"Middling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are not afraid of opening your mouth, I see. Three thousand francs!—humph! Security, ten acres of middling land, uncultivated, and a tumble-down house; title, droit de guillotine. It is a risk, but I think I may venture. Pierre Nadaud,' he continued, addressing a black-browed, sly, sinister-eyed clerk, 'draw a bond, secured upon Les Pres, and the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... a ferny hill, Twix' a liddle low shaw an' a great high gill. Oh hop-bine yaller an' wood-smoke blue, I reckon you'll keep her middling true! ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... contemptible the Lives of the Criminals, etc., may seem in the eyes of those who affect great wisdom and put on the appearance of much learning, yet it will not be without its uses amongst the middling sort of people, who are glad to take up with books within the circle of their own comprehension. It ought to be the care of all authors to treat their several subjects so that while they are read for the sake of amusement they may, as it were ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... "I am a middling strong old fellow, but that beautiful girl's despair upset me, and I never could hear any one hint suicide, and she talked of the river. The river would receive her without references. The river was kinder than her own fellow creatures! The river would give her a home ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... now had his salade thrown back from his face, to see if he gave any token of jeering or malice, but could see nought such: nay, his face was grave and serious, not ill-fashioned, though it were both long and broad like his body: his cheek-bones somewhat high, his eyes grey and middling great, and looking, ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... and other varieties common to the West. There is much level, table land, between the streams. Along the Wabash, below Terre Haute, is an undulating surface, diversified with forest and prairie, with a soil of middling quality, interspersed with some very rich tracts. Along the Wabash and its tributaries above Terre Haute, the land in general is first rate,—a large proportion forest, interspersed with beautiful prairies. The timber consists of oaks of various species, poplar, ash, walnut, ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... whose dress betokened that she belonged to the middling class of life, whom he thus addressed. "It is some distance hence, sir," said she; "but if you continue your way straight on for about a hundred yards, and then take the second turn to your ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they would be at. From there being but little food for them on the beaches here, and their being clothed in the skins of the oppossums, I presume they are Bush natives, the women, I forgot to mention, appeared to be middling well shaped, and good-looking children, they were, however, always ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... readers of the present day. He has something of Campbell in his style—Campbell in his calm and serious moods. It may have been desirable to reprint his poems and essays in an attractive volume,[27] with his portrait; but we fear that he belongs to the class of middling writers of prose and verse who were much talked of by our fathers ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... conclusion about human nature, and that the conclusion was not flattering. Miss Ingate was a Guardian of the Poor, and the Local Representative of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association. She had studied intimately the needy and the rich and the middling. She was charitable without illusions; and, while adhering to every social convention, she did so with a toleration pleasantly contemptuous; in her heart she had no mercy for snobs of any kind, though, unfortunately, she was at times ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... "She's middling," said Barker, "but my married sister that came to live with us since you was there has had a good deal of sickness in her family. Her husband's laid up with the rheumatism ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... Queen was in her chamber, and she was middling old, Her petticoat was satin and her stomacher was gold. Backwards and forwards and sideways did she pass, Making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass. The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass As comely or as kindly or as young as ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... filling his pipe and lighting it with a small red ember, "and all things considered, I don't think I'll raise any racket about that middling, Big Abel." ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Apple, tasting much like an Almond; and in some years there falls such plenty, as to make the Hogs fat. Horn-Beam; Cedar, two sorts; Holly, two sorts; Bay-Tree, two sorts; one the Dwarf-Bay, about twelve Foot high; the other the Bigness of a middling Pine-Tree, about two Foot and half Diameter; Laurel-Trees, in Height equalizing the lofty Oaks; the Berries and Leaves of this Tree dyes a Yellow; the Bay-Berries yield a Wax, which besides its Use in Chirurgery, makes Candles that, in burning, give ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... by the collar of his coat with his left hand, held him out as though he had been a small boy, unbuckled his sword-belt, and took two revolvers from his pockets with his right. The captain was a middling-sized man, and he struggled in the gripe of the powerful Kentuckian; but he might as well have attempted ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... antiquaries; the extreme obscurity of the subject, even though faction had never entered into the question, would naturally have begotten those controversies. But the great influence of the lords over their slaves and tenants, the clientship of the burghers, the total want of a middling rank of men, the extent of the monarchy, the loose execution of the laws, the continued disorders and convulsions of the state; all these circumstances evince that the Anglo-Saxon government became at last extremely aristocratical; and the events, during ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... sovereign whom England had yet seen on the throne, we discern at once the excuse which Henry would make to himself for his severities against the nobility, and the motive of that extreme popularity of manners by which Elizabeth aimed at attaching to herself the affections of the middling and lower orders of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... elephant being thus converted, the people around were filled with joy; they all raised a cry of wonder at the miracle, and brought their offerings of every kind. The scarcely-good arrived at middle-virtue, the middling-good passed to a higher grade, the unbelieving now became believers, those who believed were strengthened in their faith. Agatasatru, mighty king, seeing how Buddha conquered the drunken elephant, was moved at heart by thoughts profound; then, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... suppositions in respect to the termination of the war, of a middling character, or those lying between the two opposite extremes. In case, without any positive conquest or submission on either side, the general tenor of success throughout the war should be with the South, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... a bit like this man, as you make him out; a thin, foxy-looking fellow, with