"Makeshift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consistent with its size, it should be on a vastly larger scale," said the doctor. "I never believed in the theory," he continued, "that the larger the planet the smaller should be its inhabitants, and always considered it a makeshift, put forward in the absence of definite knowledge, the idea being apparently that the weight of very large creatures would be too great for their strength. Of the fact that mastodons and creatures far larger than any now living on earth existed there, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... At that time they used monoplanes for reconnaissances, without any special arrangement for carrying arms, and incapable of carrying heavy weights; and biplanes for observation, unarmed, and possessing only a makeshift contrivance for launching bombs. The machines of both these series were two-seated, with the passenger in front. These were Albatros, Aviatiks, Eulers, Rumplers, and Gothas. Early in 1915 appeared the Fokkers, which were one-seated, and ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... hills, they had frequently observed parties of roughly dressed men, some with muskets and some without, making their way, by boat and on foot, toward the mountain. Those on the water were in rude, makeshift boats, of which there seemed to be an insufficient quantity at hand, groups waiting on the shore for the return of conveyances in order that they might ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... survived. Their representative was one Salathiel, who, on the failure of the direct line, was regarded as the 'son of Jeconiah' (1 Chron. iii. 17). He seems to have had no son, and Zerubbabel, who was really his nephew (1 Chron. iii. 19), was legally adopted as his son. In this makeshift fashion, some shadow of the ancient royalty still presided over the restored people. We see Zerubbabel better in Haggai and Zechariah than in Ezra, and can discern the outline of a strong, bold, prompt nature. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... twitterings were comments on his appearance, they must have been admiring comments. The man's skin was white and he was lithe and tense and muscular. Breeding showed in him as it shows in the muscles and conformation of a race-horse. When he was dried he threw down the makeshift towel and combed his shock of brown hair with his fingers. Now that the bristle of beard was off ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... by the tarnish began to dim the brightness of my life, too; and that was the worst of all, she said—that innocent children should suffer, and their young lives be spotted by the kind of living I'd had to have, with this wretched makeshift of a divided home. She began to cry again then, and begged me to forgive her, and I cried and tried to tell her I didn't mind it; but, of course, I'm older now, and I know I do mind it, though I'm trying just as hard as I can not to be Mary ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... overcoats, knapsacks and haversacks, wagons and tents, and all that goes to make up the multifarious equipment of an army. It was peering into our dock-yards to find steamers and sailing-vessels out of which to gather makeshift navies, until it could find leisure to build stancher ships. Manifestly the Government had no time for such a work. The existing Medical Bureau was hardly equal to the task. Organized to take charge of an army of ten thousand men, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... saw in front of him, and were he to meet a woman such as his father seems to have met he might take her to live with him. He thought of himself as her husband, though he was by no means sure that married life was a possible makeshift for the life he sought and was obliged to forgo, but as life seemed an obligation from which he could not reasonably escape he thought he would like to share it with some woman who would give him children. His father ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... might have been run up for its present purpose. There was an entrance at one end for the performers, and that on the platform level, since the ground sloped a little; at the other end was the only other entrance, by which the audience were admitted. A makeshift lobby had been arranged behind the platform, and thither Mrs. Clarkson retired to await her earlier encores; when the compliment became a recognized matter of course, she abandoned the mere form of a momentary retirement, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... arches, with a groined vault. One of the bells bears the inscription "Carmine laetatur Paulus campana vocatur," and the name of the maker. The body of the church was rebuilt in 1842. The chancel is a makeshift. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... recognized that Bonbright and herself were embarked on one of these unstable, experimental craft. She saw, as he did not, that it was unseaworthy and must founder at the first touch of storm. She pinned no false hopes to it; recognized it as a makeshift, welcome to her only as a reprieve—and that it must soon be discarded for a vessel whose planking was reality and whose sails were ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... ford, a makeshift boat was constructed by the aid of the useful tarpaulin, and the passage of the Hume safely accomplished. Still passing through good available country watered by fine flowing streams, on the 24th they crossed the Ovens River, and on the 3rd of December they ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... one like themselves, and in their interest. They will contrast, perhaps, as is often done, a picture of the landscape with the landscape Itself. The picture, they will say, however beautiful, is not a 'natural' Good, not a real Good, not a Good in its own right; it is a kind of makeshift produced by human effort, beautiful, if you will, admirable, if you will, to be sought, to be cherished, to be loved in default of a better, with the best faculties of brain and soul, but still not that ultimate thing we wanted, that Good in and of itself, as well as through and for us, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... into my mind. What was this visit to a sister? Was it not a pure makeshift, an expedient in the breaking up of her life, the first step in an accommodation to Dorothy's loss? I had such ample means. Why should she not come with me? Why separate Dorothy from her? Why leave Mammy and Jenny behind, who had served ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... John seeing that the wind was in their favor, rigged up the royal-yard in the middle of the raft as a mast. It was stayed with shrouds, and carried a makeshift sail. A large broad-bladed oar was fixed behind to act as a rudder in case the wind was sufficient to require it. The greatest pains had been expended on strengthening the raft to resist the force of the waves, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... exhibits from the vegetable kingdom were attached to the seafloor by only the most makeshift methods. They had no roots and didn't care which solid objects secured them, sand, shells, husks, or pebbles; they didn't ask their hosts for sustenance, just a point of purchase. These plants are entirely self-propagating, and the principle of their existence lies in the water that sustains ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... who should invite him to state his errand. She did not offer him her hand but, for that matter, (she might have pleaded), she could not, very well: for one of her hands held her sunshade, and the other held an embroidered silk bag, woman's makeshift for ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... disturbed. It would at least be a novelty to disturb them. They were on the highest shelf, and he stood on a chair to get them down. But he opened the volume which he first took from the shelf: somehow, one is apt to read in a makeshift attitude, just where it might seem inconvenient to do so. The page he opened on was under the head of Anatomy, and the first passage that drew his eyes was on the valves of the heart. He was not much acquainted with valves of any sort, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... national government could have wielded that moral power whose interposition was so necessary to prevent Southern society from falling at once into the chaos of a general collision between its different elements."[99] Notwithstanding this the Bureau was temporary, was regarded as a makeshift, and ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... forced to give way. Fidelity of representation was less their object than beauty; with us it is exactly the reverse. On this principle, the use of masks, which appears astonishing to us, was not only justifiable, but absolutely essential; far from considering them as a makeshift, the Greeks would certainly, and with justice too, have looked upon it as a makeshift to be obliged to allow a player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly marked features, to represent an Apollo or a Hercules; nay, rather ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... see," said Thorndyke. "Here is a makeshift cartridge of Polton's manufacture, containing an eighth charge of smokeless powder ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... "pianass" she was proud to house; she cherished them as if they had been tame elephants. Several concerts were given during our stay—but in the Assembly Rooms of Aberystwith; our wooden school-room was found, on the first experiment, unfit for the purpose, from the want of resonance. The makeshift gymnasium and carpentery, in the stables and coach-house, have been mentioned before. If among "real studies" we may include the cricket, this was, as we saw, well cared for; while the instructor in swimming had nothing to complain ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... the defective part must be cut out by hand-tapped holes drilled by ratchets and as it is frequently impossible to get space in which to drive rivets, a "soft patch" is necessary. This is but a makeshift at best and usually results in either a reduction of the safe working pressure or in the necessity for a new plate. If the latter course is followed, the old plate must be cut out, a new one scribed to place to locate rivet holes and in order to obtain room for driving rivets, the boiler ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... Senatorship is the most important office to be filled by the people of California under the provisions of the proposed Direct Primary law. The so-called district plan for nominating United States Senators is worse than a makeshift. it provides for no pledge on the part of candidates and would be purely a straw vote, ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... that land and brooded on it until dawn. The horrible meanness of its details was veiled, the hutches that were homes, the bristling multitudes of chimneys, the ugly patches of unwilling vegetation amidst the makeshift fences of barrel-stave and wire. The rusty scars that framed the opposite ridges where the iron ore was taken and the barren mountains of slag from the blast furnaces were veiled; the reek and boiling smoke and dust from foundry, pot-bank, and furnace, transfigured and assimilated by the night. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... promptly started off. Mary, standing back in the shadow of a tall lilac bush, clasped her hands in silent admiration of the picture. It was wonderful how the moonlight transformed everything. Here was the living, breathing poem itself before her. She forgot it was Lloyd and Malcolm posing in makeshift costumes on a calico-covered dry goods box. It seemed the barge itself, draped all in blackest samite, going upward with the flood, that day that there was dole in Astolat. While she gazed like one in a dream, Lloyd half-opened her eyes, to peep at ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the Lutherans, the final draft of the Confutation, too, was a miserable makeshift. True, its tone was moderate, and, with few exceptions, personal defamations were omitted. The arrangement of subjects was essentially the same as in the Augustana. Still it was not what it pretended to be. It was no serious attempt at refuting the Lutheran Confession, but rather an accumulation ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... His demeanour suggested that he had met autocrats before but never such a thorough autocrat as I. For the rest of my time there I pressed my trousers in the usual way, well knowing that he would regard the process not as the makeshift of a valetless pauper but as the eccentricity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... his own beef to-night—it was so pleasant to him to look on in the intervals of carving and see how the others enjoyed their supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year except Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a makeshift manner, under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden bottles—with relish certainly, but with their mouths towards the zenith, after a fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds. Martin Poyser had some faint conception of the flavour such men must find in hot ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... morning Mike went to work again. He showed Thompson how to arrange a mattress of hemlock boughs on the bed frame. It was a simple enough makeshift, soft and springy when Thompson spread his bedding over it. Then Mike superintended the final disposition of his supplies so that there would be some semblance of order instead of an indiscriminately mixed pile in which the article wanted ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... very much to make Beryl understand that she was not the "lucky thing" Beryl thought her; that she knew, too, what it was to want something and not to have it, though perhaps she had not known it as cruelly as Beryl had, for Jimmie had always contrived to cover their bleak moments with a makeshift contentment. "Oh, Beryl, honestly I know just how you feel. I wish I could help you. Maybe I can. My allowance seems awfully big and I can't ever spend ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... with the Physics Department—had by means of a railing insured himself against the painful mortification of an icy step. Walking is never good in Tutors' Lane during the winter. Cement walks are not laid, and temporary boards smack a little too much of a makeshift. Arctics are the invariable rule, but even so the going is not easy, and it is particularly bad at this time of year, for now it is that arctics, which never seem able to last through a winter, suddenly give out at the heel and ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... when fresh, with salt, and fold them in the animal's green hide, to pickle and sweat for twenty-four hours. But salt is not needed; and of course the Indians and the old-time scout trappers never had salt. Trappers sometimes used a sprinkle of gunpowder for salt; and that is an army makeshift, too. ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... United States were not overrun. New England was practically safe, although the British held Newport; and all the country south of the Delaware was free from them. The perplexities and discouragements of Washington were great indeed, while he stubbornly held the field with a beggarly makeshift for an army and sturdily continued his appeals to Congress and to the country for men, arms, and clothing; yet only New York City and New Jersey were really in the possession of the enemy. It was one thing for England to occupy a few cities, and quite another ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... to see how my picture turned out, Jack," said Billy Manners after supper when it was quite dark. "Then I want to get the laugh on those fellows that said my makeshift was no ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... therefore, partially at least, supported. Other facts bias the employer against the payment of the same wage. The girl's education is usually less practical than the boy's; and as most, at least among the less intelligent class, regard a trade as a makeshift to be used as a crutch till a husband appears, the work involved is often done carelessly and with little or no interest. With unintelligent labor wastage is greater, and wages proportionately lower; and here we have ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... mountain-climbing: a necessity was it merely, and a makeshift of the unhandy one:—to FLY only, wanteth mine entire will, to fly ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... that a certain medicine is good she wants no substitute or makeshift. The women who take Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound are of this class. They know what they want and they ...
— Food and Health • Anonymous
... members of the gentle sex themselves—which cannot be passed by. It is of such a delicate nature, and involves such a disparagement of the sex in a vital point, that the Drawer hesitates to put it in words. It is said that the cap and gown will be used to cover untidiness, to conceal the makeshift of a disorderly and unsightly toilet. Undoubtedly the cap and gown are democratic, adopted probably to equalize the appearance of rich and poor in the same institution, where all are on an intellectual level. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... coast the missing stock of our only anchor had been replaced by Gillies and Hannam. Two oregon "dead men", bolted together on the shank, made a clumsy but efficient makeshift. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the German post had been put up again, but in a makeshift fashion, with the aid of a number of large stones which ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the sheriff as he took the pencil and paper through the bars and returned to his bunk. He drew up the stool and sat upon it. It was a little lower than the bench, so, putting his paper on the bench, he had a fairly good makeshift desk. He began to write steadily, and after a few minutes the sheriff and jailer retired to ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... talking, there was a sound of firing guns—four or five, rattlingly, as if by a squad. The cheerful noise came from the direction of the cuartel, which is a kind of makeshift barracks for the soldiers of ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... so little used industrially that as a rule it was not owned in severalty; and even the villages and tribes had little occasion to mark the limits of their domains. For travel by land there were nothing but narrow, rough and tortuous foot-paths, with makeshift bridges across the smaller streams. The rivers were highly advantageous both as avenues and as sources of food, for the negroes were expert at canoeing ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... misuse of anything in furnishing. It needs only knowledge and patience to find the correct thing for each need. Better do without than employ a makeshift in decorating. ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... more or less badly wounded; and at first, when we heard at the hospital that a train was about to be made up, we took down all the soup and coffee we could manage to spare in big pails and jugs. But this was a mere makeshift, and was superseded very soon by a more up-to-date arrangement. A proper soup-kitchen was established at the station, with huge boilers full of soup and coffee always ready, and after that it was never necessary ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... swiftly weighing the romantic idea of using some makeshift name until he had made his fortune, and deciding against it. A false name might mean future embarrassment, and he was so far from home that his father would never hear of him anyway. But his hesitation served ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... response. "At best, that would have been only a makeshift—putting off the evil day. No; this thing must be fought out, once for all. We are running at a loss. To take money from you would be merely to waste it. Let me tell you, too, that there isn't a chance in the ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... very small and smoky light on a table of three boards mounted on boxes. If the furniture was makeshift, the walls of the room were not. Logs and adobe were just as effective for the purpose of confinement as stone blocks. Drew sat up on a bunk shell of board holding straw, and rested his head between his hands. ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... assistance in strengthening it. The raft, however, without the means of guiding it, would be of little use. They had, therefore, to construct a couple of paddles and a rudder, and they then found that, with the help of two small spars, they could form a makeshift mast and yard, their shirts and pocket-handkerchiefs fastened together forming a sail. This would carry them to the rock, as the wind was off the shore, and they must trust to the assistance of their friends to get back. ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... and a trifle makeshift to Tamara and Jack when they got out of their sleigh and were welcomed ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... faces to the disc, they waited. Would that stupendous ray be hurled back upon itself? Or would it sear through their makeshift defense, plunging them and the whole ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... Brahmin, one essential piece of our administrative apparatus in India would be wanting, and without it the whole machinery would assuredly go out of order. Nor is it easy to see how we could replace him. Not one of the other castes would serve even as a makeshift. They are all too far removed from the Brahmin. But the Purbhoo is near him, irritatingly near him, and he has proved in practice to be just the sort of homoeopathic remedy we require, the counter-irritant, the outward blister by wise ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... referred to was a makeshift arrangement used by the later emperors. Nadir Shah in 1738 cleared the palace of the peacock throne and almost everything portable of value. The little that was left the Marathas took. Their chief prize was the silver filagree ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... quite as much as he by the pain of trying to rise above mere nature? An hour—more than an hour, she must have been there. The Pantheon must have closed during that time, and the dreadful, sick man must have passed close by her. Where was he now? What makeshift shelter harbored that cough, those dirty, skeleton hands, those awful eyes which had outlived endurance and come ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the presence of the troop of cavalry; and, the command being well rested, such progress was made that the advance-guard reached the western side of San German by noon—a good ten miles. The main body halted at the same hour just outside the eastern entrance to the town, preparing a makeshift meal; and at this point the sick, both on their own account and to make room in the already crowded ambulances, were transferred to a ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... beautiful at night?' one of the other girls asked indignantly, and all joined in enthusiastic affirmations of its attractions even at high noon,—which all goes to show how relative the matter is. I, with my background of Wellesley lawns and architecture, find our school a hopelessly unsanitary makeshift to be endured patiently for a few years longer, but to these girls with their background of wretchedly poor village homes it is in its bare cleanliness, as well as in its associations, a veritable place of 'sweetness ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... an easy one. Russell had been seen freely in the makeshift saloons and other places on both sides of the street. It seemed, from what they could glean and put together, that he had stopped drinking when he had arrived at a certain point in his boasting and had announced his intention of sobering up ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... doan youse depreciate yourself to all dem. Jus' youse put on de pootiest dress youse hab an' do ole Sukey proud." Then, as she helped Janice to bedeck herself she poured out the story of their makeshift life, telling how, with what had been left of the poultry, and with the products of the small patch of the garden they had been able to till, the two slaves had managed to live the year through, taking the best care they could of their master's property, and ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... A makeshift two-story frame building had been constructed in the very center of the enclosure, and the village authorities had erected a dozen temporary hydrants in a half circle about the front of the building. The plan was to conduct the contests on the level stretch of turf before the grandstand, ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... open. Ashe looked out. There were bushes below. It was a makeshift policy, and one which did not commend itself to him as the ideal method, but it seemed the only thing to be done, for already the footsteps had reached the door. He threw the shoe out of window, and it sank beneath the friendly surface ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... "A miserable makeshift system," said I, harking back to Dunkirk and his blackmailing, for I was not just then in the mood to amuse myself with the contortions of Roebuck's flexible ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... appeared, had never really, properly and ceremoniously "come out"—a neglect which Henrietta protested should be repaired. Positively, but very charmingly, she told Sir Charles it must. She only wished the affair could be on a larger, more worthy scale. This was, after all, but a makeshift—the modest best she could arrange under the circumstances. But he—Sir Charles—must not refuse. It would give her such intense pleasure to have the darling child make her official debut under her, Henrietta's, auspices. The hours would of necessity be early, to avoid disturbance ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Honesty is a makeshift. A makeshift for saving time. Whoever wants to save time is not fit for ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... articles is not to deprive the mechanic of any portion of his legitimate occupation, but to assist those who live at a distance too great to be able to employ him, and who necessarily prefer any makeshift to the inconvenience of sending miles, and being without for days, an article which might possibly be set right in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... one thing for another.] Substitution — N. substitution, commutation; supplanting &c v.; metaphor, metonymy &c (figure of speech) 521. [Thing substituted] substitute, ersatz, makeshift, temporary expedient, replacement, succedaneum; shift, pis aller [Fr.], stopgap, jury rigging, jury mast, locum tenens, warming pan, dummy, scapegoat; double; changeling; quid pro quo, alternative. representative &c (deputy) 759; palimpsest. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a state and every act of the Exchange was so keenly watched that it was feared the holding of an extraordinary meeting might start rumors and cause alarm. In view of these considerations the Committee of Five hit upon the makeshift of inviting three members of the Governing Committee, who possessed the desired qualifications, to volunteer their services as an advisory body in the matter of fixing prices for listed bonds. The three members selected were Messrs. C. M. Newcombe, Vice President ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... it into that hollow among the stones, sir," said Denham, pointing to a little depression. Into this one of our makeshift bags was emptied, and the impromptu trough ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... an active process, as competition is; it is simply a rule of conservation, a makeshift to avoid the inconveniences of continual readjustment in the social structure. Competition or selection is the only constructive principle, and everything worthy the name of organization had at some time or other a competitive origin. At the present day the eldest ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... was a moral makeshift. His defeat of Laurier in 1911 was not a triumph for anything that might be called Bordenism. His conduct of the political side of the war was creditable, at times splendid, never consummately wise, never ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... moment, and say you are unequal to your work, and want me, and I will come to London straight and do your work. I am quite confident that, with your notes and a few words of explanation, I could take it up at any time and do it. Absurdly unnecessary to say that it would be a makeshift! But I could do it at a pinch, so like you as that no one should find out the difference. Don't make much of this offer in your mind; it is nothing, except to ease it. If you should want help, I am as safe ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... two beds—the one for the father and mother, and the other for the grandmother. So it was arranged that the son should sleep with his grandmother, at which she was very glad, but he grumbled, and only complied to oblige his parents, and as a makeshift for one night. ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... its case. He threw it back and began stacking ammunition cases in front of the dope. Gordon went out to get the others and start moving in the supplies and transferring the corpses to the truck for disposal. Randolph scurried off to start setting up his makeshift plant in the basement. ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... manufacture and art from the last days of the machine period to that day; and he went over them with us, and explained them with great care. They also were very interesting, showing the transition from the makeshift work of the machines (which was at about its worst a little after the Civil War before told of) into the first years of the new handicraft period. Of course, there was much overlapping of the periods: and at first the new handwork ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... water colour upon satin. Paint on satin, if you like. There may be occasions when there is no time to stitch, and it is necessary for some ceremonial and more or less theatric purpose to paint what had better have been worked. The more frankly such work acknowledges its temporary and makeshift character the better. Scene painting is art, until you are asked to take it for landscape painting. Anyway, the mixture of painting and embroidery is not to be endured; and it is a poor-spirited embroidress who will ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... there if it is the most attractive place for him. Some parents who are praying for wandering boys would know why they wandered if they looked calmly at the crowded quarters given to the boy, the comfortless room, the makeshift bed, and the general home organization which long ago assumed that a boy could be left out ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... just testing it to see if it works. It does, although the end which I installed down below was necessarily only a makeshift. It is not this red light with the shrill bell that we are interested in. It is the green light and the low-toned ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... quite jolly; but when my wife had gone to bed and I tried to close the blinds I discovered that there were none. Now neither of us had acquired the art of sleeping after daylight unless the daylight was excluded. With grave apprehension I arranged a series of makeshift screens and extinguished the lights, wandering round the room and turning off the key of each one separately, since the architect had apparently forgotten to put in ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... fingers resemble man's, has a thumb which is nearly useless. The American spider-monkeys prefer to use their long tails as hands, plucking fruits with the tips and carrying them to their mouths. The elephant uses his nose as a hand (for his trunk is nothing else but a long nose), and with this makeshift hand he can pick up either a heavy cannon or a sixpence from the ground. The horse uses his tail as a hand to drive off flies which he cannot otherwise reach. On board ship a hen was once seen to use her neck as a hand. She and the other fowls used to quarrel ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... if it bloweth, at night if it shine, Out trudgeth Hew Makeshift with hook and with line; While Gillet his blowse is a milking thy cow, Sir Hew is a rigging ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... be so keenly disappointed. You won't do any pitching against Wyndham, that's a cinch. Eliot has been forced to take you up as a makeshift since losing Springer, but you'll be used only in the minor games. Grant will do all the heavy work in the big games, and get all the glory. The first time I heard you talk, Hook, I thought you had some real spirit; ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... screen era from the day those whimsical pantomimers set their wholesome and humane talent at the service of the arc light and the lens. Aubrey felt a serene and intimate pleasure in watching them from a seat beside Titania. He knew that the breakfast table scene shadowed before them was only a makeshift section of lath propped up in some barnlike motion picture studio; yet his rocketing fancy imagined it as some arcadian suburb where he and Titania, by a jugglery of benign fate, were bungalowed together. Young men have a pioneering imagination: it is doubtful whether any young Orlando ever found ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... inevitably to doubt, to insight into its own weakness, while life demands conviction. The doubter cannot act, the agent cannot know. It is true that a substitute is found for defective knowledge in belief based upon instinct and custom; but this is a makeshift, not a solution of the problem, an acknowledgment of the evil, not a cure for it. Further, Hume's greatness does not consist in the fact that he preached modesty to the contending parties, that he banished the doubting reason into the study and ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... time, dear," he pleaded. "The hack-work is only makeshift, and I don't take it seriously. Give me two years. I shall succeed in that time, and the editors will be glad to buy my good work. I know what I am saying; I have faith in myself. I know what I have in me; I know what literature ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... earnestly. "I love the country," he said; "it's fed me and harbored me. But I wouldn't lift a finger to put a single patch on this makeshift of a government; I wouldn't stave off the crash if I could. And it's coming! You and I have seen something of the rottenness of the underpinning which props up empires. You and I, Scarlett, have learned a few of the shameful secrets which even ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... has thus been made a most unprofitable vocation throughout the States, and that this unsoundness at the very foundation of the business of the American people has often forced our finances into such makeshift conditions, that under any unusual financial strain a panic, with all ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... significance. When stung to fitful madness by the boastful votaries of power, their occasional frantic efforts are more as relief to their feelings than destructive to the tyranny in being. Let us realise this to the full; and seeing the futility in other years of every pathetic makeshift to annoy or circumvent the enemy, put by futilities and do a great ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... the drab-hued desert, the sun beating down and being reflected up in a way that was almost unbearable; even Tom riding with his mouth open, panting like a dog, his face coated with perspiration and dust; while when at night we had stopped at some wretched makeshift of an inn—a hut generally where a grass hammock and a little lukewarm water was the total accommodation—a wash or bath of any kind had been quite out of the question. But now, as we were descending a steep mountain-side, it seemed as if we had suddenly dropped into one of the most lovely ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... to his work it takes an accidental and contingent character, it becomes a mere makeshift arrangement; it is deserted and left in ruins when necessity changes its course. But when his work is the outcome of joy, the forms that it takes have the elements of immortality. The immortal in man imparts to it its own ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... above the river, a substantial structure grown by occasional additions from the nucleus that his ancestor Caleb Parish had founded in revolutionary times, and it marked a contrast with its less provident neighbours. Many cabins scattered along these slopes were dismal and makeshift abodes which appeared to proclaim the despair and squalor of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... spotless white handkerchiefs, which served as a makeshift bandage, till they could reach the cottage. The bullet, as Betty had said, had not much more than grazed the shoulder, yet the wound had bled profusely, and Allen was beginning to feel a little sick and dizzy, from the loss ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... constitution saved the Roman empire from imminent collapse; but it was impossible that it should be more than a makeshift, like Cromwell's protectorate. There were huge classes with perpetual grievances; the removal of the military forces to the provinces left the city of Rome without adequate governors of the provinces themselves. And there was no man of the hour of supreme ability to carry on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... main elements of coast defence—guns, lines of torpedoes, torpedo-boats. Of these none can be extemporized, with the possible exception of the last, and that would be only a makeshift. To go into details would exceed the limits of an article,—require a brief treatise. Suffice it to say, without the first two, coast cities are open to bombardment; without the last, they can be blockaded freely, unless relieved by the sea-going navy. Bombardment ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... credit and it stood forth erect with life." The United States of all modern countries have been the best fitted by their natural resources to do without artificial stimulation, in spite of which fact they still cling, after one hundred and thirty-five years, to the easy and plausible tariff makeshift. Washington himself believed that the tariff should so promote industries as to provide for whatever the country needed ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... Republican Convention boldly challenged Democrats to the open issue of protection absolute versus free trade. The best voters on the other side were eager to pick up this gauge of battle, but their leaders, covert protectionists, and makeshift office seekers, bade them nay, and a Democratic "stump speech" in that campaign was a curiosity. Part first would demonstrate the infamy of all "protection" taxes; part second would demonstrate that the orator was in favor of "protection" to a certain degree. Thus handicapped, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... a sort of gully, an abrupt ravine hollowed out, apparently, by the rains, at the end of which they laid hold of a makeshift staircase furnished with a hand-rail. As Lupin explained, this hand-rail had been placed where it was in the stead of the estamperche, a long rope fastened to stakes, by which the people of the country, in the old days, used to help themselves ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... agency of gradual heat in rendering clay fit for use in cookery and preferable to any previous makeshift. The modern Zuni name for a parching-pan, which is a shallow bowl of black-ware, is thle mon ne, the name for a basket-tray being thlae' lin ne. The latter name signifies a shallow vessel of twigs, or thla we; the former etymologically interpreted, although of earthenware, ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... to have an end, its conclusion must in any case belie a law of nature. Probably the truth is that Tommy didn't die at all: he is living still, and always will be living. And since Sir James Barrie couldn't write forever, he may be pardoned a makeshift ending that he himself apparently did not believe in. So also we may forgive that lie of Shakespeare's, since it contributes to a general truthfulness of good-will at the conclusion of his story; and as ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... lass—ha! ha!—every word as I tell thee, comrade—saith she, "Methinks, my lord, if my work hold no better than that—methinks," saith she, "'twere as well thou went for th' shoeing o' thy horse to Timothy Makeshift, as lives in Marigold Lane," saith she. "For if it come to th' ears o' others how that I will shoe a horse one day, and th' next how that he will cast th' shoe—if it so be known," saith she, "no more custom will I get to keep ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... Santa Fe went on, "are just our own makeshift imitations of what you are familiar with—building-blocks, and alphabet-blocks, and dissected pictures, and that sort of thing. Our local carpenter made the blocks for us, and we put on the lettering ourselves—as, ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... quite enough for our purpose. A jack and an oar were necessary to complete the arrangement, and before the sun had set our professor of wood-craft had both in readiness. From a young yellow birch an oar took shape with marvelous rapidity,—trimmed and smoothed with a neatness almost fastidious,—no makeshift, but an instrument fitted for the delicate ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Emerson's sentence from American into English, without loss of brevity, directness, and simple Saxon strength. For my part, I can think of nothing better than "In man she is always telling it," which strikes me as a feeble makeshift. "All the time," I suggest, is precisely one of the phrases we should accept with gratitude—if, indeed, it ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... population. They adopted the Latin language; they forsook Arianism for Catholicism; they accommodated themselves to city life; they were liberal patrons of Italian art and industry. Although they introduced a strictly Teutonic form of administration, their rule compared not unfavourably with the makeshift methods of Byzantine statesmanship. In Imperial Italy we see the strange spectacle of a military despotism tempered by the usurped privileges and jurisdictions of the great proprietors, or by the ill-defined ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... how this condition arose may be answered very briefly. The Church ordained that marriage is indissoluble, but, this being found impossible to maintain in practice, the State stepped in with a way of escape—a kind of emergency exit. But what a makeshift it is! how flagrantly indecent! how inconsistent! Adultery must be committed. To escape the degradation of an unworthy partner another partner must first be sought, and love degraded in an act of infidelity. Adultery is, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... ordinary decent man does not understand that to marry the woman he loves, as early as he can, is the most desirable of all goals; when the ordinary woman does not understand that all other forms of life are but makeshift substitutes for the life of the wife, the mother of healthy children; then the State is ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... trace of mud in it, hence it was flexible and yielding, and had no grip of the branches. It was evidently the second nest of the pair this season, and the second nest in summer of any species of bird is frailer and more of a makeshift than the first nest in spring. Comparatively few of our birds attempt to bring off a second brood unless the first attempt has been defeated, but the robin is sure to bring off two, and may bring off three. But the robin is a hustler, probably the most enterprising of all our birds. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... these makeshift observatories that Justus Hoxon stopped the first evening after his electioneering tour in the interest of his brother. The weather had turned hot and fair; a drought, a set-off to the surplusage of recent rain, was in progress; the dooryard on the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... herself in the open street, more able to cope with Drake while they walked in a throng. She remembered enough of yesterday to avoid even the makeshift solitude of a tea-table in a public room. 'Let us walk on,' she said. 'Can't you explain as we ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... will on his ignorance, his fears, and his imagination, with bribes of paradises and threats of hells, there is only one belief that can rob death of its sting and the grave of its victory; and that is the belief that we can lay down the burden of our wretched little makeshift individualities for ever at each lift towards the goal of evolution, which can only be a being that cannot be improved upon. After all, what man is capable of the insane self-conceit of believing that ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... inch or so of sand, so that it would not have been noticed by a boat a short way out. But if there is a village up here, why, a boat might come down any moment to do some fishing, and there we should be caught at once; as for getting away with them makeshift paddles, it would not be worth even thinking of. I hope our chaps will come back without having seen a monkey or a village, or as much as a banana, then the mate won't be hankering to go up again; and I should make free to advise him to get the boat up amongst the trees here till we have decided ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... fivefold more, an army bent on plunder, captained by lawlessness. And still no aid had come. Wardo told Marius, and Marius went up on the roofs to see, and came back square of jaw and with moody eyes. He sought out Eudemius, where the latter was going the rounds of their makeshift defences, ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Still, he had reasoned, the Doctor had been willing instantly to abandon this nostrum when the harm done by it was concretely brought home to him. Though this argument had fallen far short of reconciling Hal to the Surtaine standards, nevertheless it had served as a makeshift to justify in part his abandonment of the hard-won principles of the "Clarion," a surrender necessary for the saving of a loved and honored father in whose essential goodness he ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 'pinchfist', 'suckfist', 'hatepeace' (Sylvester), 'hategood' (Bunyan), 'clutchfist', 'sharkgull' (both in Middleton), 'makesport' (Fuller), 'hangdog' ("Herod's hangdogs in the tapestry", Pope), 'catchpoll', 'makeshift' (used not impersonally as now), 'pickgoose' ("the bookworm was never but a pickgoose"){162}, 'killcow' (these three last in Gabriel Harvey), 'rakeshame' (Milton, prose), with others which it will be convenient ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... is really imaginative and picturesque, but spoilt by carelessness, carelessness, carelessness. Either write verses, we say again, or prose. And unless the metre and accent coincide with the sense, and make music when read merely as prose is read, the lines are a makeshift and a failure, and neither worth writing or reading, though they were as fanciful and overloaded as Mr. Browning's, or as grandiloquent and sugary as ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... been intended to open towards the church with a wide arch, of which the jambs still remain; but this idea having been abandoned, and any part of the tower which then had been built having been taken down, the present makeshift gable was put up instead to fill up the gap, which, in these circumstances, would be left for the supposed opening into the church."[293] On the north side of the nave there is a large porch called Halkerston's Tower. It was a two-storied building, the upper storey ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... sovereign, as the temporal authority ordained by God, had been requested to render this service to the gospel, out of Christian charity, since, in his capacity as civil ruler, he was under no obligation to do so. In like manner, Luther afterwards described the Evangelical sovereigns as 'Makeshift-bishops' (Nothbischofe). At the same time the instructions for visitation introduced now in the smaller districts the office of superintendent as one of ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... of inanimate things Found nothing that answered to my indefinable expectations Habit turns into a makeshift of attachment I know not what lost home that I have failed to find When the inattentive spirits are ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... Charlotte's clumsiest contrivances for conveying necessary information. The alternate baldness and exuberant, decorated, swaggering boldness (for Charlotte's style was never bolder than when she was essaying the impossible) alone betrayed the hand of an innocent woman. Curious that these makeshift passages with their obviously second-hand material, their palpably alien mise en scene, should ever have suggested a personal experience and provoked The Quarterly to its infamous and immortal utterance: "If we ascribe the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... obvious to be specified. He claimed to be constructing a science, comparable to the physical sciences. The attempt was obviously chimerical if we are to take it seriously. The makeshift doctrine which he substitutes for psychology would be a sufficient proof of the incapacity for his task. He had probably not read such writers as Hartley or Condillac, who might have suggested some ostensibly systematic theory. If he had little ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... succeeded because he did not underestimate the difficulty of the task, and accordingly brought to bear on it every possible influence, emphasising especially the psychological element and being willing to go a long way around in order to arrive at his goal. He was not content with a mere temporary makeshift, which might carry him to the end of his own life; he was laying foundations for the future. Nowhere is this more clearly stated than in one of his edicts, where he says:—"May it fall to my lot to establish the state firm and strong and to obtain the ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... single straining effort, without the least thought of doing anything spectacular, she had gently and calmly taken up men's tools and had done men's work—not indifferently well—not in any makeshift manner—but "in all cases, even the most technical, her work has equalled that previously done exclusively by man. In a number of instances, owing to her natural dexterity and colour sense, her work, indeed, has ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... in space, past the point of no return, all the doubts that I had dismissed fought for attention. The plan that had seemed so clear and logical now began to look like a patched and crazy makeshift. ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... does," answered Jack's sister. "It was a sort of makeshift, anyhow. Jack only got her running because someone said it couldn't be done—it was a sort of dare. But the poor old boat seems to suffer from some intermittent fever. It runs one day ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... should have been four bells, when I heard my name called softly. I looked about me without seeing any one. The wounded men were resting, and Legrand was at the farther end of the corridor, acting as sentinel over our makeshift of a fortress. I sat wondering, and then my name was called again—called in a whisper that, nevertheless, penetrated to my ears and seemed to carry on the quiet air. I rose and went ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... ordnance could be spared from Amherstburg and manned by almost any crews but sailors. Even the flagship Detroit had only ten real seamen, all told. Ammunition was likewise very scarce, and so defective that the guns had to be fired by the flash of a pistol. Perry also had a makeshift flotilla, partly manned by drafts from Harrison's army. But, on the whole, the odds in his favour were fairly shown by the number of vessels in the respective flotillas, nine American against the ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... home-y atmosphere to develop. Of course, with closer intimacy, there were temperamental adjustments, as always, but they came easily. The household machinery ran smoothly, almost from the first, because there was a machine, properly set up, operated and adjusted—rather than an uncertain makeshift. ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... educative; there is more discipline for a boy in the continuous care of a cow or a horse than in many a term of school. Industry, patience, perseverance are qualities inherent in the very atmosphere of country life. The so-called manual training of city schools is only a poor makeshift for developing in the city boy those habits which the country boy acquires naturally in his daily life. An honest, hard-working country training is the best inheritance a father ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Information on Raising and Keeping Troops, Actual Service, including Makeshift and Improved Material, and Law, Government, Regulation, and Administration relating to Land Forces. By Colonel H.L. Scott, Inspector General U.S.A. New York. D. Van Nostrand. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... form of the installation of a thin sheet of steel along the bottom of the body of the craft. This turned aside missiles from below provided the plane were not so near the ground as to receive them at the moment of their highest velocity. But it was only an unsatisfactory makeshift. At the higher altitudes it was unnecessary and in conflict with other airplanes it proved worthless, because in a battle in the air the shots of the enemy are more likely to come from above or at least from levels in the same plane. The armoured airplane was quickly ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... seasons, were in New York in February, 1894, and taking advantage of that fact Mr. Walter Damrosch arranged two performances of "Die Walkre," in the Carnegie Music Hall, for the benefit of local charities. They were slipshod affairs, with makeshift scenery and a stage not at all adapted for theatrical performances; but the public rose at them, as the phrase goes, and Mr. Damrosch felt emboldened to give a representation of "Gtterdmmerung," with the same principals at the Metropolitan Opera House, on March 28th. Again there was an ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... my friends, that this place is only a makeshift; we're powerful lucky that Jim got sober in time to find it for us. This is the safest spot, and here the women and children ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... the only approach to the town was defended by three heavy guns, the ships in the river were ready to give support, the Back Creek and a series of marshes protected the north shore. But Bacon was not discouraged. All night long his men labored to throw up a makeshift fortress of "trees, bush and earth" facing the isthmus, as a protection should Berkeley's force sally out. When the governor saw what was going on he ordered the ships and shallops to move up to fire on the crude structure, while his soldiers let ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... bruises. We are almost inclined to blame the inconsiderate mother for allowing her offspring to enter the world unclothed — obviously not her fault, though she is capable of just such negligence. Fortunate are the baby doves when their lazy mother scatters her makeshift nest on top of one that a robin has deserted, as she frequently does. It is almost excusable to take her young birds and rear them in captivity, where they invariably thrive, mate, and live happily, unless death ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the tribesmen relapsed into silence, when they saw that no real harm was done. At sunset the fore sight of the fort Maxim was shot away, and the defenders were temporarily deprived of the service of that powerful weapon. They soon managed, however, to rig up a makeshift, which answered all practical purposes. At 8 P.M. the enemy wearied of the struggle, and the firing died away to desultory skirmishing. They toiled all night carrying away their dead, but next morning over fifty bodies were still ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... a masonic lodge, but at a hotel, in the presence of a deputation summoned by the Graf von Lippe-Buckeburg from Grand Lodge of Hamburg for the occasion. It is evident that something of an unusual kind must have occurred to necessitate these speedy and makeshift arrangements. Carlyle, in his account of the episode, endeavours to pass it off as a "very trifling circumstance"—a reason the more for regarding it as of the highest importance since we know now from facts that have recently ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... switch as it flows. In rheumatism and other local diseases the scratching is confined to the part affected. The instrument used is selected in accordance with the mythologic theory, excepting in the case of the piece of glass, which is merely a modern makeshift for the flint arrowhead. ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... this caste feeling is not so strong in America as it is abroad, it still has a considerable influence upon parents and their children in the selection of a vocation. While one does not lose caste by doing manual labor, temporarily or as a makeshift, he suffers socially, in certain circles, who chooses deliberately a vocation which requires him to wear soiled clothing, to carry a plebeian dinner-pail, and to work hard with his hands. Because of this, many bricklayers, carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the hurricane the schooner was pitching bows under, and shipping increasing quantities of water at every plunge. And now, as we once more bestirred ourselves, we were confronted with a fresh calamity. For our makeshift protection of the damaged companion and skylight, as well as the fore-scuttle, had been swept away, probably at the first stroke of the hurricane, although not one of us had observed it, and already vast quantities of water were pouring into the little vessel's ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Hollander was to be associated with a special engagement of Schroder-Devrient, which was to begin in Berlin immediately. They naturally thought I should be delighted to see the great actress in my own work. But this only confirmed me in the suspicion that this opera was simply wanted as a makeshift for the duration of Schroder-Devrient's visit. They were evidently in a dilemma with regard to her repertoire, which consisted mainly of so-called grand operas—such as Meyerbeer's— destined exclusively for the opera house, and which were being specially reserved for the brilliant future of the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... had been hardly more comfortable. The cold, rain-beaten rock on which Jean had spread his own and David's blankets was a poor couch at best. But to Tom it represented the freedom he had despaired of ever again attaining, and he was more than satisfied with his makeshift bed. Worn out by his recent exertion, he had fallen asleep directly after they had eaten supper. He awakened at daybreak declaring that he felt refreshed and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... divorce—(I really must use those terms)—was ever permitted to come into use may be answered very briefly. The Church ordained that marriage is indissoluble, but, this being found impossible in practice, the State stepped in with a way of escape—a kind of emergency exit. But what a makeshift it was! how flagrantly dishonest, how indecent! Adultery must be committed, and, in the case of the woman claiming relief, cruelty or desertion must be added to the adultery. To escape the degradation of an unworthy partner another partner must ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... well earned." When Jan said that he noticed that the old mistress drew her shawl closer together. He was sure now she was hiding something under it—maybe a present from Glory Goldie! "She'll get round to that in time," he thought. "All this talk about her father is only a makeshift." ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... Guide to Grand Jurymen, 1630, 12mo, the following list of the names of the more celebrated familiars of English witches. "Such as I have read of are these: Mephistophiles, Lucifer, Little Lord, Fimodes, David, Jude, Little Robin, Smacke, Litefoote, Nonsuch, Lunch, Makeshift, Swash, Pluck, Blue, Catch, White, Callico, Hardname, Tibb, Hiff, Ball, Puss, Rutterkin, Dicke, Prettie, Grissil, and Jacke." In the confession of Isabel Gowdie, a famous Scotch witch, (in Pitcairne's Trials, vol. iii. page 614,) we have the following catalogue of attendant spirits, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... off, and rigged it up with paper inside the binnacle. This answered for about ten minutes, but finding it was again flickering, I opened the tin door, and found all the candle had melted into bright liquid oil; so this makeshift was a failure. However, another candle was cut, and the door being left open to keep it cool, with this lame light I worked on bravely, but very determined for the rest of my sailing days to have the oil bottle always accessible. Finally the wind blew out the candle, though it was ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... washstand, and they find that (as much as they have of it) at the draw-well in the little back yard. The window is just a square hole in the wall, closed with a wooden shutter, so that light and air—if not wind and rain—come in together. A looking-glass they have, but a poor makeshift it is, being of metal and rounded; and those who know what a comical aspect your face takes when you see it in a metal teapot, can guess how far anybody could see himself rightly in it. It is nailed up, too, so high on the wall that it is not easy to see anything. This is all the furniture ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... thirty thousand people camped round the lake. The night was ablaze with countless camp-fires, the day a buzz of busy toil. Everywhere you heard the racket of hammer and saw, beheld men in feverish haste over their boat-building. There were many fine boats, but the crude makeshift effort of the amateur predominated. Some of them, indeed, had no more shape than a packing-case, and not a few resembled a coffin. Anything that would float and keep out ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... smaller arches to raise their crowns to the level of those of the larger arches was in constant use in Byzantine and early Romanesque architecture, in the kind of manner shown in the sketch, Fig. 99; and a very clumsy and makeshift method of dealing with the problem it is; but something of the kind was inevitable as long as nothing but the round arch was available for covering contiguous spaces of different widths. The whole of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... lamp, and she was cooking supper over the oil stove. She had found where he stored his supplies in a tightly built box under a small ledge, and she had helped herself. She had two plates and two cups set out upon his makeshift table, and while he stopped in the door she turned from the stove and began cutting slices of bread off one of the loaves which Hank had brought that day. With her head bent toward the lamp, her hair shown like pale gold. Her face looked very ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... mount," keeping watch and ward over a sort of trinity of oceans, and, by all tradition, the circumnavigator's gate of entrance to the Pacific, but also it is the temple of the god Terminus for all the Americas. So that, in relation to such dignities, it seemed to me, in the drawing, a makeshift, put up by a carpenter, until the true Cape Horn should be ready; or, perhaps, a drop scene from the opera house. This was one case of disproportion: the others were—the final and ceremonial valediction of Garrick, on retiring from his profession; and the Pall Mall inauguration ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... prevent the guns recoiling at all on the carriage. This most certainly gave a gun thus blocked up over one allowed to recoil on the level an advantage of several hundred yards at an ordinary range of say 6,000 yards; but of course it threw on our weak makeshift wooden trails an undue strain, and after a couple had been smashed had to be given up. Still, although I would never advocate doing this to any field gun (i.e., bringing a gun up short as it shakes the mounting ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... mountain ridges have to be surmounted, at an elevation each of about 6500 feet. The road is not a "road" at all as the term is understood in Switzerland, Spain, or in any highly civilized region—that is, a graded, smooth, hard, and sufficiently broad track. It is a makeshift highway, generally narrow (often too narrow for two teams to pass), cast up with loose material, or excavated on the slopes with frequent short curves and double curves. Like all mountain roads which skirt precipices, it may seem "pokerish," but it is safe enough if the ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... such a difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that it had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage with herself but domestic makeshift. She had always kept the grudge of that up her sleeve, as it were, and used it commercially. He listened. A sound—the vague murmur of a woman's movements—was coming through the door. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... must confess that I have only heard of it, and the price seems to be such as to discourage almost all the pictorial workers that I know. In my observation of the work that has been done by pictorialists, the very fact that in many instances they use makeshift apparatus has resulted in some of the most beautiful effects in their work. Good apparatus is of course desirable, but there are happy accidents with the other sort. It is the workman, not his tools, that ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1921 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... it," he said. "What are the doings of this silly world, of our makeshift appearances, to the essentials? Antics— filling up time! You speak as if she gave Ingram everything, and lost it. She did, but he never knew it—so never had it. Ingram had what he was fitted to receive. Her impulse, her impulsion were divine. She has ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... we may as well cook ourselves a real dinner for this evening," said Dick. "No makeshift ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... an apprenticeship to it, and that is—build a boat. He can repair a damaged boat, I grant you, put in a new plank, or replace a damaged timber. But to build a boat, as we understand the term, is altogether beyond him. The best that he can do is to construct some sort of a makeshift; and the problem that now confronted me was, what form ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... patience can be spontaneous,—the natural result of a broadening outlook,—then it will be permanent and serviceable; the other kind, that exists by extreme effort, may do for a while, but it is a poor makeshift. ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... of the other shall suffer no diminution of the rights and privileges they have hitherto enjoyed. But however necessary such an expedient may have been to tide over the grave emergencies of the situation, it is at best but an unsatisfactory makeshift, which should not be suffered to delay the speedy and complete establishment of the frontier line to which we are entitled under the Russo-American treaty for ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and see for yourself. I've sent for the electrician to come and rip out everything. I'll have the place all wired over. It was a makeshift job to begin with, and since Darcy complicated the wires with some that he hoped to run his electric lathe with, there is no telling when one may ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... perfect kind of watch, acknowledging at the same time, that this, its conception of him, was utterly inadequate, although the best its inferior nature allowed it to form. For if, instead of so conceiving of its maker, it refused to make use of these relative perfections as a makeshift, and so necessarily thought of him as amorphous metal, or mere oil, or by the help of any other inferior conception which a watch might be imagined capable of entertaining, that watch would he wrong indeed. For man can much more properly be compared with, ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... Rationalism is comfortable only in the presence of abstractions. This pragmatist talk about truths in the plural, about their utility and satisfactoriness, about the success with which they 'work,' etc., suggests to the typical intellectualist mind a sort of coarse lame second-rate makeshift article of truth. Such truths are not real truth. Such tests are merely subjective. As against this, objective truth must be something non-utilitarian, haughty, refined, remote, august, exalted. It must be an absolute correspondence of our thoughts with an equally absolute reality. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... crude, and they struck through the thick hide into the quick, into the human, and you winced a little; but this was rarely, for you were very nearly, oh, very nearly an animal, your temperament and intelligence were just those of a dog that has picked up a master, not a real master, but a makeshift master who may turn it out at any moment. Dickens would sentimentalise or laugh over you; I do neither. I merely recognise you as one of the facts of civilisation. You looked—well, to be candid,—you looked neither young nor old; hard work had obliterated the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore |
