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More "Characteristic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Her fingers were yellow from peeling an orange, and her smart little hat was cocked on one side. There were grains of sand on her black gown, and when she saw her mistress she at once began to compress her lips, and to assume the expression of obstinate patience characteristic of properly-brought-up servants who find themselves travelling far ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... to this was brief, and characteristic of his insight where Walter was concerned. After assuring him that he had no objections to his leaving the stewardship in case the scholarship was open to him, ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... fell upon the pale, sad face of Carl, and he noticed his dwarfed and disfigured form, he had a feeling of pity for him. There was that about his manner which at once interested him. The boy's features were good, and yet they had that sharp, shrunken appearance which may be said to be characteristic of the majority of those afflicted with spinal trouble. He was a little humpback, who, from his size, would be taken for a lad of not more than thirteen, though he was then seventeen, one year older than Fred, as the ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... are little different from the villages of Normandy, but the churches have not the architectural beauty of the Normandy churches, being for the most part massive structures without any pretence to artistic embellishment in their construction. Monkish-looking priests are a characteristic feature of these villages, and when, on passing down the narrow, crooked streets of Fontenay, I wheel beneath a massive stone archway, and looking around, observe cowled priests and everything about the place seemingly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... exceptional opportunities to learn of the modern world, but who, like every Eastern woman, clings with almost desperate tenacity to the traditions and customs of her race. Indeed, however the youth of Oriental countries may be changing, their mothers always exhibit that characteristic of woman-hood, conservatism, which is to them the safe-guard of their homes. Unlike the Western woman, accustomed to a broader horizon, the woman of China, secluded for generations within her narrow courtyards, prefers the ways and manners which she knows, rather than flying to ills she knows ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... How, he demands, does the actual life of every day fit into "that view of the scheme of things which bids us believe that the silent God above us is principally anxious about just one thing, the moral recovery and ingathering of these individual souls one by one"? The answer is given with characteristic confidence: "It does not fit into it at all; if God be as anxious about that as we are assured He is, He has a queer way ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... of the biographies he was reading. James A. Garfield was then spoken of for the presidency; Edward wondered whether it was true that the man who was likely to be President of the United States had once been a boy on the tow-path, and with a simple directness characteristic of his Dutch training, wrote to General Garfield, asking whether the boyhood episode was true, and explaining why he asked. Of course any public man, no matter how large his correspondence, is pleased to receive an earnest letter from an information-seeking ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... something which will convince Mademoiselle that she is mistaken. I was able to get hold of one of his Majesty's collars which he had just worn. Its size is distinctly characteristic, being 18 inches. Now it would be very easy to verify the fact that the real King wears this size and also whether it fits the supposed impostor. In any case, Monsieur, from inquiries made among the ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... army, and the character of its chiefs, are now wholly in the hands of your excellency. You and you alone will be held responsible for all that shall happen. The hour of clemency for Greece is past; the sword alone can decide the contest. Courage is a characteristic of men who deserve to be free. Let then the conduct of a few atrocious individuals yesterday be effaced by a march direct to Athens, at least to relieve the women and children now doomed to destruction, if prompt exertions be not made to save them. Your excellency ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... I saw you. The former favorite mistress of 826 B, who was displaced by Frederika, is a French girl, Celestine d'Aublay. She resented her downfall bitterly, and she hates Frederika with the characteristic vehemence of her race. She learned from the talk of the servants that a new victim—Estella—had been brought into the house, a girl of great beauty; and that Frederika was trying to prevent 826 B from seeing her. A sudden thought took possession of her mind; she would ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... this mighty river the most characteristic and persistent human features were the stacks of brush-wood and the piles of stove wood along the banks or loaded upon boats and barges for the market. The brush-wood was largely made from the boughs of pine, tied into bundles and stacked ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... improvement in taste during the previous twenty years was "as different as civilized people from savages"; while Stafford Smith, writing in 1779, tells that music was then "thought to be in greater perfection than among even the Italians themselves." There is a characteristic John Bull complacency about these statements which is hardly borne out by a study of the lives of the leading contemporary musicians. Even Mr Henry Davey, the applauding historian of English music, has to admit the evanescent character ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... ever more impersonal in his attitude toward government, and that very impersonality was the characteristic which most baffled the American people. Mr. Wilson had a genius for the advocacy of great principles, but he had no talent whatever for advocating himself, and to a country that is accustomed to think in headlines about ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... with the will, were a splendid fire-eyed motherly Britannia the figure sitting in the minds of men for our image—a palpitating figure, alive to change, penetrable to thought, and not a stolid concrete of our traditional old yeoman characteristic. Verily he lives for the present, all for the present, will be taught in sorrow that there is no life for him but of past and future: his delusion of the existence of a present hour for man will not outlast the season ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... have just mentioned show that to mere curiosity, the characteristic passion of our sex and so often its ruin, I am to ascribe the introduction, which was only prevented by events unparalleled in history from proving the most fortunate in my life as it is the most cherished in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... station-basin is novel, characteristic, and not without its charms, especially when the sunset paints the plain with the red, red gold, and washes every barren peak with the tenderest, loveliest rosy pink. Under an intensely clear sapphire-coloured sky rises a distant rim of broken and chocolate-coloured ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... This is characteristic. For no people in the world are so fond or so long-suffering with children—children make the mirth and the adornment of their homes, serving them for playthings and for picture-galleries. 'Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them.' The stray bastard is contended for by rival ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... season of egg-laying for the megapodes in Bashti's private laying-yard did not begin until the period of the south-east trades. And Agno, having early conceived his plot, with the patience that was characteristic of him was content ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... was a temperament sensitive to the point of morbidness. This unhappy characteristic had been fostered only during his early years. But he had not attempted to change it till the period of his disgrace plainly offered a choice between a resolute stifling of his pain or downright madness. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... characteristic, Margaret, that you hadn't the least perception of it. Yes, I was done with you. I simply didn't need you any more. What you could give me, you had given me; you had fulfilled your function. You knew in the depths of your heart, you knew unconsciously ... that ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... are the born enemies of all characteristic music, and the greatest destroyers of style. May Fate preserve the orchestral conductor ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... said, with characteristic energy, "If any one, during my administration, shall appeal, I will make him a foot shorter, and send the pieces to Holland and let him appeal ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... Stoddard, in his "Men of Business," tells a characteristic story of the late Leland Stanford. When eighteen years of age his father purchased a tract of woodland, but had not the means to clear it as he wished. He told Leland that he could have all he could make ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation. No more characteristic instance could be found than in the family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all, and Kirstie the first of all, ready and eager to pour forth the particulars of their genealogy, embellished with every detail that memory had handed down or fancy fabricated; and, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regiments of its State in the number of its battle losses, or, excepting six regiments that spent most of their time in garrison duty, at the bottom of the list of all three years' regiments sent from the State. It would appear that the 103d Ohio had become pretty well imbued with the spirit characteristic of the headquarters with which it was associated, to claim credit in an inverse ratio ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... his indorsement and went to a chair and sat down. His Excellency was pursuing his familiar tactics in an emergency—the rough tactics that were characteristic of him. In this case Senator Corson approved and allowed the Governor to ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... in a very high degree impregnated with the taste and desire for art which seemed so generally the characteristic of our people. I speak not now of the degree of skill which she possessed. Her teacher was a foreigner, and a mere mechanic; but, while he taught her only the ordinary laws of painting, her natural endowment wrought more actively in favor of her performances. She soon discovered ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... have been a Venetian characteristic; nor is it now, when Venice is only a museum and show place. All the Venetians—the men, that is,—whom one sees in the Piazza have an air of profound self-satisfaction. And this palace of the Doges is no training-place ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... a place in Florence? One of the commentators, with characteristic carelessness, states that the places mentioned in the preachment of Fra Cipolla (an amusing specimen of the patter-sermon of the mendicant friar of the middle ages, that ecclesiastical Cheap Jack of his day) are all names of streets or places of Florence, a statement which, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... leaden, breathless silence, while Alex nervously clenched and unclenched his hands. At last the line again clicked open, and with a characteristic deliberation that caused the nerve-strung boy a moment's hysterical laugh, "B" announced: "Just got her. She's ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... Butterfly-collecting, singing to a guitar passionate songs of love and hate, and lying the live-long day on a long chair with a long tumbler in his hand, and a volume of Longfellow on the floor, are his characteristic pursuits. It is needless to say that he is the Accountant-General, and the last man in the world to suppose that I have given myself ten days' privilege leave to the Hills on urgent private affairs,—affairs de coeur, and ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... have at least taken a partial course—enough to catch the university spirit. All the controlling elements of German national life, therefore, have been trained to sympathize with the freedom, intellectual and individual, which is the characteristic of the university method." ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... each side; its pectoral fins are large, its ventral much smaller; the fin behind its anus small; its dorsal fin large, containing eight spines; its tail, where it joins to the tail-fin, remarkably broad, without any taperness, so as to be characteristic of this genus: the tail-fin is broad, and square at the end. From the breadth and muscular strength of the tail, it appears to ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... notice. They require the practice of a so-called virtue which is contrary to nature, and which, in my eyes, would be no virtue if it were practised. They are like clergymen who preach sermons against the love of money, but who know that the love of money is so distinctive a characteristic of humanity that such sermons are mere platitudes called for by customary but unintelligent piety. All material progress has come from man's desire to do the best he can for himself and those about him, and civilisation and Christianity ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... market in a way somewhat similar to that shown in Experiments 47 and 48, except that it is colored, salted, pressed into shape, and allowed to ripen. While ripening, changes take place in the ingredients of cheese which develop characteristic flavors ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... Holoptychus being occasionally found there, whilst Conularias, Nautili, Spirifers aviculus, Bellerophons, and others are numerous. The sand rock overlying it contains Calamites, Lepidodendrons, Ulodendrons, Sigillarias, &c., &c. Benthall Edge and Lincoln Hill yield characteristic fossils of the Wenlock limestone and Wenlock shales in great numbers and variety, corals being most abundant. Between the Severn and the Acton Burnell hills fossils of the Caradoc may be found in drift, in old walls by the ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... a characteristic thing. Folding his arms in front of him he grasped his own elbows and shook himself fiercely. The effort of will and body banished the shapes and illusions, and he went to ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had taken the liberty to recommend a clever and accomplished friend of her own, one Mrs. Morris, a widow,—"of course, that's you, Madeline,"—and Mr. Osgood had accordingly done her the honor to offer the place to Mrs. Morris, and, "with characteristic consideration and delicacy," had inclosed a check, by way of an advance on her salary, which would be liberal, to defray the expense of an outfit,—"and there it was." His writing to her, Miss Wimple said, was a circumstance as strange as it was fortunate; for, in fact, she had, personally, but a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... assumed, that a turbid mixture of different races has a tendency to separate after a time into its constituent elements, and certain originally distinct types to re-appear with their characteristic features, how does this law ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... esteemed by competent judges, including, of course, ourselves. We shall not follow the example of dear old Eckermann, nor preface our specimens by any critical remarks upon the scope and tendency of the great German's genius; neither shall we divide his works, as characteristic of his intellectual progress, into eras or into epochs; still less shall we attempt to institute a regular comparison between his merits and those of Schiller, whose finest productions (most worthily translated) have already enriched the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... married at the age of eighty. The young duke admired women, but he placed them too high and respected them too much; in fact, he adored them, and was only at his ease with those whom he could not respect. This characteristic caused him to lead a double life. He found compensation with women of easy virtue for the worship to which he surrendered himself in the salons, or, if you like, the boudoirs, of the faubourg Saint-Germain. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... LORD BOB remarked: "I don't know whether the hon. Member regards me as a particularly frivolous person." General and generous cheering approved this implied disclaimer, and LORD BOB returned to consideration of "the characteristic vice of the Radical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... flickerish prolixity, and a single downy woodpecker called sharply again and again. A mocking-bird near me (there is always a mocking-bird near you, in Florida) added his voice for a time, but soon relapsed into silence. The fact was characteristic; for, wherever I went, I found it true that the mocker grew less musical as the place grew wilder. By instinct he is a public performer, he demands an audience; and it is only in cities, like St. Augustine and Tallahassee, that he ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... into which the gulls and terns bring tidings of the sea, stands the fishing hamlet of Pittenloch. It is in the "East Neuk o' Fife," that bit of old Scotland "fronted with a girdle of little towns," of which Pittenloch is one of the smallest and the most characteristic. Some of the cottages stand upon the sands, others are grouped in a steep glen, and a few surmount ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... use of. For, there being ordinarily in each sort some leading qualities, to which we suppose the other ideas which make up our complex idea of that species annexed, we forwardly give the specific name to that thing wherein that characteristic mark is found, which we take to be the most distinguishing idea of that species. These leading or characteristical (as I may call them) ideas, in the sorts of animals and vegetables, are (as has been before remarked, ch vi. Section 29 and ch. ix. Section 15) mostly figure; and in inanimate ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... The worst characteristic of panic is that it is so horribly contagious. Let a crowd of people once get the idea into their heads that they are in peril, and they will fight together like wild beasts in their anxiety to escape. And the ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... and also of your unexpectedly being yet spared to us, were duly received, and I trust, I mourned and rejoiced on each occasion with all the moderation characteristic of a philosopher. In the first instance I consoled myself with the reflection that the world you had left was in a state of slavery, and pressed down by the iron arm of despotism, and that to die was gain, not only in all the parson tells ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... This brought round the characteristic elasticity of temper belonging to the Americans, and caused the doctor to give way to his mental speculations:—He would not go to Edinburgh; it was nonsense; here was a fortune made. He would form a company ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Germany, and passed to England and France, everywhere awakening enthusiasm by its great symmetry and beauty. Without the sublimity of Handel's "Messiah," it is marked by a richness of melody, a serene elevation, a matchless variety in treatment, which make it the most characteristic of Haydn's works. Napoleon, the first consul, was hastening to the opera-house to hear this, January 24, 1801, when he was stopped by ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... was known as Kengi. They were a people of Semitic speech with pronounced Semitic affinities. From the earliest times the sculptors depicted them with abundant locks, long full beards, and the prominent distinctive noses and full lips, which we usually associate with the characteristic Jewish type, and also attired in long, flounced robes, suspended from their left shoulders, and reaching down to their ankles. In contrast, the Sumerians had clean-shaven faces and scalps, and noses of Egyptian and Grecian rather than ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... dissects again in the opposite manner, leaving us gasping, and finding that there really are two ways of looking at every question—a thing we never realize till we think about it. I have in this chapter taken five of Chesterton's most characteristic books of essays, displaying the enormous depth of his intellect, the vast range of subject, the unique use of paradox. Of these five books I have again taken rather necessarily at random subjects depicting the above Chestertonian ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... and beyond every other characteristic, Curtis was fair-minded. He read the girl's letter once in order to learn what had happened and why she had gone: then he reread it critically, word for word, trying to distil from its disjointed phrases "that essence of truth" which Hermione had spoken of. Evidently, she had ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... true fashionable is peculiar and characteristic. From the toe of his boot to the crown of his hat, there is that unostentatious, undefinable something about him distinctive of his social position. Professional men, every body knows, have an expression common to their profession. A purblind cyclops could never mistake the expression ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... out a piece of paper; smiling as he did so. It was covered with writing in Luther Barr's cramped hand and was a characteristic document. Stripped of its legal phraseology it was an agreement to the effect that if the boys would make no salvage charges for saving the yacht, they could have her free of cost to ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Oque. Some feeble attempts were made by returned missionaries to introduce it into several European countries, but it appears to have been imperfectly expounded. An example of this faulty exposition is found in the only extant sermon of the pious Bishop Rowley, a characteristic passage from ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... president, who was now in his element, served in their turn to blow up and keep ablaze the patriotic enthusiasm of his countrymen. These addresses, circulated everywhere in the newspapers, were collected at the time in a volume, and they appeared in Adams' works, of which they form a characteristic portion. A navy was set on foot, the old continental navy having become extinct. An army was voted and partly levied, of which Washington accepted the chief command, and merchant ships were authorized ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the bride's description of the Bridegroom with the descriptions of "the Ancient of Days" in Dan. vii. 9, 10, and of our risen LORD in Rev. i. 13-16. The differences are very characteristic. ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... assumed that the "Chaudiere" of this story is the real Chaudiere of Quebec province. The name is characteristic, and for this reason alone I have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... furnace, the products of combustion are made to warm up the air and gas which go to feed the flame, and the effect is a full and brilliant light with some economy of fuel. The use of coal-gas for heating purposes was another subject which he took up with characteristic earnestness, and he advocated for a time the use of gas stoves and fires in preference to those which burn coal, not only on account of their cleanliness and convenience, but on the score of preventing fogs in great cities, by checking the discharge ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... impure carbon by simple tests. Similarly the lime or carbon put into the electric furnace may contain small quantities of compounds which are naturally coloured; and which, reappearing in the sludge either in their original or in a different state of combination, confer upon the sludge their characteristic tinge. Spent lime of a yellowish brown colour is frequently to be met with in circumstances that are clearly no reproach to the generator. Doubtless the tint is due to the presence of some coloured metallic oxide or other compound which has escaped reduction in ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... Walter, meekly; and we think he was right, for a petticoat has never in our day been the only garment worn by females, nor even the most characteristic: fishermen wear petticoats, ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... by the frontiersmen in the direction of setting up a new state was very characteristic, as showing the military structure of the frontier settlements. To guard against Indian inroad and foray, and to punish them by reprisals, all the able-bodied, rifle-bearing males were enrolled in the militia; and the divisions of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the amusements that each season brings round that no time of year lacks its own characteristic sport. In the spring, ere red coats and "leathers" are laid aside by the fox-hunting squire, there is the best of trout-fishing to be enjoyed in the Coln and Windrush—streams dear to the heart of the accomplished expert with the "dry" ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... touch another characteristic—his feeling for logic, for dialectic, which made him one of the severest reasoners that it would be possible to meet in argument. He used, in his admirably assumed air of brag, an attitude which he could take with perfect humour and perfect dignity—to protest that he was one of two ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... Napoleon replied, therefore, by a note suggesting not a definite peace, but a step toward it. If England would withdraw the orders in council of 1807, he would evacuate Holland and the Hanseatic towns. His note closed with a characteristic threat. If England should delay, having already lost her trade with Naples, Spain, Portugal, and the port of Triest, she would now lose that with Holland, the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... point in characteristic fashion. He protested his good faith elaborately, but the gist of his remarks was that he held the cards and that, consequently, it was he who must be trusted, whilst I ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... important discoveries in this work appears under the title of "the state of the abdominal muscles during dyspepsia;" which is pronounced to be a very characteristic feature of the disease, never yet noticed by writers on the subject, or particularly attended to by physicians. It would certainly have been somewhat strange for medical writers to enlarge upon a symptom of one disease, which absolutely belongs to another; ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of her hair rested against her brow. Save the scarlet lines which marked her lips, her face was of that clear colourlessness which can be likened only to the purest ivory. Though there was an utter absence of the rosy hue of health, the transparency of the complexion seemed characteristic of her type, and precluded all thought of disease. Miss Margaret muttered something inaudible in reply to her last remark, and Irene walked on to school. Her father's residence was about a mile from the town, but the winding road rendered the walk somewhat longer; ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... and frowning with the sanctions of incarnate law. The drapery of the lower part of the figure is inferior to the anatomy of the upper part. Remarkable as the execution of the statue is, the expression is yet more so; for notwithstanding its colossal proportions, its prominent characteristic is the embodiment of intellectual power. It is the great leader and lawgiver of his people that we see, whose voice was command, and whose outstretched arm sustained a nation's infant steps. He looks as if he might control the energies ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Caledonia and lay my songs under your honored protection. I now obey her dictates." His mind was not active at this time, for beyond a few trivial verses he wrote nothing worthy of him except a short but characteristic 'Epistle to the Guidwife of Wauchope House.' He spent the winter of 1786 and the spring of 1787 in Edinburgh; and summer being close at hand, he resolved to return for a time to Mossgiel. There were strong reasons for his return, some of which pertained to his impoverished family, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... been, however, an exceptionally severe winter. On the way to Government House, my eyes were once more regaled with the gum trees, in the well-accustomed form of open forest, the ground being covered with grass, on which sheep were depasturing. This is the pleasing characteristic of much of ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... communicated it in detail to his father, the latter took the professional advice of his friend Mr. Percival, and in the course of a few weeks Joseph found himself regularly established in a business which had the—for him—novel characteristic of serving the purposes of purity. The manufactory was situated in a by-street on the north of Euston Road: a small concern, but at all events a genuine one. On the window of the office you read, 'Lake, Snowdon, & Co.' As it was necessary to account for this achievement ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... with the history of philosophy, or of philological and historical criticism, which is essential to any one who desires to obtain a right understanding of agnosticism. Incompetence in philosophy, and in all branches of science except mathematics, is the well-known mental characteristic of the founder of positivism. Faithfulness in disciples is an admirable quality in itself; the pity is that it not unfrequently leads to the imitation of the weaknesses as well as of the strength of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... entered the room unperceived by both, and had heard all, and with the magnanimity so characteristic of him, he stepped nobly forward and placed Jessie's hand in that of the ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... the Thugs were utterly callous, utterly destitute of human feelings, heartless toward their own families as well as toward other people's; but this was not so. Like all other Indians, they had a passionate love for their kin. A shrewd British officer who knew the Indian character, took that characteristic into account in laying his plans for the capture of Eugene Sue's famous Feringhea. He found out Feringhea's hiding-place, and sent a guard by night to seize him, but the squad was awkward and he got away. However, they got the rest of the family—the mother, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... reproof in a penitent spirit; she expresses sincere sorrow for having thoughtlessly frightened you. Both yesterday and to-day she has made kind inquiries after your health. Come! come! don't bear malice—wish her good-by." Mrs. Ellmother's answer was characteristic. "I'll say good-by by telegraph, when ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... some of the characteristic features of country life in New England, I had especially in mind the beautiful mountain village in which this preface is written, and in which for nearly a quarter of a century I have felt myself more at home than in any other spot in ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... in any reputable book shop, and which ought to be much rarer than they are—namely, those that belong to the domain of indecent literature. Booksellers who deal in such wares often put them in catalogues under the head of facetiae, thus making a vile use of what should be characteristic only of books of wit or humor. Men of prurient tastes become collectors of such books, many of which are not without some literary merit, while many more are neither fit to be written, nor ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... incidents of the most frivolous nature. At this juncture the metropolis of England was divided and discomposed in a surprising manner, by a dispute in itself of so little consequence to the community, that it could not deserve a place in a general history, if it did not serve to convey a characteristic idea of the English nation. In the beginning of the year an obscure damsel, of low degree, whose name was Elizabeth Canning, promulgated a report, which in a little time attracted the attention of the public. She affirmed, that on the first day of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... of the Martyrs, the Pilgrim's difficulties in the Slough of Despond, or with the Giant Despair, afforded pleasurable reading; while Mr. Great Heart's courageous cheerfulness brought practically a new characteristic into Puritan literature. ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... from her seat, lighted her candles, and began to make her modest toilet for dinner with an air of satisfied finality. It was characteristic of her that she was never satisfied with half-measures, and was always supremely confident of her ability to carry out new resolutions. The determination to become a perfect character was taken as easily as if it had ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... is described in verse 17, with allusion to the closing prophecy of Malachi. That prophecy had kindled an expectation that Elijah, in person, would precede Messias. John was like a reincarnation of the stern prophet. He came in a similar epoch. His characteristic, like Elijah's, was 'power,' not gentleness. If the earlier prophet had to beard Ahab and Jezebel, the second Elijah had Herod and Herodias. Both haunted the desert, both pealed out thunders of rebuke. Both shook the nation, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... unhesitating. It was perhaps at that moment that a hidden characteristic of her features showed itself. Her mouth, sometimes almost too voluptuous in its softness, had straightened into a firm line of scarlet. The deeper violet of her eyes had gone. So a woman might have looked who watched suffering unmoved, the woman of the bull ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... attitude of a human and ethical religion towards that characteristic manifestation of piety which we call prayer? Doubtless its views will be found to diverge notably from those which were prevalent in other days when scientific knowledge was imperfect, and conceptions of man ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... numbered eleven, nine of which were still upon their feet, and, with the vindictive fearlessness which is the chief characteristic of the Cape buffalo, charging straight down upon our party; at a word, therefore, from the induna who was in command of the contingent, nine of the warriors flung away their shields and casting assagais, and, gripping the single bangwan, or ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... my sworn friend. With characteristic directness she had cut the Gordian knot of our misunderstanding by telling me, against Dicky's protests, all about the old secret which her past and that of my husband shared. After her story, with all that it revealed of her sacrifice and her fidelity to her own ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... but a solitary infant, and its solitary combat with grief—a mighty darkness, and a sorrow without a voice. But something of the same interest will be found, perhaps, to rekindle at a maturer age, when the characteristic features of the individual mind have been unfolded. And I contend that much more than amusement ought to settle upon any narrative of a life that is really confidential. It is singular—but many of my readers will ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... nothing more truly felt and meant. But the young make their own experience, and my father, with the smiling open look which disarmed opposition, and disguised all the time a certain stubborn independence of will, characteristic of him through life, took his own way. He went to New Zealand, and, now that it was done, the interest and sympathy of all his family and friends followed him. Let me give here the touching letter which Arthur Stanley, his ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... manufacture of cricket-balls, for example. You might not think it a very arduous occupation, but Dr. MACNAMARA assured the House that it required "a high standard of physical fitness," and that leather-stitching was as laborious as leather-hunting. It is true that some of the disabled men with characteristic intrepidity are willing to face the risk, but the Union concerned will not hear of it, and the MINISTER OF LABOUR appears to agree ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... more respectable, because she was singularly free from censoriousness, and discouraged scandal as much as vice. In dislike of backbiting indeed she and her husband cordially agreed; but they showed their dislike in different and in very characteristic ways. William preserved profound silence, and gave the talebearer a look which, as was said by a person who had once encountered it, and who took good care never to encounter it again, made your story go back down your throat. [57] Mary had a way of interrupting ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Sir Thomas Seymour, who, sailing forth into the chops of the channel, laid wait for any richly-laden craft he might happen to espy. Among other men of rank who thus distinguished themselves were the sons of Lord Chobham. Influenced by that hatred of Roman abominations which had long been the characteristic of their family, Thomas Chobham, the most daring of the brothers, had established himself in a strongly-fortified port in the south of Ireland, from whence, sailing forth with his stout ships, he attacked the Spaniards on their own coasts. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... was a united civilization, the prime characteristic of which was the acceptation, absolute and unconditional, of one common mode of life by all those who dwelt within its boundaries. It is an idea very difficult for the modern man to seize, accustomed ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... much importance to the applause of a court, although it neither possessed judgment nor feeling for the merits of a writer, nor for poetical beauties; and he complains at the same time that this court had neither duly estimated his tragedies nor his epic poems. It is characteristic both of the court and of Voltaire that he eagerly pressed himself forward for admission to its favor, and sought to attract attention by a work which be himself called a piece of trash, and that the court extended its approbation and applause to this miserable and altogether inappropriate piece, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... had much to do with it," laughed the doctor, "beyond being, like Barkis, 'willing.' It's a queer story; some people profess not to believe it, but those who know her ladyship best think it is just the story that must be true, because it is so characteristic of her. And besides, I happen to know ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... girl's reply was thoroughly characteristic: "Every house has its ugly duckling, dear boy," she observed quaintly, "and they seldom turn out swans except in story-books. However, it does not matter very much about a man's personal appearance; and you—why, you might have been ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... the most austere of the ancient masters. I refer to Walt Whitman's "Out of the cradle endlessly rocking," in which the mockingbird plays a part. The poet's treatment of the bird is entirely ideal and eminently characteristic. That is to say, it is altogether poetical and not at all ornithological; yet it contains a rendering or free translation of a bird-song—the nocturne of the mockingbird, singing and calling through the night for its lost mate—that I consider quite ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... last century, Theodore Roosevelt said, "the one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight. . . It should be the growing nation with a future which takes the long ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... mace! All these men regard this slaughter of the foe by thee to be like that of Vritra by Indra himself! Who else, save thyself, O Vrikodara, could slay the heroic Duryodhana while careering in diverse kinds of motion and performing all the wheeling manoeuvres (characteristic of such encounters)? Thou hast now reached the other shore of these hostilities, that other shore which none else could reach. This feat that thou hast achieved is incapable of being achieved by any other warriors. By good luck, thou hast, O hero, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... actors know they are acting, and have to mask their faces with smiles, restrain the tears which they would fain let flow, and mouth witty sayings with breaking hearts. Surely the most bitter of all feelings is that cynical disbelief in human nature which is so characteristic of our ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... severe inflammation and the formation of a false membrane. In some instances this condition has been mistaken for foot-and-mouth disease, but it can be differentiated by the absence of the blister that is characteristic of that disease and by the further fact that it ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... religious duty that the latest of the Saint Legers should be so trained as to worthily sustain the traditions of his race. Not, it must be understood, that my father preserved the faintest trace of that unscrupulous, buccaneering propensity that was only too probably a strongly marked characteristic of the earlier Saint Legers; far from it; but it had evidently never occurred to him that it was even remotely possible that I should ever adopt any other profession than that of the sea, and, knowing ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... great hour! At times comes a beam of light from him on the world he is quitting. "I carry in my heart the death-dirge of the French Monarchy; the dead remains of it will now be the spoil of the factious." Or again, when he heard the cannon fire, what is characteristic too: "Have we the Achilles' Funeral already?" So likewise, while some friend is supporting him: "Yes, support that head; would I could bequeath it thee!" For the man dies as he has lived; self-conscious, conscious of a world looking on. He gazes forth ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the idea was suggested, it was certainly calculated to increase the agitation of her mind. In one respect however it produced an effect unlike that which might most obviously have been looked for. It roused within her the characteristic energy of mind, which she seemed partially to have forgotten. She saw the necessity of bringing the affair to a point, and not suffering months and years to roll on in uncertainty and suspence. This idea inspired her with an extraordinary resolution. The language she employed, was, ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... be amiss to glance, for an instant, toward the Senate Chamber; and especially at one characteristic incident. It was the afternoon of August the 1st, 1861,—scarce ten days since the check to the Union arms at Bull Run; and Breckinridge, of Kentucky, not yet expelled from the United States Senate, was making in that Body his great speech ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the couch with more gentleness than might have been expected of him, he walked out of the room. For a little while she sat listening, then opened her eyes and glanced about her. Yes, he was gone. But it was characteristic of her that at such a time her chief and overpowering thought was Valerie as a rival! 'Valerie's lovers, Unziar and the Englishman!' A score of trifles rushed back upon her memory; but no it could not be. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... unaccompanied by a prayer, to assist her endeavours to perform her duty in that station of life to which it might please Him to call her. We shall see, presently, how much more strongly in adversity each characteristic of ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin
... and chalky mud in wet, are the characteristic faults of this hundred kilometres or more of Herault roadway which one must cross to gain the shadow of the Pyrenees. There seems to be no help for it unless cobblestones were to be put down, which would be a ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... have a ship, monsieur, here in the Baltic?" asked Mathilde with more haste than was characteristic of her ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... are matters which must be relinquished to another pen. The history of the peace of Westphalia constitutes a whole, as important as the history of the war itself. A mere abridgment of it, would reduce to a mere skeleton one of the most interesting and characteristic monuments of human policy and passions, and deprive it of every feature calculated to fix the attention of the public, for which I write, and of which I ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... hand, and willingly adopted the opinion advanced by the Chancellor (Lord Northington), that "the measure was strictly legal, and that no indemnity was necessary." Lord Northington's language on the subject Lord Campbell describes as "exhibiting his characteristic rashness and recklessness, which seemed to be aggravated by age and experience,"[19] and the censure does not seem too severe, since he presently "went so far as to maintain that the crown had a right to interfere, even against a positive act of parliament, and that ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... represents the Dakota village; the single horseman, covered by a shield, and hanging behind his horse's neck in a characteristic way, represents the attacking Omahas. Bullets are flying, the ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... that all impartial observers must acknowledge, that by far the most prominent cause is the conduct of the abolitionists. . . . . Nor is it by argument that the abolitionists have produced the present unhappy excitement. Argument has not been the characteristic of their publications. Denunciations of slaveholding, as manstealing, robbery, piracy, and worse than murder; consequent vituperation of slaveholders as knowingly guilty of the worst of crimes; passionate appeals to the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... grocery and came back with the articles demanded. Main Street's curiosity had never been so whetted and teased. If it had been any one but Amzi; but it was so unmistakably Amzi! Amzi placed the box under the window and stood upon it. Then with characteristic nonchalance he removed the wrapper from the cake of soap, while the crowd surged and shuffled, filling the street again in its anxiety to miss nothing. Amzi broke the bar of soap in two, and calmly trimmed half of it to serve as a crayon. As he began to write upon the glass, his guards ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Bishop sat down, he examined him carefully, noticing that there was nothing noticeable about him. He seemed a characteristic prelate—large, genial, ruddy and smiling, with bright eyes and well-cut mouth. He was in his purple and ferraiuola, and carried ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... young German perceived that his neighbour could not be an Englishman, as his servant had told him he was. His strikingly thin, finely-cut features, and his peculiarly oval, black eyes and soft, dark beard betrayed much more the Sarmatic than the characteristic Anglo-Saxon type. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... formidable. It is the faction that makes them truly dreadful. That faction is the evil spirit that possesses the body of France; that informs it as a soul; that stamps upon its ambition, and upon all its pursuits, a characteristic mark, which strongly distinguishes them from the same general passions, and the same general views, in other men and in other communities. It is that spirit which inspires into them a new, a pernicious, a desolating ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... to "establish" himself in his role, just as an actor does. At first he felt his way tentatively and with tact. Every store has its own tone and atmosphere: in a day or so he divined the characteristic cachet of the Beagle establishment. He saw what kind of customers were typical, and what sort of conduct they expected. And the secret of conquest being always to give people a little more than they expect, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... Lord Home as a conspirator—'in good faith he will never help his friend or harm his foe'—and the praises of Bower, are characteristic, and, here, are in place; elsewhere they are idle repetitions, mere copies. The apology for bad writing—Logan could not employ a secretary in this case—is natural: the two days writing agrees with Sprot's evidence. ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... the response with a characteristic toss of her head. "With those pins in your mouth you talk like a dialect story. I'm off now. Dr. Morgan wishes the committee to meet in her parlor. I suppose she wants to get our mouths into the 'papa, potatoes, prunes and prisms' shape ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... the cleared space what was presumably a quadrille, though it bore almost as great a resemblance to a Scottish country dance, or indeed to one of the measures of Bretonne France, which was, however, characteristic of the country. The Englishman has set no distinguishable impress upon the prairie. It has absorbed him with his reserve and sturdy industry, and the Canadian from the cities is apparently lost in it, too, for theirs is the leaven ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... beyond all limits. Conditions were as disastrous as in the time of Wang Mang. And once more, as then, a popular movement broke out, that of the so-called "Yellow Turbans". This was the first of the two important events. This popular movement had a characteristic which from now on became typical of all these risings of the people. The intellectual leaders of the movement, Chang Ling and others, were members of a particular religious sect. This sect was influenced by Iranian Mazdaism on the one side and by certain ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... Dr. Saleeby had gone up to Byron and said, "My lord, I perceive you have a club-foot and inordinate passions: such are the hereditary results of a profligate soldier marrying a hot-tempered woman." The poet might logically reply (with characteristic lucidity and impropriety), "Sir, I perceive you have a confused mind and an unphilosophic theory about other people's love affairs. Such are the hereditary delusions bred by a Syrian doctor marrying a Quaker lady from York." Suppose Dr. Karl Pearson had said to Shelley, "From what I see ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Taine, who generally pays little attention to the opinion of others, gives as Lord Byron's predominant characteristic that which phrenologists denominate "combativite." Which of the two is likely to be right? If Moore is right, Lord Byron must have been almost wanting in consistency of character; if Taine is correct, then Byron was really of a most passionate nature. But as we have proved that Lord ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... proceeding, so disreputable to all concerned, and so characteristic of the fidelity with which the business of "Uncle Sam" is managed, was not confined to the detention and destruction of the poor orphan's letters, but to the piracy of their ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... there is a characteristic letter to General Crawford, concerning the dismissal of an officer, whom Cromwell would have restored. "Ay, but the man is an Anabaptist. Are you sure of that? Admit he be, shall that render him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... take the breakfast dishes from the sofa and carry them downstairs. One by one my friends arrived, the clock struck seven, and to our great astonishment, Solling had not yet appeared. One, two, even five minutes passed before we heard him run upstairs and knock at the door with his characteristic short blows. ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... horned cattle are said to be the same species as those in Europe, but they differ so much in appearance, that we were inclined to doubt it: They have indeed the palearia or dewlap, which naturalists make the distinguishing characteristic of the European species, but they certainly are found wild, not only in Java, but several of the eastern islands. The flesh of those that we eat at Batavia, had a finer grain than European beef, but it was less juicy, and miserably ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... absolutely unknown among the North Italians; sometimes one comes upon a young Italian who wants to learn German, but not often. Priggism, or whatever the substantive is, is as essentially a Teutonic vice as holiness is a Semitic characteristic; and if an Italian happens to be a prig, he will, like Tacitus, invariably show a hankering after German institutions. The idea, however, that the Italians were ever a finer people than they are now, will not pass muster with ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... consistently the Jingo party. He was an aristocrat, in the sense that all our public men were then aristocrats; but he was very emphatically what may be called a commercialist—one might almost say Carthaginian. In this connection he has the characteristic which perhaps humanized but was not allowed to hamper the aristocratic plan; I mean that he could use the middle classes. It was a young soldier of middle rank, James Wolfe, who fell gloriously driving the French out of Quebec; it was a young ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... last part of the poem we find a beauty of image and comparison that thrills us, and something of that strange, weird suggestiveness which was characteristic of all of Poe's poetry, the thing he has in common ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... is no introduction and no notes—merely a postscript in which the translator declares that he has endeavored everywhere faithfully to reproduce the peculiar tone of the play and to preserve the concentration of style which is everywhere characteristic of Shakespeare. He acknowledges his indebtedness to the Swedish translation by Hagberg and the German by Schlegel. Inasmuch as this work was published for wide, general distribution and for reading in the schools, Lassen cut out the passages which he deemed unsuitable for the untutored ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... consisted of Mrs Musgrove, Henrietta, and Captain Harville, beside their two selves. He gave her a very plain, intelligible account of the whole; a narration in which she saw a great deal of most characteristic proceeding. The scheme had received its first impulse by Captain Harville's wanting to come to Bath on business. He had begun to talk of it a week ago; and by way of doing something, as shooting was over, Charles had proposed coming with him, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... stranger, old Mr. Lonner was seated near the side of his bed in his private apartment. Although weighed down by age and the grief that had oppressed his early life, he nevertheless possessed that gentleness and sociability, which had ever been the characteristic traits of his life. His flowing white locks fell around his countenance, from which the traces of manly beauty had not been entirely eradicated, and as he smoked his pipe with an air of dignified ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... realms of gold" is rendered impossible by the cares of business, has seemed sufficient excuse for its being. Though the beauty of the original is of necessity lost in a condensation of this kind, an endeavor has been made to preserve the characteristic epithets, and to retain what Mr. Arnold called "the simple truth about the matter of the poem." It is believed that the sketch prefacing each story, giving briefly the length, versification, and history of the poem, will have ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... of the second story, I imagined that I discovered vestiges of that catastrophe which the past night had produced. The bed appeared as if some one had recently been dragged from it. The sheets were tinged with yellow, and with that substance which is said to be characteristic of this disease, the gangrenous or black vomit. The floor ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... lies prostrate at my feet. It does not know that a sick conscience is a characteristic trait of all slaves. It is the universal self-accuser. Were the people—individually and collectively—to sin on a grand scale, were they to refuse to be the puppets of the man-made idols—were that to happen, masters and slaves would ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... members of the same tribe or race gather around a common center or occupy a continuous stretch of territory, as compactly as their own economic status, and the physical conditions of climate and soil will permit. This is characteristic of all mature and historically significant peoples who have risen to sedentary life, maintained their hold on a given territory, and, with increase of population, have widened their boundaries. The nucleus of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... for Bruce's machinations, and those machinations were conceived and carried on with consummate and characteristic cleverness. Bruce did not spread his net in the sight of the bird, but set to work with wariness and caution. He determined to try the arts of fascination, not of force. The thought of the desperate wickedness involved in his attempt either never crossed his ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... swallowed this title so readily, from that time I have designated, and I shall always designate him, by the title of JOHN GULL, instead of John Bull; GULL being a most appropriate title, with a very significant and truly characteristic meaning. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... governor of that state, whose speech on the French revolution has been already quoted, threatened to join in lynching Mr. Hale, if he ever set foot in Mississippi, whither he invited him to come for that purpose. This part of the debate was so peculiar and so characteristic, showing so well the spirit with which the District of Columbia was then blazing against me, that I cannot help giving the following extract from Mr. Foote's speech, as contained in the ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... one that has been characteristic of the Anglican Church ever since. It has always been restless in the presence of a divided Christendom; the sin of the broken unity has always haunted it. It never has taken the smug attitude of sectarianism, a placid self-satisfaction with its own perfection. It has ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... little centre of a purely agricultural region, we find here one of those small, specific industries, as characteristic of French districts as soil and produce. Folks being great water-drinkers, they will have their drinking-water in a state of perfection. Some native genius long ago invented a vessel which answers the requirement of the most fastidious. This is a pail-shaped receptacle ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... as his wife had given her name, Nina, to Nineveh,*** and was, as the companion of the Chaldaean Bel, styled the divine lady Belit; she was, in fact, a chaste and warlike Ishtar, who led the armies into battle with a boldness characteristic of her father.**** ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... painting, and for various other arts and pursuits of an absorbing character. She had hardly any acquaintances except her relations, but possessed an enormously large number of extremely intimate friends—a characteristic that had remained to her ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... splendid period of the art revival covered the latter part of the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth. The characteristic art of the Renaissance in Italy was painting, although the aesthetic genius of the Italians also expressed itself both in architecture and sculpture. [Footnote: The four supreme masters of the Italian Renaissance were Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Michael Angelo ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... sanguine complexion, with a broad, good-natured visage, which he could lengthen at will in a surprising manner. His hair was cropped close to his head, and the razor did daily duty over his cheek and chin, giving him the roundhead look, some years later, characteristic of the Puritanical party. Nicholas had taken to wife Dorothy, daughter of Richard Greenacres of Worston, and was most fortunate in his choice, which is more than can be said for his lady, for I cannot ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... organism. Taken altogether, the internal secretions are the forces which build up the man's and woman's distinctively sexual constitution: the special disposition and growth of hair, the relative development of breasts and pelvis, the characteristic differences in motor activity, the varying emotional desires and needs. It is in the complex play of these secretions that we now seek the explanation of all the peculiarities of sexual constitution, imperfect or one-sided physical ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... resulting vices fall into two classes. Vices resulting from the former sort of temptation are vices of defect. Vices resulting from the latter form of temptation are vices of excess. As one of these temptations is usually much stronger than the other, we will discuss simply the strongest and most characteristic temptation in connection with each object. Yet as both classes of vice exist with reference to every object, it will ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... This characteristic of these ceremonies appeared most strikingly in the custom which required that the departed ancestors should be represented by living relatives of the same surname, chosen according to certain rules that are ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... and so forth, will be made, and may be met by the true consideration that something of this sort is inevitable in autobiography. However, for the matter of vanity, all I know of myself is the fact that praise, if consciously undeserved, only depresses me instead of elating; that a noted characteristic of mine through life has been to hide away in the rear rather than rush to the front, unless, indeed, forced forward by duty, when I can be bold enough, if need be; and that one defect in me all know to be a ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... one in my cap that it might move along with me, and give me light whichever way I turned." A still severer school of discipline had, previously to his appearance in the London garret, given his mind the practical turn chiefly characteristic of his life and works. He was born in 1782, at Norton, in Derbyshire, and when eight years old lost his father. His mother married again, and in 1798 proposed to apprentice him to a solicitor in Sheffield. Whilst walking through that town the boy saw some wood carving in a shop window. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... photograph of a Cygni, taken November, 26, 1886, shows that the H line is double, its two components having a difference in wave length of about one ten-millionth of a millimeter. A photograph of o Ceti shows that the lines G and h are bright, as are also four of the ultra-violet lines characteristic of spectra of the first type. The H and K lines in this spectrum are dark, showing that they probably do not belong to that series of lines. The star near [chi]' Orionis, discovered by Gore, in December, 1885, gives a similar spectrum, which affords additional ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... gave rise to this remark is too long to relate in the text, but is highly characteristic and instructive for Wagner's attitude towards art. It will be found in the sixth volume of Glasenapp's biography, ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... then the sort of thing that was fortunately characteristic of the men who rose in the nick of time to seize the reins. He hurried to his quarters, packed in its case the sword of honor that had once been given him by his Queen, and despatched it without a written line of comment to Mahommed Gunga. The native who took it was ordered to ride like ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... It was characteristic enough of the parties engaged in the great political drama that the republic now requested from France and Great Britain a written recognition of its independence, and that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... if rather carelessly, and presented to the world a somewhat imposing personality. He did not wear gloves, and he had no flower at his button-hole; but the respectability of his silk hat and well-made coat was unimpeachable, and he had all the air of easy command which is so characteristic of the well-bred Englishman. The slight roughness about him was as inseparable from his build and his character as it is to the best-groomed and best-bred staghound or mastiff of the ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... incident to a sensation leave permanent traces, which are the physical bases of memory. One or several such remembered sensations, evoked by a present sensation, combine with it to form an Emotion. Characteristic of their origin is it that the emotions fall naturally into a dual classification, in which the one involves pleasurable or elevating, the other painful or depressing conditions. Thus we have the pairs joy and grief, hope and ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... fond eye those who have graced these collections look as diverse as sheep to their shepherd, or the members of a Chinese family to their uncle; and if there is an allegation which I would 'deny with both hands', it is this: that an insipid sameness is the chief characteristic of an anthology which offers—to name almost at random seven only out of forty (oh ominous academic number!)—the work of Messrs. Abercrombie, Davies, de la Mare, Graves, Lawrence, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... against the wall. An Indian (for Indians were plenty in that region then) passed along as the bereaved mother washed the bloody corpse of her murdered child, and learning the cause of its death, said, with characteristic vehemence, 'If I had been here, I would have put my tomahawk in his head!' meaning ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... contain a yellow oil, bitter and astringent, with a characteristic odor, having a taste somewhat resembling the odor. In decoction they are used for diarrhoea and dysentery, on account, doubtless, of the tannin they contain. The dose is 1-2 seeds dried, pounded and infused with ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... intelligence in our own times to an extent which can hardly be over-estimated. Far more mind has been employed in constructing the great fabric of knowledge, which we call science, than in any other pursuit of men. Far more mind has had its characteristic qualities and temper imparted to it by scientific study than by study in any other field. It is of science—which to all intents and purposes means physical science—of science and its methods and results that the modern mind is most confident, and speaks with the most natural and ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... him, and then flew back to try and save some of her own treasures. The first thing she thought of was her portfolio of drawings, which she dragged outside; but it had already been partially burned, and most of the valuable and characteristic sketches she had made at the different durbars were destroyed. She next tried to rescue her jewels, many of which she had worn the night before; her pearls were lying on the dressing-table, and she was only just in time to save them; one of the strings had caught fire, and several ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... many more who surrendered at discretion. The latter were formed into a brigade, and were distributed throughout the valley of the Nile in military settlements. They submitted to their fate with that resignation which we know to have been a characteristic of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... them. Harold knew that his plans could not be carried out with a woman for companion—and he had sense enough to know that Mary's words were born of a momentary enthusiasm. When he spoke it was with characteristic blunt honesty. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the year 1210 (edited by Dr. Robert Reinsch, Leipzig, 1890). While endeavoring to retain somewhat of the quaintness and naivete of the original, I have omitted those repetitions and tautological expressions which are so characteristic of mediaeval literature. The religious application of the various animals is usually very long, and often is the mere repetition of the same idea. The symbolical meaning of the lion here given may be taken as a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... happy thought of setting up the body of the dead bird by the aid of wires, very much as a taxidermist mounts them. This plan worked well and enabled him to have his birds permanently before him in a characteristic attitude: "The bird fixed with wires on squares I studied as a lay figure before me, its nature previously known to me as far as habits went, and its general form having ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... heart cried out. The grim remorselessness of that business had no pity for hearts. There was June, the atom with flaming hair, who had climbed all over him, twined and twisted herself about him—about his heart that was made to be the plaything and beloved resort of tiny, helpless things. With characteristic insight he saw he must part with one or with the other; no half-measures could serve in such a situation. In that lay its tragedy. And the tiny, helpless thing prevailed. He would not run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, and so to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Comparison, which was introduced by Spurzheim. Direct perception of truth is its leading character. Illustration by comparison belongs to the breadth of the forehead, to the Ideal and Inventive region, and is the characteristic of poetry. Spurzheim's description, however, is substantially correct. It qualifies for clear statement, but not for comprehensive or ingenious reasoning. The portion on the median line has still more penetration, in consequence of which it perceives the nature and tendencies ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... two prime factors in Plutina's detestation of Hodges. The first was due to his insolence, as she deemed it, in aspiring for her favor. With little training in conventional ideas of delicacy, the girl had, nevertheless, a native refinement not always characteristic of her more-cultured sister women. There was to her something unspeakably repugnant in the fact that this bestial person should dare to think of her intimately. It was as if she were polluted by his dreaming of her kisses, of her yielding to his caresses. That he had so aspired ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... men to War: instinctive hostility and hostile intention. In our definition of War, we have chosen as its characteristic the latter of these elements, because it is the most general. It is impossible to conceive the passion of hatred of the wildest description, bordering on mere instinct, without combining with it the idea of a hostile intention. On ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... very afternoon, he donned his best funeral suit and boarded the same train himself. As he passed through the drawing-room car he bowed to the great man, who returned his greeting with the shortness characteristic of him, and passed on to the smoker, where he ensconced himself in a chair near the door, depositing on the seat next to him a pile of magazines and his coat. Half an hour passed and the car filled up, save for ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... smart journalistic instinct characteristic of all his school, the editor of The Atheist had put first in his paper and most prominently in his window an article called "The Mesopotamian Mythology and its Effects on Syriac Folk Lore." Mr. Evan MacIan ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... is incontestable that the Zohar makes allusions to the beliefs in the Trinity and the Incarnation."[63] M. Vulliaud adds: "The idea of the Trinity must therefore play an important part in the Cabala, since it has been possible to affirm that 'the characteristic of the Zohar and its particular conception is its attachment to the principle of the Trinity,'"[64] and further quotes Edersheim as saying that "a great part of the explanation given in the writings of the Cabalists resembles in a surprising manner ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... Spanish Christianity upon the soil of the United States was wholly characteristic. In quest of the Fountain of Youth, Ponce de Leon sailed for the coast of Florida equipped with forces both for the carnal and for the spiritual warfare. Besides his colonists and his men-at-arms, he brought his secular priests ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... remarks, in his 'Principles of Psychology,' such solitary hallucinations of the sane and healthy, once in a life-time, are difficult to account for, and are by no means rare. 'Sometimes,' Mr. Tylor observes, 'the phantom has the characteristic quality of not being visible to all of an assembled company,' and he adds 'to assert or imply that they are visible sometimes, and to some persons, but not always, or to everyone, is to lay down an explanation of facts which ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... identified with the "Imagist" movement in poetry and with the technical use of 'vers libre'. These movements, however, were not yet influencing poetry when "The Little Book of Modern Verse" was edited, and Miss Lowell is, therefore, represented by a lyric in her earlier and less characteristic manner. Her volumes in their order are: "A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass", 1912; "Sword Blades and Poppy Seed", 1914; "Men, Women, and Ghosts", 1916. Miss Lowell is also the editor of "Some Imagist Poets", 1915; "Some Imagist ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... happiest nations are those in whose people you witness the least sensible reverses from gayety to dejection; and that thought, which is the noblest characteristic of the isolated man, is also that of a people. Freemen are serious; they have objects at their heart worthy to engross attention. It is reserved for slaves to indulge in groans at one moment and laughter ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stations. A wound received, or a limb lost, will, in many instances, constitute a stronger recommendation for political preferment than long experience, coupled with ability and high character. This disposition to reward those who have faithfully served the country in time of war is an amiable characteristic of the American people, and proves that, in this particular at least, republics are not ungrateful. But it is clear, at the same time, that the public gratitude, thus turned into political channels, may be productive of great evil, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... names I have forgotten, but they had one common characteristic. They were puffed up with spiritual pride, and I used to amuse myself with finding their originals in the Pilgrim's Progress. When I tried to judge them by the standard of old Peter, they fell woefully short. They shut out the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... of Rousseau. It deliberately refused to consider man as he really was under its own eyes, and persisted in seeing nothing in him but the abstract being created in books. Consequently, with the blindness and obstinacy characteristic of a speculative surgeon, it destroyed, in the society submitted to its scalpel and its theories, not only the tumors, the enlargements, and the inflamed parts of the organs, but also the organs themselves, and even the vital ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... One is nothing; two are a coincidence; three are a moral certainty. A really trained man can see a molehill; I can see a mountain; most of you fellows couldn't see the Himalayas." With which sage remark he thoughtfully lit his pipe and relapsed into silence. And silence being his usual characteristic he came into the Battalion Head-quarters dug-out one evening and dropped quietly into a seat, almost unnoticed by the somewhat noisy group around ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... that madame was waiting for them upstairs. In the drawing-room Valdoreme was standing with her back to the window like a low-browed goddess, her tawny hair loose over her shoulders, and the pallor of her face made more conspicuous by her costume of unrelieved black. Caspilier, with the grace characteristic of him, swept off his hat, and made a low, deferential bow; but when he straightened himself up, and began to say the complimentary things and poetical phrases he had put together for the occasion at the cafe the night before, the lurid ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... in 1755, his father being a Jacobite refugee from Scotland. He began to paint at an early age, worked faithfully at drawing, and finally, at the age of nineteen, began portrait painting in earnest. One of his first pictures was a striking example of a remarkable characteristic, the power of visual memory, which he retained through his whole life. His grandmother had died five or six years before, but he painted a portrait of her, producing so striking a likeness that it immediately brought him orders for others. But Newport ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... powerful champions. He was founder and principal editor of the Pere Duchesne, a poor imitation of the journal, published under the same title, by Hebert, in the time of the first Revolution. This paper, one of the most characteristic of the Commune, was filled with trivialities, in the vilest taste and slang, which cannot be rendered in English. The first number of Vermesch's journal was published on the 6th of March, but was suppressed by General Vinoy; it re-appeared, however, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... have with which to work. Mistakes have been made in the past by the prospective nut growers because they did not stop to consider the possibilities of the nuts that were native in their own locality, but looked abroad for something else. This is characteristic of many people. "Distant fields look green," and, of all the imported nut trees, none except the English walnut have been of any success here whatever, while, in one instance at least, their importation has resulted ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... Carolina to assist in pulling down the Tory ascendancy of the disaffected portion of upper South Carolina. In one of these expeditions Col. Johnston experienced an adventure—a passage at arms, which, as an incident of the war and characteristic of his bravery, is here worthy of narration. On Pacolet river, near the place where the late Dr. Bivings erected a factory, Col. Johnston, in a skirmish, had a personal rencontre with Patrick Moore, a Tory officer, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... brown cloak hanging from his shoulders, sat a short stout personage, a man about thirty years of age, with fair flaxen hair, a florid complexion, a very fair skin, and massive German features. The expression of his face, so far as such a countenance could be said to have any characteristic expression, was that of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... each generation followed various honourable professions, but they failed to rise to high rank in them, owing, I fancy, to a want of worldly ambition—the general characteristic of our race. Altogether, however, I believe them to have been a simple-minded, upright, clear sighted set of people, who did whatever their hands found to do honestly and with all their might. Such people ought to rise, it may be said. So they ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... great social revolution, with its various and endless aspects, affecting all central Europe, and being more or less felt in the west, the north, and the south. On one side, the Greek and Latin partiality for ancient corporations, modified by a democratic element, and an innate feeling of opposition characteristic of barbaric tribes; and on the other, the free spirit and equality of the old Celtic tribes rising suddenly against the military hierarchy, which was the offspring of conquest. Europe was roused by the double current of ideas ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... for the fight, and looking forward to it with eagerness. There had been possibly a slight pallor upon his face, as Miss Dodge had adjusted his mask of gauze, but, as Burns recalled it, this was a common matter with many surgeons, and it might easily have been characteristic of Leaver himself, even though Burns had not remembered it. His own heart was thumping heavily in his breast, as it had never thumped when he had been the chief actor ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... bring the three boats alongside, and in a few seconds more the crew were congratulating their comrades with that mingled feeling of deep heartiness and a disposition to jest which is characteristic of men who are used to danger, and think lightly of it after ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... often in these manuscripts, we seem to see Casanova thinking on paper. He uses scraps of paper (sometimes the blank page of a letter, on the other side of which we see the address) as a kind of informal diary; and it is characteristic of him, of the man of infinitely curious mind, which this adventurer really was, that there are so few merely personal notes among these casual jottings. Often, they are purely abstract; at times, metaphysical jeux d'esprit, like the sheet ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... side of the road they found the ends of two similar buildings (D, E). This looks as if this portion of the fort was filled with four barracks. On the other side of the row of buildings I-III remains were traced of stone structures; one of these (F) had the L-shape characteristic of barracks, and indications point to two others (G, H) of the same shape. This implies six barrack buildings in this portion of the fort and ten barrack buildings in all, that is, a cohort 1,000 strong. But the whole fort is only just 3 acres, ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... has led is seen, in the general tendency of our artists, to shun the deep and sober tones of the Italian school, and, as their phrase is, to put as much daylight as possible into their works. But even here I would pause to suggest, that light, daylight, in its great characteristic, is more lustrous than white, and will be produced rather by the lower than the lighter tones, as may be seen in the pictures of Claude, whose key of colouring is many degrees lower than in pictures which affect his light, without his means of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... This is the question asked by an ever- increasing number of thoughtful teachers. They have no wish to displace or to discredit the classics. On the contrary, they love and revere them. But they do wish to give their pupils something additional, something that pulses with present life, that is characteristic of to-day. The children, too, wonder that, with the great literary outpouring going on about them, they must always fill their cups from ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... remain permanently depressed, and shortly after his return to Lochlea, a trifling accident to a ewe he had bought prompted him to the following delightful and characteristic production. ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... that there really is, in places like Rishon, something like a beginning of this spirit; the love of the peasant for his land. One lady, even in expressing her conviction of it, called it "this very un-Jewish characteristic." She was perfectly well aware both of the need of it in the Jewish land, and the lack of it in the Jewish race. In short she was well aware of the truth of that seemingly topsy-turvy test I have suggested; ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... it insensibly rises towards the distant Sierra Ventana. There are in this neighbourhood some other and lower plains, but they do not abut one at the foot of the other, in the manner hereafter to be described, so characteristic of Patagonia. The plain on which the settlement stands is crossed by many low sand-dunes, abounding with the minute shells of the Paludestrina australis, d'Orbigny, which now lives in the bay. This low plain is bounded to the south, at the ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... objected to this with an indignation that was scarcely in the sequel justified, because Mary found the book jammed against the paint-box and a dry walnut nestling in its centre. She cried and protested and then suddenly, with the disgusting sentimentality that was so characteristic of her, abandoned her position altogether and said that Jeremy could have it, and then cried again because he ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... make-believe—an age of wild people, of insane impulse, of homicidal mania. The sweet-souled songster had no more than others attained real calm in it. Even in youth nervous distress had been the chief facial characteristic. Triumphant, nevertheless, in his battle for Greek beauty—for the naturalisation of Greek beauty in the brown cloud-lands of the North- -he might have been thinking, contemptuously, of barking little Saint-Gelais, or of Monsieur Marot's pack-thread poems. He, for his part, had always held that poetry ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... respectable young and married ladies in the place are attending them. These are steps in the right direction, and show that our fair countrywomen, with the grand good sense which is their leading characteristic, are resolved to supply whatever in our ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to measure one of them, before they were skinned and cut up. It had a body four feet in length; and a tail two and a half feet long, black at the tip, but without the characteristic tuft of the lion. Its limbs were very thick and muscular, to enable it to climb trees and spring a great distance. Its coat was of a light tawny tint, and ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... certain ungracious epithets. Emboldened by success, he went further with his experiments: he began to alter sentences and their meaning: and he was really skilful in it. The whole art of it consisted in preserving the general appearance of the sentence and its characteristic form while making it say exactly the opposite of what Christophe had meant. Mannheim took far more trouble to disfigure Christophe's articles than he would have done to write them himself: never had he worked so ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... followed where his conscience led. Before his conversion he was a great smoker. The missionary asked him one day if he smoked for the glory of God. He took the cigarette from his mouth, threw it away and never smoked again. This was characteristic of his determination and his unfaltering devotion to what he esteemed to ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... in some respects, the authentic voice of health. Undoubtedly the most characteristic thing about the past is that it is not present, and to lavish on it too tragic and intense a devotion is to love death more than life. And yet our bluff Englishman can learn in two words how it comes about that his invitation represents a demand for the impossible. In ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... in idea is "Modern Daughters." Mr. Black has written some exceedingly clever conversations, which give us verbal pictures, so to speak, of some characteristic types of American womanhood. The chapters called "With a Gym Girl" and "With a Club Woman" are specially successful. There is a perception and a sense of humour about them which make them not only delightful to read, but worth thinking about afterwards. The ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of the ordinary chambers, except that they are separated by much smaller intervals. Examples of this arrangement are still to be seen at S. John's College, Jesus College, and Queens' College, Cambridge; but perhaps the most characteristic specimen of all is that which was built over the Hall at Pembroke College in the same University, by Laurence Booth (Master 1450-1480), the aspect of which has been preserved in Loggan's print, ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... and he has symmetrically formed and arranged the members, to give combined and appropriate action to the whole. This would point to an allotment of the soul and the elementary body to Washington, and of the arranging, developing, and informing spirit, to Hamilton—the same characteristic which is found in the great works he devised for the country, and are still the chart by which his department of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... unskilled. The only really efficient officers and engineers they had were a few Englishmen and Americans and two Germans. The Japanese, from Admiral Count Ito, who commanded, down to the youngest of the bluejackets, were not only brave with the inherited recklessness of death and suffering, which is characteristic of their race, but were also highly trained in every branch of their profession, first-rate sailors, excellent gunners. And the fleet had for years been exercised in manoeuvres, so that the ships could work together as an organized whole. The spirit which animated it was that of "No surrender—Victory ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... then placed his palms on the corresponding parts of the invalid's body, and pressed his head several times between his hands. After touching any part of the invalid, Hostjoghon threw his hands upward and gave one of his characteristic hoots. The song-priest placed coals in front of the invalid and herbs upon them, as he had done the day before, and then retired. The coals were afterwards thrown out of the fire opening and the crowd rushed ...
— Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the - Navajo Indians • James Stevenson
... by what uncommon Accident she, the erst Ballet Dancer in the King's Opera-House at Paris, had come to be the tenant of this Outlandish House, and arrayed in this Heathen Habit. She answered me with that Candour and Simplicity which I ever found characteristic of her. Old Mr. Lovell was still alive, and in Paris; and this is how his Daughter had become separated from him. A very brilliant Engagement, as First Dancer, indeed, had been offered to her at the King's Theatre at Palermo; and, after long unsuccessful importunities ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... that superb unconcern which is the characteristic of genius," replied the Ambitious Writer, contemptuously passing ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... Codex at least, nothing is to be taken for granted, nothing charged to a careless scribe, and no variants regarded as being identical in value—with a very few exceptions, to which I shall advert later. Wherever there remains enough of any glyph to show its characteristic strokes, it can be regarded as safely indicated; whenever the strokes are not just those characteristic of any glyph, it cannot be inferred. Down to the very end of the various revisions I found myself able to add glyphs which at first seemed hopeless, and yet when once seen became ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... reclosing of the safe and the removing of the hashish tabloids, leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a drug slave—for so anyone unacquainted with the East must have construed West's story—is particularly characteristic. His own tabloids were returned, of course. The sparing of his life alone is a refinement of art which points to ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Sheane, the residence of Dr. Harris, on the 11th, and were received by him with the characteristic kindness with which friends or strangers are ever welcomed by that gentleman, He had accompanied Mr. Oxley as a volunteer in 1818, and his name was then given to the mount which formed the extreme point to which the main body of the first expedition down the banks of the Macquarie penetrated, ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... afterwards the chevalier Nicolas Iron, then one of the inquisitors, astonished me greatly by telling me the whole story, giving the names of all the actors. He did not tell me whether any one of the band had betrayed the secret, and I did not care to know; but I could clearly see the characteristic spirit of the aristocracy, for which the 'solo mihi' ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... struck her as excessive, but I confess it broke out afresh. Had she acted only in obedience to this singular plea, so characteristic, on Mrs. Saltram's part, of what was irritating in the narrowness of that lady's point of view? "Mrs. Saltram," I explained, "undervalues him where he's strongest, so that, to make up for it perhaps, she overpraises him where he's weak. He's ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... introduced in Shadwell's play, the Lancashire Witches, 1682, as a persona dramatis, along with Mother Dickinson and Mother Hargrave, two of the witches convicted in 1633, but without any regard to the characteristic circumstances under which she appears in the present narrative. The following invocation, which is put into her mouth, is rather a favourable specimen of that play, certainly not one of the worst of Shadwell's, in which there are many vigorous strokes, with an alloy of coarseness ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... during this time Mrs. Ray and Willy sat together in a room above. The reason of Ralph's absence had been explained to his mother by Rotha, who had received her information from Robbie Anderson. The old dame had accepted the necessity with characteristic resignation. What Ralph thought well to do she knew would be best. She did not foresee ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... 1894, to present a silver chalice to Hawarden Church as "a memorial of Mr. Gladstone's sympathy with and assistance to the Armenian people." Mr. Gladstone's address to the deputation was regarded as one of the most peculiar and characteristic acts of his life. He gave himself wholly to the cause of these oppressed people, and was stirred by the outrages and murders perpetrated upon them as he was 18 years before. He said that the Turks should go out as they did go out ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... Nature's side of the picture. The reverse was this: the earth everywhere torn and disfigured by prospectors, whose picks had produced the effect of some huge snout of swine, applied with the industry characteristic of that animal in forbidden grounds. Rude cabins were scattered about, chiefly in the neighborhood of the stream. Rockers, sluice-boxes, and sieves strewed its borders. Along the dusty road which led ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... son-in-law continues the family of his wife's parents, and lives in their home. The custom is still very prevalent in Japan, but it is not considered very honorable in China to enter into a strange family in this way. It is characteristic that Mosu, as a punishment for disdaining to "marry into" a family the first time, is obliged to "marry into" a second time, the family of ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... he cried in a husky voice, wiping away a tear that sprang unbidden to his eye, with the characteristic ready emotional sympathy ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the night almost every breath came with an effort, but he scarcely heeded the fact. With characteristic persistence he forced himself to follow her steps in imagination from the time she left home until she reached her destination. The eight-o'clock sleeper that she had taken was due in Chicago at five-thirty. She would probably not leave it before ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... civilization to that race would be an artificial state of existence.[3] The vestiges of barbarism characterize the African, in his normal state. The latent principle of cannibalism, lurks, in dormant energy, within the very core of his being, and constitutes a prominent characteristic of his animal existence. The economy and order of nature is no less marked in the carnivorous than in the herbivorous mammalia and quadrumana; and although their physical distinctions are not always so marked as to render apparent, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... and what we term pretty in Miss Milbanke. Her features were small and feminine, though not regular. She had the fairest skin imaginable. Her figure was perfect for her height; and there was a simplicity, a retired modesty, about her, which was very characteristic, and formed a happy contrast to the cold, artificial formality and studied stiffness which is ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... the first and last visit of Lord Cornwallis to "Charlotte town." He came flushed with victory, and firmly anticipated similar success in North Carolina. He departed laboring under vexation and sore disappointment; not without bestowing a characteristic name ("Hornets' Nest") upon the patriotic sons of Mecklenburg around which appellation cluster many thrilling historical and traditional associations, destined to enshrine their memories in the hearts of their countrymen, throughout all ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... country. It was carrying one back to the time of the "League" and the "Fronde," and I involuntarily cast my eyes to that balconied window in the Louvre, where Charles IX. is said to have stood when he fired upon the flying Protestants. The brooding calm that reigned around was both characteristic and strange. Here was an empire in jeopardy, and yet the population had quietly withdrawn into their own abodes, awaiting the issue with as much apparent tranquillity, as if the morrow was to be like another day. Use, and a want of sympathy between the governed and their governors, had begotten ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... understood." How, he demands, does the actual life of every day fit into "that view of the scheme of things which bids us believe that the silent God above us is principally anxious about just one thing, the moral recovery and ingathering of these individual souls one by one"? The answer is given with characteristic confidence: "It does not fit into it at all; if God be as anxious about that as we are assured He is, He has a queer way of ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... had all the advantages of esprit and beauty to as great a degree as if nature had taken pleasure in completing, in her person, a perfect work; but these qualities shone less brilliantly on account of one characteristic which led her to imbibe so thoroughly the sentiments of those who adored her that she no ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Voyage of Captain Popanilla, with as much of the aforesaid qualities as the most listless drawing-room or boudoir reader could require. Nevertheless, "the voyage" has many touches of wit, humour, and caustic satire, and it has the soul and characteristic of wit—brevity; for we read the volume in little more than an hour; and, although Vivian may regard our analysis of his voyage like showing the sun with a lantern, we are disposed to venture upon the task for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... a schedule of prices; competing railways come to terms. Even among large businesses which enjoy no local monopoly, there are constant endeavours to maintain a common scale of prices. This condition of loose, irregular, and partial co-operation among competing industrial units is the characteristic condition of trade in such a commercial country as England to-day. Competitors give up the combat a outrance, and ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... been so characteristic a trait of Charles, and had added at once to the melancholy and majesty of his face, was now of a yellow waxen colour, which might be said to increase from minute to minute in lividness of hue. His large nose stood frightfully prominent from those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Netherlands in 1538, wrote to the king: "I have made a stay in my hands of two hundred ells of goodly tapestry; there hath not been brought this twenty year eny so good for the price." Henry VIII. had in his large collection many subjects, among them such characteristic pieces as: "ten peeces of the rich story of King David" (in which Bathsheba doubtless played an important part), "seven peeces of the Stories of Ladies," "A peece with a man and woman and a flagon," "A peece of verdure... having poppinjays at the nether ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... among an equal number of Italians or English, similarly taken; or thus: of a hundred Frenchmen and an equal number of Englishmen, fairly selected, and arranged according to the degree in which they possess a particular mental characteristic, each number, 1, 2, 3, etc., of the one series, will be found to possess more of that characteristic than the corresponding number of the other. Since, therefore, the comparison is not one of kinds, but of ratios and degrees; and since, in proportion as ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... it conducive to sleep. Andrew Carnegie, learning of this custom, made it his business to supply Scotch of his own special importation. The first case came, direct from Scotland. When it arrived Clemens sent this characteristic acknowledgment. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... forgotten his avocation in his electorship, and would quibble on the Franchise over Ophelia's grave, instead of more appropriately discussing the duration of bodies under ground. From this tendency, from this gradual attrition of life, in which everything pointed and characteristic is being rubbed down, till the whole world begins to slip between our fingers in smooth undistinguishable sands, from this, we say, it follows that we must not attempt to join Mr. Tatler in his simple division of students into Law, Divinity, and Medical. Nowadays ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is a small, slight, plain-looking man, of indefinite age, and of much humbleness of mien. A naturally retiring, modest disposition, and two external causes are the reasons for Muller's humbleness of manner, which is his chief characteristic. One cause is the fact that in early youth a miscarriage of justice gave him several years in prison, an experience which cast a stigma on his name and which made it impossible for him, for many years after, to obtain honest employment. But the world is richer, and safer, ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... damaged by going on with the improvements in Notting Hill. Not our interests, of course, for it has been the hard and quiet work of ten years. Not the interests of Notting Hill, for nearly all its educated inhabitants desire the change. Not the interests of your Majesty, for you say, with characteristic sense, that you never contemplated the rise of the lunatic at all. Not, as I say, his own interests, for the man has a kind heart and many talents, and a couple of good doctors would probably put him righter than all the free cities and sacred mountains in creation. ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... playing the flute, and by breathing into the thin, reedy tones he drew from it, all that he dreamed of, but would never know. For he presently came to a place in his life where two paths diverged, and he was forced to make a choice between them. It was characteristic of the man that he chose the way of least resistance, and having married, more or less improvidently, he turned his back on the visions that had haunted his youth: afterwards, the cares, great and small, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... manipulation. For this reason the loss of the thumb disables the hand far more than the loss of either of the fingers. This very significant opposition of the thumb to the fingers, furnishing the complete grasp by the hand, is characteristic of the human race, and is wanting in the hand of the ape, chimpanzee, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... menace until the definite action of the Transvaal Government partially opened its eyes prior to the Johannesburg revolt. The hope was, however, still clung to in an undefined way that patience and forbearance would yet overcome Boer prejudice and disperse racial antipathies, and with characteristic self-confidence as well, things were allowed to drift rather out ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... at the close of a sultry day in July that Mr. John Louder and his neighbor Bly were returning from Boston in a cart. As usual, their conversation was of the solemn kind, characteristic of the Puritan. The many mysteries in nature and out of nature formed their principal topic. Each had had his long, ardent conflict with ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... or decay. Every jug not in daily use, every pot and vase, and half the many drawers, contain lines, copper nails, sail-thimbles and needles, spare blocks and pulleys, rope ends and twine. But most characteristic of the kitchen (the household teapot excepted) are the navy-blue garments and jerseys, drying along the line and flung over chairs, together with innumerable photographs of Tony and all his kin, the greater number of them ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... helped her. She saw a lean, nervous young man, whose flowing black hair and full beard were streaked with gray. His dark face, hollow in the cheeks and not too well-colored with the glow of health, seemed to get light and vivacity from his melancholy eyes. Seriousness was the characteristic expression. Once he laughed, in the whole evening. Once he looked straight into her face, with so fixed, so intense an expression, so near a gaze, so intimate and penetrating, that she ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... have something which will convince Mademoiselle that she is mistaken. I was able to get hold of one of his Majesty's collars which he had just worn. Its size is distinctly characteristic, being 18 inches. Now it would be very easy to verify the fact that the real King wears this size and also whether it fits the supposed impostor. In any case, Monsieur, from inquiries made among the hotel servants I find there can ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... part of Mr. Bartlett's book is the Appendix, in which he has got together a few proverbs and similes, which, it seems to us, do no kind of justice to the humor and invention of the people. Most of them have no characteristic at all, except coarseness. We hope there is nothing peculiarly American in such examples as these:—"Evil actions, like crushed rotten eggs, stink in the nostrils of all"; and "Vice is a skunk that smells awfully rank when stirred up by the pole of misfortune." These have, beside, an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... forward in his chair, rested one elbow upon his untidy desk, and for several moments of silence jabbed an inky pen rhythmically into the largest rutabaga ever grown in Slocum County. At last he sat back and gazed upon me distantly from inspired eyes. Then, with his characteristic enthusiasm, he exclaimed:— ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... side, is fully transformed, changes his shape, acquires wings and wing-cases; nevertheless, like the female, he possesses, from the time when he is hatched, the pale lamp of the end segment. This luminous aspect of the stern is characteristic of the entire Glow-worm tribe, independently of sex and season. It appears upon the budding grub and continues throughout life unchanged. And we must not forget to add that it is visible on the dorsal as well as on the ventral surface, whereas the two large belts peculiar to the female ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... is a distinguishing characteristic that there is no great difference in level between the outside and the inside of a walled-plain, there are some very interesting exceptions to this rule, which are termed by Schmidt "Transitional forms." Among these he places some of the most colossal formations, such as ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... "This characteristic distinction, which perhaps escapes notice at first sight, appears clearly when the origin of the State is studied.'' Kropotkin, ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... to consider. It was characteristic of him and the stock he sprang from that he would never have admitted that he had borne with Nasmyth as long as possible out of kindness. The thing would have ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... pleasantly out. I had been awake all night, I had undergone the most violent agitations of mind and body, and it is not so much to be wondered at, as it was exceedingly unwise and foolhardy, that I should have dropped into a doze. From this I awakened to the characteristic sound of digging, looked down, and saw immediately below me the back view of a gardener in a stable waistcoat. Now he would appear steadily immersed in his business; anon, to my more immediate terror, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... load upon the shoulders. Haste not. * * * * Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own short-comings. * * * Forbearance is the basis of length of days." He proved in his life what he preached. A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he attributed, "I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;" to Hideyoshi, "I will force her to sing for me;" and to Iyeyasu, "I will wait till ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... last, to waken only to the sunlight streaming through the curtainless windows on his face. To his surprise the long shed was empty and deserted, except for a single Chinaman who was sweeping the floor at the farther end. As Reddy started up, the man turned and approached him with a characteristic, vague, and ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... these machines, which was one reason why he afterward came to be so ingenious a governor. His name according to the most authentic etymologists, was a corruption of Kyver—that is to say, a wrangler or scolder—and expressed the characteristic of his family, which for nearly two centuries had kept the windy town of Saardam in hot water, and produced more tartars and brimstones than any ten families in the place; and so truly did he inherit this family peculiarity that he had not been a year in the government ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... towns which held out for France, the Prince seldom stayed to subdue them, but contented himself with plundering and burning the town. Not a very glorious style of warfare for those days of vaunted chivalry, yet one, nevertheless, characteristic enough of the times. Every undertaking, however small, gave scope for deeds of individual gallantry and the exercise of individual acts of courtliness and chivalry; and even the battles were often little more than a countless number of hand-to-hand conflicts ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... With characteristic shrewdness he chose a wife of assured fortune—Mary, youngest daughter of Robert Arden, a wealthy farmer of Wilmcote in the parish of Aston Cantlowe, near Stratford. The Arden family in its chief branch, which was settled at ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Bambilio. He was pious, but did not think it necessary to advertise it day and night unremittingly. He was not lax in religious matters, but he was no stickler for minute trifles. He inspired confidence by every characteristic of his appearance and behavior. He was a man somewhat over medium height, well built, neither heavy nor large, with an unusually dignified bearing and carriage, not a hint of self-assertion and with a genially comprehending ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... patriots to perform their share of the labor and follow the example of the modest General at the head of our armies, and sink all personal consideration for the sake of the country. I commend you to keep yourselves in the same tranquil mood that is characteristic of that brave and loyal man. I have said more than I expected when I came before you. Repeating my thanks for this call, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... diaries show a quality of clear authentic vision, which was afterwards so characteristic of her conversation. For those who remember their own youthful feelings, even the stiff occasional scraps of poetry she wrote at this time glow with a life not always discernible in the deft writing ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dream-like vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi— "Diana's Mirror," as it was called by the ancients. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene. Diana herself might ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... It seems that water is not the proper matter of Baptism. For Baptism, according to Dionysius (Eccl. Hier. v) and Damascene (De Fide Orth. iv), has a power of enlightening. But enlightenment is a special characteristic of fire. Therefore Baptism should be conferred with fire rather than with water: and all the more since John the Baptist said when foretelling Christ's Baptism (Matt. 3:11): "He shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... corporation with similar powers for twenty years, with express reservation in the same clause to modify or create any bank for the District of Columbia, so that the aggregate capital shall not exceed five millions, without enumerating other features which are equally distinctive and characteristic, clearly show that it can not be regarded as other than a bank of the United States, with powers seemingly more limited than have heretofore been granted to such an institution. It operates per se over the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... advocacy often blinds them to the proprieties and the requirements of candor and fairness. They fall into the same errors that their clients do, though with a better knowledge of their duties in this regard. They share what has been characteristic of our entire people in the last two decades. The minds of the great majority have been focused on business success, on the chase for the dollar, where success seems to have justified some departure from the strict line of propriety or fairness, so long as it has not brought on criminal ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... many of the traits which for a thousand years had been characteristic of the Phoenicians. It was a vast business-house, protected by a strong navy, indifferent to most of the finer aspects of life. The city and the surrounding country and the distant colonies were all ruled by a small ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... refined, somewhat pale, but indescribably lovely countenance; her bewitching little gestures; you would be just as much taken with her as the rest are,—you would find it difficult, as we all do, not to spoil her. She is a quiet little child, but very unlike her eldest sister. A predominating characteristic of Gabriele is love of the beautiful; she shows a decided aversion to what is ugly and inconvenient, and as decided a love for what is attractive. A most winning little gentility in appearance and manners, has occasioned the brother and sisters ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... place of honour—say the central panel in a pale yellow or rose Dubarry drawing-room, or a monumental easel placed so that it took the light through curtains of old Venetian point. The more modest place became the picture better; yet, as my eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, all the characteristic qualities came out—all the hesitations disguised as audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation by which, with such consummate skill, he managed to divert attention from the real business of the picture to some pretty irrelevance of detail. Mrs. Gisburn, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... in her quick, characteristic manner, "the Great Mystery does not will us to find things too easily. In that case everybody would be a medicine-giver, and Ohiyesa must learn that there are many secrets which the Great Mystery will disclose only to the most worthy. Only ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... a platform exponent of his own pages. That event took place at the old Broad Street Music Hall in Birmingham, a building which was superseded by the Prince of Wales' Theatre. It was not easy to mistake so characteristic a figure for that of any ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... for few had the high spirit and energy to translate into action man's duty to the State. Vacillation, indecision, fitful outbursts of unhealthy activity followed by cowardly depression, selfish cruelty, and criminal weakness are characteristic of the public life of Greece from the struggle with Macedonia to the final conquest by the arms of Rome. No one can fail to be struck by the marked difference between the period from Marathon to the Peloponnesian War and ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... electoral districts. No attempt was made to secure absolute uniformity of population in the boroughs, but there were no glaring inequalities. With the regard for the practical which has always been characteristic of Englishmen, the Company seized upon the existing units, such as towns, plantations and hundreds, as the basis of their boroughs. In some cases several of these units were merged to form one borough, in others, a plantation or a town or a hundred ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... nights, when he fell asleep over his books, he had sunk slowly to the level of the small tobacco growers among whom he lived. With him also was the curse of apathy—that hereditary instinct to let the single throw decide the issue, so characteristic of the reckless Blakes. For more than two hundred years his people had been gay and careless livers on this very soil; among them all he knew of not one who had gone without the smallest of his desires, nor of one ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... points of interest to be picked out of the following honest and straightforward bit of criticism, if we examine it closely: and, firstly, as to its author? Is there not something very characteristic in its general tone, something dimly sketching a shadowy outline of a kindly, fussy, busy, querulous old man, much given to tiny minuti, acareful copier with a clean pen, indefatiguable in collecting "contributions" to minor history; one ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... suffering. He denied the suffering, and she accepted his teaching; she followed him in denying disease and then matter, and kept on with her theory of negation and denial until she evolved her present theory. It was a natural reaction from all conceivable pains characteristic of hysteria, to no pain; from all conceivable diseases which different physicians had opined, to no disease; from the infirmity of body with its inhibitory discomfitures, to no body. The history of the founder ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... about this ruin has a very modern appearance, some of it having the characteristic surface finish and color of the Rio Grande ware. A small amount of ancient pottery also occurs here, some of the fragments of black and white ware displaying intricate fret patterns. The quantity of these potsherds is quite small, and they occur mainly in ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... was characteristic of them, nevertheless, that no one made any mention of escape. Many could have stolen away in the night over the lower walls. Perhaps all could have done so, but not a single Texan ever spoke of such a thing, and not one ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a time when she felt no impulse to rouse him. The touch of curls upon her cheek she would not feel any more. They were gone, and that baby of hers was gone. When he presently awoke, his greeting was characteristic of his altered condition. He did not call to her, he did not crow with laughter of good feeling and fine health. He merely sat up and ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... talk, lad! That's the way!" and Skipper Zeb slapped him on the shoulder, his characteristic method of expressing approval. "You has the makin's in you of a fine trapper and hunter. You fits yourself to what you has to meet and to do, whether 'tis a bit hard or whether 'tis easy. 'Twere a long way for young legs that's not used to un. Bein' on the path settin' up traps is ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... at the conclusion of the story. "Eyah!" he said wistfully, "many's th' toime have I heard me father tell that same tale. They must have been shtirrin' times, thim!" In characteristic fashion his mood suddenly changed. His face hardened, as with upraised hand he silenced the burst of laughter he had provoked from his hearers. "Ginthlemen!" he resumed quietly, "we're none av us cowards here, but—no need tu ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... The characteristic trees are the live-oak, its wood almost as heavy as lignum-vitae, the trunk not high, but sometimes five or six feet in diameter, and extending its crooked branches far over the land, with the long, pendulous, funereal moss adhering to them,—and the palmetto, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a score of Americans in the crowd, the non-sailors being "tramps royal," the men whose "mate is the wind that tramps the world." They were all cheerful, facing things with the pluck which is their chief characteristic and which seems never to desert them, withal they were cursing the country with lurid metaphors quite refreshing after a month of unimaginative, monotonous Cockney swearing. The Cockney has one oath, and one ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... tightly-fitting, single-breasted blue frock-coat and a pair of pink striped cotton trousers, while the younger candidly displayed the trousers of his brother's suit, as a harmonious change to a shining black alpaca coat and crimson neckerchief. Fairfax, who brought up the rear, had, with characteristic unselfishness, contented himself with a French workman's blue blouse and a pair of white duck trousers. Had they shown the least consciousness of their finery, or of its absurdity, they would have seemed despicable. But only one expression beamed ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... British nature not to disguise his identity under some such gallicised form of his name as BOITE, or LOGE. There is, perhaps, no surname in our language so truly national as Box. "JOHN BOX" might well be substituted for "JOHN BULL." It is characteristic of our ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... will understand him, and no indolence shall prevent us. Let us begin again, then, and re-examine some of our statements concerning the Sophist; there was one thing which appeared to me especially characteristic ...
— Sophist • Plato
... sold the farm?" I exclaimed, with sorrow and surprise. Mrs. Peet was too old and too characteristic to be suddenly transplanted from her native soil. "'T wa'n't mine, the place wa'n't." Her pleasant face hardened slightly. "He was coaxed an' over-persuaded into signin' off before he was taken away. Is'iah, son of his sister that married old Josh ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... secretaries mistrusted and were jealous of one another, and Fox was too ready to believe that Shelburne was secretly working in league with the king to counteract his negotiations, which was not the case. In concealing the Canada paper from his colleagues, Shelburne behaved with characteristic lack of openness, but as Franklin's proposition was informal and required no answer, the matter was trivial, and did not warrant the indignation which was expressed ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... opinion as to the nature of Happiness. The Platonic Idea of the Good criticised. The Highest End an end-in-itself. Virtue referable to the special work of man; growing out of his mental capacity. External conditions necessary to virtue and happiness. The Soul subdivided into parts, each, having its characteristic ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... encouraged, tuft on his chin. "He thinks me rather mad, but I've broken him in, and now he likes the place, he likes the company," said the old man. I embraced this fully after I had become aware that Brooksmith's main characteristic was a deep and shy refinement, though I remember I was rather puzzled when, on another occasion, Mr. Offord remarked: "What he likes is the talk—mingling in the conversation." I was conscious I had never ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... language towards him, but rebuke him with conciliatory words, whether he be in the company of friends or alone. Moreover, she should not be a scold, for says Gonardiya, "there is no cause of dislike on the part of a husband so great as this characteristic in a wife." Lastly she should avoid bad expressions, sulky looks, speaking aside, standing in the doorway, and looking at passers-by, conversing in the pleasure groves, and remaining in a lonely place for a long time; and finally she ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... two years afterwards, from the same boy,[33] there occurs the following characteristic trait:—"I think, by your last letter, that you are very much piqued with most of your friends; and, if I am not much mistaken, you are a little piqued with me. In one part you say, 'There is little or no ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... will do my heroine the justice to remember that she set out with only three, consequently her wish that another had been added, arose from a motive purely affectionate and characteristic. This benevolent trait, ingeniously insinuated, excites the interest of the reader for her, and adds horror to ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... Again he said, with characteristic energy, "If any one, during my administration, shall appeal, I will make him a foot shorter, and send the pieces to Holland and let him appeal ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... practice we may discover evidence of such magic in various forms. There is, for instance, what anthropology describes as 'sympathetic magic'—the attempt to influence the powers of nature by an imitation of the process which it is desired that they should perform. Of this we have a characteristic example in the ceremony of the aquaelicium, designed to produce rain after a long drought. In classical times the ceremony consisted in a procession headed by the pontifices, which bore the sacred rain-stone from ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... easy on the instant to find the English word. He explained the duties of his mission. It was singular to ask his enemy that he should see his papers handed to Count Frontenac if he were killed, but it was characteristic ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... been doing characteristic work. With three gunboats he attacked a force three times as numerous as his own. Impetuously boarding the first craft, after a discharge from his long boat, he engaged the numerous crew in a furious hand-to-hand struggle, in which all were made prisoners or forced to leap into the sea ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... natural and probable. The reduction or the exaggeration is made upon a mathematically calculated scale. For such verisimilitude Rabelais cares not a straw. His various inventions are recklessly independent one of another. A characteristic of Swift thus is scrupulous conformity to whimsical law. Rabelais is remarkable for whimsical disregard of even his own whimseys. Voltaire put the matter with his usual felicity,—Swift ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... broad social picture, in which, if there is any concentration of interest, it is upon Blanche and Warden. Sterling's suicide, then, though it does in fact cut the chief knot of the play, is to be regarded rather as a characteristic and probable incident of a certain phase of life, than as the culmination of a spiritual tragedy. It has not the artistic significance, either good or bad, that it would have if the character and destiny of Sterling ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... and a red moon, alternately illumined all parts. King Loc descended into the well and found Nur in his laboratory. Nur looked like a kind little old man, and he wore a sprig of wild thyme in his hood. In spite of his learning he had the innocence and candour characteristic ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... and a historian* draws a comparison, also in their favour, between them and the natives of Botany Bay, of whom THREE stood forward to oppose Captain Cook at his first landing. The ferocity subsequently displayed by natives of Van Diemen's Land cannot fairly be attributed to them therefore as characteristic of their race, at least until extirpation stared them in the face and excited them to acts of desperate ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... steadily driving down toward us, until at length she was so close, and so directly to windward of us, that I almost succeeded in persuading myself that there were moments when I could catch, through the strong salt smell of the gale, a whiff of the characteristic odour of a slaver with a living cargo on board. Nor was I alone in this respect, for both Simpson and the man who was tending the schooner's helm asserted that they also perceived it. But now a question arose which, for the moment at least, was ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... he was reading. James A. Garfield was then spoken of for the presidency; Edward wondered whether it was true that the man who was likely to be President of the United States had once been a boy on the tow-path, and with a simple directness characteristic of his Dutch training, wrote to General Garfield, asking whether the boyhood episode was true, and explaining why he asked. Of course any public man, no matter how large his correspondence, is pleased to receive an earnest letter from an information-seeking boy. General Garfield ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... formations are the volcanic mountains near Knin and on Lissa. Next follow the trias strata, as under the Velebits and westwards from Sinj, then the sandstone beds, the different eocene beds and alluvial strata, as in the plain of Dernis, north of the Vrana Lake, by Nona and Imoski. The principal characteristic of the Karst district (to which Dalmatia belongs geologically) is the way the water flows, sometimes above, sometimes under ground. Where the woods were cut down to supply the Romans and Venetians with material for constructing their fleets, and where natural afforestation ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... the girlhood of the delightful little heroine at Riverboro which were not included in the story of "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," and they are as characteristic and delightful as any part of that famous story. Rebecca is as distinct a creation in the second volume as in ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... faculty, which not only consists with the poetical, but is invariably and necessarily associated with it, whenever the latter exists in an advanced stage of development, is in no writer more conspicuous as an intellectual characteristic than in Schiller. In this respect he is not excelled even by Wordsworth himself; but Homer sometimes snoozes, and Schiller's reasoning is not always consequential: as, for instance, when he denies two compositions of Ovid—the Tristia and Ex Ponto—to be genuine ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... band the story was the same. The grass rushed confidently in, bit off great chunks, then smaller, then smaller, until its movement ceased entirely. That part which embedded itself in the salt lost the dazzling green color so characteristic and turned piebald, from dirty gray through brown and yellow, an appearance so familiar in its normal counterpart ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... is a characteristic letter to General Crawford, concerning the dismissal of an officer, whom Cromwell would have restored. "Ay, but the man is an Anabaptist. Are you sure of that? Admit he be, shall that render him incapable to serve the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... It is characteristic that this man, who is probably a drunkard and shebeener and certainly in penury, refused the chance of a shilling because he felt that I did not like him. He had a curiously mixed expression of hardness and melancholy. Probably his character has given him a bad reputation ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... or spiritual principle supposed by alchemists to be transfusible into material things; an imparted characteristic or tendency. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... sufficiently indefinite. "It appears to be characteristic of this young lady that she is either a vanished joy, or just on the point of becoming one. Have you any idea how far ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... me to judge how much truth there may have been in these reports; but in the one case every one believed, and in the other some suspected, that there had been foul play; and nobody dreamed for an instant of taking the authorities into their counsel. Now this is, of course, characteristic enough of the Mexicans; but it is a noteworthy feature that all the Americans in Monterey acquiesced without a word in this inaction. Even when I spoke to them upon the subject, they seemed not to understand my surprise; they had forgotten the traditions of their own race and upbringing, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I may say without flattery that I expect you. If I am disappointed, I still must bear witness to your courage and to a generosity not characteristic ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... danced, their dance, at first slow and melancholy, becoming gradually active, nervous, and interrupted by cries which resembled sobs. And the Hungarian czardas, symbolizing thus the dance of these martyrs, kept still, will always keep, the characteristic of contortions under the lash of bygone days; and, slow and languishing at first, then soon quick and agitated, tragically hysterical, it also is interrupted by melancholy chords, dreary, mournful notes and plaintive accents like drops of blood from a wound-from the mortal wound ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... generosity which is so prominent a characteristic of "Exchange" was very noticeable this morning. The number I asked for, which was faithfully repeated by the operator, was Mayfair 976. I was connected successively to Hammersmith 24, Museum 113, and Mayfair 5800. After a decent interval I ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... world of fact it is the rarest thing to encounter this absolute alternative; S1 is pink, but S2 is pinker, S3 is scarcely pink at all, and one is in doubt whether S4 is not properly to be called scarlet. The finest type specimen you can find simply has the characteristic quality a little more rather than a little less. The neat little circles the logician uses to convey his idea of P or not P to the student are just pictures of boundaries in his mind, exaggerations of a natural mental tendency. They are required for the purposes of his science, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... where I find this remark appended to them: "Don't take leave of Lamartine on that contemptuous note; it will be easy to think of something more sympathetic!" Those friends of mine, mentioned a little while since, who accuse me of always tipping back the balance, could not desire a paragraph more characteristic; but I wish to give no further evi- dence of such infirmities, and will therefore hurry away from the subject, - hurry away in the train which, very early on a crisp, bright morning, conveyed. me, by way of an excursion, to ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... and the banks authorized by it alone issued money; but everybody who gave a dollar's credit issued money to that extent, which was as good as any to swell the circulation till the next crises. The great extension of the credit system was a characteristic of the latter part of the nineteenth century, and accounts largely for the almost incessant business crises which marked that period. Perilous as credit was, you could not dispense with its use, for, lacking any national or other public organization of the capital of the country, it was the ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... philosophy is called Prakriti. My utmost expectations will have been exceeded if it should happen that any considerations here offered should throw even a faint suggestive light upon the bearings of this great problem. It may be that the mere irreconcilability of all that is characteristic of the temporal Ego with the conditions of the superior life—if that can be made apparent—will incline you to regard the latter rather as the Redeemer, that has indeed to be born within us for our salvation and our immortality, than as the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... sum up our contention so far, we may say that the most characteristic current philosophies have not only a touch of mania, but a touch of suicidal mania. The mere questioner has knocked his head against the limits of human thought; and cracked it. This is what makes so futile the warnings of the orthodox and the boasts of the advanced ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... charm was not one or two striking characteristics which distinguished him from other men, but it was a beautiful combination of many noble and lovely traits, in proportions so just, and in harmony so pleasing, that when I have attempted to select this and that characteristic for description, I feel that I have succeeded about as well, as if I had collected a bouquet from the valley of which I just spoke, and should give it to a friend as a picture of the landscape itself. The truth is, my young friends, you will never truly know your Grandfather unless you are ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... conflict in which the free States and the slave States should wrestle in deadly encounter. Douglas presented his indictment artfully and with singular force. The two speeches were in all respects characteristic. Each had made a strong presentation of his case, but the superior candor and directness of Mr. Lincoln had made a deep impression on the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... with that impatient despair which is equally characteristic of the man. "Go!" he said, "when you are called upon by law to vindicate a man's character, and that man your husband! I ought not to be surprised at anything with my experience, but, Elinor, you take ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... odd thing that a girl who could find the nerve to shoot a huge black ruffian rushing to kill her with a spear should have been so affected at the thought of it afterwards; but it is, after all, characteristic of the sex. Poor Flossie! I fear that her nerves will not get over that night in the Masai camp for many a long year. She told me afterwards that it was the suspense that was so awful, having to sit there hour after hour through the livelong ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... supporters renewed vigour, and, even to-day, the election of November, 1844, is remembered as one of the fiercest in the history of the colony. Politics in Canada still recognized force as one of the natural, if not quite legitimate, elements in the situation, and it was eminently characteristic of local conditions that, early in his term of office, Metcalfe should have reported that meetings had been held near Kingston at which large numbers of persons attended armed with bludgeons, and, in some cases, with firearms.[21] Montreal, with ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... some trivial local characteristic, were not at all translations of the native tribal names. For in their own dialects, Quiche, [c]iche, means "many trees;" Tuztuhil, [c,]utuhil, "the flowery spot;" Akahal, "the honey-comb;" and Cakchiquel, ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... his judge calmly. An American can meet death with even the stoicism so characteristic ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... Byronic manner, and ceases, fatigued with his task, before he has begun to get his story under weigh; and miscellaneous pieces. Some of these latter are simply lyrical exercises, and must have been written in Peter Corcoran's earlier days. The most characteristic and the best deal, however, with the science of fisticuffs. Here are the lines sent by the poet to his mistress on the painful occasion which we have described above, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... New Year—and may you live to see many of them!"—The New Year is born with every characteristic of its defunct sire—seeming no better behaved (as some people would have little boys after a birthday or a breeching):—the old year died with a drizzle; and the young one, that everybody hoped promising, is ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... lucky number in the conscription, he went away from home, and got work, first at the farm of La Borderie and later at La Chamade. He was a true son of the soil, knowing nothing of the world beyond the narrow district in which he was born, and possessing that fierce passion for the land which is the characteristic of so many peasants. When Pere Fouan made a division of his property among his family, Buteau was dissatisfied with the lot which he drew, and refused to take possession of it. In this attitude he persisted for two ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Jason was not long in ascertaining where we were bound. This was done in a manner so characteristic and ingenious, that I will ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... for Ransom to reach his dressing-room by a slight circuit through the passage; but it was characteristic of the relentless domesticity of their relation that he chose, as a matter of course, the directer way through his wife's bedroom. She had never before been disturbed by this practice, which she accepted ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... private character of Buffon," says Sir William Jardine in a characteristic passage, "we regret there is not much to praise; his disposition was kind and benevolent, and he was generally beloved by his inferiors, followers, and dependants, which were numerous over his extensive property; he was strictly honourable, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... she cried. "I have fared admirably. Why should I not? Life makes me as happy as though I were a child. Oh, I can always be happy.... That's characteristic of me. Nearly every day brings something new and usually something delightful.... And since I've been in love with you.... You mustn't take that for a banal declaration of passion, dear friend.... Just imagine you are ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... we should turn to the brute creation existing in these regions, noticing the interesting specimens of the vegetable kingdom as we proceed in our survey. As the camel is the characteristic animal of the sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa, the royal tiger of the jungles of Bengal, and the kangaroo of the wide-extending plains of Australia, so the llama brings to our recollection the lofty plateaus of the Andes, and the mighty condor ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... conference of leading State and city officials and other representative men who there and then mapped out a program tending to prevent the recurrence of such race riots—a program which up to the present time has successfully fulfilled its purpose. It is characteristic of Mr. Washington's methods that he turned this disaster into an ultimate blessing for the ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression. Philanthropy is a gesture characteristic of modern business lavishing upon the unfit the profits extorted from the community at large. Looked at impartially, this compensatory generosity is in its final effect probably more dangerous, more dysgenic, more blighting ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... Hohenhrn Sand. 14th Sept.—Nil. 15th Sept.—Under way at 4 a.m. Wind East moderate. Course W. by S.: four miles; N.E. by N. fifteen miles Norderpiep 9.30. Eider River 11.30.' This recital of naked facts was quite characteristic when 'passages' were concerned, and any curiosity I had felt about his reticence on the previous night would have been rather allayed than stimulated had I not noticed that a page had been torn out of the book just at this point. The frayed edge left had ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word—on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray. If you care to know the extent of his ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... his eyes flashed with anger; but, on second thought, the joke struck him as being too good, and the pleasant smile so characteristic of the Colonel wreathed ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... barely accessible with Yuranigh's assistance, and, on reaching an elevated summit, I saw still worse gullies before us, amongst which I could perceive no feature affording any cue to their final outlet, nor any characteristic of the structure of these labyrinths. I looked in vain for the rugged summits I had seen peeping over the plains when first discovered, and could not then be convinced (as I found long afterwards, on completing my map), that they were then under my feet. ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... duty to their country as Englishmen should. Lord Methuen described as dastardly the firing by the enemy on ambulance waggons, the shooting of a British officer by a wounded Boer, and the use of Dum-Dum bullets; but he refused to believe that these acts were characteristic of the enemy; he would give them credit until he was convinced to the contrary that they wished to fight fair and square. Addressing the Scots Guards, the General said that they had acted as he expected his ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... transparent substance having a smooth shining fracture and melting at about 135 deg. C. (275 deg. F.). The American variety possesses a characteristic aromatic odour, which is lacking in those from France and Spain. It is graded by samples taken out of the top of every barrel, and cut into 7/8 of an inch cubes, which must be uniform in size—the shade of colour of the cube ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... the companion of man. Such he is in all parts of the world; and although wild dogs exist, they appear, like savage human beings, to have retrograded from a state of civilisation. The mongrels and curs, too, have evidently deteriorated, and lost the characteristic ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... Plowden. Notwithstanding the confusion in its orders, owing to the different ages in which its several parts had been erected, the interior was not wanting in that appearance of comfort which forms the great characteristic of English domestic life. Its dark and intricate mazes of halls, galleries, and apartments were all well provided with good and substantial furniture; and whatever might have been the purposes of their original construction, they were now peacefully appropriated ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... blue colour; and his lower jaw was somewhat prominent. Smoothly shaved and well brushed, with stiff white neckcloth, shining boots, and silver-headed cane, there was something about his whole appearance which told of prosperity. Every word, every movement, even the peculiarly characteristic one with which he adjusted his chin in his stiff neckcloth, was the picture of propriety and precision. Precision was, in fact, a word which seemed made for the young Consul; both his appearance and his career reflected it ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... more than repaid," writes Peel, "by the personal satisfaction which I have had in doing that for which you return me warm and characteristic acknowledgments. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with God, I have had innumerable trials, some of them tortures, but have been brought safely out of every one. I afterwards found that each trial was exactly what was needed for the alteration of some objectionable characteristic in myself. No trial that came was unnecessary. When its work ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... bad of coming from a Scotch Calvinist's house. No man in that age had so healthy an instinct for the actuality of positive evil. In The Master of Ballantrae he did prove with a pen of steel, that the Devil is a gentleman—but is none the less the Devil. It is also characteristic of him (and of the revolt from Victorian respectability in general) that his most blood-and-thunder sensational tale is also that which contains his most intimate and bitter truth. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a double triumph; it has the outside excitement that ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Mr. T. will not require me to depict my feelings, when I inform him that I have become accustomed to hear Mr. Micawber assert that he has sold himself to the D. Mystery and secrecy have long been his principal characteristic, have long replaced unlimited confidence. The slightest provocation, even being asked if there is anything he would prefer for dinner, causes him to express a wish for a separation. Last night, on being childishly solicited for twopence, to buy ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... of strife between good and evil as interpreting the significance of existence arose that dissonance which lies at the root of nearly all his most characteristic works—that sense of want, that failure to find final satisfaction which may be only too readily detected. For the conflict within himself he knew no real mediatory: he was baffled to discover a higher category in which to unite ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... then, I say, is the most characteristic of him and of his Valois blood, and of the national spirit in general to which he belonged: for he, and it, and they, loved and love contrast, and the extra-meaning ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... But as for specialists in feminine diseases being at heart rakes and cynics, allow me to differ. Gynaecologists have to do with deadly prose such as you have never dreamed of, and to which perhaps, if you knew it, you would, with the ferocity characteristic of your imagination, attribute a worse smell than that of dogs. One who is always swimming in the sea loves dry land; one who for ever is plunged in prose passionately longs for poetry. All gynaecologists are idealists. Your doctor reads poems, your instinct prompted you right; I would add that ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... late thought, we should say that by it everything is made 'an antiquity.' When, in former times; our ancestors thought of an antiquarian, they described him as occupied with coins, and medals, and Druids' stones; these were then the characteristic records of the decipherable past, and it was with these that decipherers busied themselves. But now there are other relics; indeed, all matter is become such. Science tries to find in each bit of earth the record of the causes which made it precisely ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... horrified though he was, Bart Hodge realized that Frank had been stabbed. At that moment, with the lack of resolution that was characteristic of him on occasions of peril, and not through fear, he stood quite still ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... young man himself: nay, on the contrary, being grieved that he was even the cause of public odium and accusations to his father, that all the gods and men might know that he would rather afford aid to his father than to his enemies, he forms the design, characteristic of a rude and rustic mind no doubt, and though of a precedent not conformable to the rules of civil life, yet commendable for its filial piety. Having furnished himself with a knife, without the knowledge of any one he proceeds early in the morning into the city, and from the gate straightway ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... "The characteristic features of the Esquimaux," says Admiral Beechey, "are large fat round faces, high cheek-bones, small hazel eyes, eyebrows slanting like the Chinese, and wide mouths." They are generally under ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray
... our people have characteristic racial features which make it practically impossible for a Japanese to disguise himself as a Western European, so as to ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... however poorly told, offers a picture of real war: the war that is by no means one continuous stretch of heroism and martyrdom in excelsis, of guns galloping to death or glory, of bayonets dripping with enemy blood, of "our gallant lads" meeting danger and destruction with "characteristic British humour and cheerfulness," when they are not "seeing red." On that 29th of August, when Major Mallaby-Kelby assumed command, we knew that the campaign had taken a definite turn in our favour, but none of us expected the ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... standards of shame that exist even among the cultivated Japanese to-day.[19] Even among the Ainos, whom the Japanese look upon as savages, there is still much of the obscenity of speech which belongs to all society[20] in a state of barbarism; but it has been proved that genuine modesty is a characteristic of the Aino women.[21] A literal English translation of the Kojiki, however, requires an abundant use of Latin in order to protect it from the grasp of the law in English-speaking Christendom. In Chamberlain's version, the numerous cesspools are thus filled up with a dead language, and ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... subject of different kinds of air, I find myself at a loss for proper terms, by which to distinguish them, those which have hitherto obtained being by no means sufficiently characteristic, or distinct. The only terms in common use are, fixed air, mephitic, and inflammable. The last, indeed, sufficiently characterizes and distinguishes that kind of air which takes fire, and explodes on the approach ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... die, and some of these have been rescued and carried to foundling hospitals. The neighbourhood was so pestiferous that we could only pause a moment to look at 'an institution' which, although so horrible, is so characteristic of this race, who pay such unbounded reverence to the powerful dead who could harm them. Most of the bodies deposited here are those of girl babies who have been intentionally put to death, but older children are ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... apostasy from God does not denote the special sin, but rather that general condition of every sin, consisting in its turning away from God. It may also be said that apostasy from God is said to be the beginning of pride, because it is the first species of pride. For it is characteristic of pride to be unwilling to be subject to any superior, and especially to God; the result being that a man is unduly lifted up, in respect of the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... attachment to the fair sex extended even to a dead queen. The record of this royal salute on his natal day is very characteristic. The story told him in Westminster Abbey appears to have been correct; for Neale informs us ("History of Westminster Abbey," vol. ii., p. 88) that near the south side of Henry V.'s tomb there was formerly a wooden chest, or coffin, wherein part of the skeleton and parched body of Katherine ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... railroad transportation might have been discouraged by this discovery, but it is a characteristic of an inventor that he is not set back by opposition, which, in fact, only serves to stimulate his zeal. The projectors of inclined roads and mountain engines kept steadily on, and in France, Germany, England, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... transition from these homely scenes, which humor commends to our liking, to the chivalrous pageant unrolled for us in the "Conquest of Granada." The former are more characteristic and the more enduring of Irving's writings, but as a literary artist his genius lent itself just as readily to Oriental and mediaeval romance as to the Knickerbocker legend; and there is no doubt that the delicate perception he had ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... step into the office to inquire after my comrades. One of the whey-faced clerks said with the supercilious asperity characteristic of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... further, let us look at some of the circumstances which were characteristic of the period with which we are dealing. Liberty of the subject and public opinion are inseparably wedded together, and this seems inevitable in every country whose government partakes largely of the representative system. For in such States, unlike the conditions which ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... property; he has no important vices and no inclination to commit robbery on a large scale; but if he can get ahead of you in the horse business, he will take a genuine delight in doing it. This traits is characteristic of horse jockeys, the world over, is it not? He will overcharge you if he can; he will hire you a fine-looking horse at night (anybody's—may be the King's, if the royal steed be in convenient view), ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... take time. Sometimes we can trace how new methods were carried about. Those who were brought over from Normandy by the Norman kings of England to be abbots in English monasteries, brought with them their characteristic style of building; and at the end of the twelfth century this had entirely superseded the old English style. One monastery passed on the new fashion to another, as Simeon, at Ely, came fresh from the great work being ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... as you have done in substance, that this is no longer the characteristic of Romanism. Why is it not? Has she ever changed for the better? When did she renounce her doctrines and practices? Never! Rome is the same tyrannical system now, where she has the power, that she ever has been, and for ever must be. ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... illustrates this teaching in a most remarkable way. Back through twenty-five hundred years we can follow the line of the imperial succession, till it vanishes out of sight into the mystery of the past. Here we have evidence of that extreme power of resisting all changes which is inherently characteristic of religious conservatism; on the other hand, the history of shogunates and regencies proves the tendency to disintegration of institutions having no religious foundation, and therefore no religious power of cohesion. The remarkable duration of the Fujiwara rule, as compared with others, may perhaps ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... political opinions, nor to the critical decisions of the Edinburgh Review; but we must do justice to the talent with which they are supported, and to the tone of manly explicitness in which they are delivered.[A] They are eminently characteristic of the Spirit of the Age; as it is the express object of the Quarterly Review to discountenance and extinguish that spirit, both in theory and practice. The Edinburgh Review stands upon the ground of opinion; it asserts the supremacy ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... not at once reply. He was standing in one of his characteristic attitudes, his hands clasped behind him, his head a little thrust forward, watching with every appearance of courteous interest the roomful of guests, stationary just now, listening to the performance of a famous violinist. It was, perhaps, by accident ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... insight he anticipated the arguments of his attorney. He presented them fairly and generously to the court and jury. According to Samson the opposing lawyers admitted in a private talk that Lincoln had thought of presumptions in favor of Davis which had not occurred to them. Therein lay the characteristic of Mr. Lincoln's method in ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... and flavour of rudeness was altogether characteristic of Theresa, and somebody resented it by reminding her that SHE was the hostess. "Of course," she replied, "that is why I said it: what shall I do?" One of her gifts was memory, and her friends cried out at once that she should recite ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... Francias we distinguish, 1436, a Crucifixion; 1556 is a Pieta by Cosimo Tura in the characteristic hard manner of the Ferrarese master, being the upper portion of the central altar-piece, Virgin and Child Enthroned, in the National Gallery; 1417, Virgin and Child with two Saints, is a doubtful Pinturicchio; 1114, Virgin and Child between SS. Jerome and Zanobi ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... the phenomena about her, to pay much attention to the perhaps equally interesting phenomenon of her own personality. The impression left upon the two girls by their half hour's talk with Geoffry Daymond was characteristic of each. May approved of him because he had been interested in her ideas; and Pauline liked him because he had ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... the effect that the increasing economic security of women is having upon their whole habit of life and mind. The diminishing marriage rate and the even more rapidly diminishing birth rates how which way the wind is blowing. It is common for male statisticians, with characteristic imbecility, to ascribe the fall in the marriage rate to a growing disinclination on the male side. This growing disinclination is actually on the female side. Even though no considerable, body of women has yet ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... catastrophe that yet wouldn't at all be the catastrophe: partly because she had almost of a sudden begun to strike him as more useful to him than ever yet, and partly by reason of an appearance of uncertainty in her health, co-incident and equally new. It was characteristic of the inner detachment he had hitherto so successfully cultivated and to which our whole account of him is a reference, it was characteristic that his complications, such as they were, had never yet seemed so as at this crisis to thicken about him, even to the point of making him ask himself ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... underscored words are actual quotations. "Estimony" for "opinion" was a characteristic in Gus' vocabulary; "race" for the original "wretch" in the song may have been a general error in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... to Christianity in particular, but at best to Religion in general, perhaps to mere Morality, their homage is intended to be paid. With Christianity, as distinct from these, they are little acquainted; their views of it have been so cursory and superficial, that far from discerning its characteristic essence, they have little more than perceived those exterior circumstances which distinguish it from other forms of Religion. There are some few facts, and perhaps some leading doctrines and principles, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Portugal, are also cast into the sea, but succeed in making the shore of a far country. All these children grow up endowed with marvellous beauty and strength, but their doom is upon them, and after numerous adventures they slay their fathers or some other unfortunate relative. But the most characteristic part of what seems an almost universal legend is that these children are born in the most obscure circumstances, afterward rising to a height of splendour which makes up for all they previously suffered. It is not necessary to explain nowadays that this is characteristic of ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... low-spirited sort of way, characteristic of Mrs. Beecot, but with a true motherly heart. After two pages of lamentation over his absence, and a description of how the head of the household managed to bear up against the affliction of his son's absence, Mrs. Beecot proceeded to explain ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... one reinforcing the other, are mixed together in this drink, both being of high flavor and so rank as to burn an ordinary mouth. On the one hand, with the freedom of language and the boldness of deduction characteristic of the method, the sentiment of the priest's dignity is exalted. What is the priest?"He is, between God who is in heaven and the man who tries to find him on earth, a being, God and man, who brings these nearer by his symbolizing both.[5281].. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was by no means clear but that it might be four. It was one of those happy strokes of calculation and combination, the result of which it was difficult to estimate. It was one of those instances of a comprehensive grasp, associated with habitual luck and characteristic boldness, of which an age presented us but few. But here was Brother Bellows, who had been in the great Bank case, and who could probably tell us more. What did Brother Bellows put this new ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to the rank of second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and the third-largest economy in the world after the US and China, measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis. One notable characteristic of the economy is how manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors work together in closely-knit groups called keiretsu. A second basic feature has been the guarantee of lifetime employment for a substantial portion of the urban labor force. Both features are now eroding. Japan's ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... beings you can distinguish several distinct portions set apart to do particular things and work in a particular way. These are termed "organs," and the whole together is called "organic." And as it is universally characteristic of them, this term "organic" has been very conveniently employed to denote the whole of living nature,—the whole of the plant world, and the whole of ...
— The Present Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... sullen face of the murderous and death-stricken Amos. It became very lonely at Twenty Mile. "For the love of God, Prentiss, send me a man," he wrote to the agent at Fort Hamilton, three hundred miles up river. Six weeks later the Indian messenger brought back a reply. It was characteristic: "Hell. Both feet frozen. Need ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... not wane, but increased. It differed from that of his sisters, however, in being a tribute to her creative faculties, while Edith's breathless faith pictured her cousin as having passed through as many adventures as Queen Esther. George paid her a characteristic compliment, but chivalrously drew her aside to bestow it. He was not one to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... After writing another characteristic article, on Biography, he furnished for Fraser's Magazine one of the finest biographical portraits ever painted,—that of Dr. Johnson, in which that cyclopean worker stands out, with even more distinctness than in Boswell's "Life," as one of the most honest, earnest, patient laborers in the whole ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... and broad chest was the health of the open, but on one finger he wore a heavily carved ring from which glowed the cool light of a large emerald, and in his scarf was a black pearl, which hardly seemed characteristic of native wear. Then ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... imaginary recollection, when he was in a more advanced age, and his peculiarities of temper became much more remarkable; of a piece with the ingenious discoveries of those sagacious observers, who can discern something evidently characteristic in the features of any noted personage whose character they have previously heard explained. Yet without pretending to specify at what period of his childhood this singularity first appeared, I can with great truth ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... were divinely appointed, and divinely qualified, equally with their brethren nearer the Tabernacle. It is true that Joshua exhibited some jealousy and suspicion, and would have silenced them because the blessing had not come through Moses; but the great law-giver, with characteristic insight and generosity, would not heed the request—"My lord Moses, forbid them." Calmly, yet decisively, the answer rang out, "Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His spirit ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... warning:—"This book belongs to Miss Pink's Academy for Young Ladies, and is not to be removed from the library." The date, which was added, referred to a period of ten years since. Miss Pink now stood revealed as a retired schoolmistress, and Mr. Troy began to understand some of the characteristic peculiarities of that lady's establishment which had puzzled him ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... affluent. Some were new and had the price-mark still on them, while others were old, foundered albums, with a droop in the back and little flecks of egg and gravy on the title-page. All came with a request for Galileo "to write a little, witty, characteristic sentiment in them." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... beautiful medieval story such as "Our Lady's Tumbler," retold by Wickstead, the original text could hardly be presented so as to hold an audience; but while giving up a great deal of the elaborate material, we should try to present many of the characteristic passages which seem to sum up the situation. For instance, before his performance, the Tumbler cries: "What am I doing? For there is none here so caitiff but who vies with all the rest in serving God after his trade." And after his act of devotion: ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... the Courts of Love in France, places the reasonable and modest wish of a sensitive and chaste lady above all the eagerness of her lovers, all the incongruous counsels of representative courtiers. So far, therefore, as the poem reproduces the characteristic features of procedure in those romantic Middle Age halls of amatory justice, Chaucer's "Assembly of Fowls" is his real "Court of Love;" for although, in the castle and among the courtiers of Admetus and Alcestis, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... to High Halden, which stands upon a ridge out of the Weald, a very characteristic and beautiful place, with a most interesting church dedicated to Our Lady. Indeed I do not know where one could match the strange wooden tower and belfry and the noble fourteenth century porch, masterpieces of carpentry, which close on the west the little stone ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... established themselves between Palstrey and The Kennel Farm were marked by two characteristic features. One of these was that Lord Walderhurst did not develop any warmer interest in the Osborns, and that Lady Walderhurst did. Having acceded to Emily's wishes, and really behaved generously in the matter of providing for his heir presumptive and his wife, ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... life in its extreme form. Its more moderate form can hardly be better expressed than in the saying of Dugald Stewart that 'the great secret of happiness is to study to accommodate our own minds to things external rather than to accommodate things external to ourselves.'[2] It is eminently the characteristic of Eastern nations to place their ideals mainly in states of mind or feeling rather than in changes of circumstances, and in such nations men are much less desirous than in European countries of altering the permanent ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... they have ceased from the charge at full gallop, the pace should at once be changed; and now, with footing slow, let them retrace their course back to the temples. In this way every detail characteristic of knightly pageantry (9) will have been displayed to the delight of god and man. That our knights are not accustomed to these actual evolutions, I am well aware; but I also recognise the fact that the performances are good and beautiful and will give pleasure to spectators. I do not fail to note, ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... they began to talk, stiffly at first; then, as she seemed by no means forward, with greater freedom. Mesdames de Breville and Carre-Lamadon, who were accomplished women of the world, were gracious and tactful. The countess especially displayed that amiable condescension characteristic of great ladies whom no contact with baser mortals can sully, and was absolutely charming. But the sturdy Madame Loiseau, who had the soul of a gendarme, continued morose, speaking little ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... anything. Perhaps, more than anything, she laid before the Lord what she wanted him to do. She told him how Marjorie looked, and how depressed she had been, and her own fear that it was disappointment that was breaking her heart. The prayer was characteristic. ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... it—and the only point of view in which it is worth the serious regard of thoughtful people—is the art of erecting expressive and beautiful buildings. I say expressive and beautiful, and I put expressive first, because it is the characteristic which we can at least realize even when we cannot realize what can fairly be called beauty, and it is the characteristic which comes first in the order of things. A building may be expressive and thereby have interest, without rising into beauty; but it can never be, architecturally speaking, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... BALANCE SYSTEM.—A striking characteristic feature of American constitutional government is the check and balance system. By this system we mean all those constitutional provisions which divide and subdivide governmental power among various sets of public ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... imitation of its form has been reduced into an art; and in the commerce of life, the first study of all who would either gain the esteem or win the hearts of others, is to learn the speech and to adopt the manners of candour, gentleness, and humanity. But that gentleness which is the characteristic of a good man has, like every other virtue, its seat in the heart; and let me add, nothing except what flows from the heart can render even external manners truly pleasing. For no assumed behaviour can at all times hide the real character. In that unaffected ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... vocalists—those who perform throughout the year, "the musicians of all times and places," and those who join the chorus only for a few weeks or months. The calls of the former class go far to create for India its characteristic atmosphere. To enumerate all such bird calls would be wearisome. For the purposes of this calendar it is necessary to describe only the common daily cries—the sounds that at all times and all seasons form the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... these words is traditionary, if we may be allowed the expression. It is one of the many wild and characteristic melodies floating about, perhaps unappropriated, on the popular breath, varied indefinitely according to the humour of the performer. The author has listened to several of these ditties; some of them he thinks peculiar to this and the neighbouring ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... or which they knew only through the reels of the moving picture films. They criticized events as though they were witnessing a bull fight. "The Germans have the snap! You can't fool with them! They are fine brutes!" And they appeared to admire this inhumanity as the most admirable characteristic. "Why will they not say that in their own home on the other side of the frontier?" Chichi would protest. "Why do they come into their neighbor's country to ridicule his troubles? . . . Possibly they consider it a sign of ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... love, as we have seen, is to "move everything to everything else that is," especially to reunite person to person. This is an identifying characteristic of the love of God, and it is to some degree the characteristic of all love. We believe that this love was incarnate in Jesus Christ. We believe that His Spirit, active in the world in which we live, seeks to incarnate this love in us here ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... holding her face up, her lips puckered forward in a tight little rosebud. She closed her eyes and waited. Gingerly and hesitantly he leaned forward and met her lips with a pucker of his own. It was a light contact, warm, and ended quickly with a characteristic smack that seemed to echo through the silent house. It had all of the emotional charge of a mother-in-law's peck, but it served its purpose admirably. They both opened their eyes and looked at one another from four inches of distance. Then they tried it again ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... at last returned. Mrs. Wetenhall (for that was the name of her relation) would by all means wait upon her to London, in appearance out of politeness; for ceremony, carried beyond all bearing, is the grand characteristic of country gentry: yet this mark of civility was only a pretence, to obtain a peevish husband's consent to his wife's journey to town. Perhaps he would have done himself the honour of conducting Miss Hamilton up to London, had ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... surrounded the swamp. They cautiously penetrated the tangled thicket, their feet at almost every step sinking in the mire and becoming shackled by interlacing roots, the branches pinioning their arms, and the dense foliage blinding their eyes. Philip, with characteristic cunning, sent a few of his warriors occasionally to exhibit themselves, to lure the English on. The colonists gradually forgot their accustomed prudence, and pressed eagerly forward. Suddenly from the dense thicket a party of warriors in ambush ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... With her hand on the arm of her cavalier she sauntered forward, and, swerving slightly, sauntered by. She sauntered by with a lingering look of curiosity that seemed to throw him a challenge. Never in his life had Claude received such a look. It was perhaps the characteristic look of the girl of the twentieth century. It was neither bold nor rude nor self-assertive, but it was unconscious, inquiring, and unabashed. For Claude it was a new experience, calling out in ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... had become English, would never do. He next saw Mansoor, the brother, and asked him if he knew that Asaad was in close confinement. "Yes," answered he, "and he may end his days there, unless he can learn to behave himself better." One characteristic mark of a heathen is, that he is "without ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... impossible to refrain from an outburst of merriment. It was quite in accordance with German promises, which are composed of the two ingredients—uncompromising bluff and unabashed deliberate lying, leavened with a sprinkling of disarming suavity. I had tasted this characteristic at Wesel and frankly was not a bit surprised at anything which loomed up, always resolving at all hazards to make the best of an ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... fountains, from which the groseille water is administered, are among the most characteristic ornaments ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... was worshiped under the name of Fricco, and a statue of him at Upsala represented him in the characteristic attitude of the god of procreation. "Tertius est Fricco, pacem voluptatemque largiens mortalibus, cujus etiam simulachrum fingunt ingenti priapo."[70] From this god a vulgar word for copulation had its origin. ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... peculiar sweet upward inflection of the solitary's. To hear some of the measures, you would pass the bird for a red-eye; to hear others of them, you might pass him for a solitary. At the same time, he has not the most highly characteristic of the solitary's phrases. His voice is less sharp and his accent less emphatic than the red-eye's, and, so far as we heard, he observes decidedly ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... although it possesses not a few drawbacks, can be made both amusing and instructive; we can even find something attractive in the quality of the local atmosphere, which suggests at one and the same time sunshine, garlic, incense, stale fish and wood smoke; it is the pungent but characteristic aroma of the South, filled "with spicy odours Time can never mar." And what truly charming pictures do the family groups present in the wide archways giving on the untidy courts within, full of sun and shadow ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... women may make money at home, with practical directions for so doing. Stories with a moral are not usually interesting, but this one is an exception to the rule. The narrative is lively, the incidents probable and amusing, the characters well-drawn, and the dialects various and characteristic. Mrs. Campbell is a natural storyteller, and has the gift of making a tale interesting. Even the recipes for pickles and preserves, evaporating fruits, raising poultry, and keeping bees, are made poetic and invested ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... brought every day with the regularity of a postman, and fourteen days later they were engaged, and his first kiss was given in the presence of her grandmother, mother, and Paul's parents. Her heart felt very warmly toward him, and she would have felt dreadfully confused had not Wilhelm, with characteristic good feeling, declined the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Chemical Light (17th century) says: "Simplicity is the seal of truth.... Nature is wonderfully simple, and the characteristic mark of a childlike simplicity is stamped upon all that is true and noble in Nature." In another place the same author says: "Nature is one, true, simple, self-contained, created of God, and informed with a certain universal spirit." The same author, Michael Sendivogius, remarks: ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland, known more familiarly as HOTSPUR,—a name which historians and poets have preferred as characteristic of his decision, and zeal, and the impetuosity of his disposition,—very shortly after Henry IV.'s accession had been appointed not only Warden of the East Marches of Scotland and Governor of Berwick, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... calmly awaiting the decision of the Governor; and he saw one of them draw from his belt the knife that Masasoyt had commanded him to plunge into the culprit's heart. But Squanto did not tremble. All the native fortitude, so characteristic of his race, was manifested in this awful moment; and the bystanders felt a respect for the Pokanokit that he ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... connected with his lifelong fondness for funny stories. His favorite humorous writer during the presidential period was Petroleum V. Nasby (David P. Locke), from whose letters he frequently read to more or less sympathetic listeners. It was eminently characteristic of Lincoln that the presentation to the Cabinet of the Emancipation Proclamation was prefaced by the reading of the ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... consequently as having their origins of as opposite a nature as are their appearances. But the nature and formation of those bodies are not left in this obscurity; for, the secondary masses, which are interposed, participate so precisely of what is truly opposite and characteristic in the primary and tertiary masses, that it requires nothing more than to see this distinction of things in its true light, to be persuaded, that in those three different things we may perceive a certain gradation, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... nothing can be better. In fact the volumes exhibit, not George Selwyn, the only one whose letters we should have cared to see, but those who wrote to him. And the disappointment is not the less, that in those letters constant allusions are made to his "sparkling, delightful, sportive, characteristic, &c. &c., epistles." Great ladies constantly urge him to write to them. Maids, wives, and widows, pour out a stream of perpetual laudation. Men of rank, men of letters, men at home, and men abroad, unite in one common supplication for "London news" rechauffeed, spiced, and served up, by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... had left her out of the conversation as though she were a child, and though Lawrence tried to bring her in she remained, so to say, in the nursery most of the time, speaking when she was spoken to but without any of her characteristic freshness and boldness. She was the schoolgirl that Clowes expected her to be. Her very dress irritated Lawrence, as if he had seen a fine painting in a tawdry frame, or a pearl of price foiled by a spurious setting. He had ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... this woman was characteristic of the miss-fire quality of much of American life. She was at bottom a wholesome creature who should have lived in a neat frame house in a village and tended a garden. On Sunday she should have dressed herself with care and gone off to sit in a country church ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... has become necessary now, I think," he replied, "if we are to bring out a characteristic of works of Art which will throw light, I believe, on the ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... z. path. Anat. u. z. allg. Path., 1912, iii, 597.] concluded that the microscopic nodules which occur in endocarditis in the myocardium, and which consist of the several varieties of white blood corpuscles first referred to by Aschoff in 1904, are characteristic only of acute rheumatism. Fraenkel found these nodules in the myocardium in a case of chorea, showing the close relationship between it ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... despondent. Instead, you threw yourselves into the social life of this place in such a way that, before you were here many weeks, it was felt that you, who had displayed the brilliant qualities so characteristic of your race on many a hard-fought field in South Africa, were not lacking in those social qualities which tend to enhance the popularity of His Majesty's forces, and make life a little less irksome in what all must admit is ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... are decorated with dog-tooth mouldings. The absence of buttresses and the continuous row of arches cause a remarkable freedom from vertical lines in the exterior of the transepts, which is also characteristic of the interior. The battlements, both of the aisles and of the transept itself, are quite plain. The most admirable portion of this transept is its north front, which contains the famous group of lancet windows known ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... been the fate of the chiefs of the clan Maclean.[96] Sir Allan, respected and beloved, became a colonel in the British army. He retired eventually to the sacred Isle of Inch Kenneth, in Mull, where he exercised the hospitality characteristic, in ancient times, of the Lords of Duart. Dr. Johnson has handed down the memory of the venerable chief, not only in a few descriptive pages of a Tour to the Hebrides, but in a Latin poem, translated by Sir Daniel ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... plow." But since there are ways of the peasant that are far from still, it is likely, too, that he was led to select such movements, instead of the vehement gesture and lively facial expression that are just as characteristic of the peasant, by a memory of the restrained acting of the French stage. It is likely, too, that the very inexperience and lack of knowledge of artifice to which Mr. Yeats refers was an element in making ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... him as lightly as the freckles on his nose. When occasion or his mother demanded he worked to good purposes with a tenacity that argued well for his future success, but for the most part he played and fought and got into trouble with the aptitude characteristic of ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... well. But you gave the whole show away by the tone in which you swore two minutes ago. If there is anyone mad in this room, it is yourself. Your schemes show that queer mixture of amazing ingenuity and amazing folly which is characteristic of madmen. Let us hope you are mad, at ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... Quaere a place in Florence? One of the commentators, with characteristic carelessness, states that the places mentioned in the preachment of Fra Cipolla (an amusing specimen of the patter-sermon of the mendicant friar of the middle ages, that ecclesiastical Cheap Jack ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... presented briefly here, and more grandly by Dante in the seventh canto of the Paradiso, it represents the supreme effort of the law-reverencing mind of the Latin Church to formulate the methods of Infinite Love. In the curious figure of the Tournament, we have a characteristic play of mediaeval fancy. As Langland puts ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... had tanned the naturally fair skin to a dark bronze which bespoke struggle and battle and added both to his savagery and his beauty. The lips were full, yet possessed of the firmness, almost harshness, which is characteristic of thin lips. The set of his mouth, his chin, his jaw, was likewise firm or harsh, with all the fierceness and indomitableness of the male—the nose also. It was the nose of a being born to conquer and command. It just hinted of the eagle beak. It might ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Bleecker street is more characteristic of Paris than of New York. It reminds one strongly of the Latin Quarter, and one instinctively turns to look for the Closerie des Lilas. It is the headquarters of Bohemianism, and Mrs. Grundy now shivers with holy horror when she thinks it was once ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... were made, very definite and circumstantial, but then they were various,—and directly opposed one to another. According to The People's Banner, Mr. Daubeny had resolved, with that enduring courage which was his peculiar characteristic, that he would not be overcome by faction, but would continue to exercise all the functions of Prime Minister until he had had an opportunity of learning whether his great measure had been opposed by the sense of the country, or only by the tactics of an angry and greedy party. Other ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... as far as we had developed it, was distinguished by a portion of gravity and steadiness, which our subsequent acquaintance with his countrymen by no means led us to conclude a national characteristic. In that daring, enterprising frame of mind, which, when combined with genius, constitutes the leader of a horde of savages, or the ruler of a people, boasting the power of discrimination and the resistance of ambition, he was ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... hastened to say, with all the impressiveness characteristic of me in my more serious moments. "I do not expect you to ask me for any information I do not volunteer. This is hard, I know; but some day I will be perfectly frank with you. Are you willing to accept my ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... (for those who came to him from the valley were rude Western emigrants like himself) remained undisturbed. The return of the prospecting party to his humble hospitality that night had been an exceptional case; in his characteristic simplicity he did not dream that it was because they had nowhere else to go in their penniless condition. It was an incident to be pleasantly remembered, but whose nonrecurrence did not disturb his infinite patience. His ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... All these men regard this slaughter of the foe by thee to be like that of Vritra by Indra himself! Who else, save thyself, O Vrikodara, could slay the heroic Duryodhana while careering in diverse kinds of motion and performing all the wheeling manoeuvres (characteristic of such encounters)? Thou hast now reached the other shore of these hostilities, that other shore which none else could reach. This feat that thou hast achieved is incapable of being achieved by any other warriors. By good ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... either P or not P. In the world of fact it is the rarest thing to encounter this absolute alternative; S1 is pink, but S2 is pinker, S3 is scarcely pink at all, and one is in doubt whether S4 is not properly to be called scarlet. The finest type specimen you can find simply has the characteristic quality a little more rather than a little less. The neat little circles the logician uses to convey his idea of P or not P to the student are just pictures of boundaries in his mind, exaggerations of a natural mental tendency. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Even amid the rush of rehearsals, he was dreaming of other things to write; some time before "The Genius" had reached the public, he had finished the writing of "The Utopians"—that fragment of a vision which was perhaps the greatest thing he ever did, and certainly the most characteristic. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... abundant evidence of her vast gain in every trait and characteristic that constitutes a nation's greatness. We have reason for congratulation in the fact that the Government of the United States, by the exchange of liberal treaty stipulations with the new Japan, was the first to recognize ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... from the drama of "Calderon" a few characteristic passages, to show how this subject was treated by the glowing pen and fervid fancy of the greatest of all the poets of Catholic Spain, whose poetry, indeed, is deserving of more widespread appreciation than it has yet received ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... the Irish writing, so well, indeed, that the earliest specimens extant can hardly be distinguished from the beautiful penmanship of the Irish. The Book of Durham, generally called the Lindisfarne Gospels, of about 700, is an exquisite Northumbrian example of the Irish round hand, in the characteristic broad, heavy-stroke letters. Another good specimen of this style is the eighth century manuscript of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, in ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... impracticable because they had to be taken for a term of three to five years. Bridget would go with me—dear, lawless, laughter-loving Bridget, who entered into the play with refreshing zest. Bridget had the real characteristic Irish faculty of looking upon life as an amusing game, and the more novel and unorthodox the game was, the better she was pleased. "Sure it's your own face! It's for you to do what you please with it!" ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and discomposed in a surprising manner, by a dispute in itself of so little consequence to the community, that it could not deserve a place in a general history, if it did not serve to convey a characteristic idea of the English nation. In the beginning of the year an obscure damsel, of low degree, whose name was Elizabeth Canning, promulgated a report, which in a little time attracted the attention of the public. She affirmed, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Poetry: she danced with Sensuality a characteristic dance, to which Imagination played the ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... arts: there were some few figures of the second rank in painting presently; in sculpture, nothing at all (to speak of). Painting, you see, works in a little less material medium than sculpture does. Dante's Italy had not quite plunged into that orgy of vice, characteristic of the great creative ages, which we find in the Italy of the Cinquecento. But England, even in Shakespeare's day, was admiring and tending to imitate Italian wickedness. James I's reign was as corrupt as may ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Scott to envelop the frog in a bath towel for the benevolent purpose of transplanting him presently to some other bath-tub; and Kathleen's golden head and Scott's brown one were very close together, and they were laughing in that intimate undertone characteristic of thorough understanding. Her brother's expression as he looked up at Kathleen Severn, was a revelation to his sister, and it pierced her with a pang of loneliness so keen that she started forward in sheer desperation, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... novel plan, and will, at a glance, convey more information regarding the types of Greek, Roman, and English Coins, than can be obtained by many hours' careful reading Instead of a fac-simile Engraving being given of that which is already an enigma to the tyro, the most striking and characteristic features of the Coin are dissected and placed by themselves, so that the eye ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... on Characteristic-Writings, here reprinted, is the introductory essay to his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725). Of Gally's life (1696-1769) little is known. Apparently his was a moderately successful ecclesiastical career: ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... 1803-1812, was prevented from producing a peak in the eastern markets by the South Carolina repeal of the slave trade prohibition and by the European imbroglio. The first common peak, 1818, and its ensuing trough came promptly upon the establishment of the characteristic regime of the ante-bellum period, in which the African reservoir could no longer be drawn upon to mitigate labor shortages and restrain the speculative enhancement of slave prices. The trough of the 'twenties was deeper and broader in the upper and eastern South than elsewhere partly because ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... strength was concerned. It struck me as an odd thing that a girl who could find the nerve to shoot a huge black ruffian rushing to kill her with a spear should have been so affected at the thought of it afterwards; but it is, after all, characteristic of the sex. Poor Flossie! I fear that her nerves will not get over that night in the Masai camp for many a long year. She told me afterwards that it was the suspense that was so awful, having to sit there hour ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... easy enough. But I doubt if it is one of the most characteristic passages. It doesn't give you a clue to LAFORGUE'S manner, any more than "'Must I sit here, mother?' 'Yes, without a doubt you must,'" tells you all that you want to know about MEREDITH. There's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... sort of thing that was fortunately characteristic of the men who rose in the nick of time to seize the reins. He hurried to his quarters, packed in its case the sword of honor that had once been given him by his Queen, and despatched it without a written line of comment to Mahommed Gunga. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... limbs, the long arms, the shape and index of the nose, the occasional heads of hair that are too wavy for the Malay and would be unheard of in the Mongol—these things are Negrito, or at least they are characteristic of the black race of Oceanica. The variability in shape of head would be puzzling were it not for the fact that both the Malayan and the black races of the Indian archipelago show a wide variability in this character of the head. These reflections have already suggested ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... against compressed type, and that especially in roman letter: the full-sized lower-case letters "a," "b," "d," and "c," should be designed on something like a square to get good results: otherwise one may fairly say that there is no room for the design; furthermore, each letter should have its due characteristic drawing, the thickening out for a "b," "e," "g," should not be of the same kind as that for a "d"; a "u" should not merely be an "n" turned upside down; the dot of the "i" should not be a circle drawn with compasses; but a delicately drawn diamond, and so on. To be short, the letters ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... one, ask her of him for betrothal and say to him, Here is her dowry, which is all that thou hast in the chests. Then produce a purse of a thousand dinars and distribute them among those present, and display the characteristic of the Barmekys, and take out a piece of silken stuff and order them to draw up the marriage contract immediately. If they sign it, declare to them that thou wilt not enter the city because thou art pressed and thy bride will come to thee. Should thou do thus, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... striking characteristic of Sennacherib's ornamentation is its strong and marked realism. It was under Sennacherib that the practice first obtained of completing each scene by a background, such as actually existed as the time and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... his small niece was indeed a great trial to him, but, with his characteristic thoroughness, he determined that he would make the necessary arrangements for her comfort. Accordingly he had a long interview with her nurse the following morning. It proved to be satisfactory. The nurse was a staid, elderly woman, who assured him she was accustomed to the sole charge ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... all works of great genius the characteristic fault will be found in the characteristic excellence. Thus in ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... respect stands alone. The action is merely a light piece of legerdemain; but the follies which it portrays belong to a circle, and, with the imitations of the officers of court and advocates, form a complete whole. Many lines are at once witty sallies and characteristic traits; and some of the jokes have that apparently aimless drollery, which genuine comic inspiration can alone inspire. Racine would have become a dangerous rival of Molire, if he had continued to exercise the talent ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... consideration for a successful befana, noise of any kind, shrill, gruff, high, low—any sort of noise; and the first purchase of everyone who comes must be a tin horn, a pipe, or one of those grotesque little figures of painted earthenware, representing some characteristic type of Roman life and having a whistle attached to it, so cleverly modelled in the clay as to produce the most hideous noises without even the addition of a wooden plug. But anything will do. On a memorable night nearly thirty years ago, the whole cornopean stop of an organ was sold in the fair, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... too—one of the few capitals in Europe that remain characteristic of their countries, and nothing else—wholly or nearly unaffected by the current of life outside. But," he went on, unexpectedly, "I wonder what a man like you can see in ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... embryo West years ago and there amassed a fortune. When he retired and returned to "civilization" he found his greatest reward In the discovery of three charming nieces, all "as poor as Job's turkey" but struggling along bravely, each in her individual characteristic way, and well worthy their doting uncle's affectionate admiration. Mrs. Merrick had recited some of the advantages they had derived from the advent of this rich relative; but even she could not guess how devoted the man was to the welfare of these three fortunate girls, nor ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... suggested, it was certainly calculated to increase the agitation of her mind. In one respect however it produced an effect unlike that which might most obviously have been looked for. It roused within her the characteristic energy of mind, which she seemed partially to have forgotten. She saw the necessity of bringing the affair to a point, and not suffering months and years to roll on in uncertainty and suspence. This idea inspired her with an extraordinary resolution. The language she employed, was, in effect, as ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... and very few of the natives remained, but as soon as they were thoroughly convinced that our troops had actually taken the town, they flocked in by the hundreds, the men nearly naked, always barefoot, the women in their characteristic bright ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... in being with you, dear friends, to-day. I have heard a great deal of what has been going on from your excellent vicar, and have now listened with the deepest interest to the characteristic speeches which have just been made. I shall be glad now to say a few words, and to add my testimony to the importance of certain truths which need enforcing in our day. Thomas Bradly is to follow me, and I feel sure that ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... who is subject to fits of passion and discontent. For in the same degree in which a man's mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength: and as the sense of pain is a characteristic of weakness, so also is anger. For he who yields to pain and he who yields to anger, both are wounded and ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... Bertha to walk home wards, Rosamund put her hat on, and they went out together. Turning to the west, they passed along Cheyne Walk, and paused awhile by old Chelsea Church. The associations of the neighbourhood moved Miss Elvan to a characteristic display of enthusiasm. Delightful to live here! A joy to work amid such memories, of ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Canada—truly the last that many of us were ever to see, and we looked upon them, our hearts filled with emotions that these scenes had never given rise to before. Our ruddy Canadian emblem, the maple leaf, gave its characteristic tinge to the receding shores—a colour to be seen often on the field of battle, but never in the foliage of a ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... worded, and the shrewder for it. The mark of the book, if not a disfigurement, was a characteristic of Westlake's fashion of speech. Whitmonby nodded twice, for signification of a palpable hit in that bout; and he noted within him the foolishness of obtruding the remotest allusion to our personality when crossing the foils with a woman. She is down on it like the lightning, quick ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... different and, read by the light of his subsequent career, a far more characteristic view of the case. He took care, as a medical man, to dwell on the cause which had terminated the career of so interesting a ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... traced in the boyhood of Lewis Carroll the beginnings of those characteristic traits which afterwards, more fully developed, gave him so distinguished a position among his contemporaries. We now come to a period of his life which is in some respects necessarily less interesting. We all have to pass through that painful era of self-consciousness which prefaces manhood, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... pass. I can see now his first bumble down that wide, back-water of a street, how continually and suddenly he sat down to make sure of his own legs, how continually he lost our heels. He showed us then in full perfection what was afterwards to be an inconvenient—if endearing—characteristic: At any call or whistle he would look in precisely the opposite direction. How many times all through his life have I not seen him, at my whistle, start violently and turn his tail to me, then, with nose thrown searchingly from side to side, begin ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... canvas bag, opened it slowly and emptied its golden contents upon the table. There was a small shining heap of sovereigns and a twisted note; this latter he placed in Hamilton's hand and the Houssa captain unfolded it. It was a letter in Arabic in Bosambo's characteristic and angular handwriting. ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... mental disease, is, the want of the appropriate exercise of the various faculties of the mind. On this point, Dr. Combe remarks, "We have seen, that, by disuse, muscle becomes emaciated, bone softens, blood-vessels are obliterated, and nerves lose their characteristic structure. The brain is no exception to this general rule. Of it, also, the tone is impaired by permanent inactivity, and it becomes less fit to manifest the mental powers with readiness and energy." It is "the withdrawal of the stimulus necessary for its healthy exercise, which renders ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... were again prepared to make a stand, and to dispute a pass which, above all others, seemed to be admirably designed by nature for the purposes of defence. Their position was not exactly what it had been on the previous occasion, but its characteristic advantages were the same. Hitherto, the Indians had shown considerable judgment in the selection of their battle-grounds, and in the general employment of their strength. This judgment they probably owed in great part ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... ringing in his brain, then, that Scott Brenton, after his old fashion, shut his teeth askew and awaited the still distant homecoming of his old-time idol. He gained the slimmest sort of comfort by remembering how characteristic it all was of the boy he ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... made—and proving effective have passed into tradition—by singers who, exercising the liberty then accorded them by composers, have slightly modified certain passages for several reasons: for instance, to augment the effect by making the phrase more characteristic of the vocal instrument, or to express more forcibly the ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... upon making the Roman Church supreme in England. Penn was stoutly opposed to the king's religion. In his "Seasonable Caveat against Popery," as well as in his other writings, he had expressed his dislike with characteristic frankness. That he had himself been accused of being a Jesuit had naturally impelled him to use the strongest language to belie the accusation. Nevertheless, William Penn stood by the king. He sought and kept the position of favorite and agent of the court. He upheld, and so far ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... Peace mission in France, he commenced an Anti-slavery tour in England and Scotland. With that independence of feeling which those who are acquainted with him know to be his chief characteristic, he rejected the idea of anything like eleemosynary support. He determined to maintain himself and family by his own exertions—by his literary labours, and the honourable profession of a public lecturer. His first metropolitan reception in England was at ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... in a manner characteristic of him, Gerald lifted his head and looked round. Even though he was reading the newspaper closely, he must keep a watchful eye on his external surroundings. There seemed to be a dual consciousness running ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... lose sight of the envoys. After whispering together a short time they had risen and gone out. At the door the Abbot of St. AEgidius left them to greet Professor Kollin, and, with the easy kindness characteristic of him, to say that the room had become too warm for the other gentlemen. They presented their compliments to the distinguished citizen of Cologne, and placed their table at the service of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Change is the characteristic of the month of October; in short, it includes the birth and death—the Alpha and Omega—of Nature. Hence, it is the most inviting to the contemplatist, and during a day in October, the genius of melancholy may walk out and take her fill, in meditating ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... renounced their rights, {225} he could not lawfully ascend the throne. After threatening to change the dynasty rather than admit any discussion on the restoration of King Constantine, M. Venizelos, by one of those swift turns characteristic of him, suddenly made that restoration the main issue of the Elections. He challenged the Opposition to this test of the real wishes of the Greek people. The Greek people, he said, should be given the chance of deciding whether ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... History of the United States from the very beginning of our history to the present time. This particular volume covers the years from 1815 to 1848 and is entitled "The Period of Transition." It is written in keeping with the standard of thoroughness characteristic of the author and is made further informing by the use of ten valuable maps illustrating important facts ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... begin his share of the enormous labors that evidently lay before the rulers of the world. I wrote shorthand, and as there was not even a phonograph available, I went in so soon as his ankle had been dressed, and sat at his desk to write at his dictation. It is characteristic of the odd slackness that went with the spasmodic violence of the old epoch, that the secretary could not use shorthand and that there was no telephone whatever in the place. Every message had to be taken to the village post-office in that grocer's ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... enjoyment, and (2) those who admit inequality, but grounded on some principle, or supposed principle, of justice or general expediency, and not, like so many of the existing social inequalities, dependent on accident alone. The characteristic name for this [first] economical system is Communism, a word of Continental origin, only of late introduced into this country. The word Socialism, which originated among the English Communists, and was assumed by them as a name to designate ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... humiliating to contrast the reception of these empty echoes of inspiration, these agreeable centos, with that of such genuine, although faulty poems, as Keat's "Endymion," Shelley's "Queen Mab," and Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads." Two years later, (in 1711), a far better and more characteristic production from his pen was ushered anonymously into the world. This was the "Essay on Criticism," a work which he had first written in prose, and which discovers a ripeness of judgment, a clearness of thought, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... enjoying the mere fact of restoration to terra firma after twelve days' imprisonment on the ocean. Maritime cities are much the same all the world over. The forests of masts, the heavily laden drays, the lounging sailors, the rough 'longshoremen, and the dirty quays, are no more characteristic of Bordeaux than New York, London, and Liverpool. But Bordeaux was interesting as the birthplace of Montesquieu and as the capital of ancient Guienne ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... disease, characterized by a sudden onset, marked nervous symptoms, and spotted rash and fever ending quickly after two weeks. Also called jail, camp, hospital, or ship fever. Filth has a great deal to do with its production. There is no real characteristic symptom except the eruption. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... earldom varied from time to time, and there were sometimes other earldoms set up in the neighbouring shires, whereas the first-named three remained as they were for some time after Cnut's death. It is characteristic of Cnut that the one of the Earls to whom he gave his greatest confidence was Godwine, an Englishman, who was Earl of the West Saxons. Another Englishman, Leofwine, became Earl of the Mercians. A Dane obtained the earldom of the North-humbrians, but ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Instead of stopping at Vila, I went on to White Sands, Tanna, where the Rev. M. was stationed. The large island of Erromanga has but little native population, and that is all christianized; the same is true of the smaller islands of Aneityum, Aniwa and Futuna. I preferred to study Tanna, as it is characteristic of all the southern part of the archipelago. The population is quite different from that in the north, and one would call it Polynesian, were it not for the curly hair which shows Melanesian admixture. Light-coloured, tall, strong, with the fleshy body that ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... him to me was how he could cherish on the one hand such devotion as he plainly did, to France, and on the other hand such a passionate attachment to the United States. In truth, that double patriotism is one of the characteristic features of ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... chain of reasoning, which is so strikingly characteristic of the good father, being addressed to the faith, rather than the understanding, is flatly opposed by Hans de Laet, who declares it a real and most ridiculous paradox to suppose that Noah ever entertained the thought of discovering America; and as Hans is a Dutch writer, I am inclined ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... approaching. He caught sight of them in time to give the alarm to the others, who stood to their arms. Giles says in his journal that they were "a perfectly armed and drilled force," though military discipline was a singular characteristic to find amongst the blacks of this barren region. A discharge of firearms from the whites checked their assailants before any spears had been thrown, and probably prevented the massacre ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... best description of him compressible in a few words is Balzac's—"He was the incarnation of an entire people." Nothing can be truer. Not only was he Irish of the Irish, but Celt of the Celts, every quality, every characteristic, good, bad, loveable, or the reverse which belongs to the type being found in him, only on an immense scale. To the average Irishman of his day he stands as Mont Blanc might stand were it set down amongst ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... course an exceptional instance; but indeed this pleasant personality in roads is not entirely fanciful. It exists as a characteristic of the old country road, evolved out of the primitive prehistoric track, developing according to the needs of the land it passes through and serves: with a language, accordingly, and a meaning of its own. Its special services are often told ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... one of the German universities has a particular character; for, as no universal cultivation can pervade our fatherland, every place adheres to its own fashion, and carries out, even to the last, its own characteristic peculiarities: exactly the same thing holds good of the universities. In Jena and Halle roughness had been carried to the highest pitch: bodily strength, skill in fighting, the wildest self-help, was there the order of the day; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... [437] The characteristic of Pulteney's oratory is thus given in Hazlitts Northcole's Conversations (p. 288):—'Old Mr. Tolcher used to say of the famous Pulteney—"My Lord Bath always speaks in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of kivas in the ruins of the Verde has been commented on by Mindeleff, and has likewise been found to be characteristic of the cliff houses on the upper courses of the other tributaries of Gila and Salado rivers. The round kiva appears to be confined to the middle and eastern ruins of the pueblo area, and are very numerous in the ruins ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... but enthusiasm; that which transports us to every scene, and interests us in every sentiment. Poetry without this cannot subsist; every species demands its proportion, from the greater ode, of which it is the principal characteristic, to the lesser, in which a small portion of it only has hitherto been thought requisite. My productions, I apprehend, have never before been deemed destitute of this essential constituent. Whatever I have wrote, I have felt, and I believe others ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... daughters for their mother had all the tenderness, subtlety, and unselfishness of womanly natures, together with a certain characteristic of the female character. And whither that one defect led them, and by what gradations, it may be worth the reader's ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... treatment, puts no emphasis on it, forces the reader to compare, contrast, account for, explain, and draw conclusions for himself. That he should slide over this side of Baltimore's history would be natural enough, but of this he cannot be accused. His treatment of this subject is characteristic ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Educational Institute,' and earnestly desire its success, and we feel proud of these good men and women who are led on by Mrs. Elizabeth L. Comstock at their head, and Mrs. Laura 8. Haviland, their secretary. Characteristic spirits of the broad philanthropy of our beloved land, they need no commendation to sustain them. This has been their life- work, and they now select our State for their field of labor. J. E. Picketing was chosen ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... as 1824 the legislative council, composed of members of the dominant church, rejected a bill allowing Methodist ministers to solemnise marriages, and it was not until 1831 that recognised ministers of all denominations were placed on an equality in this respect. Christian charity was not more a characteristic of those times than political liberality. Methodism was considered by the governing class as a sign of democracy and social inferiority. History repeated itself in Upper Canada. As the Puritans of New England feared the establishment ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... most depressing effect on the boy, whose heart was still sore for his father. After the sudden shock of such a loss, the monotonous repetition of the snatching away of all alike, in the midst of their characteristic worldly employments, and the anguish and hopeless resistance of most of them, struck him to the heart. He moved between each bead to a fresh group; staring at it with fixed gaze, while his lips moved in the unconscious hope of something consoling; till at last, hearing some uncontrollable sobs, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... but she lifted her quiet, characteristic gaze to his and said, "You're glad you're going, are ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... or slighted. His early History, Political Career, Speeches, both in and out of Congress, the great Lincoln-Douglas Debates, every state paper, speech, message and two inaugural addresses are given in full, together with many characteristic STORIES AND YARNS by and concerning Lincoln, which have earned for him the sobriquet "The Story ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... prominent. Smoothly shaved and well brushed, with stiff white neckcloth, shining boots, and silver-headed cane, there was something about his whole appearance which told of prosperity. Every word, every movement, even the peculiarly characteristic one with which he adjusted his chin in his stiff neckcloth, was the picture of propriety and precision. Precision was, in fact, a word which seemed made for the young Consul; both his appearance and his career reflected it to ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... {niemals}), never.—Characteristic of the German students' colloquial speech is the mixing of German ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... just time to measure one of them, before they were skinned and cut up. It had a body four feet in length; and a tail two and a half feet long, black at the tip, but without the characteristic tuft of the lion. Its limbs were very thick and muscular, to enable it to climb trees and spring a great distance. Its coat was of a light tawny tint, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
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