been noticed, betrayed a certain deference before Lord Dymchurch, and was not wholly at his ease; however decidedly he spoke, his accent lacked the imperturbable ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... the cause of American independence, who did not ask "Is this a town of Virginia?" but, "Is this a town of my brethren?" who pitched his camp and commenced his operations with the steady courage and cautious wisdom characteristic of Washington, hopefully, resolutely waiting and watching for the day when he could drive the British troops out of your ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... may be defined as a characteristic of the electric or magnetic fluid, by virtue of which its opposite qualities, as those of attraction and repulsion towards the same object, are manifested in opposite parts of the electric or magnetic body. These opposite parts are called the poles ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... say that the progress of the world towards self-government would have been arrested but for the strength afforded by the religious motive in the seventeenth century. And this constancy of progress, of progress in the direction of organised and assured freedom, is the characteristic fact of modern history, and its tribute to the theory, of Providence.[35] Many persons, I am well assured, would detect that this is a very old story, and a trivial commonplace, and would challenge proof that the world is ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... into which the merchant farmer and foreign immigrant were indiscriminately huddled, have given place to capacious, swift, and stately vessels, in which are to be found a concentration of all that is desirable in water conveyance. Such is now the characteristic of steamboat building on ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... closing prophecy of Malachi. That prophecy had kindled an expectation that Elijah, in person, would precede Messias. John was like a reincarnation of the stern prophet. He came in a similar epoch. His characteristic, like Elijah's, was 'power,' not gentleness. If the earlier prophet had to beard Ahab and Jezebel, the second Elijah had Herod and Herodias. Both haunted the desert, both pealed out thunders of rebuke. Both shook the nation, and stirred conscience. No two ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... I stood by the bedside of the blind Frenchman. The poor fellow was a skeleton, with the characteristic sunken face and fallen skin with which we are familiar in those living on what we know as "dry diet." He had nothing to say for himself except, "Times has been none too good, Doctor. It is a bad country when a fellow can't see where he is going. 'T is many an odd tumble I've had, too, knocking around." ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... position precisely at the right spot on that long platform. An enthusiastic lady patient had once said of Deryck Brand, with more accuracy of definition than of grammar: "You know, he is always so very JUST THERE." And this characteristic of the doctor had made him to many a very present ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... between the States to the beginning of his last lingering illness, these "Observations" were for him but an inadequate outlet for the expression of the courageous and hopeful philosophy which was always his distinguishing characteristic. To cover his pain with a jest,—to preach without cant the gospel of love,—to do the best that he could do according to the lights before him—these generous motives and high purposes are to be read between the lines by those who knew him as legibly as if they shone out ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... sculpture, music, rhetoric—in a word, the four liberal arts—were at the expense of it. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the decorations; they were finely imagined, and designed by Le Brun. The mausoleum reached to the top of the dome, adorned with a thousand lamps, and a variety of figures characteristic of him in whose honor it was erected. Beneath were four figures of Death, bearing the marks of his several dignities, as having taken away his honors with his life. One of them held his helmet, another his ducal coronet, another the ensigns of his order, another his chancellor's ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... this subject should be to get together the best possible 658 members of Parliament. That to me would be a most repulsive idea if it were not that by its very vagueness it becomes inoperative. Who shall say what is best; or what characteristic constitutes excellence in a member of Parliament? If the gentleman means excellence in general wisdom, or in statecraft, or in skill in talking, or in private character, or even excellence in patriotism, then I say that he is utterly wrong, and has never ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... as though she had died at the date when she ran away, without bitterness, with an indulgent kindness, with a full recognition of her many merits. Those who did not know the story little supposed that the lady lived still in Paris. His conduct in this matter was highly characteristic. He regarded passions and emotions as things altogether outside and independent of the rational man. Their power could not be denied in their own sphere and season; he admitted that they must be ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... under the nom de plume of Marquise de Fontenoy, is a lady of distinguished birth and title. Her work consists largely of personal reminiscences, and descriptions of events with which she is perfectly familiar; a sort of panoramic view of the characteristic happenings and striking features of court life, such as will best give a true picture ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... just quitted, and serve as park round the house I was then building. Vanity of human wishes! What but the several proportions of their common folly distinguishes the baffled squire from the arrested conqueror? Man's characteristic cerebral organ ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the Emperor Napoleon, and perhaps the rarest among them, that the marvellous fecundity of his mind, and the inexhaustible variety of the projects and conceptions which he was constantly turning over, reciprocally sustained and complemented each other. This characteristic of his genius has been ignored; and little honor has been done to his foresight when he has been depicted as taken in some degree unawares by the failure of his maritime plans, and constrained to improvise by a supreme effort the direction of his campaign in Germany. In the last days ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... in favour of a republic. Popular societies were formed, and became the vogue, with a programme of universal suffrage, and fraternization as a social characteristic. Women, occasionally children, were admitted; the members called one {112} another brother and sister, having discarded more formal modes of address; popular banquets were held. The influence of woman, of which something has already been said, was widened by the action of these societies; ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... all do their duty to their country as Englishmen should. Lord Methuen described as dastardly the firing by the enemy on ambulance waggons, the shooting of a British officer by a wounded Boer, and the use of Dum-Dum bullets; but he refused to believe that these acts were characteristic of the enemy; he would give them credit until he was convinced to the contrary that they wished to fight fair and square. Addressing the Scots Guards, the General said that they had acted as he expected his ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... hesitated, where a poet's earlier work seemed finer and more characteristic than his later, to draw upon such earlier work, in the main 'The Second Book of Modern Verse' has been selected from poetry published since 1913, the ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... was not downcast. He was only sober and thoughtful, which had become characteristic of him in the last four months. He was forgetting how to laugh, to be buoyant, to see the world through the rose-colored glasses of sanguine youth. He was becoming a living exampler of his nickname. Even Stubby Abbott marked this when ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... than for war service, because of the lack of protection against hostile fire. The engines had been so placed as to be exposed above water-line, which was condemned as a serious mistake in a war-vessel without armor-protection. It was realized, too, that the essential characteristic in an unarmored cruiser is great speed. The function she is expected to perform is to destroy commerce; and if she is slower than the merchant-vessels it is useless for her to go to sea; and if she is slower than the iron-clads, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... ability I possess, increased by more than fifty years of study and experience, would have been cheerfully exerted to have saved him, for in saving him I believe I would have been saving the honor of my country. I received a characteristic reply in terms of friendship and grateful thanks. He wrote that he did not think the prosecution would take place. Hearing, however, some time after, that the prosecution would commence at Richmond, I went at once to that city and ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... gradually overspread the sky with a layer of stratus, which, however, never seemed to be very dense; the position of the sun could always be seen. Two or three hours later the wind steadily increased in force, with the usual gusty characteristic. A noticeable fact was that the sky was clear and blue above the southern horizon, and the clouds seemed to be closing down on this from time to time. At intervals since, it has lifted, showing quite an expanse of clear sky. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... normal condition, this forbidding wilderness had become peopled with thousands of men. The Army of the Potomac was penetrating and seeking to pass through it. Vigilant General Lee had observed the movement, and with characteristic boldness and skill ordered his troops from their strong intrenchments on Mine Run toward the Union flank. On this memorable morning the van of his columns wakened from their brief repose but a short distance from the Federal ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... had once worked a little, very fitfully, at the theory of music, and had obtained just enough knowledge of the composition of chords to give him an intelligent pleasure in disentangling the elements of simple progressions. Another trifling physical characteristic had prevented his hearing as much music as he would have wished. The presence of a crowd, the heat and glare of concert-rooms, the uncomfortable proximity of unsympathetic or possibly even loquacious persons, combined with a dislike of fixed engagements ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... afraid to believe it. It is too good to be true. My brother's chief characteristic was neither egotism nor self-renunciation, but a strict mean between the two. He never sacrificed himself for any one else; but not only always avoided injuring others, but also interfering with them. He kept his happiness and his sufferings ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... the force of the wind. The Royal travellers alighted, and Sir John proceeded to inspect the bridge. On his return, he advised the Duchess to stay, as the storm was raging fearfully, and the danger was imminent. The Princess, with characteristic courage, wanted to go on, but Sir John was firm, and he prevailed, for the journey onwards was postponed. In an hour from that time, nearly the whole of one parapet was lying in rains upon the footway of the bridge, and the other had been blown bodily into the river underneath. The Royal ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... solitude is not the natural state; for, at his entrance into the world, a man finds himself with parents, brothers, sisters, that is to say, in society, and not alone. Accordingly it cannot be said that the love of solitude is an original characteristic of human nature; it is rather the result of experience and reflection, and these in their turn depend upon the development of intellectual power, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... From its commanding site and vicinity to the Roman villa, it was probably a Roman station previous to its becoming a Saxon residence. The walls and Norman gateway are fine. The massive keep, ponderous in stability, has the characteristic marks of the twelfth century, and is a noble ruin. It is called King Alfred's Keep; and with what hallowed feelings of reverence must a locale ever be approached which bears the name of that illustrious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... and laborious direction of the human intellect: yet so it was, not only in Greece, but almost universally. In nearly all countries, speculative conjecture or inquiry is the first successor to poetry. In India, in China, in the East, some dim philosophy is the characteristic of the earliest works—sometimes inculcating maxims of morality—sometimes allegorically shadowing forth, sometimes even plainly expressing, the opinions of the author on the mysteries of life—of nature—of the creation. Even with the moderns, the dawn of letters broke ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... No characteristic of the young kingbirds was more winning than their confiding and unsuspicious reception of strangers, for so soon as they began to frequent other trees than the one the paternal vigilance had made comparatively sacred ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... listened to with that avidity with which we devour whatever is fearful and mysterious. The universal currency of these superstitious fancies and the grave record made of them by one of the learned men of the day are strongly characteristic of the times. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... nearly sixty, and if he had not gained a serious reputation, he had at least excited the curiosity and interest of his contemporaries by the social eccentricities of his life, by the multitude of his schemes and devices, and by the fantastic ingenuity of his political ideas. Saint Simon's most characteristic faculty was an exuberant imagination, working in the sphere of real things. Scientific discipline did nothing for him; he had never undergone it, and he never felt its value. He was an artist in social construction; and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... wealth. In fact, he was too proud a man to be a vain one. He resolved, therefore, to place himself upon the footing of a country gentleman of easy fortune, without assuming, or permitting, his household to assume, any of the faste which then was considered as characteristic of a nabob. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... architecture of Auvergne. The exterior is plain, but the plan admirable. The transepts are just sufficiently developed to give expression to the edifice; while the elegant projection of the five apsidal chapels illustrates one of the characteristic beauties of the style. Amosaic decoration of differently-coloured lavas under a handsome cornice runs round the chancel, resembling what is seen on the south transept and tower of St. Amable at Riom. The interior ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... a curious characteristic of the non-defensive disposition that it is like a honey-jar to flies. Nothing is brought to it and much is taken away. Around a soft, yielding, unselfish disposition men swarm naturally. They sense this generosity, this ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... several years. The month I was to spend at home sped swiftly away, and we all made the most of each passing day. Charley Gray seemed so cheerful and happy that I began to hope he had outgrown that jealous and unhappy temper which had formerly been so characteristic of him; but in this I was mistaken as I soon had abundant cause to realize. That serpent in his bosom was not dead, but only slumbered till aroused by some slight provocation. We were one evening engaged in ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... of February, 1519, that the little squadron finally set sail from Cuba for the coast of Yucatan. Before starting, Cortes addressed his soldiers in a manner both very characteristic of the man, and typical of the tone which he took towards them on several occasions of great difficulty and danger, when but for his courageous spirit and great power of personal influence, the expedition could only have found a disastrous end. Part of his speech was to this effect: ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... threshold, the visitor needed no effort of fancy to picture that uncouth figure shambling through the crooked lanes that afford access to this queer, somber, melancholy retreat. In that house he wrote the first dictionary of the English language and the characteristic, memorable letter to Lord Chesterfield. The historical antiquarian society that has marked many of the literary shrines of London has rendered a signal service. The custom of marking the houses that are associated with renowned names ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... hook was baited, the albatross had approached near to the boat, and hovered around it with that curiosity which seems to be a characteristic feature of all sea-birds. It was an enormous creature; but Ailie, when she saw it in the air, could not have believed it possible that it was so large as it was afterwards found to be on ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... to destroy all competition. He had murdered one partner, or perhaps employer. He hoped, no doubt, to treat the other white man similarly. Now he meant a similar mischief by this new threat to his monopoly. Kars felt it was characteristic of the bastard races. Well, he was ready for the fight. He had ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... fears in this theatrical speculation are very naturally and livelily expressed throughout Halhed's letters, sometimes with a degree of humorous pathos, which is interesting as characteristic of both the writers:—"the thoughts," he says, "of 200l. shared between us are enough to bring the tears into one's eyes." Sometimes, he sets more moderate limits to their ambition, and hopes that they will, at least, get the freedom of the play-house by ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... infallible guide to the general character and type of the breed by men who were genuine lovers of the dog for its own sake, who were perfectly familiar with the breed from its start, and who were cognizant of every point and characteristic which differentiated him from the bulldog on the one side and the bull terrier on the other, and while admitting the just claims of every other breed, believed sincerely that the dog evolved under their fostering care was the peer, if not the superior, of all in the particular ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... AND GENIUS OF EBENEZER ELLIOTT," is a volume by January Searle, author of Leaves from Sherwood Forest, &c., who knew the corn-law rhymer well, and has been enabled to give very characteristic sketches, original descriptions, correspondence, &c. There are in it many judiciously selected specimens of Elliott's poems, prose productions, and lectures. Mr. Searle observes of him, that "he was cradled into poetry by human wrong and misery; and was emphatically the bard ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... composition and publication, were not written until a decade later, when they were issued under an arbitrary opus number as a matter of expediency. Their proper place in MacDowell's musical history is, therefore, about synchronous with the mature and characteristic "Eight Songs" of op. 47. From the five songs now published in one volume as op. 11 and 12, the progress of MacDowell's art as a song writer ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... accused. The list of her crimes was appalling. Firstly: treason. Secondly: purloining of lands and monies. Thirdly: witchcraft and black magic. Fourthly: bigamous intent. Fifthly: attempted murder. It is characteristic of the age that the fifth indictment should not have been ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... truly "old and plain, and dallying with the innocence of love" like that spoken of in Twelfth Night, is taken with 5, 17, 20, 34, and 40, from the most characteristic collection of Elizabeth's reign, "England's ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... castles innumerable which were held by the native nobility in the name of a foreign king, could scarcely have been possible under other circumstances. Everything was out of joint. It is said to be characteristic of the nation that it is unable to play publicly (as we say) a losing game; but it is equally characteristic of the race to forget its humiliations as if they had never been, and to come out intact when the fortune of war changes, more French than ever, almost unabashed and wholly uninjured, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... make his excuses for having completely forgotten his engagement, Rufus discovered Sally. No woman, young or old, high in rank or low in rank, ever found the New Englander unprepared with his own characteristic acknowledgment of the debt of courtesy which he owed to the sex. With his customary vast strides, he marched up to Sally and insisted on shaking hands with her. "How do you find yourself, miss? I take pleasure in making your acquaintance." The girl turned ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... are the best that exist; and not the least characteristic of these, the Lincoln of the Douglas debates, has never before been engraved.... Herndon's narrative gives, as nothing else is likely to give, the material from which we may form a true picture of the man from infancy to ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... manner adapted to the occupation of the patron saint while on earth. The richest furs of such animals as are made the objects of the chase in different countries supplied the place of tapestry and hangings around the altar and elsewhere, and the characteristic emblazonments of bugles, bows, quivers, and other emblems of hunting, surrounded the walls, and were mingled with the heads of deer, wolves, and other animals considered beasts of sport. The whole adornments ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... were discouraging indeed, but she met the situation with characteristic courage, and added to her other duties the task of teaching a little music and English in these schools. The introduction of these subjects proved to be very successful in reviving the pupils' flagging interest. "The girls are more interested just now," a letter says, "because they ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as this characteristic. They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers of international law and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the only altercation which took place before the commencement of the ceremony; and the one which we are about to relate is so characteristic of the manners of that age among the great, that it must not be omitted. The Duc de Nevers had taken his place upon the bench appropriated to the Princes of the Blood, immediately below M. de Soissons, who, being engaged in conversation with his brother, the Prince de Conti, did ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... capable of writing the letters; that he had motives to write them; that his conduct on other occasions is consistent with Junius's anxiety to preserve his incognito; and that there are curious coincidences between his character and conduct, and many characteristic passages in the letters. This directs research to a new quarter; but though a good prima facie case of suspicion is made out, that is all. Positive evidence is wanted. A writer in the London Athenaeum, who long ago demolished the claims of Sir Philip Francis to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... It is interesting to note the differences in evidences of prosperity that are associated with lime percentages. The areas that are able to produce the vegetation characteristic of calcareous soils are obviously the most prosperous. The decidedly lime-deficient sections, advertising their state by the kind of original timber, and later by unfriendliness to the clovers, do not attract buyers except through relatively low prices for farms. Such ...
— Right Use of Lime in Soil Improvement • Alva Agee
... of quiet and retirement; simplicity had ever been his chief characteristic. He was always very religious; his greatest works voice ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... herself to her friend Mme. de Longueville, who soon after her marriage is attacked with the same dreaded malady. Mme. de Sable is afraid of contagion, and refuses to see Mlle. de Rambouillet, who writes her a characteristic letter. As it gives us a vivid idea of her esprit as well as of her literary style, I copy it in full, though it has been made already familiar to the English reader by George Eliot, in her admirable review of Cousin's "Life of ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... that the progressive reforms of the past year would be accepted throughout the Navy. But if Forrestal's ultimate goal was plain, his failure to give clear-cut directions to his informal committee was characteristic of his handling of racial policy. He carefully followed the recommendations of the Chief of Naval Personnel, who wanted the committee to be a military group, despite having earlier expressed his intention of inviting Granger to chair the committee. As announced on 25 April, the committee was ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... when I'd broken away from Julian, I wondered if he had made up the whole story. The cruel trick would be impishly characteristic! But I went straight to the concierge to ask about Muller. He said that a man of that name had called the night before, inquiring for me, and had talked with "the Monsieur who looked like an Italian." This practically convinced me that ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... always days when the Ten Hundred arouse within themselves by their own exertions a shy, deep pride of their Regiment. It is a characteristic happy knack of the boys to give their very best during parades before the G.O.C., and that was undoubtedly a strong factor in building up the Battalion's fame ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... for an enlarged sphere and greater rights for woman was to a considerable extent merely negative. The aim was to remove barriers and to open the way. It is characteristic of the earlier days of agitation for the removal of wrongs affecting any class, that the questions involved appear to be simple, and easily repeated formulas ample to secure desired rights. Further agitation, however, and more mature reflection ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... for the growth of a courage which is strength and freedom itself. He who yields gladly to the ordinary facts of life, will also yield gladly to the supreme fact of physical death, for a brave and happy willingness is the characteristic habit of ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... however, took place; Richard won more and more. He would come home to his hotel in the evening with a porter carrying his gains. His portmanteau was full of napoleons. It was characteristic of him that he never thought of banking it. One evening he came in with very bright eyes, but a most shrunken and ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... sometimes peeped forth the head of an elegant high-born lady. Rumour, as usual, reported that his iron coffers were full of untold gold, treasures, diamonds, and all sorts of pledges, but that, nevertheless, he was not the slave of that avarice which is characteristic of other usurers. He lent money willingly, and on very favourable terms of payment apparently, but, by some curious method of reckoning, made them mount to an incredible percentage. So said rumour, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... understand the agency of Hephaestus at the birth of Athena, we must again return to the founding of the arts on agriculture by the hand. Before you can cultivate land, you must clear it; and the characteristic weapon of Hephaestus,—which is as much his attribute as the trident is of Poseidon, and the rhabdos of Hermes, is not, as you would have expected, the hammer, but the clearing-ax—the double-edged [Greek: pelekys], the same that Calypso gives Ulysses with which to cut down the ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... reason; but he asked Mr. McGill why he wore no overcoat. "Well, I haven't one, and I am not able to buy one yet," he replied with sturdy honesty. "Just come right in, and help yourself to one, and pay for it when you can," said Mr. Lamberton with characteristic generosity. This kindness was a bond that made the two men friends for life, although later they were often arrayed against ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... Houses follow. The former was rebuilt by Robert Adam in 1772-74, and follows the well-known lines of his work, with fluted pilasters rising from above the basement to an entablature. The entrance has the fan-shaped glass above the door so characteristic of ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... exquisite arabesques on the roof of the choir, taken together, are certainly unequaled by any other early church decoration I have seen; and they are as interesting as they are beautiful. Any description of them is impossible; but mention may be made of two characteristic groups, remarkable for execution, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it is plausible, but false—repugnant to fact and correct observation. We have no credible evidence that species have changed, or are changeable by the utmost efforts of art or favouring conditions; all we can effect is to improve them within definite limits, but not alter their characteristic types; and we have certain proof that neither man nor the animal nearly next to him in organization, has changed either in habits, disposition, form, or osseus structure during the last 3,000 years. ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... the improvements in Notting Hill. Not our interests, of course, for it has been the hard and quiet work of ten years. Not the interests of Notting Hill, for nearly all its educated inhabitants desire the change. Not the interests of your Majesty, for you say, with characteristic sense, that you never contemplated the rise of the lunatic at all. Not, as I say, his own interests, for the man has a kind heart and many talents, and a couple of good doctors would probably put ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... stared at her, his hands clasped behind his back in characteristic attitude. He could not remember ever ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... as "Our Lady's Tumbler," retold by Wickstead, the original text could hardly be presented so as to hold an audience; but while giving up a great deal of the elaborate material, we should try to present many of the characteristic passages which seem to sum up the situation. For instance, before his performance, the Tumbler cries: "What am I doing? For there is none here so caitiff but who vies with all the rest in serving God after his trade." And after his ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... Barescythe, with his characteristic word-catching spirit, wishes to know if grapes and cherries are ripe at one and the same time ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the gentlemen, I am told, and in truth I wonder not at it. Oh, my country, my country! preserve, preserve the little purity and simplicity of manners you yet possess. Believe me, they are jewels of inestimable value; the softness, peculiarly characteristic of our sex, and which is so pleasing to the gentlemen, is wholly laid aside here for the masculine ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... by some one laying a tarry hand on his shoulder. Mr. Heatherbloom raised himself. The person had a characteristic Russian face. For a moment the young man stared at the stolid features, then looked around him. He saw the customary furnishings of such a place; hammocks, bags and chests, several of the last marked with Russian characters. A trace of color sprang to Mr. Heatherbloom's face; he realized ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... rudest and coarsest kind. There was no trace of civilization anywhere, no theatre, no forum, nothing but a barbarous idea of splendour, worked out on a colossal scale in columns and temples. The most interesting thing was the Tombs. These were characteristic of Palmyra, and lined the wild mountain-defile entrance to the city, and were dotted about on the mountain-sides. It was a City of Tombs, a City of the Dead. I was much struck too with the dirtiness of the people of Palmyra, which ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... in heaps, and a step-ladder stood in one of the aisles, showing that the decoration of the edifice was not yet complete. A subdued melancholy had settled down on my erstwhile vivacious companion, the inevitable reaction so characteristic of the artistic temperament, augmented doubtless by the solemnity of the place, around whose walls in brass and marble were sculptured memorials of her ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... comparatively small defense allocation (1% of GDP) helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically-powerful economy in the world after the US and third-largest economy after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... be adduced. Almost all the inhabitants of the territory of the Union are the descendants of a common stock; they speak the same language, they worship God in the same manner, they are affected by the same physical causes, and they obey the same laws. Whence, then, do their characteristic differences arise? Why, in the eastern states of the Union, does the republican government display vigor and regularity, and proceed with mature deliberation? Whence does it derive the wisdom and durability which mark its acts, while in the western ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... if I told you that aeroplanes are all the time flying over our camp. With characteristic British frankness they always have two huge Union Jacks painted on the undersides of the wings. We have become so used to them that we scarcely trouble to look up unless they are ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... "Very characteristic, that piece of impudence," he reflected; "very like Doctor Chaleck that device of shutting the register he had just stained with blood in order to give himself time to make off!" On reaching the Boulevard Magenta he ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... "The usual hasty conclusion characteristic of Young America!" said the General, sharply. "Do you know, young man, that General Bushing is not only one of our ablest soldiers, but one of the most finished diplomats in the service?" Lewis had never ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... Ideas, and brought it into connection with his characteristic theory of Will as the ultimate Ground. The Ideas, for him, represent definite forms of existence, manifested in individual things and beings. There are thus, he said, Ideas of the simple elementary forces of nature, such as gravity and impenetrability; there are Ideas of the different ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... advice. The baron did not even think of attempting to do so. He had known Madame d'Argeles for years; he had seen so many proofs of her invincible energy and determination. She possessed the distinguishing characteristic of her family in a remarkable degree—that proverbial Chalusse obstinacy which Madame Vantrasson had alluded to in ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... quite unusual sprightliness Mr Yule entered the house. He could talk of but one subject, and Mrs Milvain had to listen to a laboured account of the blunder just committed by The Study. It was Alfred's Yule's characteristic that he could do nothing lighthandedly. He seemed always to converse with effort; he took a seat with stiff ungainliness; he walked with a ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... higher in the ninth and tenth sections, a fourth higher in the eleventh and thirteenth, and a whole octave higher in the twelfth. This transposition of the range of the melody is more developed here than in most sequence melodies, but some such transposition is a prominent characteristic of many of them. There is nothing at all like it ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... too characteristic of Mr. Ray for anything?" exclaimed Mrs. Turner. "I wonder if any other officer would be in such a hurry to risk his scalp in chasing the regiment? You wouldn't, would you, Mr. Gleason?" she added, with the deliberate and mischievous impertinence she knew would sting, and ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... right," Tip said. Then, with a sudden burst of energy which was characteristic of mockers, he began to jiggle up and down and chant in time with his movements, "All right all ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... very touching, and characteristic of the two persons. Mrs. Woodward was sad enough, but her sadness was accompanied by a strength of affection that carried before it every obstacle. Norman was also sad; but he was at first stern and cold, and would have remained so to the last, had not his ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... be seen that the characteristic peculiarities of the constitution are: 1. The mode of its formation. 2. The division of the supreme powers of government between the States in their united capacity and the ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... to mitigate the evil; but it was a wonderful piece of administration, though perhaps not one that appealed specially to him; and when some one, knowing what had been achieved, congratulated him on his success and the boon it was to the women in Egypt, his characteristic reply was: "I am told I have saved the lives of ten thousand babies. I suppose that is something to have done." At that time, only a fortnight before the prospect of war seemed possible, he was talking with the keenest ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... aboard, run up a bit, and see what sort of weather you were making, Tom," says he, touching clumsily his small-brimmed, plait hat, as he recognizes the young man, whom he salutes in that style so frank and characteristic of the craft. "He's a bit better, sir-isn't he?" inquires Spunyarn, his broad, honest face, well browned and whiskered, warming with a ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... seems to me to be worth notice. He is tall and thin, and looks quite the fifty years that his gray hairs proclaim him to be. His characteristic expression is one of haughtiness, or rather disdain, composed in equal parts of love of all things English and contempt for all things that are not. This type is occasionally so insupportable, even to his compatriots, that Dickens, ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... travelling companion from San Francisco, having proved to be talkative and uninteresting, Elsie Marley was more than content to find herself alone after the change had been made and her train pulled out of Chicago. It was characteristic of the girl that she did not even look out of the window to see the last of Mrs. Bennet, who, having waited on the platform until the train started and waved her handkerchief in vain, betook herself indignantly to her ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... affluent. Some were new and had the price-mark still on them, while others were old, foundered albums, with a droop in the back and little flecks of egg and gravy on the title-page. All came with a request for Galileo "to write a little, witty, characteristic sentiment in them." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... paddocks, and a good many great elms stand up above the house-roofs. There is one quaint old farm, with a moat and a dove-cote and a fine, old mellow brick wall surrounded by little pollarded elms, very quiet and characteristic; and then there is a big, ancient church, by whom built one cannot divine, because there is no squire in the village, and the farmers and labourers could no more build such a church now than they could build ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... first broad characteristic of the building, and the root nearly of every other important peculiarity in it, is its confessed incrustation. It is the purest example in Italy of the great school of architecture in which the ruling principle is the incrustation of brick with more precious materials; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... top of his head; and, although he had not supposed himself so well known in this neighborhood, he was aware that he did, here and there, possess acquaintances of whom some such uncomplimentary action might be expected as natural and characteristic. His immediate procedure was to prostrate himself flat upon the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... smartness characteristic of our navy the men were formed up in a line with their backs to the mission wall. The officer in command gave one look at them, and then almost ran up the ladder which ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... sometimes causes the father or mother to treat the vices of the child as virtues, to be encouraged? And may we not expect from the superintendent, to whom, practically, the discipline of the school is confided, one characteristic of good government, not always, it is feared, found in punitive and reformatory institutions? I speak of the attributes of equality, uniformity, and certainty, in the administration of the law. To be ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi— "Diana's Mirror," as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene. Diana herself might still linger by this lonely shore, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... with the world. The tall slim figure, always of a kind of quaker neatness; the innocent anxious face, anxious bright hazel eyes; the timid, yet gracefully cordial ways, the natural intelligence, instinctive sense and worth, were very characteristic. Her voice too; with its something of soft querulousness, easily adapting itself to a light thin-flowing style of mirth on occasion, was characteristic: she had retained her Ulster intonations, and was withal somewhat copious in speech. A fine tremulously sensitive nature, strong chiefly on the side ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Sewell, 'is a virtue; doubt is a sin.' Iago is nothing if not critical; and the sceptical spirit—der Geist der stets verneint—which is satisfied with nothing, which sees in everything good the seed of evil, and the weak spot in every great cause or nature, has been made the special characteristic—we all feel with ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... names of these two neighbours are admirably characteristic, not confined to any age or place, but always accompany the young convert to godliness, as the shadow does the substance. Christian is firm, decided, bold, and sanguine. Obstinate is profane, scornful, self-sufficient, and contemns God's Word. Pliable is yielding, and easily ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... France from bankruptcy. Offering to venture their lives a second time for the extension of the French domain, they were told they might do so if they would share half the profits with an avaricious governor. Their answer was characteristic. Discoverers were greater than governors; still, if the Indians of the Upper Country invited his Excellency, Radisson and Groseillers would be glad to have the honor of his company; as for ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... responded Marcelle, slowly, with a certain dignified shyness that was characteristic of her. "My mother has told me all about it. She liked the library when she was here. She told me where her room was up-stairs, too, but I did not want to go up while the ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... was exceptional at Egdon, this made little difference. He had determined upon the bold stroke of asking for an interview with Miss Vye—to attack her position as Thomasin's rival either by art or by storm, showing therein, somewhat too conspicuously, the want of gallantry characteristic of a certain astute sort of men, from clowns to kings. The great Frederick making war on the beautiful Archduchess, Napoleon refusing terms to the beautiful Queen of Prussia, were not more dead to difference of sex than the reddleman was, ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... Shakespeare and musical glasses kind of speech. Then Mrs. Jasher, who had no idea that her good dinner should be wasted in charming nothings, introduced the subject of the mummy by a reference to Professor Braddock. It was characteristic of her cleverness that she did not address Don Pedro, but pointed ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... a number of things that night that were very characteristic of him; for God gave him back his gift of merriment, now that he had the Gift of Faith as well: and he shewed a great tenderness too from time to time and a very Christian appreciation of ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... story "Malva," Gorky offers us two characteristic types of peasants who become tramps by insensible degrees; almost without suspecting it, through the force of circumstances. One of them is Vassili. When he left the village, he fully intended to return. He went away to earn a little ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... are well marked as separate from the foregoing. Lastly, those of the New Babylonian Empire are a group by themselves. A few scattered examples survive which form intermediate groups, usually too small to be very characteristic, and certainly insufficient to justify or support any theory of the intermediate stages ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... creatures, and enabling man to do what no other animal has done, to fill the world with his handiworks, and alter the very face of nature with his ax, and spade, and steam engine. His tongue and organs of articulate speech alone, were there no other characteristic, proclaim him different from all other animals; none of those resembling him in outward form making the slightest attempts toward articulate language or being able ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... friendliness of the County Surveyor Calhoun, who was a Democrat, while Lincoln called himself a Whig. Calhoun offered him the post of assistant. In accepting, Lincoln again displayed the honesty that was beginning to be known as his characteristic. He stipulated that he should be perfectly free to express his opinions, that the office should not be in any respect, a bribe. This being conceded, he went to work furiously on a treatise upon surveying, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... took a very characteristic line. She sat up with instant decision; her pale face flushed, and her large pathetic grey eyes shone ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... "Such is the characteristic and ingenuous account given by Clarkson of his introduction to that work to which the energies of his life were devoted, and in reference to which, and to the account whence the foregoing extract has been ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... capable of negotiating a treaty of peace. It is not for us to question a belief by the President that enemy aliens who were justifiably deemed fit subjects for internment during active hostilities do not lose their potency for mischief during the period of confusion and conflict which is characteristic of a state of war even when the guns are silent but the peace of Peace has not come. These are matters of political judgment for which judges have neither technical ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... came this morning just before I left the house." Fumbling in her bag, Grace drew forth a bulky looking letter, bearing a foreign postmark, and tearing open the end, drew out several closely folded sheets of thin paper covered with Eleanor's characteristic handwriting. ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... there is a characteristic letter to General Crawford, concerning the dismissal of an officer, whom Cromwell would have restored. "Ay, but the man is an Anabaptist. Are you sure of that? Admit he be, shall that render him incapable ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... questions?" asked Priscilla, for a moment supposing it to be a characteristic of the young ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... to read them all. How far this was a popular superstition, and to what length his learning went, it is impossible to say. But nobody ever came quite to the end of it. He was a silent, modest man, who never spoke much of what he knew, or of himself in any wise. His strongest outward characteristic was quietness, both of manner, speech, motions, springing, it appeared, out of a corresponding quietness of soul. Whether it had been born with him, or through what storms of human passion and suffering he had attained to this permanent central calm, who could say? ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... genius, could do anything in these days without much study of ancient art, and even he would be much hindered if he lacked it. If you think that this contradicts what I said about the death of that ancient art, and the necessity I implied for an art that should be characteristic of the present day, I can only say that, in these times of plenteous knowledge and meagre performance, if we do not study the ancient work directly and learn to understand it, we shall find ourselves influenced by the feeble work all round us, and shall be copying the better work through the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... gaze wander down the second column of the front page whence issue daily those anguishing appeals, mysterious messages, heart-rending entreaties and barefaced begging advertisements which give this column its characteristic name. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... distinct species. The same remarks may be extended to the two chief races of the pig. We must, therefore, either give up the belief of the universal sterility of species when crossed; or we must look at this sterility in animals, not as an indelible characteristic, but as one capable of being ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... prone to melancholy. It has been said of our countrymen that they take even their pleasures sadly. But this, if it be true at all, will, I hope, prove a transitory characteristic. "Merry England" was the old saying, let us hope it may become true again. We must look to the East for real melancholy. What can be sadder than the lines with which Omar Khayyam opens his ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... archway. The other end of this street comes out on the open space or Parvis before the west door of the Cathedral. If you will go still further eastward by way of the Rue St. Romain, past the Portail des Libraires, the most characteristic thoroughfare is from the Place des Ponts de Robec, not far south of St. Ouen, along the street called Eau de Robec to the boulevards. These are the main ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... so little the victim of his moods. What could have come over him now to change him in that swift instant? Was she to blame? Had she unknowingly been at fault? Or was there something in her story that had chilled him? It was characteristic of her that it was herself she doubted and not him; that it never occurred to her that her hero had feet of clay ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... interesting than dull, dry, and correct. It can interest by reminding us of pleasant things, such as familiar flowers, shady woods, or green lawns; birds, beasts, and so forth can be depicted in their characteristic attitudes, or a story can be told; in fact, work can be made attractive in a hundred different ways. It must not show signs of having wearied the worker in the doing; variety and evidence of thought lavishly expended upon it will prevent this, and enthusiasm will ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... Republic were founded for the manufacture of a good quality of soul. In the presence of the greatest men of history we can point with pride to Lincoln, saying, "This is the kind of man the institutions of the Republic can produce." For Lincoln's most striking characteristic was his Americanism. At best, Washington was a patrician, the fine product of aristocratic institutions, so that England claimed him. Washington was the richest man of his era, his home an old manor house, his estate wide inherited acres, his relative ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... influenced him towards being the direct cause of happiness and comfort to others. Taking away any supernatural motive that might lead him to such generous action, yet leaves the deed a worthy one, and the heart a Christian one, for, to gratify others was to gratify himself, and this alone is characteristic of a great soul. As the orphan child of a friend of his youth, I doubt not that Henry Rayne would protect her at his life's peril. We all know what a firm knot it is that binds the sympathetic souls ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... shall take our leave of Dr. Donne. It is called a fragment; but it seems to me complete. It will serve as a specimen of his best and at the same time of his most characteristic mode of presenting fine thoughts ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Dawson pulled down his tunic, settled himself comfortably into his Sam Browne belt, and rested his left hand upon the hilt of his sword.—It was a pretty artistic touch, the wearing of that sword, and exactly characteristic of Dawson's methods. I laughed when he told me of it.—There were two doors to the room—one upon Dawson's left hand, the other at the far end behind the workmen. He raised his right hand, and the chairman, who was ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... purpose. So do small events influence great! Suspend those fellows' wages, get down strike-breakers, save the hay! And if there were a row—well, let there be a row! The constabulary would have to act. It was characteristic of his really Norman spirit that the notion of agreeing to the demand, or even considering whether it were just, never once came into his mind. He was one of those, comprising nowadays nearly all his class, together with their press, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in art, as "a normal state of completeness in the relation of things to each other." This "state of completeness" in a harmonious scheme is such that we have no desire to change or modify any detail or characteristic. ...
— Applied Design for Printers - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #43 • Harry Lawrence Gage
... Characteristic it was of Bud Merkel not to answer at once the sharp and excited question of his cousin. Living all his life in the West, as he had done, and most of it having been spent on his father's ranches, Bud had unconsciously acquired the valuable ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... Skagen lie other curious phenomena created by this "Storm King." The "Raabjerg Miler" are vast and characteristic dunes of powdery sand in long ridges, like huge waves petrified in the very act of turning over! In the neighbouring quicksands trees have been ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... chair by the bedside, and, shading the candle from the patient's face—and her own, too—produced from a bag that hung from her waist a half-finished stocking and began to knit silently and with the skill characteristic of the German housewife. I looked at her attentively (though she was so much in the shadow that I could see her but indistinctly) and somehow her appearance prepossessed me as little as did that of the other members of the household. ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... from the devout Billy—Billy Preston. That pious man liked to have the talk mainly to himself, and he thought that anything not obscene was tame. By the way, these abrupt and insolent remarks are characteristic of public-house wit. A favourite joke is to ask a friend a serious question. When he fails to answer, then the joker shouts some totally irrelevant and indecent word, and the questioned man is regarded as "sold." I cannot repeat the interlude with which Billy Preston favoured ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... of the native dances, desiring the restrictions to be removed, or rather to be made dependent on the character of the dance. Clarke, who had feared censure and all kinds of trouble, is, of course, rejoicing greatly. A characteristic feature: the argument of the pastors was handed in in the form of a fictitious narrative of the voyage of one Mr. Pye, an English traveller, and his conversation with a chief; there are touches of ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and very thin, with regular, well-cut features indicating little to the physiognomist unless it be the great gift of self-possession. His hair was cut short, and he wore no beard beyond an absolutely black moustache. His teeth were perfect in form and whiteness,—a characteristic which, though it may be a valued item in a general catalogue of personal attraction, does not generally recommend a man to the unconscious judgment of his acquaintance. But about the mouth and chin of this ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the last characteristic expression which escaped from the dying man. He knew Fletcher's superstitious tendency, and it cannot be questioned that the threat was the last feeble flash of his prankfulness. The faithful valet replied in consternation that he ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... interesting to compare the bride's description of the Bridegroom with the descriptions of "the Ancient of Days" in Dan. vii. 9, 10, and of our risen LORD in Rev. i. 13-16. The differences are very characteristic. ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... week before Christmas that Pollyanna sent her story (now neatly typewritten) in for the contest. The prize-winners would not be announced until April, the magazine notice said, so Pollyanna settled herself for the long wait with characteristic, ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... allocation (1% of GDP) have helped Japan advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and third largest economy in the world after the US and China. One notable characteristic of the economy is the working together of manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors in closely knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the good-nature, we might even call it playfulness, characteristic of the enlightened higher official. He was astonished, however, when he heard that the cousins he had invited had remained at home in the country. 'Your father was always a queer fellow,' he remarked, playing with the tassels of his magnificent velvet ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... shrill, querulous, drawling voice, so characteristic of the Southern "poor-white" ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... He is in possession of many substitutes, composed of a few of those set phrases and accommodating sentences which fit into any subject; and these, mixed up with appropriate nods, significant gestures, and above all, with the characteristic shrugging of the shoulders, are ever ready at hand when the tide of his ideas ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... back, nearly to the tail. So powerful a band requires correspondingly large attachments; and accordingly we find that the vertebrae of the shoulders send out enormously long perpendicular processes, which give to the shoulder that height which is so eminent a characteristic of the animal. To these processes the ligament of the neck is fastened by accessory bands, which add both to ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... time, indeed, those works caused considerable scandal. Clergymen denounced them in pamphlets. St. Cuthbert was described by his biographer as having 'carried the jealousy of women, characteristic of all the saints, to an extraordinary pitch'. An example was given, whenever he held a spiritual conversation with St Ebba, he was careful to spend the ensuing ours of darkness 'in prayer, up to ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... jointed tail-feelers or cercopods; the baby grasshopper by its strong, elongate hind-legs, adapted, like those of the adult, for vigorous leaping. During the growth of the insect to the adult state there may be four or five moults, each preceded and succeeded by a characteristic instar[4]. The first instar differs, however, from the adult in one conspicuous and noteworthy feature, it possesses no trace of wings. But after the first or the second moult, definite wing-rudiments are visible in the form of outgrowths on the corners ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter
... eating nor talking, which was far from pleasant to behold. He was very much esteemed by Mr. Carter, nevertheless; not so much because he was clever, as because he looked so eminently stupid. This last characteristic had won for him the sobriquet of Sawney Tom, and he was considered worth his weight in sovereigns on certain occasions, when a simple country lad or a verdant-looking linen-draper's apprentice was required to enact some little part ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... throbbing in his veins, and himself participant of the thoughts and emotions of his brethren. Then he is to be 'like unto' Moses,—not in all points, but in his receiving direct communications from God, and in his authority as God's messenger. The crowning characteristic, 'I will put My words into his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him,' invests his words with divine authority, calls for obedience to them as the words of God Himself, widens out his sphere far beyond that of merely foretelling, brings in the moral and religious element ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... at the court. His bullet-shaped head was unusually large, and his face, with its narrow brow and small, lustreless eyes, showed that he was not prone to thinking. Yet he fulfilled every order precisely according to directions, and possessed his full share of the cunning which is often a characteristic ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... This record, in which are embedded a variety of documents characteristic of privateering procedure, is from pp. 163-183 of a volume of records of the vice-admiralty court held in Philadelphia, 1735-1746, now preserved in the office of the clerk of the U.S. district court in that city. The only other records of that vice-admiralty court known to be still preserved ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... "Australia has produced in Mr. A. B. Paterson a national poet whose bush ballads are as distinctly characteristic of the country as Burns's poetry is ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... education, then, has been very great. Williams remarks that "he inspired Rousseau with nearly every valuable thought which appears in the brilliant pages of his 'Emile.' He seems himself to have derived some of his most characteristic ideas from Montaigne, and possibly also from Rabelais."[110] Although Locke differed from other educational reformers in many respects, though he was somewhat narrow in his conception of education, owing ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... from an unwillingness to affront them, they were uneasy and dissatisfied till I had given them something in return, though their hands were full of the presents which I had just made them. Selfishness is, in fact, almost without exception, their universal characteristic, and the mainspring of all their actions, and that, too, of a kind the most direct and unamiable that can ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... eminently characteristic fact—the RIGHT OF INCREASE—we shall pursue the old serpent through his coils; we shall count the murderous entwinings of this frightful taenia, whose head, with its thousand suckers, is always hidden from the sword of its most violent enemies, though abandoning to ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... courteous, affable, and remarkable for a natural dignity which added greatly to his influence with the people. He was the model from which was grown that chivalry and nobility of soul and high bearing so characteristic of the people of Southern Georgia. In truth, the essence of his character seemed subtilly to pervade the entire circle in which he moved, inspiring a purity of character, a loftiness of honor, which rebuked with ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Cosmic Club discussing the question: "What's the matter with Jones?" Waldemar, the oldest of the conferees, was the owner, and at times the operator, of an important and decent newspaper. His heavy face wore the expression of good-humored power, characteristic of the experienced and successful journalist. Beside him sat Robert Bertram, the club idler, slender and languidly elegant. The third member of the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in the Sacred Language before mentioned, this could at once have been recognized by a difference in the intonation of the voice. This may have been a survival to some extent of the chanting which was the distinguishing characteristic of the speech of the Second Race. (Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 198) In the written language it is not easily possible to discover this without much thought, unless endeavour has previously been made to re-awaken the faculty of ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... King wrote in my, album which is very characteristic of him: "If you do anything, do it without delay and with ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... and characteristic of you," said Manuel, "but I suppose you will be wanting me to make a speech, and I ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... sub-characteristic with an organism. A language is not an organism, but one of the characteristics of man. After the lapse of countless ages there are grey horses and black, bay and chestnut, presumably because greyness and blackness and the rest are incidental ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... was to be a general commers, or meeting of the societies among the students, and I determined not to omit witnessing one of the most interesting and characteristic features of student-life. So borrowing a cap and coat, I looked the student well enough to pass for one of them, though the former article was somewhat of the Philister form. Baader, a young poet of some note, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... he laid down his arms at the close of the War between the States to the beginning of his last lingering illness, these "Observations" were for him but an inadequate outlet for the expression of the courageous and hopeful philosophy which was always his distinguishing characteristic. To cover his pain with a jest,—to preach without cant the gospel of love,—to do the best that he could do according to the lights before him—these generous motives and high purposes are to be read between the lines by those who knew him as ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... stove, with his brown cloak hanging from his shoulders, sat a short stout personage, a man about thirty years of age, with fair flaxen hair, a florid complexion, a very fair skin, and massive German features. The expression of his face, so far as such a countenance could be said to have any characteristic expression, was that of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... possible to view these characteristics as patentable in combinations of all or in any combinations less than all, and also as separate characteristics, 16 divisions additional to the 256 for each independent characteristic would have to be provided, as well as other divisions for combinations of less than the whole, in order to make the classification absolutely indicative of every feature, and the number of divisions would be enormous. ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... Canon Selwyn gave notice of proposing a petition on the subject to the Upper House. The proposal in a somewhat different form a year afterwards was disposed of by a characteristic amendment ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... me explain. This picture was not like the others hanging about. It was a veiled one. From some motive of precaution or characteristic desire for concealment on the part of the judge, it had been closely wrapped about in heavy brown paper before being hung, and in the encounter which ensued between the falling picture and the spear of an image standing on a table underneath, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... out of the chaos of the past, and the past became the present, and he stood before her as though in the flesh. Nay, she heard his voice, his laugh, she even recognized again the smouldering flames in his eyes as he glanced into hers, and his characteristic manners and gestures. Honora wondered. In vain, during those long months of exile had she tried to reconstruct him thus the vision in its entirety would not come: rare, fleeting, partial, and tantalizing glimpses she had been vouchsafed, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... evening he talked a great deal to me, Lady Georgina putting in from time to time a characteristic growl about the table-d'hote chicken—'a special breed, my dear, with eight drumsticks apiece'—or about the inadequate lighting of the heavy German salon. She was worse than ever: pungent as a rule, that evening she was grumpy. When ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... brief dialogue between master and pupil, which gives us an amusing glimpse of the worthy d'Eterville, whom the boys called 'poor old Detterville.' In the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of Lavengro he is pleasantly described by his pupil, who adds, with characteristic 'bluff,' that d'Eterville said 'on our arrival at the conclusion of Dante's Hell, "vous serez un jour ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... attended in Carthage was Tudie Litton, as pretty a creature as he could imagine or desire. For manifest reasons he affected an interest in her brother Arthur. And Arthur, with a characteristic brotherly feeling, tried to keep his sister in her place. He not only told her that she was "not such a much," but ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... The most marked characteristic of this restricted friendship was a disposition to respect the privacy of each other's lives and thoughts. In all their intercourse through the year in which they had been thus associated they had never obtruded their personal affairs upon each ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... be!" exclaimed Minnie, starting up, and running to the rescue, while the others followed with various appropriate and characteristic remarks of ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... no help for it; I can't very well become more open-handed in a moment! In the second place, much goes out at home, and little comes in; and the hundred and one, large and small, things, which turn up, are still managed with that munificence so characteristic of our old ancestors. But the funds, that come in throughout the year, fall short of the immense sums of past days. And if I try again to effect any savings people will laugh at me, our venerable senior and Madame Wang suffer wrongs, and the servants abhor me for my stinginess. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... expression. Superfluous—that's just it. To other people that term is not applicable.... People are bad, or good, clever, stupid, pleasant, and disagreeable; but superfluous ... no. Understand me, though: the universe could get on without those people too... no doubt; but uselessness is not their prime characteristic, their most distinctive attribute, and when you speak of them, the word 'superfluous' is not the first to rise to your lips. But I ... there's nothing else one can say about me; I'm superfluous and nothing more. A supernumerary, ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... endurance in the breed by introducing into it the blood of "Old Snip." So celebrated did the qualities of this horse become that the "Snip breed" was not only spoken of with regard to the horses, but of the owners as well, and Hazards who did not possess the distinguishing race-characteristic of self-will were said not to be "true Snips." Old Snip was said to have been imported from Tripoli; others assert (and it is generally believed) that he was a wild horse running at large in ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Montreal, so great was the vigilance and valour of the Canadians, retired with his "Grand Army of the North" into safe winter quarters, behind the entrenchments of Plattsburg. A few ineffectual border raids and skirmishes, at different points of the extended frontier, were characteristic episodes of the war during the winter, and, indeed, throughout the entire duration ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... communities, and naturally produced an oligarchical form of government. A peculiarity of theirs, of which Sparta is the only modern example, was the dual system of two kings reigning in one city. As a result probably of their sea-going taste, the study of the stars became a characteristic pursuit, and this race made great advances both in astronomy ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... cheek, shaded away as it was, until it melted into the light that sparkled from her complexion—the snowy forehead, the flashing eye, in which sat the very soul of love—the lips, blushing of sweets—her whole person breathing the warmth of youth, and feeling, and so characteristic in the easiness of its motions of that gracile flexibility that has never been known to exist separate from the power of receiving varied and profound emotions—all this told the spectator, too truly, that the lovely being before him ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... public. The day which had started bright grew dark; for a long time there were threatenings of a thunder-storm; but none looked on this as an evil omen. All were inclined to cheery views. The courtiers displayed their zeal with all the ardor, the passion, the furia francese, which is a national characteristic, and appears on the battle-field as well as in the ante- chamber. The French fight and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... church music had been lacking in that dignity which should be its main characteristic, and this fault was largely due to the Flemish composers, who thought most of displaying their technical skill. They frequently selected some well-known secular tune around which to weave their counterpoint, many masses, for instance, having been ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... these forces is a characteristic of our age that makes it an age of adventure and discovery. The heart of equatorial Africa has been explored, and soon the poles ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... time to devote to objects in no way connected with their business. It cannot be regarded as accidental that this characteristic of mind is found so commonly among successful men during the years of their most fruitful labor. According to the American ideal, the man who is sure to succeed is the one who is continuously 'keyed up to concert pitch'—who ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... advance with extraordinary rapidity to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and the third-largest economy in the world after the US and China, measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. One notable characteristic of the economy is how manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors work together in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... his habitually and instinctively allowed for him, as for a child or some other lawless thing, exacting no strict obedience to conventional rules, and hardly noticing his eccentricities enough to pardon them. There was an indefinable characteristic about Donatello that set him ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... refinements had been after all little more than a theatrical make-believe—an age of wild people, of insane impulse, of homicidal mania. The sweet-souled songster had no more than others attained real calm in it. Even in youth nervous distress had been the chief facial characteristic. Triumphant, nevertheless, in his battle for Greek beauty—for the naturalisation of Greek beauty in the brown cloud-lands of the North- -he might have been thinking, contemptuously, of barking little Saint-Gelais, or of Monsieur Marot's pack-thread poems. He, for his part, had always held that ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... that one of the most characteristic and beautiful laws of life should be announced in the opening chapter of the Holy Bible. It was clothed in the form of an ordinance, as became it: "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, and every thing that creepeth ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Rich, the manager of the theatre, was, like many of his kind, more given to considering the weight of his purse than the scant supply of sentiment with which nature might originally have endowed him, and so he tried to do two characteristic things. The salaries of his faithful employes should be reduced and the older members of the company retired into the background as much as possible. Younger faces must occupy the centre of the stage; even Betterton, the greatest actor of his time, should be supplanted in some of his parts by the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... we could breathe the characteristic pervading odor of sandalwood. Rich Oriental hangings were on the walls, interspersed with cabalistic signs, while at one end was ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... been into the country, and was taking Helstonleigh on his way back to town; had stayed in it a day or two for the purpose of seeing Martin Pope, who was an old friend, and of being introduced to Hamish Channing. That shy feeling of reticence, which is the characteristic of most persons whose genius is worth anything, had induced Hamish to ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Fountainhall to his son, probably his eldest son and successor, John, is a characteristic specimen of his later style. It holds up to the young man as an example the character and career of his maternal grandfather, Sir Andrew ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... new novel is a fresh and delightful study of artist life in the city and the country. The theme is worked out with the author's characteristic originality and force, and with much natural humor. In subject the book is altogether different from any of its predecessors, and the author's marked success proves his breadth and the versatility ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... entered the navy, I should probably never have been allowed to rise in my profession, the influence and patronage which I lacked causing other and more fortunate ones to be promoted over my head. His reply was characteristic. ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... a fabric of expressive form and texture. Equipped with a knowledge of the terms of any art, the layman has yet to understand something of the ways in which the terms may be combined. Every artist has his idiom or characteristic style. Rembrandt on the flat surface of his canvas secures the illusion of form in the round by a system of light and shade; modeling is indicated by painting the parts in greater relief in light and the ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... small squadron, stormed the fort of St. Fernando de Omoa, on the south side of the Bay of Honduras, and captured some register ships which were lying under its guns. Two hundred and fifty quintals of quicksilver and three millions of piastres were the reward of this enterprise; and it is characteristic of Nelson that the chance by which he missed a share in such a prize is never mentioned in any of his letters; nor is it likely that it ever excited even ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... not need to follow this style of combination into the more refined kinds of work and into loom products, but may add that through all, until perverted by ulterior influences, the characteristic geometricity ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... magmatic solutions, as suggested by the close association of the ores with the igneous rock, the presence of minerals containing chlorine, fluorine, and boron, and the development in the limestone of dense silicates and mineral associations characteristic of hot-water alteration. The manganese ores are mined principally in the oxidized zone. Rich silver ores are found below the water table, but mainly in veins independent ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... not escape undetected, passed away unnoticed. Not so, however, with the peculiarity already mentioned as an exception. This touch of deportment, (or management, perhaps, is the better word,) being characteristic of the man, it deserves to be mentioned a ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... temperance movement, because they knew right well that sobriety in the people was there greatest enemy; the lame, the blind, the maimed, the deaf, and the dumb, were there in strong muster, and with their characteristic ingenuity did everything in their power, under the pretence of zeal and religious enthusiasm, to throw discredit upon the whole proceedings. It was this vile crew, who, by having recourse to the aid of mock miracles, fancied they could turn the matter ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Upholstery Purposes.—Full technical description of the method of producing a new and characteristic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... fatigue and a little chill of disappointment and doubt. How would it be possible to become intimate with a man who sat at the opposite end of the table, shut himself in his own room, and was apparently oblivious of his surroundings? With characteristic recklessness Margot had put on her very prettiest blouse, hoping to make a good impression on this first evening, but for all the attention it had received it might as well have been black delaine! She sighed and yawned again, ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... MARY PICKFORD has been compared with that of MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, and not without some show of reason, for the appeal which her acting, makes is always to the sense of chivalry which, in however sentimental a form, is characteristic of our race. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... I meant it, of course, and it took a long time to convince her. But when at last she began to believe—at least to the extent of believing that I had sent the telegram—her next remark was characteristic. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to this question may be given at once by pointing to a rule in Scriptural teaching, according to which the symbol and the thing symbolized are expressed in identical terms. {34} The Bible must have been read to little purpose by those who have not discovered that this characteristic pervades all parts both of the Old and the New Testament. On this principle, when speaking to the Jews, our Lord made no distinction between his own body and the visible temple at Jerusalem, just because his body was the proper habitation of the Holy Spirit antecedently to, and comprehensively ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... possibilities of the work were discovered as early as 1809, by Thomas Rowlandson, who illustrated the edition published in that year. The edition of 1859 owed embellishments to Crowquill, while Cruikshank supplied some characteristic woodcuts to that of 1869. Coloured designs for the travels were executed by a French artist Richard in 1878, and illustrations were undertaken independently for the German editions by Riepenhausen and Hosemann respectively. The German artist Adolph Schroedter has also painted a celebrated ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... and do some practical good. At present he had no organisation and no plans. He did not believe in organisation and plans preceding a clear conception of what was to be accomplished. Such, as nearly as I can now recollect, is an outline of his discourse. It was thoroughly characteristic of him. He always talked in this fashion. He was for ever insisting on the aimlessness of modern life, on the powerlessness of its vague activities to mould men into anything good, to restrain them from evil or moderate ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... commenced in 1828, is most characteristic, and in the very beginning shows that inclination to the consideration and discussion of serious questions which in after years ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... human nature—faith, if we may say so, in his own instincts—in his ideas of men and things—in himself; and the result was, that unhesitating bearing up and steering right onward—"never bating one jot of heart or hope" so characteristic of him. He had "the substance of things hoped for." He had "the evidence of ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... into the lodge, and coming out with a large stone mallet, killed the unfortunate dog at one blow. This speech is worthy of notice as illustrating a curious characteristic of the Indians: the ascribing intelligence and a power of understanding speech to the inferior animals, to whom, indeed, according to many of their traditions, they are linked in close affinity, and they even claim the honor of a lineal ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... disapprobation, the work at Herrnhut prospered, and the more it increased the fiercer their resentment grew. That they, who had gained their name from their advocacy of the need for personal piety, should have been foremost in opposing a man whose piety was his strongest characteristic, and a people who for three hundred years, in prosperity and adversity, in danger, torture and exile, had held "Christ and Him Crucified" as their Confession of Faith, and pure and simple living for His sake as their object in life, ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... general idea was a defensive occupation of the Colenso position, although Botha, with characteristic spirit, proposed to send a commando across the river to face the British on the open. The initiative, always a disadvantage when attacking an enemy strongly posted and entrenched, was thus imposed upon Buller. It was ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... Its peculiar characteristic is its extraordinary fragility—arising from the muscles being articulated quite through the vertebras. If struck with a switch, the body is easily broken in two or more parts. Sometimes, indeed, the creature breaks off its own ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... the name of the artist who first imagined her has long been lost. Perhaps she was Daisy Miller's grandmother. In reality, in spite of that lack of reverence which is undoubtedly a national American characteristic, the average American woman has an almost passionate love for those glories of antiquity which her own country necessarily lacks, such as few Englishwomen are ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... cheery greeting was strangely at variance with his manner, which was as diffident as that of a village dog on the Fourth of July. As he advanced toward the showroom he exhaled the odour of mothballs, characteristic of an old stock of cloaks and suits, so that before he looked up Morris was able to identify ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... young peer looked amazed; and some of them, I thought, notwithstanding gravity and earnestness are rather characteristic of the monikin physiognomy, betrayed a slight disposition to laugh. Not so with my ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Walter, meekly; and we think he was right, for a petticoat has never in our day been the only garment worn by females, nor even the most characteristic: fishermen wear ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... dying in captivity, dull-witted but haughty turkeys, mild old tabby cats, who forgave us when we trod on their tails for fun and caused them agonising pain? I even fancy, sometimes, that the patience, the fidelity, the readiness to forgive, and the sincerity which are characteristic of our domestic animals have a far stronger and more definite effect on the mind of a child than the long exhortations of some dry, pale Karl Karlovitch, or the misty expositions of a governess, trying to prove to children that water is made ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... apparently never found in dramatic writing a medium suitable to her genius, and even less was she attracted by a stage career. The reasons for her abandoning the theatre to develop her powers as a writer of fiction are stated in a characteristic letter still filed among ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Wheelswarf Chronicle, and in 1836 appeared the first number of The Shevvild Chap's Annual in which the writer throws aside his nom-de-plume and signs himself Abel Bywater. This annual, which lived for about twenty years, is the first of the many "Annuals" or "Almanacs" which are the most characteristic product of the West Riding dialect movement. Their history is a subject to itself, and inasmuch as the contributions to them are largely in prose, they can only be referred to very lightly here. Their popularity and ever-increasing ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... an auction, and sell off all my goods dirt cheap," said Jack, showing his repentance in the most characteristic way. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... With that characteristic directness which I have always thought accounted in large measure for his success, he wasted scarcely a word in coming straight to the object of his visit. "Professor Kennedy," he began, chewing his cigar and ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... unless I deceive myself, a highly psychic man. I was a nervous, sensitive boy, a dreamer, a somnambulist, full of impressions and intuitions. My black hair, my dark eyes, my thin, olive face, my tapering fingers, are all characteristic of my real temperament, and cause experts like Wilson to claim me as their own. But my brain is soaked with exact knowledge. I have trained myself to deal only with fact and with proof. Surmise and fancy have no place in my scheme of thought. ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they are also quite determined to defend Albania from aggression.... When he asserts that various ties existed between Italy and the Albanians—the Albanian language, the feudal architecture, much that is characteristic in Albanian art and so forth—I would refer him to M. Justin Godart, with whom I am glad for once to be in agreement. "There is no traditional or actual link," says he, "between the two countries; if, on account of this geographical position, they propose to ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... these selections as shall help the reader to perceive and appreciate their true poetic qualities and enter into full sympathy with the thoughts and feelings which their writers intended to express. The first object to be sought in the study of these poems is the perception of those characteristic excellences which have made them universally admired and placed them among the classics of our language. To accomplish this object rationally and successfully, it is best to begin with those productions which are nearest to us in point of ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... VIOLA AUREA. Golden Violet. Biflora usually; but its brilliant yellow is a much more definite characteristic; and needs insisting on, because there is a 'Viola lutea' which is not yellow at all; named so by the garden florists. My Viola aurea is the Rock-violet of the Alps; one of the bravest, brightest, and dearest of little flowers. The following notes upon it, with its summer companions, a little ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... prevented such a sacrifice he would have robbed Alcestis of an honor which every nobly ambitious woman in Hellas would have coveted. This is so much taken for granted by the poet that all that he lays stress on in the drama is the virtue rewarded by the return of Alcestis to life, the virtue characteristic of Admetus, the virtue of hospitality, to this duty in all the agony of his sorrow Admetus had been nobly true, and as a reward for what he had thus earned, the wife who had been equally true to woman's obligations was restored all-glorified ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... a man capable of the uttermost sacrifices upon either of two shrines; that of Mammon, or that of Eros. His was a temperament (truly characteristic of his race) which can build up a structure painfully, year by year, suffering unutterable privations in the cause of its growth, only to shatter it at a blow for a woman's smile. He was a true member of that brotherhood, represented throughout the bazaars of the East, of those singular ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... poetry, which the narrowness of men's minds constantly tends to oppose to each other, have a great stimulus for the intellect, and are almost always worth understanding. It is so with this theory of a Renaissance within the middle age, which seeks to establish a continuity between the most characteristic work of the middle age, the sculpture of Chartres and the windows of Le Mans, and the work of the later Renaissance, the work of Jean Cousin and Germain Pilon, and thus heals that rupture between the middle age and the Renaissance which has so often been ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... every utterance which came from His holy lips. What discoveries of His Grace and moral Glory we make, if under the guidance of His Spirit we meditate on His life here below. Humility and submission under God, patient waiting on Him, utter absence of all haste, perfect calmness of soul and every other characteristic of perfect patience, we can trace constantly in that wonderful life. What patience is revealed in the forty days in the wilderness, when He hungered and was with the wild beasts (Mark i:13). When Satan tempted Him and asked for stones to be made bread, ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... gone to Manchester, and there had been barely time for a brief but characteristic interview between him and Tembarom, when he rushed back to London. Tembarom felt rather excited when he remembered it, recalling what he had felt in confronting the struggles against emotion in the blunt-featured, red face, the breaks in the rough voice, the charging ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were yellow with the first primroses, and patches of golden daffodils could be seen in the woods, though spring seemed to be far enough away that chilly day. It was characteristic of one's experience in France that, as we sat down to dinner that evening in an Abbeville hotel I had beside me an officer in the British army who had been in Canada for a number of years and who had, during that time, been a frequent caller at my home in Toronto. The spontaneous ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... I published a new edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and in two volumes. I took this opportunity of inserting the manuscript Notes of Lord Byron, with the exception of one, which, however characteristic of the amiable feelings of the noble poet, and however gratifying to my own, I had no wish to obtrude on the notice of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... was a measure of Napoleon's already referred to, but little known. In some respects it was more successful than any other; it certainly is most characteristic of the man. The evil aimed at was cured at the time, and the permanent question is less acute in modern France than in any other European country. For years past there had been chronic distress among the agricultural classes in some of the most fertile districts ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... not a few of the great leaders of opinion under whose influence the father of New England became a great political power in the mother country. It is not to the Pilgrim Fathers alone who landed at Plymouth on December 22, 1620, that New England owes its characteristic principles and its splendid renown, but it is also to the leaders of the great Puritan party in England, who reinforced that immigration by the subsequent higher and nobler life of the planters of Massachusetts Bay, conspicuous among whom was the distinguished ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... spot was as complete a solitude as the backwoods of North America, and so thick was the foliage on the noble trees, that no glimpse of the surrounding city could be obtained in any direction. Everything that greeted eye and ear was characteristic of "the woods," even to the swans, geese, ducks, and other water-fowl which sported on the clear surface of the pond; while the noise of traffic in the mighty metropolis was so subdued by distance as to resemble the deep-toned roar of a great cataract. A stranger, rambling there for the ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... out a piece of paper; smiling as he did so. It was covered with writing in Luther Barr's cramped hand and was a characteristic document. Stripped of its legal phraseology it was an agreement to the effect that if the boys would make no salvage charges for saving the yacht, they could have her free of cost to sail back to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... he—when he's thirsty anyhow? And artists are so often thirsty. Charles is often thirsty. He says it is a characteristic feature of the artistic temperament. Ah! ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... process of cementation which steadfastly links Alexandria to the District of Columbia by bands that are basically nonpolitical (maybe stronger for that same reason). Paradoxically, Alexandria is a free city—part of Virginia, though not characteristic of the State; allied to the District, but ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... military reservation, where probably 50,000 persons were camped, affairs were conducted with military precision. Water was plentiful and rations were dealt out all day long. The refugees stood patiently in line and there was not a murmur. This characteristic was observable all over the city. The people were brave and patient, and the wonderful order preserved by them proved of great assistance. In Golden Gate Park a huge supply station had been established and ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
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