sandy hair and a face full of wrinkles, about the middling ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... handsome, green, and different from ours, having fruits and flowers each one according to its nature. There are many birds, which sing very sweetly. There are a great number of palm trees of a different kind from those in Guinea and from ours, of a middling height, the trunks without that covering, and the leaves very large, with which they thatch their houses. The country is very level." The Admiral jumped into his boat and went on shore. He came to two houses, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... can do something," she said, with a manner less cordial but more sincere than that she had previously assumed. "Leave the matter with me, and I may be able to open to you a grand house, not a plain, middling place like mine"—and she waved her hand deprecatingly toward the furnishings which seemed to Mrs. Frankland inconceivably rich—"a grand house with all the prestige of a great family. I don't know that I shall succeed with my friend, but for the sake of the cause I am willing ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... blooded steed of the Rothschilds by the side of the old plug of the cabman. Fresh beef, mutton, pork are now out of the question. A little poultry yet remains at fabulous prices. In walking through the Rue St. Lazare I saw a middling-sized goose and chicken for sale in a shop-window, and I had the curiosity to step in and inquire the price (rash man that I was). The price of the goose was $25, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... with his friend Evelyn, and, in fine, settles for a season in Paris. Here he keeps open table for the banished royalists, as well as for the French wits, till his means are impaired by his liberality. A middling poet, a pitiful politician, a fickle dangler in affairs of love, Waller was an admirable host, and not only gave good dinners and suppers, but flavoured them delicately with compliment and repartee. In Paris he recovered his tone of spirits, and, had his money ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... middling, within doors; but I don't like the climate, Mr. John I don't the climate, Sir. There's no country like h'England, I believe, for my business. 'Ere's a fine rose, Sir if you'll step a bit this way quite a new kind I got it over last h'autumn ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... during the ten days that it lived was remarkable for refusing to be fed by any but one particular person. Among the natives it was an object of wonder and fear, as they could never be prevailed upon to go near it. They asserted, that it would carry off a middling-sized kangaroo. Captain Waterhouse hoped to have brought it to England; but it was one morning found to have divided the strands of a rope with which it was fastened, and escaped. A drawing had been made of it while in our hands, of which the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... to his turn to charge them. "Are they guilty, or not? If the question was put to me I should say the Laird of MacLachlan, arrant Papist! should keep his men at home to Mass on the other side of the loch instead of loosing them on honest, or middling honest, Campbells, for the strict virtue of these Coillebhraid miners is what I am not going ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... said M. Postel, that typical, provincial tradesman. "Are you pretty middling? I have just been experimenting on treacle, but it would take a man like your father to find what I am looking for. Ah! he was a famous chemist, he was! If I had only known his gout specific, you and I should be rolling along in ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... once the Reverend Edward Masters, Bachelor o' Divinity in Cambridge College; but in a tavern there fell a-talking with a certain Pelagian about Adam an' Eve, an' because the fellow turn'd stubborn, put a knife into his waistband, an' had to run away to sea: a middling drinker only, but after a quart or so to hear him tackle Predestination! So there be times after all when I sets'n apart, and says, 'Drunk, you'm no good, but half-drunk, you'm priceless.' Now there's a man—" ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... had been in middling circumstances, but having lost her husband by a railroad accident six months previously, the widow was reduced to quite a straightened condition. And when the fever seized her, she was in utter despair at the thought of being taken away from her ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... the Mexicans whom we had known when we were here before. Toward noon we procured horses, and rode out to the Carmel Mission, which is about a league from the town, where we got something in the way of a dinner— beef, eggs, frjoles, tortillas, and some middling wine— from the mayor-domo, who, of course, refused to make any charge, as it was the Lord's gift, yet received our present, as a gratuity, with a low bow, a touch of the hat, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... "Just middling," replied Wayland, reticent from weariness and with joy of their camping-place. The lake, dark as topaz and smooth as steel, lay in a frame of golden willows—as a jewel is filigreed with gold—and above it the cliffs rose three thousand feet in sheer majesty, their upper slopes ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... reader might have a good Italian dictionary—an article, by the way, the writer has never yet seen. Suffice it to say, that the exclamations made use of by the Romans, men and women, not only of the lower but even the middling class, are of a nature exceedingly natural, and plainly point to Bacchic and Phallic sources. The bestemmia of the Romans is viler than the blasphemy ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... that there is anything particularly new or interesting. Not much is going on there. We have had a good crop of hay, the corn looks middling well; the rye is not much rusted. I think we shall not ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... 'Why, middling, Miss, i' myseln—my eyes is no better, but I'm a deal easier i' my mind nor I have been,' replied she, rising to welcome me with a contented smile; which I was glad to see, for Nancy had been somewhat afflicted ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... hurtful, as rum, tobacco, and all the meerschaums of divers colors that do accompany the same. Second, retrench all eating not necessary to health and comfort. A French family would live in luxury on the leavings that are constantly coming from the tables of those who call themselves in middling circumstances. There are superstitions of the table that ought to be broken through. Why must you always have cake in your closet? why need you feel undone to entertain a guest with no cake on your tea-table? Do ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... assists in casting loose and middling breeching; takes off and places amidships sight-covers, selvagee straps, and toggles; handles quoin; provides thumbstalls, priming-wires, and boring-bit, and equips himself with the first two; clears lock-string ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... acquiesce in the measures of England, without this last being obliged to give up any one point of her superiority. The leading men in the parliament of Ireland were the first that conformed; and though the ferment continued very high for some time after, among the middling and lower ranks of people, it was at length entirely allayed by the wisdom of the lord lieutenant, and the excellent law which he encouraged and passed for the benefit of that nation.* The primate of Ireland, who had been very busy in fomenting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... soon you'll be at the foot." Schiller's negligence and lack of alertness called for repeated reproof, and his final school thesis was unsatisfactory. Hegel was a poor scholar, and at the university it was stated "that he was of middling industry and knowledge but especially deficient in philosophy." John Hunter nearly became a cabinetmaker. Lyell had excessive aversion to work. George Combe wondered why he was so inferior to other boys in arithmetic. Heine agreed with the monks that ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... acknowledged his bravery and openness of temper; she was also struck with the very good-nature and benevolence of his character, but she contended that he had a certain grossness and indelicacy in his ideas, which distinguish the children of the lower and middling classes of people from those of persons of fashion. Mr Merton, on the contrary, maintained, that he had never before seen a child whose sentiments and disposition would do so much honour even to the most elevated situations. Nothing, he affirmed, was more easily ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... contains also one Zelie, who is perhaps the author's most impudent, but by no means most unamusing or most disagreeable, grisette. Les Demoiselles de Magazin gives us a whole posy of these curious flower-weeds of the garden of girls—pretty, middling, and ugly, astonishingly virtuous, not virtuous at all, and couci-couci (one of them, by the way, is nicknamed "Bouci-Boula," because she is plump and plain), but all good-natured, and on occasion almost noble-sentimented; a guileless provincial; his friend, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the middling or better class, in her turn, pines for the society of the circle of friends she has quitted, probably for ever. She sighs for those little domestic comforts, that display of the refinements and elegancies of life, that she had been accustomed to see around her. She ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... with myself, I began reading and visiting museums and galleries, gave up drinking and took to eating very little. If one keeps oneself well in hand from morning to night, one's heart seems lighter. I began to bore Ariadne too. The people with whom she won her triumphs were, by the way, all of the middling sort; as before, there were no ambassadors, there was no salon, the money did not run to it, and this mortified her and made her sob, and she announced to me at last that perhaps she would not be against our returning ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sake of the shipwrecked men we may have to bring home, and who are pretty sure to be in greater need of the stuff than us. I never drink myself, sir, and that's one reason, I think, why I manage to meet the cold and wet middling well, and rather better than some men who look stronger than me. However, I told Charlie Verrion to measure the rum out and serve it round, and it would have made you laugh, I do believe, sir, to have seen the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... was a vis inertiae in my total want of social and scholastic ambition. I never in my life felt the faintest desire to rise in the world either by making the acquaintance of people of rank (which is the main reason why boys of middling station are sent to aristocratic schools), or by getting letters put after my name as a reward for learning what had no intrinsic charm for me. In the worldly sense I never ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... composed of a great many very different races: unfortunately, I am unable to describe their several characteristics, as my stay in China was far too short. The people I saw in Canton, Hong-Kong, and Macao, are of middling stature. Their complexion varies with their occupation: the peasants and labourers are rather sun-burnt; rich people and ladies white. Their faces are flat, broad, and ugly; their eyes are narrow, rather obliquely placed, and far apart; their noses broad, and their ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... asked Balmordan. "Are we to understand that you also would be interested in the purchase of a middling plasmoid or two?" ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... looking into the round innocent face of his son, "that's the stuff the traders used to sell the Indians. Strong? Well, you might say it was middling strong—just middling—about three drops of it would make a rabbit ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... not the presiding executive of a southern state, but was Staple pere, of the heavy cotton firm of Staple, Long & Middling, New Orleans. Staple fils had been for years a great social card in Washington. The clubs, the legations, the avenues and the german knew him equally well; and though he talked about "the house," his only visible transaction with it was to make the name familiar to bill-brokers ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... uniform, without epaulets, booted to the knee, and with a cloth cap upon his head; and, at first sight, you might have taken him for a corporal of dragoons, of particularly neat and soldier-like aspect, and in the prime of his age and strength. He is only of middling stature, but his build is very compact and sturdy, with broad shoulders and a look of great physical vigor, which, in fact, he is said to possess,—he and Beauregard having been rivals in that particular, and both distinguished above other men. His complexion is dark ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with or without a franchise, is of importance; the poor and the middling are no otherwise so than as they obtain some collective capacity, and can be aggregated to some corps. If legal ways are not found, illegal will be resorted to; and seditious clubs and confederacies, such as no man living ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... be hung, and he was engaged in hanging it. Several pieces lay piled inside the door suitably for the hand. He stood with his back to these beside the meat bench, scraping the saltpetre off a large middling and rubbing it with red pepper. Suddenly the light of the small doorway failed; and turning he beheld his mother, and a few feet behind her—David said that he did not believe in miracles—but a few feet behind his mother there now stood a divine presence. Believe it ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... were coming over off and on—struck two hundred yards down the road and we both turned to look. In thirty seconds, maybe, another—and another—placed middling close, half a minute apart maybe, till eight had plowed along that bit. When they stopped, he looked at me. 'That's the first time I ever saw shells light nearby,' he spoke. 