"Incompetency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that account) has heard Cooper himself describe with great pleasantry his first interview with the Scotch manager; he was at that time a raw country youth of seventeen. On his arrival in Edinburgh, little conscious of his appearance and incompetency, he waited on Mr. Kemble, made up in the extreme of rustic foppery, proud of his talents, and little doubting his success. When he mentioned his name and errand, Mr. Kemble's countenance changed from a polite smile to a stare of disappointment: Cooper had been prepared for young ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... amused or thoroughly wearied. But, as the strains grew more familiar and I sang occasionally with the others, I felt each day more tired and more conscious of my own incompetency. And still the Words rang in my ears; "I hear the Saviour say, thy strength indeed is small;" with much about trusting in Him, and his willingness to bear it all. As the wind beat against the Ark on wild nights, so that we could hardly tell which was the wind and which was the roar of the maddened ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... at large; that which you have been heard now is concerning the competency or incompetency of the witness: the incompetency against him is this, that when you came thither none more violent for the parliament than himself, and that he was a great spy, and you say it was usual with him to take such courses; these are but words; if you have any witnesses ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... to terms. Since the defeat of the Irish and Spanish confederacy at Kinsale, O'Neill comforted himself with the assurance that Philip III. would send another expedition to Ireland to retrieve the honour of his flag, and avenge the humiliation it had sustained, owing to the incompetency or treachery of Don Juan d'Aquila. That the king was inclined to aid the Irish there can be no question; 'for Clement VIII., then reigning in the Vatican, pressed it upon him as a sacred duty, which he owed to his co-religionists in Ireland, whose ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... takes the first step,—when he first learns to teach at all. The pupil of a Normal School gains there a start and an impulse, which carry him forward the rest of his life. A very little judicious experimental training redeems hundreds of candidates from utter and hopeless incompetency, and converts for them an awkward and painful drudgery into keen, hopeful and ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... as a dispute, sir," Reade rejoined. "In the first place, I had discharged, for incompetency and faithlessness, ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... into the bowels to lubricate and quiet, and proceed at once to repair all irritated surfaces, which is abundantly supplied by nature from the mouth of the sphincter ani, without which forethought and preparation, nature's God will prove his incompetency for ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... engrossed with one thought. I proved myself a good assistant; I knew Dr. Sandford approved of me; I triumphed, so far, in the consciousness that I had made good my claim to my position, and was in no danger of being shoved away on the score of incompetency. ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... they were never fitted to accomplish. Such men undertake their labors in ways that want and must want the Divine sanction; and they are tempted to ward off a just verdict of unsuitableness and of incompetency by bringing many and grievous charges against their flocks. "A mania for church-extending"; "a hankering for architectural splendor"; "or for discursive and satirical preaching"; "or for something florid or profound": these and the like imputations have been put forward, as a screen, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... very sensibly my incompetency to enter upon the duties of my office without first making all the Officers of the Colony well acquainted with the principal objects which should engage our attention, I invited them to meet at the Agency House on the 27th, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... heads of colleges out of very trying difficulties with well-meaning but incompetent or indolent professors. Undergraduate popularity is often illusive and unstable, but undergraduate perception of incompetency is often very keen ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... over the employers and threw trade into recurring conditions of confusion. That same great body of uninstructed public opinion, which, on the whole, favored the factory laws, was quite clearly opposed to trade unions. With the incompetency of their own class, the power of the law, and the force of public opinion opposed to their existence and actions, it is not a matter of wonder that the development of these working-class ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... The incompetency of the superior officers in the British army had of late become painfully manifest on both sides of the Atlantic. The American campaign of 1757 was even more disastrous than were British operations in Europe. Lord Loudoun, who had been despatched to America ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... is the devil's motto. All history is strewn with its brilliant victims, the wrecks of half-finished plans and unexecuted resolutions. It is the favorite refuge of sloth and incompetency. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... her eyes, as with a sudden rush of joy, that her mind, was engaged on some other topic, and this at a moment when some appeal or interrogatory to herself rendered such abstracted enjoyment more obvious. Sensible, therefore, of her incompetency as yet to regulate her imagination so as to escape notice, she withdrew in about an hour to her own room, there once more ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... his untutored, common-sense way of viewing things, was exasperated by the stupid incompetency of their commanders, but then discipline must be maintained, and as Chouteau still kept up a low muttering he cut ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... by two great failures, for neither of which were these officers responsible, and in one only of which in fact did either appear, even in a subordinate capacity. The now nearly forgotten miscarriage of Admiral Mathews off Toulon, in 1744, and the miserable incompetency of Byng, at Minorca, in 1756, remembered chiefly because of the consequent execution of the admiral, serve at least, historically, to mark the low extreme to which had then sunk professional theory and practice—for both ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... we will; bear testimony to the inefficiency and incompetency of the workers; admit every trial and perplexity of employers, every effort to better conditions, yet there remains in the background always this shadow, in which the woman who elects to earn an honest living must walk. No more heroic battle has ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... for, and enjoy happiness. The disabilities of such an individual is a misfortune; or, as it is generally termed, a curse, an evil; but the evil consists in the incompetence of the individual, and not in that condition or station in life, to which his incompetency subjects him. It is, (to use common parlance), a curse, or an evil, to be physically, mentally, and morally disqualified to enjoy the rights, privileges and immunities of a free man; but if such be the condition of the individual, slavery to him is a blessing. It is, ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... the capability of this institution for the reception and profitable employment of a greater number of pupils, would very materially depend on the director, and be, in a great measure, accelerated or retarded by his ability or incompetency for a due ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... a crucible with which lazy, bigoted and incapable merchants can turn incompetency into success—but one into which brains and tenacity and courage can be poured and changed into dollars. It is only a short cut across the fields—not a moving platform. You can't ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... his second Vice substituted for the first, with the more justification, as "Andy" Johnson was impeached for his incompetency. Detective Baker put it this way: "As to the crazy folks, I must take my chances. The most crazy people being, I fear, some of my own too ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... needed support under those that admitted of reparation through any of the ordinary means of reprisal. In this manner Esther had made a sort of convenient ally of the word of God; rarely troubling it for counsel, however, except when her own incompetency to avert an evil was too apparent to be disputed. We shall leave casuists to determine how far she resembled any other believers in this particular, and proceed directly ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... hair behind her ears, and prepared herself to prove her capability of helping him in Euclid. She began to read with full confidence in her own powers; but presently, becoming quite bewildered, her face flushed with irritation. It was unavoidable: she must confess her incompetency, and she ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... basis of the statements in this article are as follows: leucorrhea, displacements, or malpositions of the internal organs; lacerations, ulcers, tumors, sexual incompetency, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... Of the incompetency of the Church, in its diffusive capacity, to be judge of controversies; and the impertinency of that pretence of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... boasted that he would down me and he has. Villainy, incompetency and carelessness have been too strong a combination for my ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... when the husband or the wife is very amorous and virile, while his or her mate is unable to engage in the act, to any considerable extent, without suffering therefrom. If such case arises, the best should be made of the situation, the more robust party accommodating himself or herself to the incompetency or inability of the other, and the weaker one doing all that can rightly be done to strengthen and develop his or her infirmity. If this is done, the chances are many to one that, as times goes ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... her desire to help her husband, and the dread awakening to the fact of her own incompetency. Herrick, listening, realized, as perhaps Owen could not have done, what a blow to Toni's hopes the failure of the experiment had been; and remembering her earlier confidences, when she had appealed to him ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the thinking, sympathetic portion of the British people must have had to endure it, knowing that their fellow-subjects and kinsfolk were being done to death by some contractors and by the callousness and incompetency of dunderheaded politicians and drawing-room warriors! It is a sickening subject that cannot be approached ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... difficulties in the way of books, and consideration for general incompetency, reduced her to WILHELM TELL, and she began with a lecture first on Schiller, and then upon Switzerland, and on the legend; but when Bessie Merrifield put in a word of such history and criticisms as were not in the High School Manual, she was sure everything else must be wrong—'Fraulein ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... greater than in the public opinion in regard to the administration. On the way across Siberia, I met with many Russians, some of whom were army officers, and one and all bitterly criticized the government for its mismanagement of the war, for the betrayal of Russia as they called it, for its incompetency, and general worthlessness. At the capital, it was the same, everywhere, street, car, and public places, the government was denounced; there was no attempt at concealment. In the archives where I worked, which are almost under ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... and apply the truth as to the facts of the case; some from errors in judgment; some from lack of firmness in judges in enforcing the known rights of the individual on the one hand, or those of society on the other; and perhaps a very few from incompetency or corruption. These causes can be removed to a large extent, by a more rigid insistence on skill, ability, industry, learning, and courage on the part of those assuming to administer justice as attorneys and counselors. The same insistence in the selection of judges will lessen the injustice ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... is in thy hands, my Emperor!" which must have been said to him often enough before. Let no one reproach me if, henceforth, I keep silence on the subject of Soliman. Offenses of this kind are not mere blunders, they are the sign of complete incompetency on the part of the poet, and solely out of curiosity, not because it is necessary to demonstrate my argument, I shall continue to analyze Zriny, Helena, and the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... numbers; when it ceases to be diplomacy and becomes war. In fact, only bunglers resort to killing; and if the killing be known it ends one's career in the service. To have to kill to gain an end is conclusive evidence of incompetency. I mean, of course, among reputable nations. There are some thugs among the lesser Powers, just as there are thugs among the ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... "Incompetency, if you want the brutal truth," Dudley broke in not unkindly. "He was too old-fashioned to make good elsewhere, I expect; and if he found it out, I don't wonder if he did go off ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... naturally did not ascribe it wholly to incompetency. She wanted to give up her irregular job: it could not be concealed from her friends, and it marked her as a dependent. But the stern fact remained that she needed the money, even the paltry fifty dollars a month, as she had never needed anything in ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... the approach of a Spanish squadron, commanded by Pedro Menendez, or Melendez, de Abila, sent by Philip the Second expressly to destroy the Frenchmen who had been so presumptuous as to settle in territories claimed by his Catholic Majesty. Nature seemed to conspire with their own incompetency to ruin the French. The French vessels, having gone out to attack the Spaniards, accomplished nothing, and, meeting a terrible storm, were driven far down the coast and wrecked. "Caroline" fell into the hands of Menendez, and its garrison was mercilessly put ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... strictures upon poor human nature are exceedingly delightful to our careerists. Every unpleasant social fact, every outrage to our best instincts, every exhibition of incapacity, incompetency, inefficiency, indifference, every example of super-criminal negligence is pardoned as an effect of that universal sin, human nature. Take the case of the statesman and the diplomats who failed to prevent the Great ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... of five little ones procured a divorce from her husband, whose incompetency and unkindness was the result solely of intemperance, and that intemperance the consequence of his strong social bias and inability to resist the temptations of a period, when every man put the bottle ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... which, once awakened, we bear the dream, and which rests upon the absurdity and apparent illogicality of the dream, is probably nothing but the reasoning of our sleeping ego on the feelings about what was repressed; with greater right it should rest upon the incompetency of this disturber of our sleep. In sleep we are now and then aware of this contempt; the dream content transcends the censorship rather too much, we think, "It's only a dream," and ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... uplifting of their race was Mr. H——, whose home was in Arkansas. From the first, with him Christian faith meant Christian service, and he at once became active in church and Sunday-school. Nature was generous to him in the saving gift of common sense, and he was not long in perceiving the incompetency of the ministers to whom the people at that time looked for religious ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various
... half a dozen verses, I met with Mr. Tennyson's poems; and the unequalled sketches of women that I found there, while they had, with the rest of the book, a new and abiding influence on my mind, were quite enough to show me my own fatal incompetency in that line. I threw my verses away, never to resume them. Perhaps I proved thereby the depth of my affection. Our mightiest feelings, are always those which remain most unspoken. The most intense lovers ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... were no doubt justified in the policy they pursued, for the Swabian emperors failed to respect the acknowledged rights of the church, and to remember their own incompetency in spirituals; but evidently their political views and aims were liberal, far-reaching, and worthy of admiration. Their success, if it could have been effected without lesion to the church, would ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Dalles October 30, under conditions that were not conducive to success. The season was late for operations; and worse still, the command was not in accord with the commanding officer, because of general belief in his incompetency, and on account of the fictitious rank he assumed. On the second day out I struck a small body of Indians with my detachment of dragoons, but was unable to do them any particular injury beyond getting possession ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... have hitherto been employed against the hereditary system have been chiefly founded upon the absurdity of it, and its incompetency to the purpose of good government. Nothing can present to our judgment, or to our imagination, a figure of greater absurdity, than that of seeing the government of a nation fall, as it frequently does, into the hands of a lad necessarily ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... willing to believe, that the degree—if we are rightly informed, no slight one—of interest with which these volumes were welcomed in England, was sufficient to blind their readers to the extreme incompetency with which the translations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... human capacity; it is the point of speech beyond our treasury of language. He attacked the shrug, as he thought, very temperately; but in controlling his native vehemence he grew, perforce of repression, and of incompetency to deliver himself copiously in French, sarcastic. In fine, his contrast of the pretence of their noble country to head civilization, and its encouragement of a custom so barbarous, offended M. d'Orbec and irritated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and been martyred long after the Crucifixion; and some of these had wounds from which gilded rays shone forth, as if the inner glory and blessedness of the holy men blazed through them. It is a very ugly picture, and its ugliness is not that of strength and vigor, but of weakness and incompetency. Fra Angelico should have confined himself to miniature heads, in which his delicacy of touch and minute labor often produce an excellent effect. The custode informed us that there were more frescos of this pious artist in the interior ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... enough," he said. A moment longer he remained quiet, thinking, the idea expanding. "Chuck it," he repeated half to himself. "It sounds sensible certainly, to-night particularly." New thoughts came, thoughts like the sifting of dead ashes. "Chuck it," feverishly, "and admit incompetency, cowardice, failure absolute!" For the third time he was on his feet. "No, never. I'll go to the devil first." His fingers were on the red decanter, his brown ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... quit the subject with a humiliating sense of my utter incompetency to do it entire justice. I weep and wonder—my very soul thrills with the pathos of woman's martyr position on the earth and her volunteer sufferings above all. But I would vainly attempt to utter ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... they would never succeed at their gross an driveling concerns—that their very capacity to master and retain such balderdash as constitutes their stock in trade is proof of their inferior mentality. The notion is certainly supported by the familiar incompetency of first rate men for what are called practical concerns. One could not think of Aristotle or Beethoven multiplying 3,472,701 by 99,999 without making a mistake, nor could one think of him remembering the range of this or that railway share for two years, or the number ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... their instructions should be perfect. The best of mothers are liable to err, and the love a mother has for her child may tempt her frequently to pass over faults which she knows ought to be corrected. But making due allowance for human incompetency and human weakness, still will a mother be bound to the utmost of her power to be the instructress of her child, equally by the lesson she inculcates ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... a sailor. He was about two years and eight months younger than the poet, who found in him quite a congenial spirit. He perished, with nearly all his crew, in the 'Earl of Abergavenny,' East-Indiaman, which he commanded, and which, owing to the incompetency of a pilot, was in his last outward voyage wrecked on the Shambles of the Bill of Portland on the night of Friday, February 5, 1805. His brother William speaks of him in verse, as 'a silent poet,' and in prose describes him as 'meek, affectionate, silently enthusiastic, loving all quiet things, ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... while on duty in General Hospitals, are under the exclusive control of the senior medical officer, who will direct their several duties, and may be discharged by him when considered supernumerary, or for incompetency, insubordination, or violation of his orders. Such discharge, with the reasons therefor, being endorsed upon the certificate, will be at once returned to ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... of intemperance may be classified as physical losses, economic losses, and social losses. The immediate physical effect is exhilaration, but this is succeeded by lassitude and incompetency. The stimulus gained is momentary, the loss is permanent. It is well established that even small quantities of alcohol weaken the will power and benumb the mental powers. Habitual use depletes vitality and so predisposes to disease. Life-insurance policies consider the alcoholic ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... keep a regular history" of the church. John fell into disfavor in later years, and, when he refused to give up his records, Smith and Rigdon addressed a letter to him,* in connection with his dismissal, which said that his notes required correction by them before publication, "knowing your incompetency as a historian, that writings coming from your pen could not be put to press without our correcting them, or else the church must suffer reproach. Indeed, sir, we never supposed you capable of writing a history." Why the Lord did not consult Smith and Rigdon ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... He does not deprecate the criticisms that will certainly be pronounced upon his work by those competent to judge both of the subject and of the style of it. He would rather acknowledge them in advance. No one of his critics can possibly have so keen a sense as the author himself of his incompetency, and of the inadequacy of his work, to the greatness of the subject. To one reproach, however, he cannot acknowledge himself justly liable: he is not self-appointed to a task beyond his powers and attainments, but has undertaken ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... chapter with a full recollection of the painful sense of incompetency I endured on becoming "a teacher of babes;" and this, I trust, will enable me to offer any remarks on the present subject with the humility that is desirable, blended with the confidence of experience. It is a very common idea, that ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... womanly graces. If she had at times contemplated eventual marriage, it was only as a possible practical partnership in her business; but