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Hardly a   /hˈɑrdli ə/   Listen
Hardly a

adjective
1.
Very few.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Hardly a" Quotes from Famous Books



... iv. In the early days when the Great West of the United States was just being opened up and when society there was in a very crude state, a horse thief was regularly hanged; but murder was hardly a fault. ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... wind. With the exception of a riding-master and two little girls The Row was empty, but the walk was as crowded as a comfortably filled ball-room, if you except the dancers who are sitting out; for, while three could walk abreast with small inconvenience either to others or themselves, there was hardly a seat ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... years, but not to the smallest number of four hundred and eighty years, 1 Kings 6:1; which lesser number Josephus seems sometimes to have followed. And since in the beginning of the next chapter it is said by Josephus, that there was hardly a breathing time for the Israelites before Jabin came and enslaved them, it is highly probable that some of the copies in his time had here only eight years instead of eighty; as had that of Theophilus ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... stopped at the bookstall more from force of habit than from any real interest. He had wired to Peters again from the docks. Would she be waiting for him at the station? It was scarcely probable. Their meeting could not be other than constrained, the platform of a wayside railway station was hardly a suitable place. And why in heaven's name should she do him so much honour? He had no right to expect it, no right to expect anything. That she should be even civil to him was more than he deserved. Would she be changed in any way? God, how he longed to see her! His heart beat furiously even at the ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... It is hardly a fancy that something as loyal as friendship has sprung up between this bird and me. I accept his original shyness as a mark of his finer instincts; but, like the nobler natures, when once he found it possible to give his confidence, how frankly and fearlessly has it been ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen

... does not who is a product of a period of passionate revivals of human and humanising ideals?—but how few they are! They hardly count. He absorbed all the culture of all the centuries. The Greek and Latin poets were as familiar to him as were the English. Hardly a great book had been written which he did not know familiarly. There is not a great picture or piece of sculpture in Europe he did not know. All came as grist to his mill. I end this book by joyfully hailing him as one of the half-dozen greatest ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... wheat and linseed, harvests were good and money was flowing into the country. Then came a very bad year, 1889; the harvest was practically lost owing to the heavy and continuous rains which fell from December till July with hardly a clear day. This, together with a bad government and the revolution of 1890, created a great panic and a tremendous slump in all land, from which it took a long time to recover. Where people had bought camps and ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... damp cellar with hardly a rag to his poor dear back!" said Mrs. Bhaer, in a low tone to her husband, who was looking at the boy with a skillful pair of eyes that marked the thin temples and feverish lips, as well as the hoarse voice and frequent fits of ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... vernuker (literally a "Boer cheater"), that is, a travelling trader whose business it is to beguile the simple-minded Dutchman by selling him worthless goods at five times their value. "I have loads of friends among the Boers. There is hardly a Boer in the Transvaal who does not know me"—("To his cost," put in a bystander with a grunt)—"and yet I have tried all I know"—("And you know a good deal," said the same rude man)—"and I ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... Kangourou, clad in a suit of gray tweed, which might have come from La Belle Jardiniere or the Pont Neuf, with a pot hat and white thread gloves. His countenance is at once foolish and cunning; he has hardly a nose, hardly any eyes. He makes a real Japanese salutation: an abrupt dip, the hands placed flat on the knees, the body making a right angle to the legs, as if the fellow were breaking in two; a little snake-like hissing (produced ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... with curious eyes at the broad-spread building. It had long been a mystery and a subject of gossip for the whole country side. Hardly a year had elapsed since the rumour had first gone about that a millionaire had bought a tract of land, and that it was his intention to build a country seat upon it. Since then the work had been pushed on night and day, until now it was finished ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... talk of 'love,' and I stick to 'human nature.' When that fine young fellow sailed with me, hardly a year ago, in the Sir William Elphinston, he was over head and heels in love with old Jack Tracy's pretty girl, Emily Warren: but I knew it wouldn't last long: I don't believe in constancy for longer than a week. It does one's heart good to see how ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... dashed out along the desolate country roads. We saw hardly a soul. Houses were few and far between and, save for an occasional greybeard hoeing in the wet fields or an old woman hobbling along the road, the countryside seemed dead. In the cold air the engine ran splendidly, and Francis got every ounce of ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... would, however, venture to remind such that the writer of these pages founded the China Inland Mission! He translated his vision of the Beloved into life-long strenuous service, and so kept it undimmed through all the years of a life which has had hardly a parallel ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor

... stray down on the beach as they pleased; for the waves of the great ocean slept as tenderly and noiselessly on their sandy bed as if they had been changed into the waters of an inland lake. Slow, almost imperceptible, was the approach of the ship—there was hardly a breath of wind to carry her on—she was just drifting gently with the landward set of the tide at that hour, while her sails hung idly against the masts. Long after the sun had gone down, the congregation still waited and watched on the beach. The moon and stars were arrayed in their ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... of her voice gave an indefinable charm to her performance. Mrs. Jopling looked like a poem from the Pantheon, and indeed the personae mutae were not the least effective figures in the play. Hecuba was hardly a success. In acting, the impression of sincerity is conveyed by tone, not by mere volume of voice, and whatever influence emotion has on utterance it is certainly not in the direction of false emphasis. Mrs. Beerbohm Tree's OEnone was much better, and had some fine moments of passion; but the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... leaves were immersed, each in thirty minims of a solution of one part to 437 of water. After 6 hrs. there was hardly a trace of inflection; after 22 hrs. three of the leaves were moderately, and the fourth slightly inflected; so that this salt induces, though rather slowly, well-marked inflection. These leaves, on being left in water for ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... or spring from some low family in the city; they may have raised themselves by their talents, perhaps only by their money, but they have no guarantee of antiquity, their names are not in our annals. All we true conservative Romans (and a, Roman is hardly a Roman if not conservative) profoundly believe that a man whose family has once attained to high public honour and done good public service, will be a safer person to elect as a magistrate than one whose family ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... inexhaustible supplies of fertilising moisture for the summer, while it affords the farmer the very best of natural roads to enable him to carry his wheat and other produce to market. It is a remarkable fact, that hardly a lot of land containing two hundred acres, in British America, can be found without an abundant supply of water at all seasons of the year; and a very small proportion of the land itself is naturally unfit for cultivation. To crown ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... stronghold in the throat of it. And wherever the continents trending southward come to points around which the commerce of nations, must sweep, there, upon every one of them, is a British settlement, and the cross of St. George salutes you as you are wafted by. There is hardly a little desolate, rocky island or peninsula, formed apparently by Nature for a fortress, and formed for nothing else, but the British lion has it secure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... valleys. That between A and C is called the Grimsel; that between B and C the Furka. That between D and C is the Gries Pass, that between F and C the Nufenen, and that between E and F is not the easy thing it looks on the map; indeed it is hardly a pass at all but a scramble over very high peaks, and it is called the Crystalline Mountain. Finally, on the far right of my map, you see a high passage between B and F. This is the famous ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... for ten dollars, in spite of the fact that he was already in jail. He snatched readily enough at the chance of getting as good a lawyer as Gottlieb to defend him for ten dollars, and when he was acquitted made so much of it that there was hardly a prisoner in the Tombs who did not send for one of our policies to guard against future legal difficulties. To all of these we offered free advice and a free trial upon the charges pending against them, as a sort of premium or inducement to become policy-holders, and in six months had over ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... goers in the county. Wat was a splendid lightweight rider—under ten stone with his saddle—and the mare was a powerful creature, all quarters and shoulders, fit to carry a lifeguardsman; and so it was no wonder that there was hardly a man in the field who could hope to stay with him. There he waited and listened to the shouting of the huntsman and the whips, catching a glimpse now and then in the darkness of the wood of a whisking tail, or the gleam of a white-and-tan side ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... character of the school depends, not only upon the moral level of its pupils, but above all upon the moral level and the personal influence of the head of the school and the assistant teachers. I know certain schools, and some of these in large towns, in which hardly a single improper word is spoken by the pupils, and where no sexual improprieties take place among the children, even though it has to be assumed that many of them indulge, at any rate from time to time, in solitary masturbation. But, on the whole, the spirit ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... was forced to fly from it, having become surety for a friend. He started on the tour of Europe without any money in his pocket—with nothing but his flute; and he begged and played, until he came back to England, as poor as he went. He himself used afterwards to say that there was hardly a kingdom in Europe in which he was not ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... scholarships besides this, but this was by far the most valuable one at Saint Winifred's; the tenure of it was circumscribed by no conditions, and it was therefore proportionably desirable that Kenrick, who was poor, should obtain it. He had, indeed, hardly a chance, as he well knew; for even if he succeeded in beating Walter, he could not expect to beat Power. But Power, though a most graceful and finished scholar, was not strong in mathematics, and as they counted something in the examination, Kenrick's ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... stood several vessels, likely of gold or other precious metal for they were apparently untouched by the ravages of time. Charley gave them hardly a glance but passed on to the end of the building until he ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... like Mount Blanck. Our folks seem possessed to stick a foreign name on to everything. And the road round through the scrub to Eagle Lake they call Norway. If Norway is like that, it's pretty short of timber. If there hadn't been so much lumbering here, I should like it better. There is hardly a decent pine-tree left. Mr. Meigs—they have gone riding with Mr. Meigs—says the Maine government ought to have a Maine law that amounts to something—one that will protect the forests, and start up ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... fifteen years ago. They have shared in the general prosperity of the empire. The Rev. Mr. Miller, who says that the majority of the fishermen at Mossbank are further in debt than they can hope to pay in one year, believes that they were once worse, and that eight or ten years ago hardly a fisherman was not in debt. The Rev. J. Fraser of Sullom believes that a great number of the men are very seldom clear, and that permanent indebtedness prevails to a much larger extent than is good for the community. It must be admitted that the sums due by ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... was a Scotsman of the age of about 22, who for the space of fourteen years had disguised himself as a woman, without it being publicly known all that time that he was a man. He called himself Margaret, and there was hardly a good house in Rome where he was not known, and he was specially welcomed by all the women, such as waiting-women, and wenches of the lower orders, and also many of the ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... and millions of parcels were carefully packed full of little luxuries, comforts, tobacco, cigars, and cigarettes, and addressed to some loved one "at the front." Newspapers collected subscriptions and busy societies were also formed for the same purpose, so that there was hardly a single combatant who did not receive some ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... are its future effects dreaded from its past enormities. The cause of this impolitic and anti-patriotic apathy is to be looked for in the palaces of Sovereigns, and not in the dwellings of their people. There exists hardly a single German Prince whose Ministers, courtiers and counsellors are not numbered, and have long been notorious among the anti-social conspirators, the Illuminati: most of them are knaves of abilities, who have usurped the easy direction of ignorance, or forced themselves as guides ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Hardly a trace is now left of any one of them, so sudden and overwhelming has been the march of modern progress. Even the little Peter Cooper House, picked up bodily by that worthy philanthropist and set down here nearly a hundred years ago, ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... noon before Helen Starratt finished her housework next morning—an unusually late hour for her, but she had been preoccupied, and her movements slow in consequence. A four-room apartment, with hardwood floors and a vacuum cleaner, was hardly a serious task for a full-grown woman, childless, and with a vigor that reacted perfectly to an ice-cold shower at 7 A.M. She used to look back occasionally at the contrast her mother's life had presented. Even with a servant, a three-storied, bay-windowed house had not ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... in swimming, found a burial-casket floating under the bushes down by the saw-mill. They called for help, and upon examining the interior of the casket they discovered the irrepressible Mr. Piggott again. This was too much. Even the ministers began to believe in ghosts, and hardly a man in town dared to go out of the house that night alone. But the coroner controlled his emotions sufficiently to sit on the body, make the usual charges and bury Mr. Piggott in a fresh ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... example, one cannot run through the world crying, "The Kingdom of God is at hand." Men's minds were still so filled with old theological ideas that for the most part they would understand by that only a fantasy of some great coming of angels and fiery chariots and judgments, and hardly a soul but would doubt one's sanity and turn scornfully away. But one must proclaim God not to confuse but to convince men's minds. It was that and the habit of his priestly calling that had disposed him towards a pulpit. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... responsible government to the Transvaal and Orange River Colony reacted with amazing rapidity on South African politics as a whole. It took the Canadian Provinces twenty-seven years (if we reckon from 1840), and the Australian States forty-five years (if we reckon from 1855), to reach a Federal Union. Hardly a minute was wasted in South Africa. Under very able guidance, the scheme was canvassed almost from the first, and in two years trusted leaders of both races, representing Natal, Cape Colony, and two newly emancipated Colonies—men, some of whom had been shooting at one ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... Palestine was before the foolish Jews cut down all their timber, and so destroyed their own rainfall—a "land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills." There is hardly a field here that has not, thank God, its running brook, or its sweet spring, from which our cattle were drinking their health and life, while in the clay-lands of Cheshire, and in the Cambridgeshire fens—which were drained utterly dry—the poor things drank no water, too often, save that ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... Planchet; "I assure you it is very curious. Hardly a day passes that some one is not buried there; for Fontainebleau is by no means an inconsiderable place. Sometimes we see young girls clothed in white carrying banners; at others, some of the town-council, or rich citizens, with choristers and all the parish authorities; and ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... descends The autumn-evening. The field Strewn with its dank yellow drifts Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, Fade into dimness apace, Silent;—hardly a shout From a few boys late at their play! The lights come out in the street, In the school-room windows—but cold, Solemn, unlighted, austere, Through the gathering darkness, arise The chapel-walls, in whose bound ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... beliefs to be found in Ireland that in the Black Dog is the most widespread. There is hardly a parish in the country but could contribute some tale relative to this spectre, though the majority of these are short, and devoid of interest. There is said to be such a dog just outside the avenue gate of Donohill Rectory, but neither of the ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... was on his way to England. Congratulations among the people, exultation on the part of the press, the Union Flag on Liberty Tree, salutes from Hancock's Wharf, and bonfires, in the evening, on the hills, expressed the general joy. And yet Francis Bernard was hardly a faithful representative of the proud imperial power for which he acted. He was a bad Governor, but he was not so bad as the cause he was obliged to uphold. He was arbitrary, but he was not so arbitrary as his instructions. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... rose I crept down from the tree with hardly a hope of escaping the dreadful fate which had overtaken my comrades; but life is sweet, and I determined to do all I could to save myself. All day long I toiled with frantic haste and collected quantities of dry brushwood, reeds and thorns, which I bound with fagots, and making a circle of them ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... administration. Civil authority is essential to man, and the power for it must lie somewhere. The only question is as to the safest depository of it. The mere form of the government is no great matter. It has been justly said, "There is hardly a government in the world so ill designed that in good hands would not do well enough, nor any so good that in ill hands can do aught great and good." Governments depend on men, not men on governments. Let men be good, and the government will not ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... Severus, "Urnlet, soon shalt thou enclose what hardly a whole world could contain." But the custom may also have been Indian: the contrast of external pomp with the real vanity of human life suggests ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... left is Jericho," said Grim. "That winding creek beyond it is the Jordan. As far eastward as that there's some peace. Beyond that, there is hardly a rock that isn't used for ambush regularly. Let your eye travel along the top of the hills—nearly as far as the end of the Dead Sea. Now—d'you see where a touch of sunlight glints on something? That's the top of the castle-wall of ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... desire to shine, but was delighted beyond measure to shew other people in their best guise to his friends. "Did not I shew you the lion well to-day?" used he to say after the exhibition of a remarkable stranger.' He had no wit, and for humour hardly a relish. Robertson's reputation for wisdom may have been easily won. Dr. A. Carlyle says (ib. p. 287):—'Robertson's translations and paraphrases on other people's thoughts were so beautiful and so harmless that I never ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... apples redder than they had been for a long time. Asahel, now a fine boy of fifteen, was good aid in whatever was going on, without or within doors. Rufus wrote cheerfully from the North, where he still was; and there was hardly a drawback to the enjoyment of the little family ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... narrow slit of an opening remained, and through this slit, sitting back on my haunches against the rear of the little cave I watched the white wall rising outside. All that night and all next day it snowed, and by the second evening there was hardly a ray of light coming in. I remember feeling a certain pride in being all alone, in the warm nest made by myself, for the first time in my life; and I sat back and mumbled at my paw, and grew gradually drowsier and drowsier, ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson

... you're such a funny little article." He comes a little nearer to her, and putting his arm round her neck, pinches her off-cheek. She gives him a very short kiss—hardly a real one—just an acknowledgment. He remains with her little white hand in his great hairy one, and she leans against him and accepts the position. But that cigar is on ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... money, and as Dromio was returning he met Antipholus of Syracuse, who was still in amaze at the surprising adventures he met with, for, his brother being well known in Ephesus, there was hardly a man he met in the streets but saluted him as an old acquaintance. Some offered him money which they said was owing to him, some invited him to come and see them, and some gave him thanks for kindnesses they said he had done them, all mistaking him for his brother. A tailor showed him some ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... to the city to use, to make this port what it's got to be, the very first in the ocean world. It's one of those slow tremendous pieces of work, it will take years to carry it out and hundreds of millions of dollars. My father thinks there's hardly a chance that he'll ever live to see it all done. I know he will, I'm sure he will, he's the kind of a man who keeps himself young. But whether he really sees it or not, or gets any credit, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... learned from a decent woman, a grazier's widow, that they hae a cure for the muir-ill in Cumberland, whilk is ane pint, as they ca't, of yill, whilk is a dribble in comparison of our gawsie Scots pint, and hardly a mutchkin, boiled wi' sope and hartshorn draps, and toomed doun the creature's throat wi' ane whorn. Ye might try it on the bauson-faced year-auld quey; an it does nae gude, it can do nae ill.— She was a kind woman, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... on Plushkin, "I am ashamed to say that hardly a wisp of fodder does the place contain. But how can I get fodder? My lands are small, and the peasantry lazy fellows who hate work and think of nothing but the tavern. In the end, therefore, I shall be forced to go and spend my old age ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... by "the author of 'Helen's Babies,'"[L] cannot be called a novel—hardly a tale—and yet it is a story—the story of a great "temperance movement" at Barton, which is supposed to be a village somewhere at the west—in Kentucky, we should say, from certain local references. We do not know ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... carriages whose dress could only be guessed at. As for good looks, there did not seem to be much of them in Paris. She called the Frenchwomen downright plain. They knew how to put on their clothes; there was style about them, she did not deny that; but she was prepared to maintain that there was hardly a decent face ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... was and there being no pump of Vartry water available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit upon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cabman's shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt bridge where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather nonplussed ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... be left to wander in all the darkness of Atheism. It is curious to observe the blindness with which Christians as well as Turks believe in the pretended miracles of those who are interested in deceiving them. There is hardly a town in Syria or Egypt, where the Moslems have not a living saint, who works wonders, which the whole population is ready to attest as eye-witnesses. When I was at Damascus in 1812, some Christians returned thither from Jerusalem, where they had been to celebrate Easter. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... usually fail. Alphonse de Candolle (Geographic botanique, p. 798) informs us that several botanists of Patis, Geneva, and especially of Montpellier, have sown the seeds of many hundreds of species of exotic hardy plants, in what appeared to be the most favourable situations, but that in hardly a single case has any one of them become naturalized. Attempts have also been made to naturalize continental insects in Britain, in places where the proper food-plants abound and the conditions seem generally ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... them with curiosity and made remarks on their beauty. The dancers with motions of the hands and with smiles greeted all the company. One began to play on a double flute, another accompanied with a drum, and the two others danced around the court in such fashion that there was hardly a guest whom their muslin shawls did not ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... you that "Algonquin Avenue in the sleighing season can discount this out of sight." Something is to be pardoned to the spirit of liberty; and the avenue is certainly a fine one. It is three miles long and has hardly a shabby house in it, while for a mile or two the houses upon one side, locally called "the Ridge," are unusually line, large, and costly. They are all surrounded with well-kept gardens and separated from the street by velvet lawns which need scarcely fear comparison with the emerald wonders ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... road of any kind, but was rather a space left between two deep ditches of black peat-oozings from the bog. Finding progress almost impossible, we at last forsook the car. I can quite imagine an impatient reader asking why we did not get out and walk at first; but the option was hardly a simple one. By walking the horse and letting the car swing and jolt along one experienced the combined agonies of sea-sickness and rheumatism, with the additional chance of being shot headlong into ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... They do it, that is, because they are Heathens; men with traditions different from ours about the limits of endurance and the gestures of self-respect. They may be very much better than we are in hundreds of other ways; and I can quite understand a man (though hardly a Dean) really preferring their historic virtues to those of Christendom. A man may perhaps feel more comfortable among his Asiatic coolies than among his European comrades: and as we are to allow the Broadest Thought in the Church, Dr. Inge has as much right ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... If I remember rightly there is hardly a month or two between us. She is three or ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... have preferred a devoted belief that but for him Hicks must have perished. Besides, what she said still gave no clew to her feeling in regard to himself. He was obliged to go on, but he went on as indifferently as he could. "However, it was hardly a question for me at the time whether he could have been got out without my help. If I had thought about it at all—which I didn't—I suppose I should have thought that it wouldn't do to ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... Fellowship Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... house is a pretty winding stream with a walk along the bank, bordered by shrubbery, and furnished here and there with benches, the whole disposed with much care and taste. The house also is very well arranged. All the rooms look out upon the lake, lying hardly a gunshot from the windows. There are a parlor and a dining-room on the first floor, beside two smaller rooms; and on the same floor two doors lead out into the flower garden. The kitchen is small, and on one side is a pretty ground where we can ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... sides, but the doors were uniformly of inconveniently low stature, roofs were of stone slabs or old brick, in which a suspiciously abundant crop of antirrhinums and stone crops had anchored themselves, and there was hardly a garden that did not contain a path of old paving-stones, a mulberry-tree and some yews ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... Xoranians seemed as impervious to bullets and missiles as though armor-plated. The frantic defense of the beleaguered people of the doomed planet caused hardly a casualty ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... when it is not assessed at a higher sum than one hundred thousand lire to 80 per cent. when its estimated value is more than five hundred thousand lire." The article terminates with the remark that boycotting is hardly a suitable epilogue to a war waged ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... engaged on every wild and adventurous foray. Peace is agreed on, and what happens? Absolute order exists and prevails throughout the whole country from that moment. There has not been a single case of violent crime except, I believe, one murder committed by a lunatic—hardly a case of sedition—and not a single case of prosecution for treason of any kind. I say without hesitation that in order to find a similar instance of swift transition from violent warfare to law-abiding peace you ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... vaguer, dimmer, Over the dark laurels a few faint stars glimmer; The moon, that was a pallid ghost, Hung low on the horizon, faint and lost, Comes up, a full and splendid golden round By black and sharp-cut foliage overcrossed. The girls laugh and whisper now with hardly a sound Till all sound vanishes, dispersed in the night, Like a wisp of cloud that fades in the moon's light, And the garden grows silent and the shadows grow Deeper and blacker below The mysteriously moving and murmuring trees, That stand out darkly against the star-luminous sky; Huge ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... so much as this." Max touched his breast pocket and smiled. "I will confess now, sir, that I really had hardly a hope: if I said so just now, I lied. And if a son may ever tell his father that he is proud of him, let that pleasure to-day ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... and retired, not a little mystified by this order. His mistress was a kind little woman enough, but such extreme consideration for equine comfort is hardly a feminine attribute, and Mr. Parker was puzzled. He told Josephs the coachman as much when he had dispatched an underling to fetch the cleanest four-wheeler ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... heart stuff to render such small gossip a hum of summer midges. She did not imagine the dialogue concerned her in any way. She noticed Mr. Stuart Rem's attentive scrutiny of her from time to time. She had no sensitiveness, hardly a mind for things about her. To-morrow she was to see Captain Dartrey. She dwelt on that prospect, for an escape from the meshes of a painful hour—the most woeful of the hours she had yet known-passed with Judith Marsett: which dragged her soul through a weltering of the deeps, tossed her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... him of the thin shutter between the lenses of a camera, had been shot across the tunnel behind the second group of cross bars, and as an engineer be could not but admire the skill of the practical expert who had constructed this diabolical device, for in spite of the pressure on the other side, hardly a drop of water oozed through. He tried to reach this shield, but could not. It was just beyond the touch of his fingers, with his arm thrust through the two sets of bars, but if he could have stretched that far, with the first bar retarding his shoulder, he knew his hand would be helpless ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... a state of war in which one side is stronger, and the other weaker, it is hardly a paradox to say that (1) no one has a right to complain of persecution as such, apart from odious accompaniments, any more than of superior numbers or hard blows in battle; and (2) that every one has a right to take advantage and make the most of being persecuted, by appeals to sympathy and the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... 'listen to me. A short time ago I was so weary of you, that, with hardly a reason I sought to rid myself of your presence. I then proposed a separation upon any terms that pleased you, not thinking it likely that I should ever marry again. I would have been generous then, had you yielded to my wishes. Since then the aspect of affairs have changed. I have met ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... word he bore from Ebenezer Rule that as they had feared and half expected, the factory was not to open that Winter at all. Hardly a family represented in the rooms was not also representative of a factory employee, now idle these seven months, as they were periodically idle at the times of "enforced" ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... natural tears were dried), as often as one of her little lambs was "delivered out of the miseries of this sinful world." But as long as they were in the world, she was their guardian angel; and there was hardly a mother in Aberalva who did not confess her debt to Grace, not merely for her children's ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... There is hardly a single chief of the Hindoo military class in the Bundelkhand or Gwalior territories, who does not keep a gang of robbers of some kind or other, and consider it as a very valuable and legitimate source of revenue; or who would not embrace with cordiality the leader of a gang of assassins by profession ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... think of love and happiness while this terrible mystery is upon us—while we don't know whether poor Arthur is alive or dead? You've seen what it has brought my grandfather to! It is killing him. He has been much worse in the past fortnight. And my mother is hardly a ghost of herself in these days. Ah, it is brutal of me to think of my own affairs—to dream of happiness at such a time." She smiled across at him very sadly. "You see what you have brought me to!" ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... unusually thoughtful from that period onward; speaking hardly a word through all the journey home. For now that the events which had occupied his mind for the past two or three days were over and done with, his memory harked back to those things which had to do with his ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... old halls yet inhabited, and others in ruin; but I have hardly a sufficiently distinct recollection of any of them to be able to describe them, and I now at this distance of time regret that I did not take notes. In one very sweet part of the vale a gate crossed the road, which was ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth

... but it was once. And it's quite flat. And there is a great dike, twenty feet wide, oozing through it just oozing, you know; and lots of little dikes, at right angles with the big one. And the fields are all square. And there are no hedges and hardly a tree to ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... swung his horse round smartly, and they were in the town again by the time Harold had recovered himself sufficiently to furnish some details. As they drove up to the shop, the woman was waiting at the door with the parcel; and hardly a minute seemed to have elapsed since the black crisis, ere they were bowling along swiftly home, the precious parcel hugged ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... order to find undisturbed leisure in which to arrange my ideas and array my facts. It was a pleasant place enough, perched on the brow of a heath-covered slope that dipped down to a ravine, at the head of which stands Professor Tyndall's house with its famous screen. Hardly a mile away northward lies the Devil's Punch Bowl, with its memorial stone erected in abhorrence of the detestable murder perpetrated on its rim by ruffians whose corpses slowly rotted as they swung on the gibbet overhead; far to the south spreads the glorious amphitheatre ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... Whitney[2] invented his machine, we sent hardly a bale of cotton abroad. Now we send so much in one year that the bales can be counted by millions. If they were laid end to end, in a straight line, they would reach clear across the American continent from San Francisco ...
— The Beginner's American History • D. H. Montgomery

... may exchange and retire on the half of whatever full pay he holds at the time, and as soon as such exchange can be accomplished with decency and propriety." War with the United States was now impending, hardly a fitting time for a young man to withdraw from the army, and Fraser points out that "in the present situation of public affairs and at his age and fitness for service" Tom's retirement would be hardly decent. ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... arranged with the men, he sets out on 16th February over a most beautiful country, but woefully difficult to pass through. Perhaps it was hardly a less bitter disappointment to be told, on the 25th, that the Lualaba flowed west-southwest, so that after all ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... that the great Armada, the embodiment of the foreign hatred and hostility, threatening to break upon her shores like a huge wave, vanished like its spray. Medina Sidonia, with his querulous complaints and general ineffectuality,[1] was hardly a match for Drake and his sturdy companions; nor were the leaders of the Babington conspiracy, the representatives and would-be leaders of the corresponding internal convulsion, the infatuated worshippers of the fair devil of Scotland, the men to cope for a moment ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull, Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull! —I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... now exclaimed; "you seem to me to be one of those people who have hardly a notion as to what is marvellous or what natural. Have you ever seen spirits with your own eyes, as I have? Have you ever held conversations with goblins, with the little creatures that go into and come out of the mountain-lord's great house there? Have you ever seen metals and precious ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... "That is hardly a fair question, Miss;" no reproof could break Jason of this vulgarism, "since it might make enemies for a body to speak all of his mind in such matters. There are comparisons that should never be made, on account of circumstances that overrule all common efforts. New York is a ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... ghost was hardly a presence, but an absence, or a presence so intangible that it was worse than an absence. Claire-Anne, who was dead, whom he had—made dead, whom he had taken it upon himself to set free. For a year after he had left Marseilles she had seemed to be ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... standard of his parish magazine. In acknowledging the presentation Mr. Potts said that Mr. Bolster's energy and goodwill in carrying it out had given him more satisfaction than anything else, and when the two eminent divines were photographed in the act of embracing on the platform there was hardly a dry eye in the huge audience, numbering fully forty persons, who attended ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... deep perceptions of the Infinite. No time remained for the interminable "revelations" that occupy the days of teachers without self-realization. "In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle." This observation from the Hindu scriptures ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... called her the Laughing Goddess. She had two aspects to her beauty—one when she was soft and motherly, the other when she rallied those she loved and sparkled with merriment. Her still beautiful copper-coloured hair had hardly a white thread in it. She was very charming to look ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... terrace-ground the Hermit tills and cultivates alone. And so thoroughly the work is done that hardly a stone can be seen in the soil. And so even and regular are the terrace walls that one would think they were built with line and plummet. The vines are handsomely trimmed and trellised, and here and there, to break the monotony of the rows, a fig, an apricot, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... Perfumes are hardly a part of dress; yet, as an addition to it often made, they merit censure, with slight exception, as deliberate contrivances to attract attention to the person, by appealing to the lowest and most sensuous of the senses. Next to no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... Menagier de Paris was able to present to his awed but admiring wife; and though it has been sadly neglected by historians it deserves to be well known, for it gives us a picture of a medieval housewife which it would be hard indeed to surpass. There is hardly a side of her daily life upon which it does not touch, and we may now with advantage look more closely upon her, and see in turn the perfect lady, whose deportment and manners do credit to her breeding; the perfect wife, whose submission to her husband is only equalled by her skill in ministering ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... Hardly a generous remark to make to a Punch man who had illustrated two of his books, and considering that Sir John Tenniel had done so much to make the author's reputation, and Punch had always been so friendly; but this is ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... general household use. Notwithstanding the immense quantity of the article described in this bill which is sold to the people for their consumption as food, and notwithstanding the claim made that its manufacture supplies a cheap substitute for butter, I venture to say that hardly a pound ever entered a poor man's house under its real name and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... picture which Defoe gave of the condition of affairs in the neighbourhood of Halifax. He found "the land divided into small enclosures from two acres to six or seven acres each, seldom more; every three or four pieces of land had a house belonging to it—one continued village, hardly a house standing out of speaking distance from another—at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth or kersie or shalloon—every clothier keeps a horse—so every one generally keeps a cow or two ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson

... the report was bold and ingenious, if not convincing. The minority were ready to admit that the case had been cleverly stated, although hardly a man doubted that political considerations had weighed most heavily with the chairman of the committee. Douglas resented the suggestion with such warmth, however, that it is charitable to suppose he was not conscious of the bias ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... to pieces the Rebel Infantry regiment, the Rebel Infantry regiment has mowed down the gallant artillerists of our batteries. Hardly a man of them escapes. Death and destruction reap a wondrous and instant harvest. Wounded, dying, or dead, lie the brave cannoniers at their guns, officers and men alike hors du combat, while wounded horses gallop wildly back, with bounding caissons, down the gentle ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... Roman people walking about like free men. Agatho and a few pettifoggers were weeping for grief, and for once in a way they meant it. The Barristers were crawling out of their dark corners, pale and thin, with hardly a breath in their bodies, as though just coming to life again. One of them when he saw the pettifoggers putting their heads together, and lamenting their sad lot, up comes he and says: "Did not I tell you the Saturnalia could not ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca

... curtains hanging from a pole, with various ornaments and pictures of noticeable appearance, also linoleum for the floor, had finally been gathered together and were treasured for a time as household gods indeed. In those days there was hardly a commandment in the decalogue that Mephistopheles might not have induced Mrs. Phillips to commit by judicious praise of her "room." Her occasional "visitors" were ushered into it with an air of pride that was alone enough to illuminate ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... astonished. "You want to play our only hole-card on an off-chance like that? There aren't more than four or five people here who even know it's been set up on the other side of the asteroid. There's hardly a chance the raiders will find out about it. And you want to blast the news at them!" He ...
— This One Problem • M. C. Pease

... giving you a cup,' said Mrs. Lahens, 'but I think you might have taken the trouble to change your clothes: that's hardly a costume to receive ladies in. Look at him, Lady Castlerich—that's what I've to ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... cornices, string-courses, jambs and ornaments of the exterior. The Certosa at Pavia is contemporary with the cathedral of Milan, to which it offers a surprising contrast, both in style and material. It is wholly built of brick and terra-cotta, and, save for its ribbed vaulting, possesses hardly a single Gothic feature or detail. Its arches, mouldings, and cloisters suggest both the Romanesque and the Renaissance styles by ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... wolf—he ere long signalised himself in the tiltyard by the facility which he displayed in acquiring skill in arms, and in chivalrous exercises. Indeed, whether in assailing the pel, or charging the quintain on horseback, or riding at the ring, or in the combat at the barriers, Walter had hardly a rival among the youths of his own age; and, after being advanced to the rank of squire, he crowned his triumphs in the tiltyard by successfully charging on horseback, a la Coeur de Lion, with a sword in one hand and a lance in ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... play is for the best out of three hits, i.e. the man who scores the first two points wins. At the German Gymnasium the competitor who first scores five wins the bout. This is better than at the Tournament, although it will seem to some that even this is hardly a sufficient test of the merits of each player. The bouts seem too short, but probably this is unavoidable; that which is to be regretted and might be remedied, being that no points are given for "form:" the result is that, ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... on,—softly, steadily, from the half hour to the hour, and from the hour to the half. Out of doors there was nothing stirring, unless the owl stirred between his unmusical notes, or Mr. Skip's dog did something but howl. Hardly a wagon passed, hardly a breath moved the leaves. Cindy, on her part, was lost in the fascination ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... section of the city on the north side of Market street from the ferry building to Tenth street had been consumed in the hell of flame, while hardly a building was standing in the district south of Market street. At 2 o'clock in the afternoon, despite the heroic work of the firemen and the troops of dynamiters, who razed building after building and blew up property valued at millions, the flames spread across Market ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... be easily accounted for. It would be almost impossible to pitch on any one with the slightest pretensions to fill the vacated path. If you except Rosecrans, and perhaps Franklin, there is hardly a Division leader who has not, at one time or another, betrayed incapacity enough to disqualify him from holding any important command. West Point may send forth as good theoretical soldiers as Sandhurst, or St. Cyr, while the practical ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... "That's hardly a fair comparison, signora; we cripples don't flaunt our deformities in people's faces as she does her stupidity. At least give us credit for recognizing that crooked backs are no pleasanter than crooked ways. There is a step here; will ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... the floor. There was a hole in it, and from somewhere below I thought I heard voices. It was not very comfortable, standing there on top of Heaven knows what; but we were divided between fear and outrage, and our indignation won. With hardly a word we went back to the rear staircase and so to the cellar. Halfway down the stairs both of us remembered the same thing—that it was Tish's day to use the ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... there seems hardly a doubt that exostoses on the legs, caused by too much travelling on hard roads, are inherited. Blumenbach records the case of a man who had his little finger on the right hand almost cut off, and which in consequence grew crooked, and his sons had the same ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... hardly a person who, as a school-boy, had not received the fire of imagination and the stimulus for adventure and a roaming life through the stirring narratives concerning Captain Kidd and other well-known sea rovers. A certain ineffable glamor metamorphosed these robbers ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... a technical masterpiece," replied the Greek, smiling, "but hardly a work of imagination; for you have seen the original of the principal figure, and"—he turned to Helen Cumberly—"one need not go very far East for such an ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... treason and violence; and assuredly there had been perpetual acts of spoil and barbarous infractions of the law by men who deemed themselves above all law. The only curiosity was, for which of these acts they were to be tried, and this affected many of their judges likewise; for there was hardly a man in that court who was not conscious of some deed that would not exactly bear to be set beside the code of Scotland, and who had not been in the habit of regarding those laws as all very well for burghers, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... little slip of paper, upon which he had jotted memoranda of his engagements. Work, work, work—ceaseless work. How came this? What could there be to do in a sparely-populated agricultural district with, to appearance, hardly a cottage to ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... with which earnest people are impelled to rush incontinently into practice. The position of MacCarthy is very intelligible, however much it be, to my mind—what shall I say?—regrettable. There is, in fact, hardly a question that has been raised to-night that is at present capable of scientific determination. And with that word I ought perhaps, in my capacity of man ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... authority in law, but he was unsurpassed as a counsel, especially in criminal cases. Most men thought that he had not the mental and moral qualities necessary for the bench, while he was pre-eminently the man of the bar. This, however, is hardly a fair estimate of him. He possessed in a remarkable degree all those qualities in an advocate which entitle him to cherish the ambition of becoming a judge. From the judgment-seat, when his bigotry did not blind him, O'Connell would have given charges as luminous and just as his speeches in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... There was hardly a crash. A slight jar shook the forward end of the Titan and sliding down her fore-topmast-stay and rattling on deck came a shower of small spars, sails, blocks, and wire rope. Then, in the darkness to starboard and port, two darker shapes shot by—the two halves of the ship she ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... brightness with an exhilarating tang in the breeze, not always characteristic of this sultry month, nobody was in a hurry. And, in spite of the deliberate progress of the team, and the fact that the springs of the wagon left something to be desired, it was hardly a welcome surprise when Lucy suddenly turned the horses up a rough bit of road, climbing the hill with such ambitious directness that several muffled screams sounded from the rear of the wagon, and Dorothy clutched Peggy's arm, evidently ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... phrase that has been brought over from the usage and phraseology of the various denominations. Its use among Church people has been productive of the greatest harm. In the first place, it is hardly a correct phrase for a Churchman to use. We may "join" an Odd Fellows' lodge or a debating society, but we do not join a family or household which God's Church is. We are born or adopted into a family, and so we are adopted into God's family; incorporated, grafted into the Body ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller

... appearing to have full confidence in the Meer Walli's integrity of purpose, we affected to lay aside all personal precaution and courted his society, of which, to say truth, he seemed disposed to give us plenty. We had several interviews with him,—indeed, hardly a day passed without his sending for and honouring us with his ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem

... orchids and lilies-of-the-valley, and I had to wear it at tea—and the price of that tea, my dear, would feed a first family in Wetherby Ridge for a day!—and when I came up here to my room I found three dozen red roses with stems like stilts and a three-story red satin box of chocolates. Hardly a thrifty person, this man-I-met-on-the-boat, as you persist in calling him, Sally, but the last word in Reception Committees! Just as I had forgotten his charms, so he seemed to have mislaid the memory of mine, and we really made a very pleasant fuss over each other. Rodney had ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... sympathy with the spurious and fanciful sublimities of the classical poetry—with the nod of the Olympian Jove, or the seven-league strides of Neptune? Flying Childers had the most prodigious stride of any horse on record; and at Newmarket that is justly held to be a great merit; but it is hardly a qualification for a Pantheon. The parting of Hector and Andromache—that is tender, doubtless; but how many passages of far deeper, far diviner tenderness, are to be found in Chaucer! Yet in these cases ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Must we go with our question, We'll ask of the women," The peasants decided. They asked in the village "Split-up," but the people Replied to them shortly, "Not here will you find one. But go to the village 'Stripped-Naked'—a woman 10 Lives there who is happy. She's hardly a woman, She's more like a cow, For a woman so healthy, So smooth and so clever, Could hardly be found. You must seek in the village Matrona Korchagin— The people there call her 'The Governor's Lady.'" 20 ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... keep a servant—and green mould in the cellar—and a croquet set—and waiting down South when I distinctly promised to go back with the Sherrills in March—I take it very hard of you, Diane, to be so absent-minded. Ugh! How dark the lake has grown and the wind and the noise of the water. There's hardly a star. Diane, I do wonder how you stand it. The shore looks like bands of mourning crepe. And in the midst of it all, Diane, there in St. Augustine, the Baron aeroplaned the top off the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... these readers with the larger portion of the books which they require. Almost all important English books are republished in the United States. The literary genius of Great Britain still darts its rays into the recesses of the forests of the New World. There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember that I read the feudal play of Henry V for the first time in ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... fancy there was hardly a cultivated person in England, but, before the death of Shenstone, had heard of the rare beauty of his home of Leasowes. Lord Lyttleton, who lived near by, at the elegant seat of Hagley, brought over his guests to see what miracles the hare-brained, sensitive poet had wrought upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... the coasts of Australia and New Zealand (1770). The enthusiastic naturalist of the expedition, Joseph Banks, persistently sang the praises of Botany Bay; but the new acquisition was used as a convict settlement (1788), which was hardly a happy method of extending British civilization. The origin of Australia differed from that of New England, in that the Pilgrim Fathers wanted to avoid the mother- country; while the mother-country wanted to avoid the convicts; ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... ingratitude to that expression of the beautiful which beguiled many dull hours for me, and kept me company in many lonesome ones. For kindnesses of this sort, indeed, I am under obligations to edifices in every part of the city; and there is hardly a bit of sculptured stone in the Ducal Palace to which I do not owe some pleasant thought or harmless fancy. Yet I am shy of endeavoring in my gratitude to transmute the substance of the Ducal Palace into ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... us a fine crop of poets: right through April hardly a day passed without some recital or other. I am delighted that literature is so flourishing and that men are giving such open proofs of brains, even though audiences are found so slow in coming together. People as a rule lounge in the squares and waste the time in gossip when ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... differences enough in regard to their external appearance; but these differences are by no means the whole or even the most important of the differences which obtain between these birds. There is hardly a single point of their structure which has not become more or less altered; and to give you an idea of how extensive these alterations are, I have here some very good skeletons, for which I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Tegetmeier, a great authority in these matters; by means of which, if you examine ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley

... quickened at this flame, grew keener, more acute, acquired a marvellous sensibility, a sort of clairvoyance, a faculty of divination which caused her endless torture. Hardly a deception of Andrea's but seemed to send a shadow across her spirit; she felt an indefinite sense of disquietude which sometimes condensed itself into a suspicion. And this suspicion would gnaw at her heart, embittering kisses and caresses, ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... is hardly a hamlet that has not some American industry, packing house, lumber mill, flour mill, elevator, machine shop, motor factory, which operates on the Canadian side of the border because the tariff wall compels it to do so. These industries have doubled and trebled the populations of cities like ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut



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