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More "Unsatisfactory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presented on the screen became themselves more and more enthralling. The trivial acts played in less than a minute without any artistic setting and without any rehearsal or preparation soon became unsatisfactory. The grandmother who washes the baby and even the street boy who plays a prank had to be replaced by quick little comedies. Stages were set up; more and more elaborate scenes were created; the film grew and grew in length. Competing companies ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... amusing farce. One of them saw something and could not be laughed out of it by his fellows. But the general report was unsatisfactory. The mistake was the employment of Irishmen in a task ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... dream of being accused of being older than she is, denotes that she will fall into bad companionship, and her denial of stated things will be brought to scorn. To see herself looking aged, intimates possible sickness, or unsatisfactory ventures. If it is her lover she sees aged, she will be in danger of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... economic statesmanship of King Leopold there still hangs a shroud of uncertainty as to regime and resource. Few people go there and its literature, save that which grew out of the atrocity campaign, is meager and unsatisfactory. To the vast majority of persons, therefore, the country is merely a name—a dab of colour on the globe. Its very distance lends enchantment and heightens the lure that always lurks in the unknown. What is it like? ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... the little path away from Biddy, and Biddy went into the house, and I went out at the garden gate and took a dejected stroll until supper-time; again feeling it very sorrowful and strange that this, the second night of my bright fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory as the first. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... and on the following day resumed his first position under the walls of Polotsk. There he found Saint-Cyr and the Bavarians, who increased the force of his corps to 35,000 men. As to Wittgenstein, he tranquilly took up his first position at Osweia. The result of these four days was very unsatisfactory to the emperor. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... the good of the city; and both parties jointly assisted his promotion, upon the following reasons. The change of government made by Sylla, which at first seemed a senseless one, by time and usage had now come to be considered by the people no unsatisfactory settlement. But there were some that endeavored to alter and subvert the whole present state of affairs not from any good motives, but for their own private gain; and Pompey being at this time employed in the wars ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... immigration laws are unsatisfactory. We need every honest and efficient immigrant fitted to become an American citizen, every immigrant who comes here to stay, who brings here a strong body, a stout heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose to do his duty well in every way and to bring ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... by some of his old adherents, determined to leave a country where his loyalty had received such unsatisfactory recognition, and to begin life again in some other part of the American continent. Not long after the war he sailed out upon the Gulf of Mexico,—for what destination it is not known, but probably for some Central American port,—and as nothing ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... guard surprised me exceedingly. Why was the affair mentioned in so partial and unsatisfactory a manner? Why was I, a murderer, suspected of being myself murdered? Why did not this lead to an investigation, which must have exposed the whole horrid mystery of the death of the individual up stairs? I could not understand it. My mind became the more perplexed, the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... very romantic,' Mabel pouted. Indeed, this Barstein, whose mere ideal could so interrupt the rhapsodies due to her admissions of affection, was distinctly unsatisfactory. She touched his hand ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... methods of mounting fish have proven so unsatisfactory that they have been almost entirely abandoned, and, until the method to be described was devised, it was necessary to place specimens in alcohol or other preserving liquids or to make plaster casts of them. The objections to the former process are that it is expensive, requiring ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... repressed all freedom of action and restricted the scope for individual initiative. To understand the full significance of the change which has come over the country one has to contrast what he sees at present, unsatisfactory as it may appear from some points of view, with the state of things described above.... Remembering that methods of progress calculated to evoke national feeling and religious enthusiasm are unavailable under the conditions of the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... there was something of the reaction that has taken place in some parts of our country; but that recently there has been a settling down to real, earnest life on the part of a large proportion of the race. After calling attention to certain weak and unsatisfactory phases in the life of the Jamaica ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... party had proved a most unsatisfactory affair. She had not made the sensation she expected to make. Harney had scarcely noticed her at all, having neither eyes nor ears for any one save Ellen Tiffton, who surely must have told that Hugh was not invited, for, in no ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... way. I gave you an education regardless of expense, which has put you in possession of a comfortable income, at an age when many young men are dependent. I have thus started you fairly in life, and may claim that you should cease to be a drag upon me further. Long engagements are proverbially unsatisfactory, and in the present case the prospect seems interminable. What interest, pray, do you suppose I have that I could get a living for you? Can I go up and down the country begging people to provide for my son because he has taken it into ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the tea. There was a small sliding trap at the top of the tin, and when Edgar poured out half a cup of the contents, these were examined with great curiosity. The men took a few grains in their fingers, smelt them, and then tasted them. The result was unsatisfactory, and they were content to watch Edgar's proceedings before they went further. When he had the water boiling, he put the tea into a tin pot and poured the water over it, and when it had stood a few minutes served it out. ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... In sensation, cognition, and intellection, in our instincts and volitions, as far as they are truly human, thought is a constant element. To insist upon thought in this connection with history may, however, appear unsatisfactory. In this science it would seem as if thought must be subordinate to what is given, to the realities of fact—that this is its basis and guide; while philosophy dwells in the region of self-produced ideas, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... been the purpose of giving him a brain that could not think soundly and a conscience that welcomed murder? That leads us inevitably to the question, Why are criminals created at all? Why are idiots created? The deeper we look into the facts of life the more unsatisfactory does the theory of special creation become because we find a thousand things that contradict it and show its inconsistency. If the purpose of God was to create a heaven to be enjoyed by those who reach it we cannot see why He should ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... this he had been blinded by the theories on the opposing side, notwithstanding the brilliant testimonies to the contrary of those whose lives were unimpeachable. Of course it was impossible to consecrate for and receive the experience under such circumstances, and consequently years of unsatisfactory experience passed by, until at last the indisputable symptoms of inborn depravity, and the deplorable weakness of the heart and will to cope with the mighty power of the enemy, brought the struggling soul into depths of despair at the feet of Jesus, crying, ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... discharged, and the unity of the battery is disturbed. Sometimes the number of cells is kept fixed for supply, but the P.D. they put on the mains is reduced during charge by employing regulating cells in opposition. Both these plans have proved unsatisfactory, and the battery is now preferably joined across the mains in parallel with the dynamo. The cells take the peaks of the load and thus relieve the dynamo and engine of sudden changes, as shown in fig. 21. Here the line current (shown by the erratic curve) varied ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Miss Sibyl; 'they seem so very white and sickly in appearance, that we were quite astonished at the way they scampered upstairs. I am thankful they were sent back in charge of an English nurse. Those ayahs are always so unsatisfactory.' ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre
... uneasiness? I was not able to decide, and, with this unanswered question added to the number already troubling me, I was forced to face the day which, for aught I knew, might be the precursor of many others equally trying and unsatisfactory. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... think I agree with you," she said, giving a shove to her soft elastic hair which did not improve the indefiniteness of the parting. "Of course it's unsatisfactory in one way to feel one will never live to finish things, but in another way I think it's a great comfort to feel one can never use them up or outlive them if one lasts on to be a hundred. And though one gets very cross and miserable with ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... They therefore choose rather to renounce the principle itself, and to brand it with the name of pride and faction. This test with certainty discriminates the opinions of men. The other is a description vague and unsatisfactory. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... down street discussing some business matter with Crego, and this left her hours the more empty and unsatisfactory. As the dinner-hour drew near she drove to fetch her husband, hoping for a glimpse of the Fordyces on the way, but even this comfort was denied her, and she ached with dull pain which she could ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... were to take the votes on that subject," said the doctor, "I presume the verdict would be unanimous. But looks are proverbially—unsatisfactory! Do you know what damage you have done me by your exploit ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the Shah to Tehran, a horrid event occurred which plunged me in the greatest misery. I heard that Zeenab was ill, and unable to dance before the Shah; and, knowing the royal methods of treating unsatisfactory slaves, I feared greatly for the consequences. My fears were warranted. I was ordered, with others, to wait below the tower of the royal harem at midnight and bear away a corpse. We saw a woman struggling with two men at the top of the tower. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... he made ceaseless calculations, but they were all wondrously unsatisfactory. He found that he could establish nothing. He finally concluded that the only way to prove himself was to go into the blaze, and then figuratively to watch his legs to discover their merits and faults. He reluctantly admitted that he could not sit ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... been detained by the storm, but I would rather they had been here," observed the captain. "The state of the whole country is unsatisfactory, for the natives are often hostile, and it is dangerous for a small party to move far from the settlement, although it was understood that the Indians in this neighbourhood were friendly. However, we will not anticipate evil, but hope ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... others, have given elaborate accounts of it; yet why despair of presenting, in a homely way, some general idea of it, such as one might gather in the course of an afternoon's ramble? After reading all we find about it in books of travel, our conceptions are still vague and unsatisfactory. Probably the reason is, that minute details of history and architecture afford one but a very faint and inadequate idea of the appearance of any place. Like the pictures of old Dennen, they may give you every wrinkle with the accuracy of a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... I inquired; then he gave me the general, convenient, unsatisfactory reason 'business.' In an hour we were off to New York. But now, papa, comes the singular part of the affair. When we reached the city, instead of driving to one of the best hotels, as had always been his custom, he drove to quite an inferior place, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... near Miss Noel, and, after some inquiries about Sir Robert, Ethel, and the Browns, told her what concern they had felt about her illness. "Husband telegraphed constantly to know how you were going on; but the replies were often most unsatisfactory; and it is so very nice to see you up again. You will soon be about, and the sea-voyage will set you up wonderfully. That puts me in mind of—Tell her, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... because they who labored for the government were beaten if their work proved unsatisfactory, and he thought "it is better for me to run the chance of being beaten than to allow my father to risk it." Therefore, he deserved the reward of the ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... many weeks, there came a letter from her, but it was short, and sad, and unsatisfactory in all respects. She had had a terrible disappointment she said, but her friends must have forbearance with her, and excuse her from detailing the events of the past few weeks. She was now at Springdale ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... she were assuming one of the characters in a mysterious romance, such as unfolded itself only in books or in Boston; but thrilling as it was, it was nevertheless extremely unsatisfactory. ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and the feathers weighed, after which the body was laid open longitudinally by cutting alongside the sternum and through the back bone. When all had been thus prepared, they were hung up in groups to be photographed, but the photographs were quite unsatisfactory so far as showing the relative proportions of fat and lean. The accompanying drawing made from the photograph shows the relative development of an average pair of chickens. Attention is particularly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... been regulated by anything but the most indefinite legal enactments and the most unsatisfactory rules. It was many years ago sanctioned apparently for a purpose regarded as temporary and related to a survey of our coast. Having gained a place in the appropriations made by Congress, it has gradually taken to itself powers ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... partly due to the non-existence of a rule in favor of evening dress (never again shall I gird against the rule in Europe!), but it is due also to the oddly inefficient illumination during the entr'actes, and to the unsatisfactory schemes of decoration. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... he broke in, brusquely, "don't trouble! I should make a most unsatisfactory father confessor." He spoke quickly. His color was still high, but not of annoyance. His suspense was transformed into unpleasant certainty; but the exchange left him surer of himself. His perplexity had dropped to a quiet sense of ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... good judge. A few judges are better than many, but the few must be good. The matter in dispute should be clearly elicited; time and examination will find out the truth. Causes should first be tried before a court of neighbours: if the decision is unsatisfactory, let them be referred to a higher court; or, if necessary, to a higher still, of which ...