as she lived in a country where men thought it dishonorable and a proof of incompetency to rise by their wives' superior fortune, she had been free from that kind of mercenary persecution, even from men who might have worshiped her ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... reduction of rent was an irresistible proof of what he had put forth—that it was the farmers themselves who were to blame. This cry was a confession of their own incompetency. If you analysed it—if you traced the general cry home to particular people—you always found that those people were incapables. The fact was, farming, as a rule, was conducted on the hand-to-mouth principle, and the least stress or strain caused an outcry. He must be forgiven ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... laid siege to Constantinople. There were two emperors in the city then, in succession to Leo the Philosopher—Romanus Lecapenus and Constantine Porphyrogenitus. For all the grandeur of their names they rivalled one another in incompetency and timidity. Simeon was able to force upon the Grecian Empire a humiliating peace, which made Bulgaria now the paramount Power in the Balkans, since Servia had been already subdued by her arms. From the Roman Pope, Simeon received authority ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... accountant tried to take it upon himself to dismiss a clerk without any agreement with his associates, or the consent of the government. In fact, he abolished the position. I was informed that it was not for incompetency, or for any failure of which the clerk had been guilty in his office, but only for the accountant's own private reasons. He was ordered to return the man to his place, and to have him serve as before. The accountant alleged with too unmeasured language that he and his associates ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... hampered to an unheard-of degree by baggage and camp followers; with an invalid at its head, controlled by two civilians; and moving at a rate which, in itself, testifies to divided councils and utter incompetency on the part of its commander. It is almost impossible even to hope for success, ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... Not what "will do," but what is the best possible thing to do,—is the point to be aimed at! Let a man once adopt the maxim of "It will do," and he is given over to the enemy,—he is on the side of incompetency and defeat,—and we give him ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... tactfully to show not only how government is supposed to run, but how it actually is run. There are plenty of reports of investigating committees, Federal and state, which furnish authentic information in regard to political corruption, graft, waste, and incompetency. These have not hitherto been supposed to have anything to do with the science of government, although they are obviously absolutely essential to an understanding of it. Similar reflections suggest themselves in the matter of business, international relations, ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... the old story of the southwestern miner's indolence and incompetency,—utterly distasteful to his northern habits of thought and education. Here was their old fatuous endurance of Nature's wild caprices, without that struggle against them which brought others strength and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Far away from the great centers of conflict in Virginia and Georgia, on a remote theatre, the opportunity of striking a blow decisive of the war was afforded. An army that included the strength of every garrison from Memphis to the Gulf had been routed, and, by the incompetency of its commander, was utterly demoralized and ripe for destruction. But this army was permitted to escape, and its 19th corps reached Chesapeake Bay in time to save Washington from General Early's attack, while the 13th, 16th, and 17th corps reenforced Sherman in Georgia. More than all, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... cannonade, and think that men had stayed and fought in them when only a mass of ruins. The French, indeed, were entirely sheltered the last days; to my unpractised eyes, the extent and thoroughness of their works seemed miraculous, and gave me the first clear idea of the incompetency of the Italians to resist organized armies. I saw their commanders had not even known enough of the art of war to understand how the French were conducting the siege. It is true, their resources were ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... can be accounted for only by a reference to the keen partisanship of the period, and the peculiar circumstances of parties. The Jacobites, taught by the rebellion of 1715 at once the value of the Highlands and the incompetency of the Chevalier St. George as a leader, had begun to fix their hopes on the Chevalier's son, Charles Edward, at that time a young but promising lad; and, with the tragedy of Brook before them, neither they, nor the English Government of the day could have failed to see the foreigner George ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... North and South the plundering was equally conspicuous. Some of the Northern Senators were fond of pointing out the incompetency and rascality of the Southern oligarchy, while ignoring the acts of the capitalists in their own section. Senator Wilson, for instance, enlarged upon the condition of the railroads in North and South Carolina, describing how, after having been fed with enormous ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... GERMAN GENERALS Von Hindenburg, Chief of the German General Staff; von Ludendorff, Strategist of the General Staff; von Moltke, dismissed by the Kaiser for incompetency; von Mackensen, Commander in the East; Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the parts to the wholes. The desire to remove the obligations and sanctions of the moral law from their intrinsic supports, and posit them on the fictitious pedestals of a forensic heaven and hell, reveals incompetency of thought and vulgarity of sentiment in him who does it, and is a procedure not less perilous than unwarranted. If the creation be conceived as a machine, it is a machine self regulating in all its parts by the immanent ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... able soldier and excellent man, we shall transcribe the sketches of two strangers,[104] lest the portrait of a relative should be deemed too highly coloured. That portrait has been drawn by them with a master hand, especially the first; and although feelingly alive to our incompetency for the task, we also must endeavour, with a trembling pen, to do justice to the memory of ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... are protesting strongly against permitting Gen. Lovell to remain in command in that State, since the fall of New Orleans (which I omitted to note in regular order in these chronicles), and they attribute that disgraceful event, some to his incompetency, and others to treason. These remonstrances come from such influential parties, I think the President must listen to them. Yes, a Massachusetts man (they say Gen. L. came from Boston) was in command of the troops of New Orleans when that great ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... was entirely of the satellites of Stanton, a confession in Hitchcock's diary speaks volumes. On the evening of the first day of their new relation, Stanton poured out to him such a quantity of oral evidence of McClellan's "incompetency" as to make this new recruit for anti-McClellanism "feel ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... shall be made upon the recommendation of a majority of the Senators representing, at the time, the slaveholding States. But nothing in this article shall be construed to restrain the President of the United States from removing, for actual incompetency or misdemeanor in office, any person thus appointed, and appointing a temporary agent, to be continued in office until the majority of Senators as aforesaid may present a new recommendation; or from filling ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... his full share of national characteristics. He is by inheritance an individualist. He lives in a society which, so far from being, as is the case on the Continent, saturated with respect for officialism, is somewhat prone to regard officialism and incompetency as synonymous terms. By such association, any bureaucratic tendency which may exist on the part of the British official is kept in check, whilst his individualism is subjected to a sustained and healthy course of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... sprinkled upon her face by the tender-hearted Juanita, and perhaps there might be something reviving in a soft kiss that the young seaman could not avoid dropping upon her lips as he supported her in his arms. I have already intimated my incompetency to describe a parting scene between two lovers, for reasons then specified: a tender meeting is liable to the same objections. Such things should always be left to the reader's imagination; for it is ten chances to one if the author's description pleases ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... easiest and most slovenly way to handle the situation, not to speak of its being an inhuman way. It is, in effect, throwing upon labour the incompetency of the managers of the business. If we only knew it, every depression is a challenge to every manufacturer to put more brains into his business—to overcome by management what other people try to overcome by ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free labor nation." Thus, while others dodged this issue, William H. Seward came squarely out in language which could not be misinterpreted. When the Whig party had proved its incompetency to deal with the slavery question, Mr. Seward, in conformity with his past public career, withdrew and figured most conspicuously in the founding of ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... around her,—flickering brightly on her fair hair, on her white arms, and small hands where one or two diamonds flashed like drops of dew,—and Aubrey, as he entered, was conscious of an overpowering sense of weakness, poverty of soul, narrowness of mind, incompetency of attainment,—for the tranquillity and sweet perfection of the picture his eyes rested upon—a picture lovelier than even the Gretchen which tempted Goethe's Faust to Hell,—made him doubtful of his own powers— ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... could do? Teach children, perhaps; but as a visiting governess, the only position of the kind which circumstances left open to her, she could hope for nothing more than the paltriest remuneration. Be somebody's 'secretary'? That sounded pleasant, but very ambitious: a sense of incompetency chilled her. In an office, in a shop, who would dream of giving her ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... two things of which a man cannot be careful enough: of obstinacy, if he confines himself to his own line of thought; of incompetency, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... quarrelsome; also said that she was "seclusive," had few friends, was averse to meeting people, never had a beau. She was taken out of school at 14 because she was not promoted on two successive occasions from the same class. Then she was put to work, but she was usually discharged for incompetency. ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... bridge over that distance one span! "Fear thou God" is the sweetest comfort he can give,—the clearest counsel he can offer. Consider him again, I say, my brethren, in all his nobility, in all his elevation, in all his bitter disappointment and incompetency. ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... Imp he had not wanted even Johnny Caruthers's company to-day Burns found the heaviness of his spirit lifting slightly very slightly. Tenderness toward the little lost patient who had loved and trusted him so well began gradually to usurp the place of the black hatred of what he felt to be his own incompetency. Passing a florist's shop he suddenly felt like giving that which, as it had occurred to him before, had seemed to him would be only a mockery from his hands. He went in and selected flowers—dozens and dozens of white rosebuds, fresh and sweet—and ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... charges against the Negro governments are extravagance, theft, and incompetency of officials. There is no serious charge that these governments threatened civilization or the foundations of social order. The charge is that they threatened property and that they were inefficient. These charges are in part undoubtedly true, but ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... the following pages to the public, without the trace of an excellent scholar or eloquent orator, I fully realize my inability to compete with writers of the nineteenth century. With this incompetency in view, I have hesitated and delayed until three-score and thirteen years are closing over me. Yet as I am still spared to toil on a little longer in the great field so white to harvest, praying ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... evidence as to this. Cicero himself brings this accusation, but not in that direct manner which he would have used had he been able to prove it. The Sicilians, at any rate, said that it was so. As to the incompetency of the man, there was probably no doubt, and it might be quite as serviceable to have an incompetent as a dishonest accuser. Caecilius himself had declared that no one could be so fit as himself for the work. He knew Sicily well, having been born there. He had ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... of rising with the dawn, primed for battle in club committee, business conclave, or family council, she lay on her back in a darkened room, a prisoner to pain. The only vent she had for her pent-up energy was in hourly tirades against her daughters for their inefficiency, the nurses for their incompetency, the doctors for their lack of skill, and ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... powerful and masterly drawing of character in Henry, Eleanor, and Becket, but there is a want of concentration, due, perhaps, to the long period of time covered by the action. So, at least, it seems to a reader who has admitted his sense of incompetency in the dramatic region. The acuteness of the poet's power of historical intuition was attested by Mr J. R. Green and Mr Bryce. "One cannot imagine," said Mr Bryce, "a more vivid, a more perfectly faithful picture than it gives ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... serious altercation ensued, in the course of which the other colonies pressed the war as a measure essential to their safety; but Massachusetts adhered inflexibly to its first resolution. This additional evidence of the incompetency of their union to bind one member, stronger than all the rest, threatened a dissolution of the confederacy; and that event seems to have been prevented only by the inability of the others to stand alone. Alarmed at their situation, and irritated by the conduct ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... call on all sides now is for young men, and I have not the nerve to put myself in opposition to the demand. Were 'The Jupiter,' when it hears of my appointment, to write article after article setting forth my incompetency, I am sure it would cost me my reason. I ought to be able to bear with such things, you will say. Well, my dear, I own that I ought. But I feel my weakness, and I know that I can't. And to tell you the truth, I know no more than a child what ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... duties are legally supposed to be defined by the three expressions, "hand, reef, and steer." If he can do those three things, which mean furling or making fast sails, reefing them, and steering the ship, his wages cannot be reduced for incompetency. Yet these things are the A B C of seamanship only. A good SEAMAN is able to make all the various knots, splices, and other arrangements in hempen or wire rope, without which a ship cannot be rigged; he can make a sail, send up or down yards and masts, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... families at the present hour; and when, indeed, the country itself required too much of the care of her rulers and patriots to admit of the consideration of lesser objects. With the best of hearts and affections devoted to the welfare of her niece, Miss Emmerson had early discovered her own incompetency to the labour of fitting Julia for the world in which she was to live, and shrunk with timid modesty from the arduous task of preparing herself, by application and study, for this sacred duty. The fashions ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... Morgan, in spite of my obvious incompetency from a technical point of view, I undertook, at the request of his family, to complete the translation, and to see the book through the press. I must, therefore, assume entire responsibility for the translation of the tenth book, beginning with chapter thirteen, and further responsibility for necessary ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... The crushing successes of Prussia against Austria, and of Germany against France, appear to have been those of a stronger over a much weaker nation, whether the weakness were due to natural causes, or to official incompetency. How would a delay like that of Plevna have affected the fortune of war, had Turkey had any reserve of national power upon ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... this chapter, from saying a word or two about the incompetency of the large majority of "general practitioners" and "family physicians," and their evident carelessness, and in some instances, even disgust, in the diagnosis and treatment ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... the London "Times" came out with a leading article which produced a profound sensation throughout England. The burden of it was a bitter complaint that "the noblest army ever sent from our shores has been sacrificed to the grossest mismanagement. Incompetency, lethargy, aristocratic hauteur, official indifference, favor, routine, perverseness and stupidity reign, revel, and riot in the camp before Sebastopol, in the harbor of Balaklava, in the hospitals of Scutari, and how much nearer home we do not venture to say. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... tells us how he finally was dismissed from the "Call" for general incompetency, and presently found himself in the depths of hard luck, debt, and poverty. But this is only his old habit of making a story on himself sound as uncomplimentary as possible. The true version is that the "Call" publisher and Mark Twain had a ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... prelates, barons, knights, and lawyers waited on the captive in the Tower, and reminded him that in the castle of Conway, while he was perfectly his own master, he had promised to resign the crown on account of his own incompetency to govern. On his reply that he was ready to perform his promise, a paper was given him to read, in which he was made to absolve all his subjects from their fealty and allegiance, to renounce of his own accord all kingly authority, to acknowledge himself incapable of reigning, and worthy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... excellent woman came to my help with the information that it was "coontie" (Zamia integrifolia), famous as a plant out of which the Southern people made bread in war time. This confession of botanical amateurishness and incompetency will be taken, I hope, as rather to my credit than otherwise; but it would be morally worthless if I did not add the story of another plant, which, in this same New Smyrna hammock, I frequently noticed hanging in loose bunches, like blades of flaccid deep ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... and do appeal, not to convicted incompetency, but to those whose incompetency remains to be proved. Perhaps you will understand me better if I put it thus: I still accuse the jailer of more than a hundred felonious assaults upon prisoners, of attacks upon their lives by physical torture, by hunger, thirst, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... of the imprudent Palatine, the son-in-law of James the First, to the Palatinate which that prince had lost by his own indiscretion, when he accepted the crown of Bohemia, although warned of his own incompetency, as well as of the incapacity of those princes of the empire, who might have assisted him against the power of Austria and Spain, seemed, however, to a great part of our nation necessary to the stability of the protestant ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... balance of the sanctuary. When the Lord hath spoken, well does it become the whole earth to be silent before him; when the eternal Judge Himself hath decided, the witness of man bears on its very face the stamp of incompetency and presumption. ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... twenty-nine of his thirty challenges, as against three for the prosecution. The court reconvened and a new talesman was called, resembling in appearance a professional hangman who for relaxation leaned toward the execution of Italians. Mr. Tutt examined him for bias and every known form of incompetency, but in vain—then challenged peremptorily. Thirty challenges! He looked on Tutt with ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... general housework these days, and viewed in the light of past experiences with the able but unwilling, the willing but unable, the stupid, the dishonest, the ignorant servant within our gates, with the very occasional good genius of the kitchen to leaven the lump of incompetency, we are sorely tempted to give up the struggle and do our own work, feeling that the time and strength so consumed are more than compensated for by the peace of mind which comes with the cessation of hostilities. But after a breathing ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... While from the incompetency of the administration the country was fast approaching the real crisis of open war, the Republicans in Congress were deliberately destroying and undermining the basis of national credit, by which alone it could ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... MITRAL INSUFFICIENCY OR INCOMPETENCY.—This is the most common valvular disease. The segments of the valve may be shortened and deformed. There is often stenosis (narrowing) caused by this deformity. The effects are regurgitation, flowing back of blood from ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... periods of work interspersed with longer and longer periods of unemployment. Unemployment means bad food, unwholesome sanitary conditions and, worst of all, bad mental and moral states. These are followed by disease, incompetency, inefficiency, weakness, and, in time, the man becomes one of the unemployed and unemployable wrecks of humanity. Crime then becomes practically the only avenue of escape from starvation ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... "You're doing a lot of dictating here, and I've wondered why! Who gave you the right to decide? You admit your incompetency; you can't navigate, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... was the frightful irony of the magnificent marble slabs which bore the names of the streets, illustrious historical names, Gracchus, Scipio, Pliny, Pompey, Julius Caesar, blazing forth on those unfinished, crumbling walls like a buffet dealt by the Past to modern incompetency. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and sincerely a free trader in power as he had been out of office. Enemies aver that the Laurier government now launched reciprocity to divert public attention from criticism of the railroad policy, in which there had undoubtedly been great incompetency and gross extravagance—an extravagance more of a recklessly prosperous era than of dishonesty—but this motive can hardly be accepted. If Laurier had launched reciprocity as a political dodge, he would have sounded public opinion and learned that it was no longer with him on tariff concessions; ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... saying that, had my suggestion been acted upon, there would have been an end of the mutiny at the Nore. Returning on board I found that every arrangement had been made, and the Clyde being the inshore ship, was to move first, which she did, and ran under the batteries; when, either from incompetency or fear, our pilot refused to take charge of the ship, and the tide being on the turn to ebb, Sir Harry Neale thought it advisable to wait for a more favourable opportunity. In the meantime we were visited by the delegates of ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... stormy oscillations between insolence and repentance, which had marked the inauguration of the Assembly, had painfully undeceived him. His astonished ministry already trembled before so much audacity, and in the council avowed their incompetency. The king was desirous of retaining men who had given him such proofs of devotion to his person. Some of them, confidants or accomplices, served the king and queen, either by keeping up communications with the emigrants or by ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... understood only as a formal demand that the President should acknowledge his own incompetency to perform his duties, content himself with the amusement of distributing post-offices, and resign his power as to all important affairs into the hands of his Secretary of State. It seems to-day incomprehensible ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the idea of attacking Louisbourg, and accordingly he withdrew his troops to Halifax in order to co-operate with an English squadron under Admiral Holbourne. Loudon's incompetency alone would have fore-doomed so hazardous an undertaking; but once more the elements fought on the side of France, and Holbourne's fleet ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... &c. are exceeding strongly scented, notwithstanding that most Chymists deduce Odours from Sulphur, and from them argue the Predominancy of that Principle in the Odorous body, because I must not so much as add any new Examples of the incompetency of this sort of Chymical arguments; since having already detain'd You but too long in those generals that appertain to my fourth consideration, 'tis time that I proceed to the particulars themselves, to which I thought ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... were all kinds of graft and incompetency and jealousy and mutiny and outrages. And there were traitors and profiteers and slackers of every sort. But the Big Idea that focused the strength of the nation as a whole, Charlie, was so much bigger ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... Street, for she had had several other places to call at and she was in addition very tired. Going from place to place in search of work had reduced her to a painful knowledge of her own absolute incompetency and the general uselessness of life. A brass plate on the door of No. 2 conveyed the information: "Miss Bacon. Fourth floor. Shorthand and Typing. Please ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... the present! When it was taken up again his successor would be in charge. He, the indefatigable, the over-intense, with his mediaeval partisan fervor, who loathed in secret machines like Turcas, was the first man of the staff to go for incompetency. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... were two North Carolina officers who were also rising to distinction. These were William Gibbs McNeill, of Bladen, and William McRee, of Wilmington. Both became Colonels in the corps of engineers. Amid the frequent disasters and exhibitions of incompetency on the part of other officers in that department, these gallant men were of great credit to America and to ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... your Lordships: if a man is of opinion that no public court can truly and properly bring him to any account for his conduct, that the forms observable in courts are totally adverse to it, that there is a general incompetency with regard to such a court, and yet shuns a tribunal capable and competent, and applies to that which he thinks is incapable and incompetent, does not that man plainly show that he has rejected what he thinks will prove his guilt, and that he has chosen what ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the East, he had found a few semi-tropical islands, producing parrots and cocoanuts chiefly, and inhabited by harmless barbarians living in an idyllic state of poverty and idleness. The enthusiasm aroused by his first voyage subsided and his fame as an explorer was obscured by his incompetency as a governor. He himself never lived to comprehend the real importance of his discovery and he persisted in regarding the islands as the outposts of a great Oriental empire. Having sailed to seek a short route to the ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of General Howard have passed untarnished through the fire of criticism. Not so with all his subordinates, although in the case of the great majority of these there were shown bravery and devotion to duty, even though sometimes linked to narrowness and incompetency. ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... said Dru, "how easy it is to exploit the public when there is harmony among the exploiters. There seems to me to be two evils involved in this problem, Senator Selwyn, one is the undue cost to the people, and the other, but lesser, evil, is the protection of incompetency. ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... that he would be weak no longer, but, returning at once to his work, would still struggle on to rescue the house of Brown, Jones, and Robinson from that bourne of bankruptcy to which it was being hurried by the incompetency of ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... of our terrible disaster at Ball's Bluff, and the promising Colonel E. D. Baker has fallen, while gallantly leading his noble Californians. Discussions as to the cause or causes of that fatal advance and bloody retreat are going on throughout our camps. It does seem to many as though gross incompetency or treachery must have influenced the authorities having immediate oversight of the affair, and that our fallen braves have been needlessly immolated ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... progress of events, and the chance of luring the opposing party into by-questions, the Presidential Micawber of the moment is almost sure that something will turn up to extricate him from the consequences of his own incompetency or dishonesty. The only check upon this system is the chance that the temerity engendered by irresponsible power may lead the executive to measures which, as in the case of Kansas, shall open the eyes of thinking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... at times accused of incompetency, and traitors slandered him, but Congress stood by him and the country had confidence in him; as well it might, since, while he had not gained great victories, and even perhaps had made military mistakes, he had delivered Boston, had rescued the remnant of his army ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... General now proposed to place guards in such a manner as should prevent the garrison in the castle marching out to surprise him, but his exertions were baffled by the want of judgment and incompetency of those beneath him in command. The guard was placed near the weigh-house at the foot of the Castle-rock, so that the battery of the half-moon, as it was termed, near the Castle-gate, bore upon it, and many of the guard within would have perished upon the first firing. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... went out to fight, and he thought that they should be allowed to go at it at once." Near Orange Court House, he wrote to his wife on the 19th of March, 1862, "I know not what is to become of this country. Davis' incompetency is more apparent as our danger increases. Our only hope ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... the Tageblatt article give a glimpse not only of how the newspapers of Germany are hampered and censored, but of the positively glorious incompetency of the Government officials who denied the existence of an original document in the Kaiser's own hand which the most elementary inquiries in their own circle would have disclosed not only was in existence ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Dennis's task approached completion, he said: "That will do, Mr. Fleet, you can finish the work at your leisure. Mr. Berder, you are discharged from this day for deception. I would have borne with your incompetency if you had been truthful. But I never trust any one who has deceived me once," he said, so sternly that even Christine's cheek paled. "Mr. Schwartz will settle with you, and let me never see or hear from you again. Mr. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... stated in another connection, to erroneous notions about the topography of the country; the incompetency perhaps, in some cases, of surveyors; and the want of due care in the General Court and the towns to have boundaries clearly defined,—uncertainties and conflicting claims arose in various portions ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Wellesley's first foreign service was in 1794, when his regiment was sent to the support of the Duke of York, who was near the end of his ignominious campaign in the Low Countries. In March, 1795, he was back in England, disgusted with the incompetency of his superiors. Of the value of this experience he afterward said, "Why, I learned what one ought not to do, and that is always something." At the time, however, he was less philosophical, and after consulting with his wise elder brother as to the future possibilities of distinction ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... the beetleheadedness of a domestic, or Baboo JALPANYBHOY'S incompetency in the art of equivocation, I am not to say—but the sequel of her inquiries was the unshakable conviction that I had not struck root in the habitation from which my ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... commission to inspect a province. Such persons were frequently of royal rank, brothers or sons of the king. They were accompanied by an armed force, and were empowered to correct whatever was amiss in the province, and in case of necessity to report to the crown the insubordination or incompetency of its officers. If this system had been properly maintained, it is evident that it would have acted as a most powerful check upon misgovernment, and would have ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... ripen the public mind to the necessity of a change in their constitution, and to the substituting the collected wisdom of the whole, in place of a single will, by which they have been hitherto governed. It is a remarkable proof of the total incompetency of a single head to govern a nation well, when, with a revenue of six hundred millions, they are led to a declared bankruptcy, and to stop the wheels of government, even in its most essential movements, for want ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... given a major's commission by the Connecticut Legislature, in 1757, and almost every year succeeding he was promoted, until finally he was at the head of the forces of the State. In common with his fellow Provincials, he suffered from the incompetency of the British commanders sent over from England. Crown Point was the objective for assault during several years, and still was not reached until the hearts of all concerned grew heavy with hope deferred. One of the most glaringly inefficient of Britain's generals in ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... a varicose vein as a result of a wound or of ulceration of its wall. Increased intra-venous pressure produced by severe muscular strain may determine rupture of a vein exposed in the floor of an ulcer. If the limb is dependent, the incompetency of the valves permits of rapid and copious bleeding, which may prove fatal, particularly if the patient is intoxicated when the rupture takes place and no means are taken to arrest the haemorrhage. The bleeding may be arrested ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... to have reformed. People sometimes ask why such a man does not go into Parliament. Impossible. He regards government as sheer business, when it is often a passing show. Foster's Business Conference that never met would have caused him to discharge the department for incompetency. Sir Thomas White had no desire to lift his eyes unto the hill Flavelle, the super-Minister who for years had been a critic of his own party, and now believed it more inept than ever in spite of the great work of the Finance Minister. Sir Sam Hughes had never ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... conditions of his readopted country, but he remains an exotic and is regarded by his neighbours as one to whom the lesson must be taught that he is no longer of importance. What had been the cause of this breach in the Roman Catholic tradition, this curious incompetency, this Anglo-Indian conservatism and pretentiousness? Perhaps it had begun when in the seventeenth century the propagation of Roman Catholicism in England was handed over to the Jesuits, who mismanaged the country hopelessly. By the time Rome had perceived ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... disturbed and disastrous. In the northern and western provinces, rebellion after rebellion broke out, due in a great measure to the carelessness, incompetency and obstinacy of the emperor, and the coasts were infested with pirates, whose number and organization enabled them for a long time to hold the imperial fleet in check. Meanwhile the condition of the foreign merchants at Canton ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... naturally flow into the bowels to lubricate and quiet, and proceed at once to repair all irritated surfaces, which is abundantly supplied by nature from the mouth of the sphincter ani, without which forethought and preparation, nature's God will prove his incompetency for ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... reform in the administration of the Government and the application of business principles to public affairs. As a means to this end, civil-service reform should be in good faith enforced. Our citizens have the right to protection from the incompetency of public employees who hold their places solely as the reward of partisan service, and from the corrupting influence of those who promise and the vicious methods of those who expect such rewards; ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... master at once recognized it as Ben Dabney, otherwise known as "Uncle Ben," a good-humored but not over-bright miner, who occupied a small cabin on an unambitious claim in the outskirts of Indian Spring. His avuncular title was evidently only an ironical tribute to his amiable incompetency and heavy good-nature, for he was still a young man with no family ties, and by reason of his singular shyness not even a visitor in the few families of the neighborhood. As the master looked up, he ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... however, take this opportunity of expressing our opinion, that there is not a shadow of foundation for the charges of blundering and incompetency which have been so liberally brought against the Irish Attorney-General. He certainly appears, in the earlier stages of the proceedings, to have evinced some little irritability—but, only consider, under what unprecedented provocation! His conduct has since, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... the English writer in Longman's Magazine, had got to the point when after trying to get out of the expedition by pleading poverty, incompetency, and anything else I could think of, I was forced to go on my way to England with apparent satisfaction. We had putrid pork and mouldy biscuit, but still I informed the King that we were "content and cheerful." Had I given him any other intelligence, the chances ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... the thief, which is the sapient Sir, and which is the Bedlamite. Surely, the man who authorizes these suggestions must be, indeed, 'far gone,' whether he be 'a king or a yeoman.' And mad indeed he is. Writhing under the insufficiency and incompetency of these pretentious, but, in fact, ignorant and usurping institutions, his heart of hearts racked and crushed with their failure, the victim of this social empiricism, cries out in his anguish, under that safe disguise of the Robes that hide all: 'Take these away at least,—that will be something ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... fact that very many of these are kept open but three months during the year.[64] The inadequacy of existing provisions for the proper education of the rising generation will be more strikingly apparent when we consider the incompetency of, I may perhaps safely say, the majority of persons who are put in charge of the public schools of the country. It is readily conceded that, in those states where education has received most attention, there are many teachers who are thoroughly furnished unto ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew |
