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Function   /fˈəŋkʃən/   Listen
Function

noun
1.
(mathematics) a mathematical relation such that each element of a given set (the domain of the function) is associated with an element of another set (the range of the function).  Synonyms: map, mapping, mathematical function, single-valued function.
2.
What something is used for.  Synonyms: purpose, role, use.  "Ballet is beautiful but what use is it?"
3.
The actions and activities assigned to or required or expected of a person or group.  Synonyms: office, part, role.  "The government must do its part" , "Play its role"
4.
A relation such that one thing is dependent on another.  "Price is a function of supply and demand"
5.
A formal or official social gathering or ceremony.
6.
A vaguely specified social event.  Synonyms: affair, occasion, social function, social occasion.  "An occasion arranged to honor the president" , "A seemingly endless round of social functions"
7.
A set sequence of steps, part of larger computer program.  Synonyms: procedure, routine, subprogram, subroutine.



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"Function" Quotes from Famous Books



... of this nature, for its events are to be classed rather among achievements of the human spirit than as objective incidents, and its interest depends only in a secondary sense on circumstance or movement in the public eye. The special function of the present book in the growing library of Browning literature is to give such a biography of Browning's mind, associating his poems with their date and origin, as may throw some light on his inward development. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... encouragement to that which brought about the formation of the Queen's company in 1582-83. Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels, who chose the players for the Queen's company in 1583, held the same position in 1591, and evidently exercised a similar function in forwarding the promotion of Lord Strange's company, and the discarding of the Queen's company for Court purposes in the latter year. It is significant that Henslowe, the owner of the Rose Theatre, where Lord Strange's players commenced ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... sociological essays. Mankind in the Making dealt very largely with education directed to a particular end, but in the book I am now considering may be found certain outlets for the expression of the less consistently strenuous. Education, whether of individual children in the home or regarded as a function of the State, offers continual perplexities that only the most resolute can confront day by day with renewed zeal; the problems of collective ownership are less confused by psychology, and the broad principles may be adopted and the energy ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... relation of this kind is, I think, very possible, if we bear in mind that all the god-figures of the manuscripts have more or less of a calendric and chronologic significance in their chief or in their secondary function. ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas

... seven dioceses, Fnen, Laaland and Falster, Aarhus, Aalborg, Viborg and Ribe, while the primate is the bishop of Zealand, and resides at Copenhagen, but his cathedral is at Roskilde. The bishops have no political function by reason of their office, although they may, and often do, take a prominent part in politics. The greater part of the pastorates comprise more than one parish. The benefices are almost without exception provided ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... custom at Colby Hall, all of the old officers and those newly elected were invited to participate in a dinner given by Captain Dale. This was held in a private dining room of the school, and was usually a function looked forward to with much pleasure by those ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield

... much of her own great mundane feather, and whom the homeliness in question didn't, no doubt, quite equally provide for—that would be, to balance, just in a manner Charlotte's very most charming function, from the moment Charlotte could be got ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... acquisition, if it does no more than impart grace to manners; but its function does not stop here. For propriety, springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever a graceful expression of sympathy. Its requirement is that we should ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... Kingdom, as Mediator, is not of this world, but purely spiritual; and so the officers in His house must be spiritual; so that the civil power of Church men is a thing inconsistent and incompatible with that sacred and spiritual function. Upon which consideration, how palpable a sin will it be to subject to, or accept of any oath that may be imposed by the said British Parliament, for the maintenance and support of such an Union, or for recognoseing, owning and acknowledging the authority ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... in regard to the result. He felt that the end had been accomplished by the work which had already been done; and the convention itself seemed to him somewhat unreal and unmeaning. It had in his mind not much more than the function of announcing a result which he felt to have been arrived at already in the canvassing of lists of delegates in which he had taken part at Mrs. Wilson's. Until the thing was formally announced, however, it was impossible to be ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... function of a field-secretary is organization. This work implies the double duty to spread, by an intelligent and well thought-out propaganda, the knowledge of the Home and Foreign Missions and of the responsibility it entails, and to found and maintain efficient the various societies established to promote ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... man of education and private means; he belonged to a much higher profession, in fact he was a "jogger" travelling about from place to place—"globetrotting" from capital city to watering-place—all over the world in the exercise of his function. I had wondered if his accent was American (petroleum-American), or German, or Italian, or Russian, or what. Now I wondered no longer, for the jogger is cosmopolitan. When he had exhausted his lozenge he told me how many times ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... function of nearly all architectural ornament. It is, in the first place, to aid the general expression and balance of the building, and give point and emphasis where needed; and, in the second place, to furnish something ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... that ply the turgid Skeena reach the head of navigation. A land-recording office and a mining recorder Hazleton boasted as proof of its civic importance. The mining recorder, who combined in himself many capacities besides his governmental function, undertook to put through Bill's land deal. He knew ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... had three sons,—the first named Bruma, who came into life with five heads. He was endowed with the power of creating all inferior beings. The name of the second was Vixnu, appointed lord of providence and preserver of all things formed by Bruma. The third was named Rutrem, whose function or inclination was to destroy all things his other two brothers had made and preserved. Rutrem, like his brother Bruma, had five heads. Bruma assumed the form of a stag; and, to punish him for a serious crime he committed when in that shape, his brothers and thirty thousand millions of gods punished ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... and Amyl Alcohols and their Ethereal Salts, Acetone — Barbet's Ether, Methyl Alcohol and Acetone Rectifying Stills. The Uses of Alcohol in Manufactures, etc. — List of Industries in which Alcohol is used, with Key to Function of Alcohol in each Industry. The Uses of Alcohol for Lighting, ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech

... the body that develops rapidly during these momentous years is the bust. The breasts become large, and not only add to the beauty of the girl's person, but also manifestly prepare by increase of their glandular elements for the maternal function of suckling infants. ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... proportion are needed rigorously only on the exterior. Within, general beauty no longer dominates, but individual life. If we look at the interior of the human body we find no symmetry, no arrangement but that demanded by the function of the organs. The brain, it is true, has two symmetrical lobes, because the brain is destined to a life of relation, to the life of intelligence. But in their individual functions the life of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... glorify the dread Being who had produced all these marvels, and to fulfil my time in worship, praise and contentment. It mattered not whether my impressions were derived through organs called ears, and were communicated by others called those of speech, or whether each function was performed by means of sensations and agencies too subtle to be detected by ordinary means. It was enough for me that I heard and understood, and felt the goodness and glory of God. I may say that my first great lessons in true philosophy were obtained in these ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... spirit adheres to all who have truly acquired it. "Nita at the Passing Show" is a witty and entertaining parody by Mr. Smith, illustrating the theatrical hobby of Miss Gerner; one of the latest United recruits. The Boys' Herald discharges a peculiar and important function in the life of the associations, connecting the present with the past, and furnishing us with just ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... and women, depends largely on their rational solution of the sexual problem. Sex and the part it plays in human life cannot be ignored. In the case of animals sex plays a simpler and less complex role. It is a purely natural and instinctive function whose underlying purpose is the perpetuation of the species. It is not complicated by the many incidental phenomena which result, in man's case, from psychologic, economic, moral and religious causes. Climate, social conditions, ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton

... liver is the lazaret of bile, But very rarely executes its function, For the first passion stays there such a while, That all the rest creep in and form a junction, Like knots of vipers on a dunghill's soil—[168] Rage, fear, hate, jealousy, revenge, compunction— So that all mischiefs spring up from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... important position as counsellor ([Greek: paredros]) of the emperor in legal matters. It was his function, also, to formulate and ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius

... I could see through the great windows of the first floor into the brilliantly illuminated audience chamber of Than Kosis. The immense hall was crowded with nobles and their women, as though some important function was in progress. There was not a guard in sight without the palace, due, I presume, to the fact that the city and palace walls were considered impregnable, and so I ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... trial of Glengarry, in Scotland, for murder in a duel, which is, perhaps, explicable by this extraordinary attitude: A lady of great beauty was called as a witness and came into court heavily veiled. Before administering the oath, Lord Eskgrove, the judge (to whom this function belongs in Scotland), gave her ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... from each, the freedmen would elect representatives to regional elective councils, and these in turn would elect representatives to a central electoral council which would elect a Supreme People's Legislative Council. This would not only function as the legislative body, but would also elect a Manager-in-Chief, who would appoint the Chiefs of Management, who, in turn, ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... apropos of nothing. She continued to utter disjointed sentences from which I gathered a skeleton history of my soi distant sister's introduction of herself and of her pretensions. She had, it seemed, casually introduced herself at some garden-party or function of the sort, had represented herself as a sister of my own to whom a maternal uncle had left a fabulous fortune. She herself had suggested her being sheltered under my aunt's roof as a singularly welcome ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad

... sense, in a backwater of evolution: nearer the Spirit, farther from the hot press and conflict of the material world;—even in its times of highest activity, not in the van of the down-rush of Spirit into matter, as the western races have been in theirs;—but held apart to perform a different function. As if the Crest-Wave of Evolution needed what we might call Devachanic cycles of incarnation, and found them there during the Altaic manvantaras of manifestation. Not that their history has been empty of tragedies; it ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... news? He did not require to turn the idea twice over, but resolved, for many reasons, to adopt it. As he hurried to the railway station, he tried to recollect the hour at which the early train started; but his confused and excited mind refused to perform the function of memory. The Shannon ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... Principles of General Grammar, calls the relative pronouns "Conjunctive Adjectives." See Fosdick's Translation, p. 57. He also says, "The words who, which, etc. are not the only words which connect the function of a Conjunction with another design. There are Conjunctive Nouns and Adverbs, as well as Adjectives; and a characteristic of these words is, that we can substitute for them another form of expression in which shall be found the words who, which, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... treated with some reluctance a lady who had extensive bronchitis and a slight albuminuria. This woman was a mere skeleton, with every function out of order. I undertook her case with the utmost distrust, but I had the pleasure to find her fattening and reddening like others. Her cough left her, the albumen disappeared, and she became well enough to walk and ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell

... the animals through this mass, ten hours a day for three or four days, causes the various ingredients to become thoroughly mingled. The quicksilver finally gets hold of and concentrates the coveted metal. The quicksilver is afterwards extracted and reserved for continued use, performing the same function over and over again. There is, of course, a large percentage of quicksilver lost in the operation, and its employment in such quantities forms one of the heavy expenses ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... 'Wisdom of Solomon.' She always remains understood as a personification only; and has no direct influence on the mind of the unlearned multitude of Western Christendom, except as a godmother,—in which kindly function she is more and more accepted as times go on; her healthy influence being perhaps greater over sweet vicars' daughters in Wakefield—when Wakefield was,—than over the prudentest of the rarely prudent Empresses ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... to Julio as though it were a manifestation of pity. They were supposing him still exercising the only function of which he was capable; he wasn't good for anything else. On the other hand, these empty heads, still keeping something of their old appearance, now appeared animated by the grand sentiment of maternity—an abstract maternity which seemed ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of the arms develops in a curious fashion into a long coiled whip-lash, and in the act of breeding may then be transferred to the mantle-cavity of the female. Cuvier himself knew nothing of the nature or the function of this separated arm, and indeed, if I am not mistaken, it was he who mistook it for a parasitic worm. But Aristotle tells us of its use and its temporary development, and of its structure in detail, and his description tallies closely with the accounts ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... "attack." Julia had heard nothing from August yet. The "Hawk" still made his head-quarters in the house, but was now watching another quarry. Mrs. Anderson was able to scold as vigorously as ever, if, indeed, that function had ever been suspended. And just now she was engaged in scolding the teacher who had expelled Norman. The habit of fighting teachers was as chronic as her heart-disease. Norman had always been abused by the whole race of pedagogues. There was from the first a conspiracy against him, and now ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... principle in highly rarefied oxygen. With the usual logic of such thinkers, he dismisses the "eternal personal identity" because "If soul, spirit, mind, which are merely modes of sensation, be the attribute or function of nerve-tissue, it cannot possibly have any existence apart from its material organism!" How does he know this impossibility? If all the mind we know be from nerve-tissue, how does it appear that mind in other planets may not be another thing? ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... me, almost in shouts and signs, because of the wind across the open, that his worship dates from a function at which Paul Deroulede had spoken to him. "He spoke to everybody, an' then he spoke to me, as close to me as you and me; but it was him! I wanted an idea, and he ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... from those terrible automatic pistols, what a carnage there would be! It was frightful to think of. Why does the law permit those cowards' tools to be made and sold? A pistol is the one weapon that has no legitimate use. An axe, a knife—even a rifle, has some lawful function. But a pistol is an appliance for killing human beings. It has no other purpose whatever. A man who is found with house-breaking tools in his possession is assumed to be a house-breaker. Surely a man who carries a pistol convicts himself of ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... a letter to Putnam as a man who "when he is much interested, looks as if he were taking aim with his rifle." To some it seemed that one eye of Mr. Binkus was often drawing conclusions while the other was engaged with the no less important function ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... a more lugubrious function. When I arrived I found Caerlaverock, the Prime Minister, and the three other members of the Cabinet standing round a small fire in attitudes of nervous dejection. I remember it was a raw wet evening, ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... institutions, and raises, by anticipation, some other questions to which growing necessities will sooner or later compel the attention both of theoretical and of practical politicians. The chief of these last, is the distinction between the function of making laws, for which a numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting good laws made, which is its proper duty and cannot be satisfactorily fulfilled by any other authority: and the consequent need of a Legislative Commission, as a permanent ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... night, that from the eye his function takes, The ear more quick of apprehension makes; Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense, It pays the hearing double recompense:— Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found; Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound. But why unkindly didst ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... upon a time meeting a young woman who had come, unbidden by the hostess, to "write up" a social function where a number of celebrated ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... and no purposeful activity to fill even half an hour of it. In a matter of—probably—years, the Warlock should receive aid. She might be towed out of her orbit to space in which the Lawlor drive could function, or the crew might simply be taken off. But meanwhile, those on board were as completely frustrated as the colony. They could not do anything ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... "invite" is worthy of notice, and calls to mind a sentence used by a writer on Freud,[14] that "the activity of a human being is a constant function of his environment." We adults, who are so ready with our "Don't touch," must endeavour to remember how everything is shouting to a child: "Look at me, listen to me, come and fetch me, and find out all you can about me by every means in ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... held in the afternoon on the Proper Function of the National Association, led by Dr. M. Carey Thomas of Bryn Mawr and Dr. Anna E. Blount of Chicago. The first evening of the convention was designated as Jubilee Night and Dr. Shaw said in beginning her president's address: "The eighteen months which have elapsed since ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... teaching of Nature." You remember the beaver which a naturalist tells us "busied himself as earnestly in constructing a dam in a room up three pair of stairs in London as if he had been laying his foundation in a lake in Upper Canada. It was his function to build, the absence of water or of possible progeny was an accident for which he was not accountable." In the same manner did Miss Dearborn lay what she fondly imagined to be foundations in the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... shivering in the rain! Indeed, the facts of aboriginal life seem to indicate that dress is developed out of decorations. And when we remember that even among ourselves most think more about the fineness of the fabric than its warmth, and more about the cut than the convenience—when we see that the function is still in great measure subordinated to the appearance, we have further reason for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... Emeritus of Jefferson College, Phila., in his book, "I believe in God and in Evolution," on p. 48 says, "Here again you perceive such identity of function, that the thyroid gland of animals, when given as a remedy to man, performs precisely the same function as the human thyroid. Moreover, it is not the thyroid gland from the anthropoid apes that is used as a remedy but that from ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... nature of the disease. He will then see the need of a radical change in his whole life and walk, if his prayer-life, which is simply the pulse of the spiritual system, is to indicate health and vigour. God has so created us that the exercise of every healthy function causes joy. Prayer is meant to be as simple and natural as breathing or working to a healthy man. The reluctance we feel, and the failure we confess, are God's own voice calling us to acknowledge our disease, and to come to Him for the ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... the thing through twice. He laid it on the desk before him and stared at it as though it had some power to hypnotize him. A pulse of anger beat in his temple, but it was a more subdued anger than his quick temper usually produced. His mental processes had ceased to function normally as they sank beneath a wave of bewilderment such as had submerged them in the woods. Feebly, they ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... Mr. Pulitzer always retired to his cabin for a siesta. I use the word siesta, but as a matter of fact it is quite inadequate to describe the peculiar function for which I have chosen it as a label. What took place on these occasions was this: Mr. Pulitzer lay down on his bed, sometimes in pyjamas, but more often with only his coat and boots removed, and one of the secretaries, usually the ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... intermingled or relieved by those wild Alpine cries which characterize the songs of the mountaineers. The authorities of the town were early afoot, and, as is customary with the important agents of small concerns, they were exercising their municipal function with a bustle, which of itself contained reasonable evidence that they were of no great moment, and a gravity of mien with which the chiefs of a state might have believed it possible ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... vehement, at other times too remiss and slow. And so everything we do may be a success from one point of view, but a failure from many points of view; as to hit the mark one thing only is requisite, but one may miss it in various ways, as one may shoot beyond or too short. This then is the function of practical reason following nature, to prevent our passions going either too far or too short. For where from weakness and want of strength, or from fear and hesitation, the impetus gives in and abandons what is good, there ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... no use. This Germanic horde, which I saw pouring down across Belgium, bound for France, does not in retrospect seem to me a man-made, man-managed thing. It seems more like a great, orderly function of Nature; as ordained and cosmic as the tides of the sea or the sweep of a mighty wind. It is hard to believe that it was ever fashioned of thousands of separate atoms, so perfectly is it welded into a whole. It is harder still to accept it as a mutable and a mortal ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... if you like. It smells like a chemist's shop! Your proper place and function are in the court, and sentencing ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... colonist; and all men are not alike qualified for giving effect to the hidden capacities of nature. One system of natural advantages is designed to have a long precedency of others; and one race of men is selected and sealed for an eternal preference in this function of colonizing to the very noblest of their brethren. As colonization advances, that ground becomes eligible for culture—that nature becomes full of promise—which in earlier stages of the science was not so; because ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... spiritual anatomy of a man is displaced and the gall-bladder takes on the function of the heart, it is far from being well with him at the moment, and in these days it was very far from being well with Paul Armstrong. Yet the jaundiced fit served its turn, and even whilst its anguish burned and nauseated, he began to ask one wholesome question: 'For whose shortcoming, for whose ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... practically I am doing nothing, and a great number of people are doing very little more. The authorities are concentrated upon the creation of an army numerically vast, and for the rest they seem to think that the chief function of government is inhibition. Their available energy and ability is taxed to the utmost in maintaining the fighting line, and it is sheer greed for direction that has led to their systematic thwarting of civilian co-operation. Let me warn them of the boredom and irritation they are causing. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... description in Chapter III, a clear idea will have been obtained of the power house building and its adjuncts, as well as of the features which not only go to make it an architectural landmark, but which adapt it specifically for the vital function that it is called upon to perform. We now come to a review and detailed description of the power plant equipment in its general relation to the building, and "follow the power through" from the coal ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... modes of action. Crystals are inorganic matter which form, do not grow. They are mere symmetrical arrangements, not organic growths; and are produced by some law akin to chemical affinity, acting on the molecules of their constituent mass. They possess no vital function. They show no beginning or cessation of life. But, once locked up in their geometric solids, they remain permanently enduring forms—concessively inorganic, not functionally-endowed, matter. To speak, therefore, of the "germs of crystals," is using language ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... Huanuco, Ica, Junin, La Libertad, Lambayeque, Lima, Loreto, Madre de Dios, Moquegua, Pasco, Piura, Puno, San Martin, Tacna, Tumbes, Ucayali note: the 1979 constitution mandated the creation of regions (regiones, singular - region) to function eventually as autonomous economic and administrative entities; so far, 12 regions have been constituted from 23 of the 24 departments - Amazonas (from Loreto), Andres Avelino Caceres (from Huanuco, Pasco, Junin), ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... increases—if by intimacy may be denoted those relations which exist between master and man, or, better yet, between king and jester. I am to him no more than a toy, and he values me no more than a child values a toy. My function is to amuse, and so long as I amuse all goes well; but let him become bored, or let him have one of his black moods come upon him, and at once I am relegated from cabin table to galley, while, at the same time, I am fortunate to escape with my ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... relations are found, rather than places of preparation for the active work of life. This last character, indeed, they almost wholly lost when they ceased to have the training of ministers as their main function. Scarcely any man who can afford it now likes to refuse his son a college education if the boy wants it; but probably not one boy in one thousand can say, five years after graduating, that he has been helped by his college education in making his start in life. It may have been never so useful ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... the territories of the North-west have but one function—to haul. Pointer, setter, lurcher, foxhound, greyhound, Indian mongrel, miserable cur or beautiful Esquimaux, all alike are destined to pull a sled of some kind or other during, the months of snow and ice: all are destined to howl ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... to be appointed, who shall have command of all the troops in the State; or the department commander be authorized to assume, by virtue of his command, the function of military governor, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... Russell's Adam's apple, regardless of the blows that smashed into his face. He hammered home one jolt hard to the jaw and, as Russell's body grew limp, dragged himself from the relaxing hold and crouched on hands and knees, wheezing, spent, gulping air to his flattened lower lungs that refused to function. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... myth, probably as the ejector of Set who was also the enemy of Osiris. He is sometimes entirely in hawk form; more usually with a hawk's head, and in later times he appears as the infant son of Isis entirely human in form. {36} His special function is that of overcoming evil; in the earliest days the conqueror of Set, later as the subduer of noxious animals, figured on a very popular amulet, and lastly, in Roman times, as a hawk-headed warrior on horseback ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... and some of the Cresswells. They would come well fed and impressed with the charming hospitality of their hosts, and rather more than willing to see through those host's eyes. They would be in a hurry to return to some social function, and would give her work ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... was dotted by white fur islands; the rich velvet carpets, put down a few years before, had in fact disappeared from the entire house. A maid, anything but cordial, removed my wrap, looking me and it over very deliberately as she did so. I wondered if by mistake I had been bidden to a grand function—no, there were no ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... ordinary necessities of nature. [76] He boasted that he could send his soul out of his body, and recal it, when he pleased; and alternately appeared an inanimate corpse, and then again his life would return to him, and he appear capable of every human function as before. [77] He is said to have practised the ceremony of exorcising houses and fields, and thus rendering them fruitful and blessed. [78] He frequently uttered prophecies of events with such forms of ceremony and such sagacious judgment, that they seemed to ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... has for buyin' your own licker. As for seein' Jack Rainey, it's plumb impossible. He's got too full to visit folks or be visited by 'em; but he's upsta'rs on some blankets, an' if his reason is restored by tomorry, you sends up your kyard an' pays him your regyards—pendin' of which social function, take another drink. Barkeep, pump another dose into this stranger, an' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... unfortunate Committee sat under a quite exceptional cross fire. First, there was the king. The Censor is a member of his household retinue; and as a king's retinue has to be jealously guarded to avoid curtailment of the royal state no matter what may be the function of the particular retainer threatened, nothing but an express royal intimation to the contrary, which is a constitutional impossibility, could have relieved the Committee from the fear of displeasing the king by any proposal to abolish the ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw

... themselves into harmony with the new conditions; and by the continued survival of those individuals, only, which varied sufficiently in the right direction, the necessary modifications of structure or of function would be brought about, just as surely as man has been able to breed the greyhound to hunt by sight and the foxhound by scent, or has produced from the same wild plant such distinct forms as the cauliflower and ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... that body can be prevented by adequate checks from misusing its powers. Indeed, the common theory of the British Constitution was precisely that the House of Commons was 'the checking body.'[94] The whole problem is to secure a body which shall effectively discharge the function thus attributed in theory to the House of Commons. That will be done when the body is chosen in such a way that its interests are necessarily coincident with those of the community at large. Hence there is of course no difficulty ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... numerous class of human beings, who are their own masters, and spend every hour of the day at the choice of their discretion. To these we may add the persons who are partially so, and who, having occupied three or four hours of every day in discharge of some function necessarily imposed on them, at the striking of a given hour go out of school, and employ themselves in a certain industry or sport purely ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... daily life chemically differentiated. She endeavored to maintain her soul on a high level of orthodoxy, while her large, flat feet trod her round of household tasks. It was only when her best parlor, great empty room, was in demand for some social function like the church fair, that she felt her old dreams return and stimulate her as with some wine ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... jealousy against this scheme. They remembered that, by such gradual steps, King James had endeavored to introduce Episcopacy. Should the ears and eyes of men be once reconciled to the name and habit of bishops, the whole power of the function, they dreaded, would soon follow: the least communication with unlawful and anti-Christian institutions they esteemed dangerous and criminal. "Touch not, taste not, handle not;" this cry went out amongst them: and the king's ministers at last ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... to Mr. Hume's hotel. Give him that card, and bring me the answer. If you and the cabman must have a drink together, kindly defer the function until after ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... that way, Thyrsis told himself, after further reflection. In the human hive the male creature was not only the bearer of the seed he was also the worker. And so there was one more function he had to perform. All those fine frenzies of his, his ideals and his enthusiasms—they had served their purpose, and would fade; but before him there was still a future—a drab and dreary future ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... and was destitute of principle. Constructive politics were beyond his powers, and he was hopelessly ignorant of social movements. The real Europe of his time was to him a closed book; and while Napoleon was well served in every other function of state, because he himself could assist and supervise, he was wretchedly betrayed in the matter of permanent gains by diplomacy, in which he was personally a blunderer and a tyro. Talleyrand was a distinguished and typical aristocrat of the old French school, elegant, adroit, smooth-spoken, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... so. Well, our Colonel, I find, bought a packet of such cards, intended for admission to a religious function, at a shop in the Quai Massena. He cut out the centre, and, see here—" The Commissary turned it over, and showed a piece of paper pasted neatly over the back; this he tore off, and there, concealed behind it, lay a folded cheque, with only the place where the ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... kinds, the highest function of all being a wedding procession, where the brilliancy varies according to the amount of means that can be expended by the prospective bridegroom. In one afternoon we witnessed eight of these spectacles; the first was given by a man of wealth who was seated on an elephant, the palanquin ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... with a modesty very ungrateful to me, had abdicated his office of host, and I was the hapless president, fulfilling the abhorred. function of calling people to their feet and making them speak. When I came to Clemens I introduced him with the cordial admiring I had for him as one of my greatest contributors and dearest friends. Here, I said, in sum, was a humorist who never ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the lower creation, it seemed obvious to infer that as had been his origin, so also would be his destiny—the destiny of the beasts that perish. The Kraft und Stoff school of physicists proclaimed aloud that consciousness was only a function of the brain, and would come to a stop together with the mechanism which produced it; as Haeckel expressed it, "The various functions of the soul are bound up with certain special parts of the brain, and cannot be exercised unless these are in a normal condition; ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... function of Modesty, then, being this recognition of place, her second is the recognition of law, and delight in it, for the sake of law itself, whether her part be to assert it, or obey. For as it belongs to all ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... of the man from Leavenworth was lighted as though for some function. There were no curtains at the windows, and even had there been, the shock of this spectacle which went on before our eyes would have been sufficient to set aside all laws and conventions. With hands in pockets we stood and gazed blankly in at the open window. There was a sound of revelry ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... this request with precision on Ina's nastiest moments, but she always rose, unabashed, and went, motherly and dutiful, to hear devotions, as if that function and the process of living ran ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale

... accent of words be watched, and closely; let their meaning be watched more closely still. A few words, well chosen, will do the work that a thousand cannot do, when every one of those few is acting properly, in the function ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof

... my new resolves: Too much love there can never be. And where the intellect devolves Its function on love exclusively, I, a man who possesses both, Will accept the provision, nothing loth, —Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere, That my intellect ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... she still couldn't function. He picked her up and tossed her back into the room. From the broken mattress on the bed, he dug out a coil of wire and bound her hands ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... American. We are the dust on His great hands, and fly as He claps them carelessly in the pauses of His work. Yet this theory would not do at all: for the unlucky particles are not dust, not refuse, but exquisite and exquisitely fashioned, designed to live, and to every small function of life adapted with the minutest care. There were nights indeed when, walking along the shore where we had walked together on the night before Harry left England and looking from the dark waters which divided me from his grave up to the nightly moon and to the stars around her, I could ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... air pressure was maintained, was devastating. Whole banks of delicate machinery were torn from the walls and scattered over the decks. The precision instruments of the inner hull showed no signs of leakage, and the oxygen-circulating machinery could still function on an ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell

... Neither did he testify that the generations of men, of Prophets and of Apostles had been objects of the good works and all the ministrations of self-abnegation, which are required only of the mothers of men. Comparatively few women, who have fulfilled the special function which man assigns to them as their chief duty in life, lack the adornment of good works. In addition to these good works of motherhood in the family, woman has ministered to the necessities and the comfort ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... of the Siouan Indians, past and present, may be traced to their causes in custom and exercise of function; yet by far the greater number of the features are common to the American people or to all mankind, and are of ill-understood significance. The few features of known cause indicate that special somatic characteristics are determined largely or wholly by industrial ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... to a knowledge of his place in the world, of his function in nature—to be a Saviour and to make atonement for the sins of the people. He stands in the inner Heart of the world, the Holy of Holies, as a High Priest of Humanity. He is one with all his brethren, not by a vicarious substitution, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... melodious beauty of the other; but it approaches Faust itself in its subtle soundings of the mysteries of the intellectual life. It is a young poet's attempt to cope with the problem of the poet's task and the poet's function, the relation of art to life, and of life to art. Neither Goethe nor Tennyson thought more loftily of the possibilities of poetic art. And neither insisted more peremptorily—or rather assumed ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... sitting the other day at a function next a man of some eminence, and I was really amazed at the way in which he discoursed of himself and his habits, his diet, his hours of work, and the blank indifference with which he received similar confidences. He ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... That steadily increasing function of the state by which it seeks to protect its workers from their own weakness and degradation, and insists that the livelihood of the manual laborer shall not be beaten down below the level of efficient citizenship, assumes new forms almost daily. From ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... community in its dealings with the central or ruling authority. But it seems scarcely likely either that the village community considered itself to own the land. Cases in which the community as a corporate body has exercised any function of ownership other than that of occupying and cultivating the soil, if recorded at all, must be extremely rare, and I do not know that any instance is given by Sir Henry Maine. A tutelary village god is to be found as a rule in every Hindu village. In the Central Provinces the most common ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... myself?" he said. "As am enormous creative organ, unknown to us, who scatters millions of worlds into space, just as one single fish would deposit its spawn in the sea. He creates, because it is His function as God to do so, but He does not know what He is doing, and is stupidly prolific in His work, and is ignorant of the combinations of all kinds which are produced by his scattered germs. Human thought is a lucky little local, passing ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... printer's function in advertising. Precepts upon which advertising is based. Printer's analysis of his copy. Emphasis, legibility, attention, color. Method of studying advertising typography. Illustrations; review ...
— Compound Words - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #36 • Frederick W. Hamilton

... law than to religious scriptures, though often there the comparison would be incomplete, since the religious atmosphere pervaded even the most secular circumstance of the life of the Jew. There was no secular. The meanest function in life must be brought in relation to the great Divine. This must be understood in studying the Talmud, this must be understood in studying the Jew. As law, it compares favorably with the Roman code—its contemporary in part. In the treatment of a criminal it is almost quixotically ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... as to say that exactly," tendered Mr. Leary ingratiatingly. "I'm afraid my clothing isn't as suitable for outdoor wear as yours is. You see, I'd been to a sort of social function and on my way ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... the back? 7. What muscles are we using when we "bat" or "serve" in ball and tennis? 8. How do the muscles of the limbs act for you? 9. Where are the biceps and triceps muscles? Explain their use. 10. What are tendons? What is their use (function)? 11. How is your arm fastened to your body? 12. Describe the arrangement of the muscles in the lower limb. Why are they larger than the arm-muscles? 13. How does exercising the muscles give you an appetite? What else does it do? 14. Why do you naturally love ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... was one of those brisk little things that did so much to build up my early reputation. I did remarkably well, though perhaps it is not my function to say so. The enemy was slightly stronger, both in cavalry and infantry, than myself [Footnote: A slight but pardonable error on the part of the gallant gentleman. The forces were exactly equal.]; ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells

... in itself a serviceable thing for Chicago. I am not so sure that we succeeded in our endeavors "to make social intercourse express the growing sense of the economic unity of society and to add the social function to democracy". But Hull-House was soberly opened on the theory that the dependence of classes on each other is reciprocal; and that as the social relation is essentially a reciprocal relation, it gives a form of ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... intimately connected with their radical aversion to maritime war and their wretched marine. But at length it became too flagrant. Favoured by Macedonia, which no longer found occasion to continue its old function of protecting Hellenic commerce from the corsairs of the Adriatic for the benefit of its foes, the rulers of Scodra had induced the Illyrian tribes—nearly corresponding to the Dalmatians, Montenegrins, and northern Albanians of the present day—to unite ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... execution of justice, as every mind ought to be. If, for instance, ten witnesses were to swear that the Chief-Justice of England, that the Lord High-Chancellor, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, was seen, in the robes of his function, at noonday, robbing upon the highway, it is not the clearness, the weight, the authority of testimonies, that could make me believe it; I should attribute it to any cause, either corruption, mistake, error, or madness, rather than believe that fact. Why? Because ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... beyond the reach of eye or ear, 'to waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole; 'the phonograph enables us to seal the living speech on brazen tablets, and store it up for any length of time; while it is the peculiar function of the microphone to let us hear those minute sounds which are below the range of our unassisted powers of hearing. By these three instruments we have thus received a remarkable extension of the capacity of the human ear, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... in itself like a whiff of salt air. It bore me back to the days when a husband's chief function was just that—being a man to his own good woman. We looked for a moment into each other's eyes. Then the same question was born to both of us ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... of the day or night and promptly transfer him to his bed. I have known of a visitor, witnessing this incident, who commented on it in a manner which showed that he imagined he had seen our unit performing its sole function; he pictured us existing purely and simply for one end—the carrying of stretchers up the front steps into the building. He was kind enough to praise the rapidity with which the job was done—but he held it to be a job which hardly justified ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... Functionally, however, its scope is very much smaller. While the penis both receives and imparts specific voluptuous sensations, and is at the same time both the intromittent organ for the semen and the conduit for the urine, the sole function of the clitoris is to enter into erection under the stress of sexual emotion and receive and transmit the stimulatory voluptuous sensations imparted to it by friction with the masculine genital apparatus. It is so insignificant an organ that it is only within recent times ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... privileges. He has a right to wear the kilt, or ancient Highland dress, with the purse, pistol, and durk — a broad yellow ribbon, fixed to the chanter-pipe, is thrown over his shoulder, and trails along the ground, while he performs the function of his minstrelsy; and this, I suppose, is analogous to the pennon or flag which was formerly carried before every knight in battle. — He plays before the laird every Sunday in his way to the kirk, which he circles three times, performing the family march which implies defiance to all the ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... all the groups of phenomena that make up the term disease, we will find that they invariably come from without. From my point of view all the groups of diseases are in truth accidents; exposure to some influence or influences that pervert function or create new motion. I must first refer to the cause to which at various times has been ascribed the responsibility for this excessive mortality, viz.: that innate vital weakness exists in the colored population ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... just recognition of the real significance of Flinders in southern exploration has led to his name being honoured and commemorated even with respect to parts where he was not the actual discoverer. It is a function of history to do justice in the large, abiding sense, discriminating the spiritual potency of personalities that dominate events from the accidental connection of lesser persons with them. In that wider sense, Flinders ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... of the nine Muses. Clio's function was to preside over history—which she did with great dignity, many of the prominent citizens of Athens occupying seats on the platform, the meetings being addressed by Messrs. Xenophon, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... world to its Creator. If these problems cannot be said to be solved yet, we need not be surprised that Xenophanes did not solve them. He was content to emphasise that which seemed to him to be necessary and true, that God was God, and not either a partner with, or a function of, matter. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... renewed with changing fortune. After holding aloof for some time the Hanseatic League finally took part in this purely internal affair of the several cities, and always in favor of the patrician party; in this way assuming a function originally foreign to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... brake and started the car, she began to talk, looking negligently about her. George thought: "She's only showing off." Still, the car travelled beautifully, and there was a curious illusion that she must have the credit for that. She explained the function of handles, pedals, and switches, and George deemed it proper to indicate that he was not without some elementary knowledge of the subject. He leaned far back, as Lois leaned, and as the chauffeur had leaned, enjoying the brass fittings, the indicators, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... as geniuses.[1] Rather, it is a primitive form of folk art produced as a more or less spontaneous act of play or passion, and achieving some small degree of respectability only when practiced by a respected poet and collected with his more serious verse.[2] Like modern "serial" graffiti, it could function as a form of communication since the first inscriptions often provoked those who followed to make their ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... The function of these bacteria is to gather the nitrogen of the air and supply it as plant food. Without the bacteria the plant can get only the nitrogen which is supplied from the soil in fertilizers. With the aid of the bacteria the growing plant can derive ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... natural objects, but that the conventional forms should be beautiful in themselves and clearly traced in the pattern.—Akin to trimmings are all other appendages to dress,—jewels, or humbler articles; and as every part of dress should have a function, and fulfil it, and seem to do so, and should not seem to do that which it does not, these should never be worn unless they serve a useful purpose,—as a brooch, a button, a chain, a signet or guard ring,—or have significance,—as a wedding-ring, an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... state and city life of the future; from a state of society where, as we have seen, the city had changed from a political to an administrative division, to one where the city was to prepare itself again to claim, and eventually, by the growth of internal resources, to gain the lost function of sovereignty. The condition of the people during this time we have seen to be wretched in the extreme; the dismantled city but a bunch of comfortless dwellings; its inhabitants but a semi-servile population, with a small admixture of refugees of a better class; the city occupying but a subordinate ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... had been his Canonical wife, that Mrs. Parflete was the one child of their union, kept the whole aristocratic assembly thrilled with the sense of taking part in something as distinguished as a Court function, as exciting as a Court scandal, and as bewildering as a Court conspiracy. A string orchestra—conducted by Strauss himself—played French melodies of the eighteenth century. Would there be any dancing? would she sing? Henriette Duboc had been compared, as a ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... should be directed rather to the giving than the receiving. We must look upon ourselves, not as misers' chests to be kept locked for our own benefit, but as centres of distribution; and the better we fulfil our function as such centres the greater will be the corresponding inflow. If we choke the outlet the current must slacken, and a full and free flow can be obtained only by keeping it open. The spirit of opulence—the opulent mode of thought, that is—consists in cultivating the feeling that we possess ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... and naval heroes of the British empire have been admitted to the honor of having their remains deposited under its marble floor. Even literary genius has a little corner assigned it—the mighty aristocracy whose mortal remains it is the main function of the building to protect having so far condescended toward intellectual greatness as to allow to Milton, Addison, and Shakspeare modest monuments behind a door. The place is called the Poets' Corner; and so famed and celebrated is this vast edifice every where, ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... temperament. His amazing power of magnetic attraction. His feminine refinement in dress. His power of inspiration gave him his place in French literature. The dominant motive of all his writings. His unshakable conviction of immortality. His power to function on both planes of consciousness. The lesson to be drawn from Seraphita. Balzac's evident intention, and why veiled. The inevitable conclusion to be drawn ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... cheap series afterwards, but not his first hundred, I think. These should be acquired through much saving, and purchased with great thought and deliberation. The purchase of a book should become to the young book-lover a most solemn function. ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... seems to have been guilty of trying to rationalize an unsolvable mystery, to find an intellectual solution forbidden to man. In some obscure way the question seems to be involved in that other of the function of the Blessed Virgin as the fount of mercy and compassion, and at this time when the cult of the Mother of God had reached its highest point of potency and poignancy anything of the ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard

... less influential ruling families, and of the clergy; they have been trained at Oxford or Cambridge, and possess the one essential qualification, that they are gentlemen. Their average price is two hundred and fifty pounds a year; their function was made clear to me when I attended my first English tea-party. There was a wicker table, perhaps a foot and a half square, having three shelves, one below the other—on the top layer the plates and napkins, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... denied. They sought, however, to bind it perpetually together with that which was stronger than triple bars of brass and steel—the ceaseless current of kind offices, renewing and renewed in an eternal flow, and gathering volume and velocity as it rolled. It was a function intended not for the injury of any. It declared its purpose to be the benefit of all. Concessions which were made between the different States in the Convention prove the motive. Each gave to the other what was necessary to it; what each could ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... learning, in every respect qualified for the office of a tutor. He likewise added, by way of eulogium, that he was a man of exemplary piety and particularly zealous for the honour of the church, of which he was a member, having been many years in holy orders, though he did not then exercise any function of the priesthood. Indeed, Mr. Jolter's zeal was so exceedingly fervent, as, on some occasions, to get the better of his discretion; for, being a high churchman and of consequence a malcontent, his resentment was habituated into an insurmountable ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... brain is cut, it is found to be composed of two substances, essentially different in construction and function—the cortical and the medullary. The first is small in quantity, and principally concerned in the food and reproduction of the animal, and the cineritious in a great measure the register of the mind. Brute strength seems to be the character of the former, and superior intelligence of the latter. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... of various pagan superstitions, we have in anatomy and physiology such doctrines as the increase and decrease of the brain with the phases of the moon, the ebb and flow of human vitality with the tides of the ocean, the use of the lungs to fan the heart, the function of the liver as the seat of love, and that of the spleen as ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... "Make a fence about the Law." If up to that moment religious usage in its development had kept abreast of the requirements of social and individual life, the requirements out of which it had grown forth, it now became a national function, and its further evolution advanced with tremendous strides. For the protection of the old "Mosaic Laws," a twofold and a threefold fence of new legal ordinances was erected about them, and the cult became more and more complicated. But the externals of religion did not monopolize ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... correctness of this conclusion, I was led to consider whether we might not reasonably consider the true source of the latent element of light to reside, not in the solar orb, but in space itself; and that the grand function and duty of the sun was to act as an agent for bringing forth into vivid existence its due portion of the illuminating or luciferous element, which element I suppose to be diffused throughout the boundless regions of space, and which in that case ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... whose quality is adequate, for growth, i.e., which contain the kinds and amounts of amino acids known to fulfil this function. ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... palace that Mademoiselle Brun and Denise were bidden, to the new function of afternoon tea, the day after the receipt of the lawyer's letter. Madame de Melide ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... the children whose function it was to procure or carry hence the egg beater generally ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett

... with any assistance or information we require. Before the railing, which encloses the sanctuary, two or three worshippers are kneeling in prayer; and these also examine us for a while with close attention. Or, it may be that at the time of our visit some religious function is proceeding. If so, the clergy with their servers are found within the chancel, clad in gorgeous yellow robes, and genuflecting now and again before the images which stand above the richly-vested altar. Outside the ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.

... it—especially at the finish. When the regiment comes stumping through London on its way back to Euston—next year, or whenever it's going to be—with their ragged pipers leading the way, you would like to be at the head of 'A' Company, Bobby, and I would give something to be exercising my old function of whipper-in. Eh, boy?" ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... small pieces of wet matting were brought out and placed at either end and a quantity of the white mixture was placed upon them. At a signal from the head priest, who acted as master of ceremonies during the curious succeeding function, the ascetics who were to perform the first exhibition of fire-walking gathered at one end of the bed of coals, which by this time was a fierce ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... polymonium, rosy plats of Sierra primroses. What one has to get used to in flowers at high altitudes is the bleaching of the sun. Hardly do they hold their virgin color for a day, and this early fading before their function is performed gives them a pitiful appearance not according with their hardihood. The color scheme runs along the high ridges from blue to rosy purple, carmine and coral red; along the water borders it is chiefly white and yellow where the mimulus makes ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin

... he does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it—only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Moral Sense of his! A sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine cases out of ten he prefers the wrong. There shouldn't be any wrong; and without the Moral ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... continued his political control. About half a dozen able lieutenants, holding fat offices in the great patronage centres, revolved with the fidelity of planets, while in every custom-house and federal office in the State trained politicians performed the function of satellites. To harness the party more securely hundreds of young men, selected from the various counties because of their partisan zeal, filled the great departments at Washington. "In obedience to this system," said George William Curtis, "the whole machinery of the government ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... the control room resembled that of any modern space-ship of its time, except that there were extra pieces of unguessed function. Directly in front of Carse was the directional space-stick above its complicated mechanism: above his eyes was the wide six-part visi-screen, which in space would record the whole "sphere" of the heavens: while to his right was the chief control board, a smooth black surface studded with ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... that mental activity, the domain of the "spirit," was dependent on bodily organisation. "When the babe is born it shows no sign of mind. For a brief space hunger and repletion, cold and warmth are its only sensations. Slowly the specialised senses begin to function; still more slowly muscular movements, at first aimless and reflex, become co-ordinated and consciously directed. There is no sign here of an intelligent spirit controlling a mechanism; there is every sign of a learning and developing intelligence, developing pari passu with the organism of ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... instructions on the subject to the Archbishop of Toledo. The sacrament having been duly. administered; the king subsequently, on the 1st September, desired to receive it once more. The archbishop, fearing that the dying monarch's strength would be insufficient for the repetition of the function, informed him that the regulations of the Church required in such cases only a compliance with certain trifling forms, as the ceremony had been already once thoroughly carried out. But the king expressed himself ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Pervez MUSHARRAF, suspended Pakistan's constitution and assumed the additional title of Chief Executive; exercising the powers of the head of the government, he appointed an eight-member National Security Council to function as Pakistan's supreme governing body; on 12 May 2000, Pakistan's Supreme Court unanimously validated the October 1999 coup and granted MUSHARRAF executive and legislative authority for three years from the coup date; on 20 June 2001, MUSHARRAF named himself as president and was sworn ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... proposing would, of course, harm Jewish Frenchmen no more than it would harm the "assimilated" of other countries. It would, on the contrary, be distinctly to their advantage. For they would no longer be disturbed in their "chromatic function," as Darwin puts it, but would be able to assimilate in peace, because the present Anti-Semitism would have been stopped for ever. They would certainly be credited with being assimilated to the very depths of their souls, if they stayed ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... acquired beyond that which immediately belongs to the particular service to be performed. If we give a man permission to enter our house to look for thieves, it does not follow that, because so admitted, he has a right to exercise any other function. I do believe that the ship in chase of us, as a public cruiser, ought to be allowed to board this vessel; but finding nothing contrary to the laws of nations about her, that she will have no power to detain or otherwise molest her. Even the right I concede ought to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... practiced eye observing the peculiar bluish pallor of his complexion, and the marked difficulty with which he drew his breath, could have failed to perceive that the great organ of life was in this man, what the housekeeper had stated it to be, too weak for the function which it was called on to perform. The heart labored over its work as if it had been the heart of a ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... us remember that the inviolableness of the ambassador depends on his function, and not on his person; and that if we want to be kept from all evil, we must do the work for which we have been sent here. So let us understand the meaning of our difficulties and sorrows. Let us set ourselves to our tasks, live up to the level of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... exceeding the spiel limit," I said, "let me ask you. You see New York during its vocative hours. It is the function of you and your brother cops to preserve the acoustics of the city. There must be a civic voice that is intelligible to you. At night during your lonely rounds you must have heard it. What is the epitome of its turmoil and shouting? What does the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry



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