— Laws • Plato
... irritated me for about a year past; they have secretly armed during that time. The busier they believed me to be in Spain, the more energetically they continued their preparations; and whenever I had them questioned about their motives and objects, they made evasive and unsatisfactory replies. The natural consequence of all this was, that I moved my troops toward the German frontier; that Davoust, Lannes, and Massena, with three corps, had to approach Austria, and hold themselves in readiness to cross ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... at school and college he had inflicted on his father's ambition; certain lectures and gibes from that strong mouth, in his early manhood. Absurd! If his father had had to do with a really spendthrift and unsatisfactory son, there might have been some sense in it. But for these trifles—these suspicions—these foolish notions of a doctrinaire—to inflict this stigma and this yoke on ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... practices had fallen much into disuse or contempt, partly because of the gross impostures to which they had been made subservient, and partly because, even where the effects upon certain abnormal constitutions were genuinely produced, the effects when fairly examined and analysed, were very unsatisfactory—not to be relied upon for any systematic truthfulness or any practical purpose, and rendered very mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitions they tended to produce. Zee received my answers with much benignant attention, and said that similar instances of abuse and ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time through reversible space and an exodus and return in space ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Philip took the title of King of Castille in order to forestall the intrigues of his father-in-law, Ferdinand. With a view of securing the support of England, which had been somewhat estranged owing to the new policy followed by Philip, the latter concluded in 1506 a new treaty of commerce, very unsatisfactory from the Belgian point of view, and which was therefore called by the people the "Intercursus Malus." The new King of Spain died the same year, in Burgos, having lost a great deal of the popularity which he had so largely ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... unsatisfactory accounts which for many days afterwards we received.... I cannot help being anxious and fearful. You know he is all left to us—and that without him we should indeed be orphans and desolate. Therefore you may well know what feelings those ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... has come nearest to catching the spirit of the moorlands and the breeze that sometimes drifts up over Hindhead from the great glen which local myth has named the Devil's Punch Bowl. The Broom Squire is strangely unsatisfactory as a novel, or I find it so, with its entire needlessness and inconsequence of plot. But it has something in it of the heather and the wind, of the sand of Thursley and the steam of the Punch Bowl on a wet day; ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... boy," said his father, "we shall not be brought to the—er—scaffold by any mistake of that kind. If that occurred, it would be most un—" he caught his wife's eye and substituted "unsatisfactory. I'm not sure," he added, "but I fancy I hear shouting. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krasnoe, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... that the general conviction of the parliament is dominated by the absolute necessity, to pull back and to strive for peace as soon as possible. The financial aspect given by Dr. Helfferich is disastrous, the military situation, taken in the whole, unsatisfactory and the confidential information, given by Herr von Jagow in the committee with regard to the Egyptian expedition, discouraging if not hopeless. The Government and particularly Herr von Bethmann wish for peace, but believe themselves ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... contemplated, a full "Abstract" of his "Title" was laid by Mr. Parkinson before his conveyancer, in order to advise, and to prepare the necessary instruments. Owing to inquiries suggested by the conveyancer, additional statements were laid before him; and produced an opinion of a somewhat unsatisfactory description, from which I shall lay before the reader ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of a Christian parent towards her. This, and other recollections, pressed upon Mm, and his heart was once or twice upon the point of falling back into the fresh impulses of its early humanity, when the trial of tomorrow threw him once more into a gloom, that settled him down into a resentful but unsatisfactory determination to discharge the duty he had ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Sir Charles Lyell made inquiries among the ancient creole inhabitants of the faubourg. That the old priest, in his last days, became very much emaciated, that he walked about the streets like a mummy, that he gradually dried up, and finally blew away, was the meagre and unsatisfactory result of the tourist's investigations. This is all that is generally told of Pere Antoine. In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans was yet occupied by the Confederate forces, I met at Alexandria, in Virginia, a lady from Louisiana—Miss ...
— Pere Antoine's Date-Palm • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... while the government during the two earlier thirds of this period executed splendid and magnificent buildings, it neglected to make other outlays at least as necessary. We have already indicated how unsatisfactory were its military provisions; the frontier countries and even the valley of the Po(21) were pillaged by barbarians, and bands of robbers made havoc in the interior even of Asia Minor, Sicily, and Italy. The fleet even was totally neglected; there ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... is a much more difficult problem. The present unsatisfactory condition of affairs was admirably expressed in the following editorial in the "Evening Post" of June 12, 1876, from the pen of the late William ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... "Unsatisfactory results," she said. "They could not adjust psychologically to changed conditions. They usually became unbalanced. Some suicides and a number of cases of extreme schizophrenia resulted. It was decided that it was no kindness to the older space-struck ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... seemed to be drawing the comparison now between this France so variable, changing even as you study her, with the manners and aspects of that other land known to him as yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed his brain, in response to some longing of which, perhaps, he himself was hardly conscious, a desire in the depths of a heart fastidious rather than jaded, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... minds me o' the laird there," he would say. "He has some of Hob's grand, whunstane sense, and the same way with him of steiking his mouth when he's no very pleased." And Hob, all unconscious, would draw down his upper lip and produce, as if for comparison, the formidable grimace referred to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St. Enoch's Kirk was thus briefly dismissed: "If he had but twa fingers o' Gib's, he would waken them up." And Gib, honest man! would look down and secretly smile. Clem was a spy whom they ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... INVALIDS.—The practice of boiling arrow-root in milk is at once wasteful and unsatisfactory; the best mode of preparing enough for an invalid's supper is as follows: Put a dessertspoonful of powder, two lumps of sugar, into a chocolate cup, with a few drops of Malaga, or any other sweet wine; mix these well together, and add, in small quantities, ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... you Rose, dear, about that night, and all that Janet said to me? I told her how I wished to get out of my useless, unsatisfactory life, just as you have been telling me. Did I ever tell you all she said to me? I don't think I ever did. I felt then, just as you do now. I think I can understand your feeling, better than you suppose; and I opened my heart to Janet—I mean, I ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... of porridge had been boiled, was set before a Newfoundland puppy of three or four months old. At first, he contented himself by licking off portions of the oatmeal which adhered to the interior, but finding this unsatisfactory, he scraped the morsels with his fore-paws into a heap, and then ate the whole at once. I had a dog, who, having once scalded his tongue, always afterwards, when I gave him his milk and water at breakfast, put his paw very cautiously into the saucer, to see if the liquid was too hot, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... mill was unsatisfactory. The elder Gaspard was away, and young Pierre was curt and surly. The sight of Victorine riding familiarly, and with an evident joyous pride, by the side of one of the richest men in the country, and a young man at that,—and a young man, moreover, who looked and behaved as if ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... as the reliability of the anatomical work which has been discussed is in question, it would seem that Rawitz's results are rendered somewhat unsatisfactory by the carelessness of Cyon in fixing the materials; that Panse's descriptions and comparisons are neither careful nor detailed enough to be convincing; that the work of Alexander and Kreidl, as well as that of Kishi, ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... legitimate to compare races of men than with wild kinds), e.g. of different dogs or pigeons, tell precisely in the opposite direction. Regardless also of the fact that perhaps no genus of monkeys is in a more unsatisfactory state as to the determination of its different kinds than the genus chosen by him for illustration. This is so much the case that J. A. Wagner (in his supplement to Schreber's great work on Beasts) at first included all the ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... in the roof of the Pantheon. The Pantheon stands at one corner of the Region of Pigna, and a connection between the Region, the Pantheon and the Pine-cone seems vaguely possible, though altogether unsatisfactory. The truth about the Pine-cone is perfectly well known; it was part of a fountain in Agrippa's artificial lake in the Campus Martius, of which Pigna was a part, and it was set up in the cloistered garden of Saint Peter's by Pope Symmachus about fourteen hundred years ago. The lake may ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... defective as to be ordered into dock. I had received letters from my sister, who was overjoyed at the intelligence of my safe return, and the anticipation of seeing me. The accounts of my father were, however, very unsatisfactory. My sister wrote, that disappointment and anxiety had had such an effect upon him, that he was deranged in his intellects. Our new captain came down to join us. He was a very young man, and had never before commanded ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... The trunk was perfectly solid and showed no signs of decay. Many bushels of nuts were gathered from this one tree yearly and I can remember the long winter evenings when we sat in the kitchen cracking the nuts from this old tree. Some have said the butternut is unsatisfactory as an ornamental tree but let me add—do not neglect it in the planting plan for it will give you much pleasure, and, too, the meats are well worth the trouble in cracking the nuts even though a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... affairs of the world, and its predecessors, the Treaties of Utrecht and Paris, which ushered in peace early in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were miniature in comparison. The German terms were an unsatisfactory and comparatively unimportant part of the Treaty except in so far as they bound Germany to accept the principles for which the Allies had fought the war and upon which they were determined that the future government ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... mandarin (upon a requisition from our side) explained to the mob who crowded about the barriers why the men were punished, and warned them that similar chastisement for similar offences awaited themselves. In one point only the example made was unsatisfactory: the men punished were not identified as the same who had assaulted Colonel Chesney. They might be criminals awaiting punishment for some other offence. With so shuffling a government as the Chinese, always moving through darkness, and on the principles of a crooked policy, no perfect ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... had to sustain nature was the leather soup Alick spoke of, with the addition of some tripe de roche. Next morning we breakfasted on the same unsatisfactory materials. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... for the sake of his beloved nieces—and they would never know what humiliation this unsatisfactory interview had cost him. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... and benevolent, there was just enough worldliness in Cleveland's nature to make his views sensible as far as they went, but to bound their scope. Everything he said was so rational; and yet, to an imaginative person, his conversation was unsatisfactory, and his philosophy ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book IV • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... no help for it. 'My chaplain, Dr Gwynne,' said he; 'my present chaplain, Mr Slope.' he certainly made the introduction as unsatisfactory to the chaplain as possible, and by the use of the word present, seemed to indicate that Mr Slope might probably not long enjoy the honour which he now held. But Mr Slope cared nothing for this. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... critics in the whole range of modern scholarship. If Daille must be placed in the second rank, surely Pearson may well be relegated to the same position; for there is most respectable proof that his Vindiciae, in reply to the treatise of the French divine, was pronounced by Porson to be a "very unsatisfactory" performance. [8:2] "The most elaborate and ingenious portion of the work" is, as Bishop Lightfoot himself confesses, "the least satisfactory." [8:3] Dr. Lightfoot, we believe, will hardly pretend to say that Vossius, Bull, ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... property and education, there are some plausible arguments in favor of such qualifications, but they are all alike unsatisfactory, illogical and unjust. A limited suffrage creates a privileged class, and is based on the false idea that government is the natural arbiter of its citizens, while in fact it is the creature of their will. In ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... It was an unsatisfactory interview that Danny had with the Chief. "You're crazy!" was the verdict of that A. F. F. official when Danny had finished. "You're crazy, or else—or else—" His voice trailed off; his eyes were on the moving letters that flashed their message of disaster ...
— The Hammer of Thor • Charles Willard Diffin
... furnished the rooms made almost the same report, quite as meagre and unsatisfactory. Mr. Berwin—so the deceased had given his name—had ordered the furniture, and had paid for it in gold. Altogether, in spite of every effort, the police were obliged to declare themselves beaten. They could not find ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... that the association with things bright and beautiful may help to set the keynote of our own lives in cheerful accord. A dark, gloomy, ill-ventilated room brings depression of spirits, and will make the most elaborate meal unsatisfactory; while the plainest meal may seem almost a feast when served amid attractive surroundings. Neatness is an important essential; any home, however humble, may possess cleanliness and order, and without these, all charms of wealth and art ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the consequence of his being a man without intellectual needs. The great affliction of all philistines is that they have no interest in ideas, and that, to escape being bored, they are in constant need of realities. But realities are either unsatisfactory or dangerous; when they lose their interest, they become fatiguing. But the ideal ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... turn from these unsatisfactory violin makers to violin players: I know nothing of the great Corelli's personal history; his pupil Geminiani is said to have led a life full of romance. Philidor spent his years chiefly in the intrigues of chess-playing. The great Tartini, whom the devil visited in the dream he immortalised ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... Lalugwumps are cannibals they would say "beyond the stomach." In testimony to the consolatory value of the doctrine of another life, I may say that this one true believer had in this life a comparatively unsatisfactory lot, for in early youth he had been struck by a flying stone from a volcano and had lost a considerable ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... a patron of Wren's, and he disliked Billy Silver, partly for his own sake and partly because he hated his brother, with whom he had come into contact once or twice during his career at Eckleton, always with unsatisfactory results. ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... moment in patching up an unsatisfactory peace, but it was becoming every day more and more obvious that the Aberdeen Government was doomed. The memorandum which Lord John drew up, at the suggestion of Lord Lansdowne, describes in pithy and direct terms the privations of the soldiers, and the mortality amongst men and horses, which was ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Hawthorne to the heretic Hilda, but not to the child of its own bosom. Hawthorne, if he indicates through Kenyon his ideas, seems to advise, as elsewhere, letting the dead past bury its dead while Donatello and Miriam should go on to what self-sacrificing life they can find. Unsatisfactory as the story is, merely as a tale, it is less vague than the central truth, the moral theme which it embodies. The truth is that after all, in the ethical sphere of the story, Hawthorne has given no more than his meditations, very ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... have yourself towed a skiff on the Thames, when the current was so strong that the progress made with the oars was unsatisfactory. Well, if you have, you don't know one bit what this was like. In the first place, the Thames, even by Monkey Island, is still water compared to the Nile between Surras and Dal, a sixty-mile stretch. Then your skiff ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... but the wife's profession was practised by a maid and a nurse. Therefore she had no occupation. The want of occupation encouraged brooding, and she brooded a great deal over her position. She found it unsatisfactory. Was it right that an intellectual woman like her should spend her days in idleness? Once her husband had ventured to remark that no one compelled her to live in idleness. He never did ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... which was growing more and more unsatisfactory, was abruptly terminated by the entrance of one of the other ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... (March and September). In Chait they also worship their hooks and nets. At their marriages when a father has selected a bride for his son he consults an astrologer to compare their horoscopes. If the conjunction is unsatisfactory he will change the boy's name to suit the astrological calculations. The wedding is celebrated in the common fashion of the Uriya castes. If a bachelor marries a widow he first goes through the form of wedlock with a bunch of flowers. Among their ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... wife and Libby Anne had saved for their trip to Ontario, there were those who said that he went through six hundred dollars that one night, making a rough guess at the amount. Mrs. Crocks did not use any such amateur and unsatisfactory way of arriving at conclusions. She did not need to—there was a way of finding out! To the elevator she went, and looked at the books under cover of looking up a wheat ticket which her husband had cashed and found that Bill Cavers had marketed seventeen hundred and ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... they contained, but no fresh information could be got from them. For six days the King remained in this uncertainty as to the real losses that had been sustained. Everybody was afraid to write bad news; all the letters which from time to time arrived, gave, therefore, but an unsatisfactory account of what had taken place. The King used every means in his power to obtain some news. Every post that came in was examined by him, but there was little found to satisfy him. Neither the King nor anybody else could understand, from what ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... would not stop at knowledge, which is, of course, unsatisfactory,—but dive beyond, as I have done, into the essence of things," said Fred to himself. "If he could pierce through the veil that covers all things, he would find amusement enough to last a lifetime. In vegetable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... we made it convenient to take our dinner in town, on the veranda of a restaurant which overlooked the busy Volga, with its mobile moods of sunset and thunderstorm, where we compensated ourselves for our unsatisfactory breakfast by a characteristically Russian dinner, of which I will omit details, except as regards the soup. This soup was botvinya. A Russian once obligingly furnished me with a description of a foreigner's probable views on this national ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Treatment is unsatisfactory. Preventive measures consist in avoiding conditions favorable to the production of the disease. This should be practised so far as possible. At the time the attack occurs, the animal should be given a cathartic. One pound ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... Alas! how unsatisfactory are even the choicest blessings of life! Wealth brings only care, and the millionnaire toils all his life for—his food and clothes and lodging; dies unregretted, and is soon forgotten. Honor brings not content, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in China are all engaged by their parents without their knowledge or consent. This was very unsatisfactory to the young people of the old regime, and it is being modified in the new. One day one of my students in discussing ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... anxiety as to how they will deport themselves when absent. And children who practise good behavior in the home when no company is present, do not need to be called aside for a hasty lesson in this line when some one is about to call. Such lessons are very unsatisfactory, and are seldom remembered, being much like music lessons taken without ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... cheerful. He was half annoyed to see the artist and Miss Lamont drifting along in such laughing good-humor with the world, as if a summer holiday was just a holiday without any consequences or responsibilities. It was to him a serious affair ever since that unsatisfactory note from Miss Benson; somehow the summer had lost its sparkle. And yet was it not preposterous that a girl, just a single girl, should have the power to change for a man the aspect of a whole coast-by her presence to make it iridescent with beauty, and by her absence to take ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... loyal mind is already an established truth—of the ultimate success and complete triumph of the North in the present contest. For in any other event all these facts are dumb, and the inferences to be drawn from them vague and unsatisfactory, absolutely no better than mere random conjecture. And as the war has now become the great fact in our history, and its effects must modify our whole social life for many years to come, its results must not be neglected ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ease and rapidity, after which everybody did the best he could for himself within the hollow of the crater. The bed was hard, the shelter unsatisfactory, the situation painful—lying in the open air, five thousand feet above the level of ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... kept very busy, for the regulation as to carrying papers is being rigorously enforced, and the belated pedestrian is invariably challenged by a cavalry patrol or by the ordinary police. If his answers are unsatisfactory, he undergoes a more searching examination at ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... a most unsatisfactory person," she went on, not heeding my annoyance. "Most abnormally modest people are. If I were to stick you with this hat-pin, for instance, you would accept the matter as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... father came in again, leading his wife and children with an old-world gallantry that was apparent even in these unsatisfactory circumstances. He had a slow impressive way of speaking that made even his unimportant words appear important. In the present case, as soon as he began to speak most of the people in the ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... dressing to the wound, from which he first extracted some bits of the leather of the boot. The worthy doctor was wrought up to a high pitch of excitement; he exclaimed, as he went downstairs, that he would rather cut off one of his own legs than continue working in that unsatisfactory, slovenly way, without a tithe of either the assistants or the appliances that he ought to have. Below in the ambulance, indeed, they no longer knew where to bestow the cases that were brought them, and had been obliged to have recourse to the lawn, where they ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... chums already established was Roscoe, a dark, well-set up man of five or six and thirty, with a clean-shaven, eager face, artistic hands, and a pair of clever eyes. Roscoe had been in turn a junior master, a journalist and actor. Dissatisfied and unsatisfactory in these situations, his friends had found him an opening where he would be at too great a distance to trouble them—in short, a billet in a Burma oil company in Rangoon. Amazing to relate, the post suited him and the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... very unsatisfactory. I supposed you went to find out whether Tom was in love with the girl. Was she as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... last night and asparagus tips—did you ever notice what a lot of skin a boarding house chicken has? And the tips just missed by one, being tip. The meals are an unsatisfactory substitute for something to eat, and I find myself filling up on bread to keep my ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... every corner. Every place seemed unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study. That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory everywhere, but the corner behind ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... knows to how great an extent—on the will of the recipients, and therefore in exact proportion to their lowness in the human scale, on the circumstances which environ them. So my characters are now—very much what the reader might expect them to be. I confess them to be unsatisfactory; so are most things: but how can I solve problems which fact has not yet solved for me? How am I to extricate my antitypal characters, when their living types have not yet extricated themselves? When the age moves on, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... that he interrupted himself in the act of cutting a slice of bread, and left the knife sticking in the loaf, 'what a queer fellow our landlord is! I don't believe he has been home once since he got me into that unsatisfactory scrape. I begin to think he will never come home again. What a mysterious life that man does lead, to ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... scenes and circumstances, and to some extent its dramatis personae, from the writer's own surroundings in the town and corporation of Bedford, and his brief but stirring experience as a soldier in the great Parliamentary War. The catastrophe also is eminently unsatisfactory. When Christian and Hopeful enter the Golden Gates we feel that the story has come to its proper end, which we have been looking for all along. But the conclusion of "The Holy War" is too much like the closing chapter of "Rasselas"—"a conclusion in which nothing is concluded." ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... the plant, or from stumps from which the heads have already been cut, or by tying the leaves together above the head. The latter is the usual method, rye straw or bast matting being generally used for the purpose. Merely breaking down the inner leaves upon the head is unsatisfactory, as the growth, both of the leaves and the head, soon causes ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... beautiful, conservative, yet open to all the liberalizing influences of an age of science and philosophy. Cranmer, though a scholastic, seems to have perceived that nothing is more misleading and uncertain and unsatisfactory than any truth pushed out to its severest logical conclusions without reference to other truths which have for their support the same divine authority. It is not logic which has built up the most enduring institutions, but common-sense and plain truths, and appeals ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... previous occasions. She was rather offish, but really would have been glad to make up, had he shown the humility and tractableness he usually manifested after their tiffs; but he was not in a humble frame of mind, and, after a brief and unsatisfactory call, took his leave. The poor girl was completely puzzled. What had come over Arthur? She had snubbed him no more than usual that night, and generally he took it very meekly. She would have opened her eyes very wide indeed if she had guessed ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... of the Government was to carry through in earnest the building of the railway to the Pacific. For over a year Macdonald persisted in Mackenzie's policy of government construction but with the same slow and unsatisfactory results. Then an opportunity came to enlist the services of a private syndicate. Four Canadians, Donald A. Smith, a former Hudson's Bay Company factor, George Stephen, a leading merchant and banker of Montreal, James J. Hill and Norman W. Kittson, ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... be unsatisfactory news to Owen Massey," observed Gerald to Norman Foley. "It is my belief that he is the last of the O'Harralls, and Owen will have a good chance of recovering the property of which they ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... in the morning when she stole my baby. No Sir replyed inspecter Gong I have seen no such person, oh thank you said Mr. Hose good morning, good morning Sir said the inspecter as he shut the door of the police office and Mr. Hose went down the steps and walked feeling very unsatisfactory. ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... incidents and characters; but they seem rather to have irritated his spleen, than to have drawn forth his powers of picturesque imitation. Certainly if we compare Hudibras with Don Quixote in this respect, it seems rather a meagre and unsatisfactory performance. ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Permanent white, and Barytic white, is, when well prepared, of superior body in water, but has less opacity in oil. It works in a somewhat unsatisfactory and unpleasant manner, and is considerably lower in its tone while wet than when dry, a fault which subjects even an experienced artist to great uncertainty where he uses it in compound tints. The semi-transparency of the white, while wet, prevents his judging of the true tint until his colour ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... interest among countless former photoplay "fans." They have gone into the theatres expecting to see a "big star" in a "big story"—and have come out after having seen only the "big star." Just who is responsible for this very unsatisfactory state of affairs it is sometimes hard to say. Occasionally the story, if written by an "outside" writer, is lacking in plot-material in the first place, and, having been purchased on account of its having, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... a visit to the notoriously immoral wife of one of the feudal nobles, and that a certain disciple was "displeased" in consequence, whereupon the Master swore, saying, "If I have done any wrong, may the sky fall and crush me!" Wang Ch'ung points out that the form of oath adopted by Confucius is unsatisfactory and fails to carry conviction. Had he said, "May I be struck dead by lightning!" his sincerity would have been more powerfully attested, because people are often struck dead by lightning; whereas the fall of the sky is too remote ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... inclined to the chord of the apse, the former having the usual angle of 45 deg., the latter one of more than 60 deg.. Externally this is not so pleasant as the more "commonplace" form, the great dissimilarity of the several angles being unsatisfactory and the third side too quickly lost to view, but within the church these points are ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... Algiers he was told the note of the French Minister was unsatisfactory, and that it was under consideration whether a note should not be presented. He ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... not directed by science,—by acknowledged principles,—he can never make any steady improvement. In like manner, when the principles of education are unknown, no advancement in the art can be expected from the teacher. Every attempt at change in such circumstances must be unsatisfactory; and even when improvements are by chance accomplished, they are but partial, and must be stationary.—When, on the contrary, the teacher is directed by ascertained principles, he never can deviate far from the path of success; and even if he should, he has the means in his own power of ascertaining ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... sake of a little talk. There was much that I should have liked to ask this man, but he could not understand Dthemetri’s language, and the process of getting at his knowledge by double interpretation through my Arabs was unsatisfactory. I discovered, however (and my Arabs knew of that fact), that this man and his family lived habitually for nine months of the year without touching or seeing either bread or water. The stunted shrub growing at intervals through the sand in this part of the Desert enables ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... not be unsatisfactory to you to know that Americans—both those long domiciled here and those in transit—applaud the appointment of the new Chief ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... evidently realized my despair over the violence in a strike quite as definitely as if she had been told about it. Perhaps that sort of suffering and the attempt to interpret opposing forces to each other will long remain a function of the Settlement, unsatisfactory and difficult ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the evening before on the best of terms. Stoller had expected Burnamy twenty-four hours earlier, and had shown his displeasure with him for loitering a day at Leipsic which he might have spent at Carlsbad; and Burnamy had been unsatisfactory in accounting for the delay. But he had taken hold so promptly and so intelligently that by working far into the night, and through the whole forenoon, he had got Stoller's crude mass of notes into shape, and had sent off in time for the first steamer ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is indeed an unsatisfactory thing: I believe that everybody thinks so. You seem to think that it is purposely unsatisfactory, or rather dissatisfactory: but it seems to me to proceed from a kind of enervation in De Quincey. However, I don't know how he supports himself in other ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... account for it. Pressed for an explanation, Felicity Brown, it is true, might have essayed an answer of sorts. "Oh, Cele's kind of a nut," she might have declared, "but she's a good scout," or something equally unsatisfactory. But Cecille, unless urged, quite likely wouldn't have made any answer at all. Then, "I don't know," she would have murmured. And in the face of such gravity her inquisitor must surely have sought ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... wonder as such necessarily faded away and the interest could be kept up only if the scenes presented on the screen became themselves more and more enthralling. The trivial acts played in less than a minute without any artistic setting and without any rehearsal or preparation soon became unsatisfactory. The grandmother who washes the baby and even the street boy who plays a prank had to be replaced by quick little comedies. Stages were set up; more and more elaborate scenes were created; the film grew and grew in length. Competing companies in France and later in the United States, England, ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by way of defense. We could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to me that some kind of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it or not. After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... much to be had in a Trappist monastery without asking, I opened the conversation by making some delicate allusions to breakfast. The truth is that the bread-and-cheese supper was nothing to me now but an unsatisfactory recollection, and, with the sense of vacuum that distressed me, I was unwilling to follow the monk upon the promised round, lest I should die of inanition on the way. He asked me what I would like to eat, and I said, 'Anything that is near at hand.' Had I suggested that a chop or a steak ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... her parents to his rival Delio. In his despair he seeks aid from the priestess of a certain temple, and receives from her a magic potion which drives from him all remembrance of his passion. This very simple and somewhat unsatisfactory story is interwoven with a multitude of episodes and incidental narratives, pastoral and chivalric, and the whole ends with the promise of a second part, which however never came to be written, the author, as it appears, being either murdered or killed ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... interval between the termination of that institution and the charter of its successor; and thirdly, during the limited period which has now so abruptly closed. The connection thus repeatedly attempted proved unsatisfactory on each successive occasion, notwithstanding the various measures which were adopted to facilitate or insure its success. On the last occasion, in the year 1833, the employment of the State banks was guarded especially, in every way which experience and caution could suggest. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... party proceeded to a high and remarkable hill called BROOKS'S BLUFF: following the strait to the northward, they passed the remains of many Esquimaux habitations; and, though their short journey had been unsatisfactory on account of the badness of the weather, there was still sufficient to cause the most lively interest, and give strong hopes of the existence of some passage to the northeast of the small inlet ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... the Mexican calendar, it is best to exclude from consideration at first the signification of the latter, and allow it to have no influence in arriving at a conclusion. The attempt by Dr Brinton to force agreement with the latter appears to be unsatisfactory. ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... kitty to the closet where the birds at present hung, but his experiment was unsatisfactory, for she dug into his cheek with a fury which rendered it necessary to abandon the attempt. When the outraged animal had fled down the street, Elsmere looked about for fresh interests. He was in a mood to recognize opportunities, ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... more often neighbors, who swore that they believed him to be telling the truth. The number of these "oath- helpers" varied according to the seriousness of the crime and the rank of the accused. This method was hardly as unsatisfactory as it seems to be, for a person of evil reputation might not be able to secure the required number of friends who would commit perjury on his behalf. To take an oath was a very solemn proceeding; it was an appeal ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... after this series of very unsatisfactory interviews. I looked at Kennedy blankly. We seemed to have uncovered so little that was tangible that I was much surprised to find that apparently he was well contented with what had happened in the ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... annoyed to see the artist and Miss Lamont drifting along in such laughing good-humor with the world, as if a summer holiday was just a holiday without any consequences or responsibilities. It was to him a serious affair ever since that unsatisfactory note from Miss Benson; somehow the summer had lost its sparkle. And yet was it not preposterous that a girl, just a single girl, should have the power to change for a man the aspect of a whole coast-by her presence to make it iridescent with beauty, and by her absence to take all the life out of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to parade his contempt of a lucrative dependency—than he had felt for the countess. No wonder his diction was poor. It was a sample of limp thinness; a sort of tongue of a Master Slender:—flavourless, unsatisfactory, considering its object: measured to be condemned by its poor achievement. He had nevertheless a heart to feel for the dear lady, and heat the pleading for her, especially when it ran to its object, as along a shaft of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... do believe!" said he; "He's only a cow-boy, I dare say!" And with this sapient, but unsatisfactory conclusion, he opened his book, and read aloud, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... in an inflated currency, but actually in a great development of material resources, beneath his management of the treasury. To find fault with him, and to talk of the "might have been" seems unworthy; also unsatisfactory, since the consequences of a different policy are wholly matter ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... 16th century. About that time hollow balls of stone or cast iron were fired from mortars. The balls were nearly filled with gunpowder and the remaining space with a slow-burning composition. This plan was unsatisfactory, as the composition was not always ignited by the flash from the discharge of the gun, and moreover the amount of composition to burn a stipulated time could not easily be gauged. The shell was, therefore, fitted with a hollow forged iron or copper plug, filled with slow-burning ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... momentary diversion among the milliners.) He could not say, however, which drew the slung-shot or which threw the grenade. (It was generally remarked by those in the court room, that the evidence of the witness was obscure and unsatisfactory. Upon questioning him further, and confronting him with the parties to the case before the court, it transpired that the faces of Jones and Smith were unknown to him, and that he had been talking about an entirely different fight all ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... thing in novels since the war—always come back with one arm, and never with a lost leg. Is it more romantic to get rid of one than of the other?—considering also that a one-armed embrace of the weeping waiting lady-love must be so utterly unsatisfactory. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... though he had on the whole had as good success as Carlton in the "keen encounter of their wits" the night before, it had left an unsatisfactory effect on his mind. The time for action was come; argument was past, as he had himself said; and to recur to argument was only to confuse the clearness of his apprehension of the truth. He began to question ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... you have possibly time, write me a few more particulars, for your letters are very unsatisfactory, and I am full of anxiety. Make Richardson write,—what has he better to do? God bless thee, my dear, dear Dick,—would it were over and all well! I am afraid, at any rate, it will ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... with his intense repugnance to anything like commercial dishonesty, was deeply perturbed. The idea of entertaining at his board as guest a man with whom he would not have a business transaction was exceedingly disagreeable. Leaving the unsatisfactory breakfast half-finished, he rose and paced the room in his perplexity. At last he spoke, as much to himself as to his daughter. "It shall never be said that John Walton was deficient in hospitality. They have been invited ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... talked loosely of "standing against" the king "unto death."[388] The Bishop of Durham fell under suspicion, and was summoned to London. His palace was searched and his papers examined in his absence; and the result, though inconclusive, was unsatisfactory.[389] The religious orders again (especially the monks of such houses as had been implicated with the Nun of Kent) were openly recusant. At the convent at Sion, near Richmond, a certain Father Ricot preached as ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... of Dismemberment, when brought to the touchstone of the three essential conditions, is found wanting. Dismissing it as unsatisfactory, I come to that other guaranty where these conditions are all fulfilled, and we find security for Germany without offence to the just sentiments of France, and also a new safe-guard to civilization. Against the Guaranty of Dismemberment ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... were beginning to pick up. He was glad she had missed him, and he certainly had missed his comfortable room, because the accommodations on the lot were not of the best. In fact, they were pretty unsatisfactory, if you came right down to it, and he hoped they wouldn't keep him there again. And, oh, yes—he was almost forgetting. Here was ten dollars—he believed there were two weeks' rent now due. He passed over the money with rather a Clifford ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... by the physicians who lived a century ago is for us unsatisfactory; we cannot understand what they meant by their vague designating of hepatitis, fibrous enteritis, diarrhoea and dysentery, peripneumonia, remittent and intermittent gastric fever, protracted nervous fever, typhus ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... seemingly just as absurd to consider in advance such sordid matters in connection with any one of a dozen couples among his friends whose matrimonial enterprises had gone smash? It was said that nowadays girls went to the altar thinking that if the husbands they were taking proved unsatisfactory they would soon be free again, the better off by the title of Mrs. and a good stiff alimony and some invaluable experience. "I must keep my head," thought he. "I must consider how I'd feel after the fatal cards ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Telephone system: system is unsatisfactory both for business and for personal use; 3.56 million applications for telephones had not been satisfied as of January 1991; electronic mail services have been established in Kiev, Odessa, and Luhans'k by Sprint ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... every good man considers it a great sacrifice on his part to continue living in this transitory, unsatisfactory, and particularly unpleasant world. This is so much a matter of course, that I was surprised to see the divinity-student change color. He took a look at a small and uncertain-minded glass which hung slanting forward over the chapped sideboard. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... deposed Ali, and announced further that he invested Moawiya with the caliphate. This treacherous decision (but see CALIPHATE, ib.) greatly injured the cause of Ali, which was still further weakened by the loss of Egypt. After much indecisive fighting, Ali found his position so unsatisfactory that according to some historians he made an agreement with Moawiya by which each retained his own dominions unmolested. It chanced, however—according to a legend, the details of which are quite uncertain—that three of the fanatic sect of the Kharijites had made ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... The present unsatisfactory condition of domestic labor in private houses is not confined to any special city or country; it is universal. Each year the difficulty of obtaining women to do housework seems to increase and the demand is so much greater ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... man from his printed works! They are the gleanings of his thoughts and investigations, the pick of his mind and heart; and they are at best but an impersonal and partial record of the writer. Even autobiography has something unsatisfactory about it; one feels the narrator is on guard always, as it were, and, aware of an audience cold and of strangers, keeps this back and trims up that to make himself more what he should be (or, in some perverse cases, what he should not be). But probably no man who is worthy of attention ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... of people were reading papers, talking excitedly, or staring at these unusual Sunday visitors. They seemed to increase as night drew on, until at last the roads, my brother said, were like Epsom High Street on a Derby Day. My brother addressed several of these fugitives and got unsatisfactory ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... all—the complete Heyst, even to the kindly sunken eyes on which there still rested the shadow of Morrison's death. Naturally, it was Davidson who had given him a lift out of his forsaken island. There were no other opportunities, unless some native craft were passing by—a very remote and unsatisfactory chance to wait for. Yes, he came out with Davidson, to whom he volunteered the statement that it was only for a short time—a few days, no more. He meant ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... to confesse to you, that as unsatisfy'd as the past discourse may have made you think me with the Doctrines of the Peripateticks, and the Chymists, about the Elements and Principles, I can yet so little discover what to acquiesce in, that perchance the Enquiries of others have scarce been more unsatisfactory to me, than my own ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... The books are rare in any shape. The principal merit of Maittaire's Annales Typographici consists in a great deal of curious matter detailed in the notes; but the absence of the "lucidus ordo" renders the perusal of these fatiguing and unsatisfactory. The author brought a full and well-informed mind to the task he undertook—but he wanted taste and precision in the arrangement of his materials. The eye wanders over a vast indigested mass; and information, when it is to be acquired with excessive toil, is, comparatively, seldom ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... their Government had done. The feeling was akin to that which would have prevailed in America had the President offered his help to the Spanish Government to suppress the insurrection in Cuba. The answers to questions were unsatisfactory, and on February 26th Heinrich von Sybel rose to move that the interests of Prussia required absolute neutrality. It was indeed evident that Bismarck's action had completely isolated Prussia; except the Czar, she had now not a single friend in Europe ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... definition contains this much of truth in it, that directly as the demand for an article, and inversely as the supply of the same, is the amount of labour which men find it worth their while to spend upon that article for commercial purposes. Otherwise the definition is unsatisfactory and involved, and leads to endless discussion. Without entering into these discussions, we will remark an ambiguity in the term on which they all roll, the term labour, which ambiguity is at the bottom of three fourths of the ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... to the dignified office which he of all men was most competent to fill. On February 9th, 1720, he was appointed Astronomer Royal in succession to Flamsteed. He found things at the Royal Observatory in a most unsatisfactory state. Indeed, there were no instruments, nor anything else that was movable; for such things, being the property of Flamsteed, had been removed by his widow, and though Halley attempted to purchase from that lady some of the instruments which his ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... rumored that the results of this campaign are very unsatisfactory to the English people. The hill-fighting, however, turned out to be so much more severe than the English expected, and the tribesmen proved such formidable foes, that they were glad to make peace ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 58, December 16, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Gray's "Trivia"; but in form and manner it is more like Phillips's "Splendid Shilling" than either of these; and yet it is not at all like the last in being a mere burlesque of the epic style. These resemblances have been noted by Italian critics, who find them as unsatisfactory as myself; but they will serve to make the extracts I am to give a little more intelligible to the reader who does not recur to the whole poem. Parini was not one to break a butterfly upon a wheel; he felt the fatuity of heavily moralizing ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... relates to the person who is the subject of the book; and, in that, there is such an inaccuracy in the statement of facts, as in so solemn an authour is hardly excusable, and certainly makes his narrative very unsatisfactory. But what is still worse, there is throughout the whole of it a dark uncharitable cast, by which the most unfavourable construction is put upon almost every circumstance in the character and conduct of my illustrious friend[91]; who, I trust, will, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Hong-Kong on July 2nd and went immediately to Shanghai, but hearing that his old friend, Li Hung Chang, was at Tientsin, he proceeded there at once, and found things in a very unsatisfactory condition. Prince Chun and the Empress Regent were anxious for war with Russia, being supported in this folly by all the Court, while Prince Kung and Li Hung Chang practically stood alone in their desire for peace. Li was so delighted to see Gordon ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... for any arbitrary alterations or curtailments would have been liable to objection or censure. In the first place, there was Dodsley's own preface, chiefly occupied by a sketch of the history of our stage, but based on the most imperfect information, and extremely unsatisfactory, if not misleading. Then there was, like Pelion heaped on Ossa, Isaac Reed's introduction, more elaborate and copious than Dodsley's, yet far from complete or systematic, and not improved by the presence of an appendix or sequel. Reed, of course, went over the same ground as Dodsley had already ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... covered with tinfoil and then rubbed down until smooth; then the whole was coated with quicksilver, which formed an amalgam with the tin. It does no harm to tell you about it now, senorita," added Giusippe a little sadly, "for every one knows. This process was slow and unsatisfactory, but it was the best the workmen then knew. These mirrors they set in elaborate frames of glass, silver, carved wood, mother-of-pearl, coral, tarsi, or into frames of painted wood. Some of them were sent by Venetian nobles ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... respects one of the most unsatisfactory of men and of writers. Yet it is hard to deny that to whatever quarter he turned, he caught the rising illumination and was shone upon by the spirit of the coming day. It was no copious and overflowing radiance, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... two epochs, and that in advanced life he looks on a different world from one which he can remember. To elucidate this fact has been my present object, and in attempting this task I cannot but feel how trifling and unsatisfactory my remarks must seem to many who have a more enlarged and minute acquaintance with Scottish life and manners than I have. But I shall be encouraged to hope for a favourable, or at least an indulgent, sentence ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... interest to hear. "In this place," he said with a deprecating gesture, "we grudge every hour that is not devoted to thought." He went on to inquire if we were following any particular line of study, and as our answers were unsatisfactory, he said that we could not do better than begin by attending the school of literature. "I observed," he said, "that you were listening to our Professor, Sylvanus, with attention. He is devoting himself to the development of ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... asked the same question of the hospital surgeon and got an unsatisfactory answer. It all depended, the doctor told him non-committally. He might easily have shown evidences of lost memory; on the other hand, it was quite possible, especially with chance acquaintances, that his manner ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... exactly described by the mediaeval scribe. Whether the philosopher and former tutor was implicated in the conspiracy of Piso may be doubted, but some ambiguous phrases he had used were reported to the Emeror, whose messenger demanded an explanation of their meaning. The reply of Seneca was either unsatisfactory or the tyrant had decided to be rid of his former guide. As in more recent times in Japan the condemned man was expected to be his own executioner, and Seneca opened his veins and allowed the life to ooze from them with a stoicism that was certainly heroic if not ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... No one ever saw him anywhere but at the club. At eight o'clock he went home to dinner, let us hope to the wife of his bosom, and at eleven he returned, and remained as long as there were men to play with. A tedious and unsatisfactory life he had, and it would have been well for him could his friends have procured on his behoof the comparative ease of a stool in a counting-house. But, as no such Elysium was opened to him, the major went on accepting the smaller profits and ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... of houses, wherever one finds them in New England towns, are very apt to be cheerless and unsatisfactory. They have neither the luxury of the mansion-house nor the comfort of the farm-house. They are rarely kept at an agreeable temperature. The mansion-house has large fireplaces and generous chimneys, and is open to the sunshine. The farm-house ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... campaign speaking, was Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts. He had a series of appointments in New York State, but on account of some emergency cancelled them all. The national and State committees selected me to fill his appointments. The most unsatisfactory and disagreeable job in the world is to meet the appointments of a popular speaker. The expectations of the audience have been aroused to a degree by propaganda advertising the genius and accomplishments of the ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... the shortness of time since receiving the more important of these documents will prevent doing justice to the very elaborate and extended material which is at hand; but it is with the hope that interest and cooperation may be awakened in Dr. Le Plongeon and his labors, that this crude and unsatisfactory statement, and imperfect and hasty reference to ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... have gone wrong. Yesterday I got unsatisfactory in history, and in arithmetic to-day I couldn't get a single sum right. I'm frightfully worried about missing that gymnastic lesson. It will be all right if Mother gives me the money to-morrow, for if she goes herself she will certainly find ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... twenty-six letters altogether. It was surprising how many women were willing, even anxious, to ally themselves with "an ex-seafaring man of steady habbits." But most of the applicants were of unsatisfactory types. As Captain Perez expressed it, "There's too many of ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... and reader part company. But frequently they are something worse, being nothing but hollow shells without any kernel. The author himself has no clear perception of what he means, contents himself with vague ideas, which if expressed in plain language would be unsatisfactory even ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... them all down and made a book of them, which it is said was printed by John Worthington & Son in the Strand, London, in 1712, under the name of "Ye Melodious Rhymes of Mother Goose." But even this story of Martha Gooch is based upon very meager and unsatisfactory evidence. ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... to the consideration of the articles with which Asia supplied Rome; these, as may be easily imagined, were principally articles of luxury. The murrhine cups, of the nature of which there has been much unsatisfactory discussion, according to Pliny, came from Karmania in Parthia; from Parthia they came to Egypt, and thence to Rome. It is probable, however, that they came, in the first instance, from India, as they are expressly mentioned by the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, as brought down from ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... She was so used to unsure people who took on a new being with every new influence. Her Uncle Tom was always more or less what the other person would have him. In consequence, one never knew the real Uncle Tom, only a fluid, unsatisfactory flux with a ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... strollers as happened to be gathered, in Athens, perhaps at the Panathenaic festival. The repertoire of each stroller would vary indefinitely from those of all the others. One man knew this chant, as modified or made by himself; other men knew others, equally unsatisfactory. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... A favourite omen is the simple device of taking some rice or juari in the hand and counting the grains. Contrary to the usual rule, even numbers are considered lucky and odd ones unlucky. If the first result is unsatisfactory a second or third trial may be made. If a winnowing basket or millstone be let fall and drop to the right hand it is a lucky omen, and similarly if a flower from Devi's garland should fall to the right ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... recollections, pressed upon Mm, and his heart was once or twice upon the point of falling back into the fresh impulses of its early humanity, when the trial of tomorrow threw him once more into a gloom, that settled him down into a resentful but unsatisfactory determination to discharge the duty he ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Prohack soothingly. "Perhaps not a bad thing. There's nothing like an unsatisfactory holiday for reconciling us all to a life of toil, ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... some scientific person would investigate the matter in a strictly rational spirit; though it is certainly difficult to see in what directions such investigations could be fruitful. Still it seems to me strange and unsatisfactory that so little should be known about the origin and nature of so ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of disaffected colonists, whose loyalty had been seriously impaired by the recent victories of their kinsmen. The attitude of many in the districts through which the Cape lines of communication passed was already very unsatisfactory. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... a basket containing, in the words of the programme, "a little pig" was slung. About thirty men stood to the front, as would-be possessors of "porcus." Each of the thirty, as valiant heroes as ever trod a plank or fisted handspike, tried and failed—and tried again with a like unsatisfactory result. Piggy still lay nestled in his swinging stye. True, once or twice he had cocked out his head with an enquiring squeal as the pole now and then received an extra hard shake, making the foundations ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... after a higher and a holier life, but the fight for necessaries, for food, raiment, and shelter, is too incessant for them to indulge much in contemplation. They have a dim idea of a future life, but none of them can give you anything but a very unsatisfactory idea of their religion. They observe certain forms and ceremonies, because their fathers did, and because the Brahmins tell them. Of real, vital, practical religion, as we know it, they have little or no knowledge. Ask any common labourer or one of the low castes about immortality, about ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... down and write pleasantly of the European crisis? And, if it were needed, herein lies another indictment against the telephone. I was engaged in an argument, which, if not in itself serious, was at least concerned with a serious enough subject, the unsatisfactory nature of human riches; and from that highly moral discussion have I been lured, by the accidental sight of the word "telephone," into the writing of matter which can have the effect only of exciting to frenzy ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... apply for accommodation, which is readily given. Here is erected a wind-mill, which pumps the water from the lake into shallow reservoirs, where it evaporates and leaves a layer of coarse salt on the bottom. These people drink water that is disagreeably brackish and unsatisfactory to one unaccustomed to it, but which they say has become more acceptable to them, from habitual use, than purely fresh water. This spot, is the healthiest and most favorable for the prolific production of certain forms of insect life I ever was in, and I spend the liveliest ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... mesmerising a lad, but had found it impossible to recall him to his normal condition. So, securing him by a leather strap fastened round his waist, he led him through the streets of Paris to my rooms. There we both tried our powers upon him, the result being very unsatisfactory. The youth, feeling himself freed from one operator and not subjected by the other, refused allegiance to either, and, being of a pugnacious temperament, he squared up and commenced striking out at both of us. It was not without considerable difficulty that I re-mesmerised him completely, ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... native peasantry everywhere sang Erse songs in praise of Tyrconnel, who would, they doubted not, soon reappear to complete the humiliation of their oppressors. [186] The viceroy had scarcely returned to Dublin, from his unsatisfactory tour, when he received letters which informed him that he had incurred the King's serious displeasure. His Majesty—so these letters ran—expected his servants not only to do what he commanded, but to do it from the heart, and with a cheerful countenance. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... after a startled glance at the clock, either stammered, "O mother, I forgot!" or else rattled off an unsatisfactory excuse. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... time past his letters have been most unsatisfactory. He has seemed depressed and discouraged. What word I have received from him during the past few months has been of such a character as to lead one to form the gravest suspicions. His letters have been short and hurried—written, evidently, under great ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... story was unsatisfactory. Here was a set of new characters who were become inordinately prominent and who persisted in remaining so to the end; and back yonder was an older set who made a large noise and a great to-do for a little while and then suddenly played out utterly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "I would not exchange the experience of the past decade for all the former years of worldly dissipation and pleasure put together. They have all been unsatisfactory. This is quite the opposite, and, better still, it is the enjoyment of indescribable peace and delight. You are not going to be much longer in this world. Mrs. R——, I beg of you to seek the Lord whilst he may still be found. ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... good opinion of the nonentities One seed of a piece of folly will lurk and sprout to confound us Secrets throw on the outsiders the onus of raising a scandal She did not detest the Countess because she could not like her Thus does Love avenge himself on the unsatisfactory Past Touching a nerve Unfeminine of any woman to speak continuously anywhere Vulgarity in others ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... them, contain nothing but carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, while animal fibers contain in addition to these elements some compounds of nitrogen. The presence of these nitrogen compounds influences the action of the chlorine and produces unsatisfactory results. For animal fibers it is therefore necessary to discard chlorine as a bleaching agent, and to substitute a substance which will have a less disastrous action upon the fibers. Such a substance is to be had in sulphurous acid. When sulphur burns, as in a match, it gives off disagreeable ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... read the Bible and neighbours dropping in occasionally to read a chapter to one who is unable to read, but where you are distinctly told that the wish is most decidedly to support the clergyman, and answers not unsatisfactory are given upon main points, what difference remains between the two cases I have put that can furnish matter for fair argument, with a man from education, &c., disposed to take a different view of the whole question? Add to this, that I cannot appeal to the universal practice of the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Austro-Hungarian note of July 23, regard being had to the attitude hitherto adopted by Serbia, represent the minimum of what is necessary for the establishment of permanent peace with the southeastern monarchy, the Serbian answer must be regarded as unsatisfactory. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... Wall Street was convinced that he was "unsafe," and sadly shook its head over his "impetuosity." When Wall Street stamps a man "unsafe," the last word in condemnation has been said. It was an even shorter time before the politicians found him unsatisfactory. "The breach between Mr. Roosevelt and the politicians was, however, inevitable. His rigid insistence upon the maintenance and the extension of the merit system alone assured the discontent which precedes dislike," wrote another observer. "The era of patronage mongering in the petty offices ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... in, brusquely, "don't trouble! I should make a most unsatisfactory father confessor." He spoke quickly. His color was still high, but not of annoyance. His suspense was transformed into unpleasant certainty; but the exchange left him surer of himself. His perplexity had dropped to a quiet sense of ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... of breaking the truce rested more with the French than the English. But a mere truce, where no real peace is looked for on either side, is but an unsatisfactory state of affairs at best; and although both countries were sufficiently exhausted by recent wars and the ravages of the plague to desire the interlude prolonged, yet hostilities of one kind or another never really ceased, and the struggles between the rival lords ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in Ezra x., showing that he does not regard himself as the slave, but as the master, of his material. Whatever may be thought of the view that he has reversed the chronological order of Ezra and Nehemiah, the book undoubtedly contains misplaced passages. Ezra x. is a very unsatisfactory conclusion to the account of Ezra, whereas Neh. viii.-x., which deal with the work of Ezra and its issue in a covenant, form an admirable sequel to Ezra x., and have almost certainly been misplaced. [Footnote 1: Unless ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... content, and spirit, to which in succession he is to devote his attention. It is hoped that the book will give definiteness and delight to literary study, which, for lack of such a guide, has so often been vague, unsatisfactory, and discouraging. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... on purpose, she could not have better freshly riveted his chains. That pensive simplicity, with the smile of heartfelt satisfaction at giving pleasure to anybody, were more and more engaging as her spirits recovered their tone, and the most unsatisfactory consideration which Rachel carried away that evening was that Alexander Keith being really somewhat the senior, if the improvement in Fanny's spirits were really owing to his presence, the objection on the score of age would not hold. But, thought Rachel, Colonel Keith being ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which they had been made subservient, and partly because, even where the effects upon certain abnormal constitutions were genuinely produced, the effects when fairly examined and analysed, were very unsatisfactory—not to be relied upon for any systematic truthfulness or any practical purpose, and rendered very mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitions they tended to produce. Zee received my answers with much benignant attention, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Carlisle, nephew of the admiral, and son of the grand aunt of the poet. Like his mother this Earl aspired to be a poet, and his tragedy, The Father's Revenge, received some commendation from Dr. Johnson; but his relations with his illustrious kinsman were from the first unsatisfactory. In answer to Dr. Glennie's appeal, he exerted his authority against the interruptions to his ward's education; but the attempt to mend matters led to such outrageous exhibitions of temper that he said to the master, "I can have nothing ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... a delightful companion, was a very unsatisfactory politician—nominally, indeed, a Liberal, but full of qualifications and exceptions. When Mr. Gathorne Hardy was raised to the peerage at the crisis of the Eastern Question in 1878, and thereby vacated his seat for the University of Oxford, Henry Smith came forward ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... hastily framed and passed laws this one proved unsatisfactory and a second one, with more detailed provisions ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... experience the powerful action exerted upon the human system by the Buxton Medicinal Thermal Water, and the unsatisfactory results arising from its indiscriminate and incautious use, either in the form of baths or by taking it internally, I have in the following pages, as briefly and succinctly as possible, endeavoured to make some practical suggestions for the guidance of those ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... a season the political career of the Honourable Alberic de Crecy. While the Liberal party at Darlford were suffering under the daily inflictions of Mr. Rigby's slashing style, and the post brought them very unsatisfactory prospects of a champion, one offered himself, and in an address which intimated that he was no man of straw, likely to recede from any contest in which he chose to embark. The town was suddenly placarded with a letter to the Independent Electors ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... Perhaps we were not the first to discover it, but we certainly did find it out,—and this fact was, that housekeeping costs money. At the end of every week we counted up our expenditures—it was no trouble at all to count up our receipts—and every week the result was more unsatisfactory. ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... to rags, we trust we are sufficiently in the mode to laugh contemptuously at such abominations)—oh! reader, quit your lighter recreations; seek not for merriment in fictitious humour; it is a poor, unsatisfactory diet, weak and watery; but find substantial drollery from the fluttering of tatters—laugh, and with the crowing joy, grow sleek and lusty at the writhings and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... who could command them, and whom they could not command. He was free from the caste prejudices which caused many even good patriots of that date to hold the masses in horror. If he had prejudices they were against the men of his own order. Once, in summing up the results of an unsatisfactory general election, he wrote: "A dozen marquises, two dozen counts, without reckoning barons and cavalieri—it was enough to drive one mad!" When he had to do with men born of the people, he instinctively treated them ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... him; he left home at an early hour this afternoon, and has not since returned. Most of his domestics, who were 'Glippers,' have long ago made their escape. The watchmen in the course of the night came in with equally unsatisfactory reports—not a trace of the Vrouw ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... had so little faith in his own authority that he dared not exercise it in a manifestly righteous cause, Henry might repudiate papal authority altogether. Nevertheless, in spite of all Gardiner's skill and vigour—and he showed himself deficient in neither—the result was unsatisfactory. A commission was obtained for Wolsey with Campeggio; but it was not absolute. The decision they might arrive at could not take effect till referred to ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... among the Kukuanas, my good friend Infadoos, we do as the Kukuanas do," I said majestically, and turned round quickly to address Good, who was tramping along sullenly behind, his mind fully occupied with unsatisfactory attempts to prevent his flannel shirt from flapping in the evening breeze. To my astonishment I butted into Umbopa, who was walking along immediately behind me, and very evidently had been listening with the greatest ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... from these unsatisfactory violin makers to violin players: I know nothing of the great Corelli's personal history; his pupil Geminiani is said to have led a life full of romance. Philidor spent his years chiefly in the intrigues of chess-playing. The great ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... something a little unsatisfactory in the countenance of this light-haired youth, with the sharpish up-turned nose. Throughout our interview he said next to nothing, and smiled lazily to himself, like a man listening to a child's solemn nonsense, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... knowledge of Zanoni, picked up in the various lounging-places and resorts that he frequented, were unsatisfactory to Glyndon. That night Viola did not perform at the theatre; and the next day, still disturbed by bewildered fancies, and averse to the sober and sarcastic companionship of Mervale, Glyndon sauntered musingly into the public gardens, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... WM. STUCKLEY published Some Anatomical Observations made upon the Dissection of an Elephant; but each of the above essays is necessarily unsatisfactory, and little has since been done to supply their defects. One of the latest and most valuable contributions to the subjects, is a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy, on the 18th of Feb., 1847, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... first program and drifted back into afternoon society by degrees; a plan of defensive campaign highly approved by Mrs. McLane, who detested lack of finesse. The winter was an unsatisfactory one for Madeleine altogether. Society would not have bored her so much perhaps if that secret enchanting background had remained intact. But her intercourse with Masters was necessarily sporadic. Her conscience had never troubled her for receiving his visits, for her husband ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... were assuming one of the characters in a mysterious romance, such as unfolded itself only in books or in Boston; but thrilling as it was, it was nevertheless extremely unsatisfactory. ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the south-west branch proving equally unsatisfactory, Oxley determined to leave the river and strike for the coast in the neighbourhood of Cape Northumberland, anticipating that on this course he would intersect any river rising in these marshes and falling into the sea between Spencer's Gulf and Cape Otway. The boats were ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... and it is questionable whether sufficient revenue can be raised from this source properly to support the government without seriously interfering with our foreign commerce. The internal revenue has many unsatisfactory phases. The income tax has been added to an imperfect system of taxation, instead of being substituted for the antiquated personal-property tax. Taxes on franchises, corporations, and inheritances are among those more recently introduced ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... satisfactory and desirable. So long as the work is done it makes little difference who does it. Every attempt to bring any of these agencies into closer touch with the farm community is to be welcomed most heartily. But beyond a certain limit this promiscuous work must be unsatisfactory. The efforts and interests of any one social agency are bound to be partial. Indeed the more effective such an agency is, the more partial it is likely to be. Intensity is gained at the expense of breadth. The need for federation exists in the desirability of securing both the ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... her twice. She had been quite passive on each occasion, watching him ironically with a sort of dry amusement. She had given him no sign that she cared for him, and their conversation had always been bare and unsatisfactory. Once she had said to ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... he had received this very unsatisfactory epistle, the Master of Ravenswood, while walking up the High Street of Edinburgh, was jostled by a person, in whom, as the man pulled off his hat to make an apology, he recognized Lockhard, the confidential domestic ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... anxiety, and desire to please sitters, frequently tends to produce a cloudy mental state in which the ideas in the mind of the medium blend with the spirit communication, and thus produces a most unsatisfactory result, and one which is apt to confuse the minds of the sitters and sometimes actual arouse suspicion that the medium is trying to practice deception. For this reason the young medium should not seek the attendance of persons desiring ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... They left the unsatisfactory witness and rushed to the corner around which De Launay had vanished. Here they found a man or two who had seen the galloping horse and its rider. But, as following on foot was manifestly impossible, one of them rushed to a telephone while others ran back to get a police automobile and ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... and in the professions. This has changed her attitude toward her original occupation of housewife and is a psychological fact of great importance. She has become more industrial and individualized, and as a result has declined to live in unsatisfactory relations with man, so that divorce has become more frequent. In part this is also caused by her inability to give up petty irresponsibility while claiming equality. Finally, the declining birth rate ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... whereas the barometer light was only a glow. Pondering over this, Hauksbee tried various experiments, revolving pieces of amber, flint, steel, and other substances in his exhausted air-pump receiver, with negative, or unsatisfactory, results. Finally, it occurred to him to revolve an exhausted glass tube itself. Mounting such a globe of glass on an axis so that it could be revolved rapidly by a belt running on a large wheel, he found that by holding ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and the candelabrum removed. Nor was the kitchen chair any longer to be seen near the book shelves. This fact, small as it was, caused me an instant of chagrin. I had intended to look again at the book which I had examined with such unsatisfactory results the time before. A glance showed me that this book had been pushed back level with the others; but I remembered its title, and, had the means of reaching it been at hand, I should certainly have stolen ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... a teacher works in a school in a rural district are so unsatisfactory that they deserve special mention. There are 245 schools in Wales and 2,199 in England with an average attendance of less than 40; such schools are staffed by a head teacher, assisted, in all probability, only by a supplementary teacher. Education suffers in these circumstances as a result ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... America intelligence is as usual confused and unsatisfactory. By way of England we have dates from Montevideo to the 12th Oct. The war in the Banda Oriental was terminated. Oribe had retreated to his country house at Rinton. The Argentine forces were reported to have joined Urquiza. The Orientals ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Lord Ashbridge, and the fact of Michael being his unsatisfactory son, stiffened him, and he had to ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... countermarched in the snow, in the mud, in the dust of Polish plains, picking up distinction and advancement on all the roads of North-eastern Europe. Meantime, Captain Feraud, despatched southwards with his regiment, made unsatisfactory war in Spain. It was only when the preparations for the Russian campaign began that he was ordered north again. He left the country of mantillas ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... generally been known as "the Kid," "Stumpy's boy," "the Coyote" [Footnote: Coyote: also called prairie wolf.] (an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck's endearing diminutive of "the little cus." But these were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under another influence. Gamblers and adventurers are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had brought "the luck" to Roaring Camp. It was certain ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... would the building of a house. Much school work and much home training is vague, indefinite, uncertain, done without a clear understanding of the needs or of the results. We therefore waste time, years of the child's life, and the results are unsatisfactory. ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... brought up to me. The name, de X., was that of a good family, well known in Normandy and in the political and scientific world. But instead of one of the faces I was prepared to see, I beheld that of a most unsatisfactory member of the family, whom I instantly remembered having seen in Algeria, wearing a Belgian uniform, and acting as reporter for the Constitutionnel newspaper. He entered ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... who had found the Simiacine was eager, restless, full of suspicion. To the others the scheme obviously presented itself in a different light. Jack Meredith was dilettante, light-hearted, and unsatisfactory. It was impossible to arouse any enthusiasm in him—to make him take it seriously. Guy Oscard was gravely indifferent. He wanted to get rid of a certain space of time, and the African forest, containing as it did the only excitement that his large heart knew, was as good ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... the text for evacuating the kingdom of Narsinga, or Bijanagur, is very unsatisfactory, as it in fact bordered on their dominions. More probably they could not agree on the partition, each being afraid of the others acquiring an ascendancy, and they satisfied themselves with the enormous spoils of the capital. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... M. d'Escorval's son, the peasants became extremely cautious. He questioned them, but could obtain only vague and unsatisfactory answers. A peasant, when interrogated, will never give a response which he thinks will be displeasing to his questioner; he is ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... was still unsatisfactory to Cecilia, who could frame to herself no possible reason for a visit so extraordinary, and so totally inconsistent with his declarations ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... practical demonstrations the study of color will be confusing unless it is understood at the outstart that pure prismatic colors can seldom be found in manufactured pigments, hence any demonstration of the theory of color composition is usually unsatisfactory. ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... condition of human infirmity. It may be doubted whether Mr. Quickenham's mind was equally philosophic on the matter. He could hardly tell why he went to church, or why he stayed away. But he was aware when he went of the presence of some unsatisfactory feelings of imposture on his own part, and he was equally alive, when he did not go, to a sting of conscience in that he was neglecting a duty. But George Brattle had arranged it all in a manner that was ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... not a hopeful manner of looking at things for the destined master of Cotenoir. M. Lenoble's letters to the anxious folks at Beaubocage became, about this time, somewhat brief and unsatisfactory. He no longer gave ample details of his student-life—he no longer wrote in his accustomed good spirits. His letters seemed ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... that the family had led seemed to have prevented Walter from making much progress as a sculptor,—a profession he had thought of while in Italy,—and his letters were somewhat vague and unsatisfactory as ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... I was indeed alone, he threw open a cupboard in one corner, and brought forth a variety of food, placing this upon a wide shelf near at hand. Occasionally our eyes met, and I knew he was slowly making up his mind regarding me. This silent scrutiny could not have been altogether unsatisfactory, for, when he finally drew up an empty box and sat down, he was prepared ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... seeing Port Western from Arthur's Seat, which had one of those unsatisfactory woody summits, of which it is difficult exactly to ascertain the highest part. We passed a spring of water near the south-eastern foot, and in a level beyond were some ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... have answered: "To make this unsatisfactory creature love you;" but her words were, "To civilize ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you, Captain Lawry, when you are ready," said Mr. Sherwood, after the question had been disposed of in this unsatisfactory manner. ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... by enacting that no small notes should be stamped after a certain period; the other by allowing those already in circulation to run a certain course till a fixed period, and prohibiting any new ones to be created. In three years the first of these modes might lead to unsatisfactory results; for if the power of stamping were to remain unlimited during that period, so considerable a number might be stamped as to subject the country, in its ultimate endeavours to get rid of them, to all its present ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... an unsatisfactory way of painting a portrait, I showed my father a large and really excellent photograph of Aniela, at which he looked with the keenest interest. I was no less interested in the study of his face, in which I saw not only the roused artist, but also the refined connoisseur ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... because his advice as to matters not strictly within his own department was not taken by his master; to leave the Board of Admiralty, for example, because the finances were in disorder, or the Board of Treasury because the foreign relations of the kingdom were in an unsatisfactory state. It was, therefore, by no means unusual to see in high office, at the same time, men who avowedly differed from one another as widely as ever Pulteney differed from Walpole, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Yet unsatisfactory as these brief interviews were, they revived in Miss Keene the sympathizing curiosity and interest she had always felt for this singular man, and which had been only held in abeyance at the beginning of their exile; in fact, she found herself thinking of him more during the ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... out in the morning in a hired car and spent more than a couple of hours with her. Then for a short time he was closeted with Sir Malcolm, who, referring to the interview afterwards, described him as "infernally close and unsatisfactory"; and finally, in company with the young baronet and Cicely Farmond, he ate a ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... for their own women. But they are, except in rare cases, unsatisfactory helpmeets for American girls. It is impossible to touch on more than a side or two of this subject. But as an illustration the following ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... bitter enemy of Conkling, had been made the Secretary of State; Garfield had made some appointments very obnoxious to Conkling—among them the Collector of the Port of New York—and, generally, conditions were very unsatisfactory. Arthur entered the office bent on restoring harmonious conditions in the party, as far as he could. He did not allow himself to be controlled by any faction, but seemed animated by one desire, and that was to give a good administration and unite ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... of the attempt at tariff reduction indicate the extent to which political decay and especially Democratic demoralization had gone. As it passed the House, the Wilson bill left both raw and refined sugar on the free list. This was unsatisfactory to the Louisiana sugar growers, who desired a protective duty on the raw product, and was objected to by the Louisiana senators. On the other hand, the American Sugar Refining Company, usually known as the "Sugar Trust," desired free raw materials but sought protective duties on refined ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
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