'Eight, I made it. But ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... edged with beads No. 4, is worked in middling-size purse silk over fine silk cord of the same colour as the silk. Before beginning to work this pattern, thread the beads which take the place of purl stitches, and which are slipped in between two double stitches. When the row of stitches is of the length required, ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... to reply, 'I'm thinking we'd better take it to the bank and get the money,' for she always felt surer of money than of cheques; so to the bank we went ('Two tens, and the rest in gold'), and thence straightway (by cab) to the place where you buy sealskin coats for middling old ladies. But ere the laugh was done the park would come through the ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... in which there was nothing to be seen but long barren wastes, over which were studded, here and there, a few solitary huts; upon its extremity, however, there were some houses of a more comfortable description, the habitations of middling farmers, who possessed small farms at a moderate rent. As they went along, the prelate addressed Reilly in ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... middling size for many months. During two or three weeks I wondered how he lived, for he was never seen to eat. He used to climb to the top of the tank and slide down the slippery glass as though it were a montagne russe. Then he would wander about upon the bottom, ploughing deep furrows in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... his grammar lesson without a slip, the letter B—standing for bene, well—was put in the grammar column. If he made one mistake, the entry was V B, vix bene—scarcely well; if two mistakes, Med, mediocriter—middling; and if three, M, male—badly, equivalent to not knowing it at all. The same system prevailed for all the lessons, and in a modified form for the behaviour or deportment also. As regards behaviour, the arrangement was one bad mark for each offence, the first constituting a ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... "Middling ... middling," Uncle William replied. "We're having a wee bit of opposition to fight against. One of these big firms has just opened a branch here. Pippin's! They're causing me a bit of anxiety, the way they're cutting prices down, but I think we'll hold our own with them. We ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... society. Among the upper classes gaming is reduced to a science and is almost exclusively the order of the day. There is little or no taste for litterature among any part of the native society. The upper classes are sensualists; the middling ignorant and superstitious. With regard to the Lazzaroni, I do not think that they at all deserve the ill name that has been given to them. They always seem good humoured and willing to work, when employment is given ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... would only give me the wages of a middling mechanic, you would have pleasure in my undisturbed work, which should all ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... That is its vexation. It is a Government for the 'bus people, the first settled and serious Government that ever attempted their case. Its action is worth all the pedantry of the doctrinaires and the middling morals of the juste milieu; and I, who am a Democrat, will stand by it as long as I can stand, which isn't very long just now, as I ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... was thin; the oats only middling; and the corn sold very badly on account of its smell. A curious circumstance was that La Butte, with the stones cleared away from it at last, yielded ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... fine, performing their moderate share of the labors of life, without being harassed by its cares. The sable inmates of the mansion were not excluded from the domestic affections: in families of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the circle closed round the evening hearth, its blaze glowed on their dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's children. It must have contributed ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... furnished, it is one hundred and sixty pounds. Rock Park, as the locality is called, is private property, and is now nearly covered with residences for professional people, merchants, and others of the upper middling class; the houses being mostly built, I suppose, on speculation, and let to those who occupy them. It is the quietest place imaginable, there being a police station at the entrance, and the officer on duty allows no ragged or ill-looking person to pass. There being a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... least sharp, and stick into the wood at some distance from the flesh. It is the rapidity of the throws, the glitter of the blades, the curve which the handles make towards their living aim, which give an air of danger to an exhibition that has become common-place, and only requires very middling skill. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... says that "it may be regarded as a test of any reader's insight into the most poetical aspects of poetry," and his Horatian Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland. The town of Hull voted him a monument, which was, however, forbidden by the Court. His appearance is thus described, "He was of middling stature, pretty strong-set, roundish-faced, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... to advantage a well proportioned dancer. A tall person appears the more majestic on it; but those of a middling stature are more generally fit for every character; and may make up in gracefulness what they want in size. The remarkably tall commonly want the graces to be seen in those of the more ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... rigid and sombre young widow. She showed her a sort of childlike affection mingled with a kind of respectful terror. Olivier complimented the aunt and niece, while Grivet hazarded a few spicy jokes that met with middling success. Altogether the company were delighted, enchanted, and declared that everything was for the best; in reality all they thought about ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... when you try to do this morally, which is what parents and schoolmasters are doing every day, you ought to be hanged; and some day, when we take a sensible view of the matter, you will be; and serve you right. The child does not stand between a good and a bad angel: what it has to deal with is a middling angel who, in normal healthy cases, wants to be a good angel as fast as it can without killing itself in the process, ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... be the improvement of the middling and upper classes, nationally speaking the passion for strong liquor continues to bear sway in the British islands to a deplorable extent. Lord Ashley has stated in the House of Commons during the present session, 1843, that there is good authority for estimating ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... just survived long enough to give ample proofs that it deserved the patronage, and support, that were denied it. The very favorable notice that the Evening Star took of "Old Cuff," is proof positive that it is much higher than "fair to middling;" and if it is true that "the proof of the pudding is eating the bag," (and the reader will consider "Old Cuff" as the bag,) I think it follows that the pudding now set before him cannot be a ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... if I can. She was of middling height, and very delicately formed, with a face as destitute of color as if it had been carved out of marble. Her dark hair was cut short in her neck, and parted over her forehead and her even brows. Her eyes were dark and soft, but almost constantly bent on the floor. She dressed in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... in an equal degree in the country, but the subject has not hitherto received sufficient attention to enable anyone to say that there are not more deaths in proportion among the children of the poor, even in the country, than among those of the middling and higher classes. Indeed, it seems difficult to suppose that a labourer's wife who has six children, and who is sometimes in absolute want of bread, should be able always to give them the food and attention necessary to support life. The sons and daughters of peasants will not ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... themselves some fine morning or other in events, if not in catastrophes. I have been watchful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell as yet. You may laugh at me, and very likely think me foolishly fanciful to trouble myself about what is going on in a middling-class household like ours. Do as you like. But here is that terrible fact to begin with,—a beautiful young girl, with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to Nature's women, turned loose among ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Guard, composed of the middling class in the city of Paris, were most of them in favor of reform. Many of their officers belonged to the Liberal party. Their commander-in-chief, General Jacquemont, was ready to sustain the Government. He ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... were) a bright live coale within it. He had two kinds of looks; when he laught, was witty, and in a merry humour, one could scarce see his eies; by and by, when he was serious and earnest, he opened his eies round his eie-lids: he had middling eies, not very big nor very little. He was six foote high and something better, and went indifferently erect, or rather, considering ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... the aristocracy should feel proud of being connected, either personally or through their relatives, with those pursuits on which their country's greatness depends. The wealthier manufacturers and merchants already mix with those classes, and the larger and even the middling tradesmen are frequently found associating with the gentry of the land. It is good that this ambition should be cultivated, not by any rivalry in expense, but by a rivalry in knowledge and in liberal feelings; and few ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... to give thee some account of the hand we have had with the tearing fellow, who had certainly been a lost man, had we not been with him; or he would have killed somebody or other. I have no doubt of it. And now he is but very middling; sits grinning like a man in straw; curses and swears, and is confounded gloomy; and creeps into holes and corners, like an old hedge-hog ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... face to face with a beautiful woman reclining on a couch. On hearing the door open she had raised herself on her elbow. Now, seeing a stranger before her, she sprang up with a low cry, and stood gazing at me, her face expressing both astonishment and anger. She was of middling height, her features regular though somewhat childlike, her complexion singularly fair. A profusion of golden hair hung in disorder about her neck, and matched the deep blue of her eyes, wherein it seemed to me, there lurked more spirit and fire ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... suppose, though what I can see of him bean't much to look at, Ann—but no more am I, for that matter! And he ain't exactly a Goliath of Gath—though no more am I again. But then I've noticed that great men be generally of a comfortable, middling size. And if he be ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... been wounded in 1812, and had received a lucrative post in Petersburg. Nikolai Artemyevitch entered the School of Cadets at sixteen, and left to go into the Guards. He was a handsome, well-made fellow, and reckoned almost the most dashing beau at evening parties of the middling sort, which were those he frequented for the most part; he had not gained a footing in the best society. From his youth he had been absorbed by two ideals: to get into the Imperial adjutants, and to make a good marriage; the ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... life, she follows him to Land of Free. Finds him about to marry his sweetheart of childhood, a New York society girl worth uncounted millions but just middling looking. Prompt bust-up of childhood sweetheart's romance. Abandonment of social position, wealth, everything by Schuyler, who declares he will make the stranger his bride—accompanying subtitle, "What should we care what the world may say? For after all, love ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... found some food—with difficulty, for the proprietors had removed their valuables during the night and made a middling breakfast. He had not fully determined what to do, so he stayed where he was until his next step should become clearer. The morning passed slowly, with no developments. He kept an eye on the crowd of watchers, and once or twice he was puzzled to see that they ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... expressed by a look or a low murmur. But I perceived the corpulent gentleman and the wan mathematician slily exchange their dishes, by which they both seemed to consider themselves gainers. The dish allotted to me, being of a middling character, I ate of it without repining; though, from the savoury fumes of my right-hand neighbour's plate, I could not help wishing I had been allowed to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upward of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upward of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... "Middling," said the President.—"By the way," he added, "if you have any money, it is usual to offer some champagne. It keeps up a good spirit, and is one of my own ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... three bars, which at the moment separated two as genuine lovers as ever wall of "stones with lime and hair knit up" could have sundered. On one side of the fence stood a man whose face I could not see, and on the other one of the loveliest horses I had ever set eyes upon. I am no better than a middling fair horseman, but, for this horse's sake, I may be allowed to mention that my friends will all have me look at any horse they think of buying. He was over sixteen hands, with well rounded barrel, clean limbs, small head, and broad muzzle; hollows above his ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... REBUILD, is no darling of your political Repairer. Call the party and the men by their right names: and give me for utility in legislation or administrative action an Old Tory and Obstructive party rather than this middling, meddling, muddling Repairer— ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... sir, pretty middling within doors; but I don't like the climate, Mr. John, I don't like the climate, sir. There's no country like h'England, I believe, for my business. 'Ere's a fine rose, sir—if you'll step a bit this way—quite a new kind—I got it over last h'autumn—the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... world's work, when it goes about with some sort of a garment on it. We are so used to a leaven of falsehood in all we hear and say, nowadays, that nothing is more likely to deceive us than the absolute truth. If a shopkeeper told me that his wares were simply middling, of course, I should think that they were not worth a farthing. But all that has nothing to do with my poor brother. Well, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... different sorts of dungs. I had a great tact in discovering amongst my customers the real connoisseur, and to him I gave it almost genuine. My whole profits, in fact, depended upon my discrimination of characters. To those of the middling ranks, I gave it half-mixed; to the lower sort, three-quarters; and to the lowest, almost without any tobacco at all. Whenever I thought I could perceive a wry face, I immediately exerted my ingenuity in favour of the excellence of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the plain of Hazeldale, which was a wide valley with a middling river winding about it, the wild-wood at its back toward the Tofts, and in front down-land nought wooded, save here and there a tree nigh a homestead or cot; for that way the land was builded for a space. Forsooth it was not ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... can't afford an expensive lawsuit, Sir Simon:—and, begging your pardon, I think the law never intended that an injured man, in middling circumstances, should either go without redress, or starve himself to ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... At middling distances or better, Ed could still see as well as ever, but close up he needed help. He got out his pocket magnifier and studied the spine. It looked hollow, grooved back for a distance from the point. A drop of milky looking substance trembled on ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... away from home for two or three months, there would certainly be two or three months take of fish, if it was a middling season, for which money would be due ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... really dry in; at one hundred and fifty in the hot room you feel more comfortable than outside at eighty-two. The Turkish bath in the hotel is very nicely fitted up, but the native masseur wasn't a pleasing experience, his weak chocolate-coloured hands gave me the sensation of the touch of a middling strong eel; his lean, lithe figure and the charms round his neck, and grey hair died brick-red I expect to see again in dreams—a crease in his teeth and venom in his ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... la Cour des Fees, with a portion of that national taste, which she inherited from her father. The heavy magnificence that distinguished the reign of Louis XIV. had scarcely descended to one of the middling rank of Monsieur de Barberie, who had consequently brought with him to the place of his exile, merely those tasteful usages which appear almost exclusively the property of the people from whom he had sprung, without the encumbrance and cost of the more pretending fashions of the period. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... convert one into a crack player. Among those who now practice football, and their name is legion, the superior players can be numbered in (to give it a wide scope) hundreds. In fact, to be able to master all the details requisite to win a first-class match, one has to be capable of dribbling, middling, heading, and passing in a way that would do credit to solving a complicated problem in Euclid. It is all very well to talk about brute force and lasting power, but unless these are accompanied by scientific application, they are worth little, and cost much. "The race is not always ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... play the villain. Or maybe some at the Court of Mahound. I know not, for I was never there. But here is a goodly world, with prizes for them that can take them. Yet virtue may still flourish, for I have done middling well by serving my country. Now I am minded to retire into my lands, to cultivate good letters and to pursue virtue. For here about the Courts there are many distractions. The times are evil times. Yet will I do one good ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... death, if I don't die aither ov consumption or production! I ever and always thought that asthronomy was the hardest science that was till now,—and, it's no lie I'm telling you, the same asthronomy is a tough enough morsel to brake a man's fast upon,—and geolidgy is middling and hard too,—and hydherastatics is no joke,—but ov all the books ov science that ever was opened and shut, that book upon P'litical Econimy lifts the pins! Well, well, if they wait till they persuade me that taking a man's rints out ov the counthry, ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... they call me—Silas Grant. Let me take your bag. My son John will be here in a minute, and will help you in with your trunk. Needn't worry, it's all right where it is. Folks are middling honest about here," he added, with a dry laugh, and his hand closed on his guest's—a cold limp, dead-fish sort of a hand, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... on middling soft mud—I should think about sixty miles from here. We are the second boat sent off for assistance. We parted company with the other on Tuesday. She must have passed to the northward of you to-day. The chief officer is in her ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... altogether supersede either the Titus or the Brutus in the eye of a Parisian, but it had evidently been twisted on system; and if their drapery in general might startle Baron Stulz, it evidently cost as dexterous cutting out, and as ambitious tailoring, as the most recherche suit that ever turned a "middling man" into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... him at lunch. Her judgment of men and affairs—for so young a woman—is nothing short of amazing. I attribute it to the Asiatic streak on her mother's side. It is a kind of second-sight. What a wife for a Prime Minister! And Marshire, a fellow of middling ability and no experience, has had the sense to perceive her qualities!... My feelings can't be easily defined, nor, indeed, is it necessary they should.... I have gone so far that I cannot see anything for it but ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... now clear-sighted, and Juccio truly blind. The next day Cola called on his friend with very downcast and melancholy looks, and when Juccio bade him good day, he said, "I wish from my soul it were a good, or even a middling, day for me." "Why, what is the matter?" "The matter?" echoed Cola; "why, it is all over with me: some rascal has stolen a hundred florins from the place where they were hidden, and I cannot recover a penny from my relations, so ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... "Middling bad, sir." Ransome's eyes gazed steadily into mine. We exchanged smiles. Ransome's a little wistful, as usual, mine no doubt grim enough, to correspond ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... variegated piece of water. I remember, one winter evening, trying to enter the mouth of the Sacramento. There was a freshet on the river, the flood tide from the bay had been beaten back into a strong ebb, and the lusty west wind died down with the sun. It was just sunset, and with a fair to middling breeze, dead aft, we stood still in the rapid current. We were squarely in the mouth of the river; but there was no anchorage and we drifted backward, faster and faster, and dropped anchor outside as the last breath of wind left us. The night came on, beautiful and warm and ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... brought her a trencher filled with chopped things, and a man in a blue jerkin came to her side bearing a middling pig, seared to a pale clear pinkness. The boy held the slit stomach carefully apart, and she lined it with slices of bread, dropping into the hollow chives, nutmegs, lumps of salt, the buds of bergamot, and marigold seeds with their acrid perfume, and balls ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... the Widow for help.] — I'm a poor scholar with middling faculties to coin a lie, so I'll tell you the truth, Christy Mahon. I'm wedding with Pegeen beyond, and I don't think well of having a clever fearless man the like of you dwelling ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... tribe are of middling size and deep black color; broad-shouldered, but neither brave nor warlike. They keep aloof from other tribes, and by a Fullah law, are protected from foreign violence in consequence of their occupation as salt-makers, which is regarded by the interior natives as one of the most useful trades. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... adulterous race, whose youths are catamites, and whose old men are obstinate as asses." "But I am from Yemen," said the boy. "If so," answered the tyrant, "thou belongest to a comfortless region, where the most honourable profession is robbery, where the middling ranks tan hides, and where a wretched poor spin wool and weave coarse mantles." "But I am from Mecca," said the boy." "Then," replied Hyjauje, "thou comest from a mine of perverseness, stupidity, ignorance, and slothfulness; ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... retired green-grocer, rejoicing in the euphonious name of TIBBS, living at Hackney, near London, sorely against his will, and after warm remonstrance, finally yielded to his wife's entreaty that he would go in character to a masquerade-ball, given to the 'middling interest' by one of his old neighbors. He went accoutred as a knight, wearing his visor down. What was his surprise on entering the room, to find first one and then another member of the motley company slapping him familiarly on the back, with: 'Halloa! TIBBS! ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... "Middling down in the mouth, too, and plagued out of his life between the ruck of you," continued Pete; "but God forgive you all, you can't ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... mighty Rome, Aricia received me in but a middling inn: Heliodorus the rhetorician, most learned in the Greek language, was my fellow-traveller: thence we proceeded to Forum-Appi, stuffed with sailors and surly landlords. This stage, but one for better travellers than we, being laggard we divided into two; the Appian way is less ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... little shepherd took his lesson out of the priest's breviary. At the end of three months he had learned to read. This was not enough—he must now learn to write. The priest had a writing teacher at Rome make three alphabets—one large, one middling, and one small; and pointed out to him that by the help of a sharp instrument he could trace the letters on a slate, and thus learn to write. The same evening, when the flock was safe at the farm, the little Luigi hastened to the smith at Palestrina, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her," replied the man; "middling tail, rather young, as I thought—with a veil, through which I could see a pair ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... formerly prevailed at the public-houses of Highgate, to administer a ludicrous oath to all the men of the middling rank who stopped there. The party was sworn on a pair of horns fastened on a stick; the substance of the oath was never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress, never to drink small beer when be could get strong, with many other injunctions of the like kind to all of which was added ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... impregnated with a flavor of a like character, and after it was swallowed this flavor would cling to the palate with provoking tenacity for several minutes. The sailors smacked their lips over it once or twice, and pronounced it "from fair to middling." When boiled, and drank under the name of tea or coffee, it might have deserved that character; but when taken directly from the cask, and quaffed in hot weather, as a pleasant and refreshing beverage it ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... a Wagon on a Hill-side.—In going down a steep hill a middling-sized tree may be felled, and its root tied to the hind axletree, while its branchy top sweeps along the ground, as is seen in the lowermost wagon in the sketch. [Sketch of horses and wagons on hill] In the south-west of France the leaders of the team are unharnessed ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... ambassdriss, brot by the ambasdor's Shassure, and sealed with his seal of arms, would affect anybody in the middling ranx of life. It droav Lady Griffin mad with delight; and, long before my master's arrivle, she'd sent Mortimer and Fitzclarence, her two footmin, along with a polite reply in ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to be reminded, that I am not worth mentioning among the illustrious men who have long formed the familiar subjects of my delightful researches. But with the middling as well as with the great, the same habits must operate. Early in life, I was struck by the inductive philosophy of Bacon, and sought after a Moral Experimental Philosophy; and I had then in my mind ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Fellow of the Geological Society, and may have caught from its members the enthusiasm which leads him to attach so extraordinary a value to every goose-track of the Elizabethan formation. It is bad enough to be, as Marston was, one of those middling poets whom neither gods nor men nor columns (Horace had never seen a newspaper) tolerate; but, really, even they do not deserve the frightful retribution of being reprinted by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... the different denominations ran high, and the middling good folk who did not go to church counted those who did. In the Established Church there was a sparse gathering, who waited in vain for the minister. After a time it got abroad that a flag of distress was flying ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... kinds of persons could do it," replied Cyrilla—"a dull person—a plodder—and a genius. Middling people—they're the kind that fill the world, they're you and I, my dear—middling people have to fuss with the trifles that must be sacrificed if one is to do anything big. You call those trifles your freedom, but they're your slavery. And by sacrificing ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... this world in whose lot failure seems to be the rule. Everything to which they put their hand breaks down or goes amiss. But most human beings can testify that their lot, like their abilities, their stature, is a sort of middling thing. There is about it an equable sobriety, a sort of average endurableness. Some things go well: some things go ill. There is a modicum of disappointment: there is a modicum of success. But so much of disappointment comes to the lot of almost all, that there is no object in nature at which ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... enfeebled invalid can travel far without fatigue. I had now got greatly stronger; and, if not quite up to my old thirty miles per day, nor altogether so bold a cragsman as I had been only a few years before, I was at least vigorous enough to enjoy a middling long walk, and to breast a tolerably steep hill. And so I resolved on at least glancing over, if not exploring, the fossiliferous deposits of the Orkneys, trusting that an eye somewhat practised in the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... into the house. There was no hall; they walked straight into the sitting-room, where a table was spread with tea, and Miss Hilton, a rather faded-looking lady of middling age, was ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... The Bohemians of the middling and poorer classes, have certainly less sincerity and straight-forwardness than their neighbours. An anecdote is related illustrative of the slyness of the Bohemians, compared with the simple honesty of the ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... boys tried their level best to get the flag," said Dick, "but its defenders were much too numerous and strong for them. During the struggle there were some middling heavy blows passed, and, if I mistake not, Rodney came in for a few that ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... blank verse, in about six weeks, and having shewn it to several of my literary acquaintance, the far greater part were of opinion, that it should be entirely one, or the other; but, as the scene was laid in private life, and chiefly among those of middling rank, it ought to be entirely prose; and that, not much exalted; and accordingly, with no small labour, I turned it all into prose. But in some short time after, having communicated this to Dr. Samuel Johnson, his words (as well as I remember) ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... haranguing the clergyman of the parish, a quiet, meek little man, who dined at Scamperley regularly on Sunday, and appeared frightened out of his wits. He was a man of education and intellect, a ripe scholar, a middling preacher, and a profound logician; but he was completely overpowered by ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... upon was far more dangerous than any hitherto attempted by me, needs no further proof than this:—I went and made my will at Porlock, with a middling honest lawyer there; not that I had much to leave, but that none could say how far the farm, and all the farming stock, might depend on my disposition. It makes me smile when I remember how particular I was, and how for the life of me I was puzzled to bequeath ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... all the dreams and 'voices' in this hustling world wouldn't have put any guile into the soul of Nathaniel, and they won't into Angel Halsey's. Saints are saints, sinners are sinners, middling folks are middling, just the same whether they have three 'revelations' a day apiece, or one once a year, or none at all. You're fretting because you think a righteous man might do something wicked, thinking that the voice of the Lord had told him. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... given to public distilleries, tend to impoverish the poor, who are not affected by the sumptuary laws; for the regent has lately laid very severe restraints on the articles of dress, which the middling class of people found grievous, because it obliged them to throw aside finery that might have ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... but they're strange to Crabapple. I heard this though: there weren't any women to them—just men—father and sons like. I drew up right slow going by; but nobody passed out a word. It's a middling bad farm place—rocks and berry bushes. I wouldn't reckon ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... aristocracy, and is considered so vitally important to their proper carriage, as well in their set as out of it, that their children are as far advanced in this particular at fifteen, as the children of middling people at twenty-five. The petticoat-string by which the youth of the non-fashionable class is tied to their mother, is a ligature not in use among the fashionable world; from the earliest period professional persons are employed in their education, and the mother never shows ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the Senate makes it necessary to be unusually careful who is admitted into that body. Let other orders receive middling men: the Senate must receive none but those who are of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... character and the exit of another, as in the French drama. The dramatis personae were divided into three classes—the inferior characters (nicha), who were said to speak Prakrit in a monotonous accentless tone of voice (anudattoktya); the middling (madhyama), and the superior (pradhana), who were said to speak Sanskrit with accent, emphasis, and expression (udattoktya). In general, the stage is never left vacant till the end of an Act, nor does any change of locality take place until then. The commencement of a new Act is often ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... to my study, consulted London, Lindley, and Linnaeus,—the thick Gray, the middling Gray, and the child's Gray,—Worcester's Dictionary, and Webster's, in both of which you can usually find almost anything but what should be there,—Johnson's "Dictionary of Gardening," and Gardner's "Dictionary of Farming,"—and none of these treatises mentioned the quantity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... description of schools," says Mr. Symons, "was made the subject of minute and accurate inquiry in 1838, by the Rev. Thomas Sutton, the vicar; and I have reason to believe that no material difference has taken place in the amount of scholars taught at the 'common' and 'middling' private day-schools since Mr. Sutton's census was made." From this census it appears that the maximum number of children on the books of the different day-schools, including the infant-schools, is 800; but on a ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... her brother, "doesn't middling-bad stand beside it, with quite as good a claim to be considered half-way? However, I won't press my victory too far. For the sake of peace we will agree that these are semi-detached houses in one block—and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... not come often at Middlemoor; not very often, at least. We had two of them during the time we lived there, 'year in and year out,' as Kezia called it. But between them we had much milder ones, one or two quite wonderfully mild, and others middling—nothing really to complain of. Still, a very tiny cottage house standing by itself is pretty cold during the best of winters, even though the walls were thick. And in wet or stormy days one does get tired of very small ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... fortune was a myth, and that his house, furniture, and personal effects would have to be sold in order to pay his debts. When all was settled, Edwin Gurwood found himself cast upon his own resources with good health, a kind but wayward disposition, a strong handsome frame, a middling education, and between three and four hundred pounds in his pocket. He soon found that this amount of capital melted with alarming rapidity under the influence of a good appetite and expensive tastes, so he resolved at once to commence work of some kind. But what was he to turn to? His ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... Voltaire. I notice the case, however, of the Greek thefts and frauds committed upon so many of our excellent wits belonging to the 18th and 19th centuries, chiefly with a view to M. de Talleyrand—that rather middling bishop, but very eminent knave. He also has been extensively robbed by the Greeks of the 2d and 3d centuries. How else can you account for so many of his sayings being found amongst their pages? A thing you may ascertain in a moment, at any police office, by having ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair "Why didn't the man die? He is only forty now. He will take my last penny from me, he will marry, will enjoy ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov |
