"Average" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and, like that class of persons, he took care to pay himself highly. It has been calculated that one satrap of Babylon drew from his province annually in actual coin a sum equal to L100,000. of our money. We can scarcely doubt that the claims made by the provincial governors were, on the average, at least equal to those of the crown; and they had the disadvantage of being irregular, uncertain, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... different engines, depending on the sectional area of the tubes and other circumstances. But on the average, it may be asserted that such a pressure of blast as will support an inch of mercury, will maintain sufficient exhaustion in the smoke box to support an inch of water; and this ratio holds whether the exhaustion is little or great. To produce an exhaustion in the smoke ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... CHICKEN SALAD.—The average cook book contains a good deal of nonsense about this salad. Nothing can be more simple than to mix a little nicely cut cold boiled chicken and celery together, with a tablespoonful or two of mayonnaise. Put this mixture into ...
— Fifty Salads • Thomas Jefferson Murrey
... tendency of things, we believe the net increase in both population and wealth, for the last decade, to be relatively as great in the State of Minnesota as in that of any other State in the Union; or, at least, far above the average in the aggregation of those things which make up ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... season Stott did not record any performance so remarkable as his feat in the Colts' match, but his record for the year was eighty-seven wickets with an average of 9.31; and it is worthy of notice that Yorkshire made overtures to him, as he was qualified by birth to play ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... the great voyager and trader of the Upper Missouri, who, for the last twenty years, has made frequent trips from St. Louis to Fort Benton, has never found the snow drifted enough to interfere with travelling. The average depth is twelve inches, and frequently it does not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... and but for it they could not have survived such intense, continual heat: there was no humidity. Water evaporated quickly in the hot, dry air and sweat glands operated at the highest possible degree of efficiency. As a result they drank enormous quantities of water—the average adult needed five gallons a day. All canvas had been converted into water bags and the same principle of cooling-by-evaporation gave them water that was only warm instead of sickeningly hot as ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... chronicled like any other. But it is safe to say that most of us who call ourselves historians, with far less justification, would be well content if we could count, as the result of a lifetime of effort, such a shelfful of volumes to our credit. The average professor of history might well expect, on less showing, to be chosen president of the Historical Association; in which case the prospect of having to deliver a presidential address might lead him to speculate ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... at war with the whole community. Except his very few friends in crime he trusts no one and fears everyone. Suspicion, fear, hatred, danger, desperation and passion are present in a more tense form in his life than in that of the average individual. He is restless, ill-humored, easily roused and suspicious. He lives on the brink of a deep precipice. This helps to explain his passionate hatred, his brutality, his fear, and gives poignant significance to ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... deprecatory way—"what sort of a man Mr. Cowperwood is, and whether he can be coerced or not. He is not an ordinary man, Mrs. Cowperwood. No man could have gone through what he has and be where he is to-day, and be an average man. If you take my advice you will let him go his way. Grant him a divorce. He is willing, even anxious to make a definite provision for you and your children. He will, I am sure, look liberally after their future. But he ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the average white man," said Braddock dryly, "especially in following a trail. He, if any one, will learn the truth. I would much rather trust the Kanaka than ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... others, but because he cannot help it. This will perhaps be denied, with the assertion that willing, intelligent submission to law, even when unjust, is yielded by most for the general good. One has, however, only to consider the disposition of the average man to evade payment of taxes, to recognize how far force daily enters into the maintenance and execution of law. Nations, on the contrary, since no force exists, or without their volition can exist, to compel them to accept the institution of an authority superior to their own conscience, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... cities were all the coasts and islands of Greece, we should probably fall short of the number of tributary cities if we estimated it at six hundred; so that the tribute would not in the time of Pericles average above a talent, or 241l. 13s. 4d. [270] English money, for each city! Even when in a time of urgent demand on the resources of the state [271], Cythera fell into the hands of the Athenians [272], the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wandered from province to province, and cell to cell, living on the alms which they extorted from the pious, and making up too often for protracted fasts by outbursts of gluttony and drunkenness. And doubtless the average monk, even when well-conducted himself and in a well-conducted monastery, was, like average men of every creed, rank, or occupation, a very common-place person, acting from very mixed and often very questionable ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... hanging in long wavy curls behind—aquiline nose, and fearless aspect, and you have a fair idea of the Wyandot and Cayuga Indian. The Senecas and Oneidas whom I met with, were not so handsome in general, but as athletic, and about the same average height—five feet nine ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... commending them to the study of the South-west wind, if they wanted to forecast the weather and understand the climate of our country. 'We have no Seasons, or only a shuffle of them. Old calendars give seven months of the year to the Southwest, and that's about the average. Count on it, you may generally reckon what to expect. When you don't have the excess for a year or two, you are drenched the year following.' He knew every bird by its flight and its pipe, habits, tricks, hints of sagacity homely with the original human; and his remarks on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... large nor too small, and a beautiful coral red, with jet-black head and legs. Everybody knows her who in the spring has ever glanced at the lily, when its stem is beginning to show in the centre of the rosette of leaves. A Beetle, of less than the average size and coloured sealing-wax red, is perched up on the plant. Your hand goes out to seize her. Forthwith, paralysed with fright, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... you. I should say, in round numbers, that you will have, when the system has been in operation for a generation, an addition of about three hundred thousand to the county constituent bodies; that is to say, six thousand voters on the average will be added to every county in England and Wales. That is surely an immense addition. And what is the qualification? Why, the first qualification is youth. These electors are not to be above a certain age; but the nearer you can get ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... cleverness and aptitude for business; but, wanting certain higher endowments, they were unable to resist the whirl of excitement accompanying an unprecedented measure of financial success. Their ruin was as rapid as their rise. To Murray, on the other hand, perhaps their inferior in the average arts of calculation, a vigorous native sense, tempering a genuine enthusiasm for what was excellent in literature, gave precisely that mixture of dash and steadiness which was needed to satisfy the complicated ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... upon an unfounded belief in the competence of the average man. He is not nearly so competent an animal as he has taught himself to believe. We read our Nordau and with but the very slightest ability to judge what he says we declare him a libeler. We read our Le Bon and ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... the Queen took possession of Buckingham Palace on 13th July 1837. Mr Jeaffreson, in describing her personal appearance, says: 'Studied at full face, she was seen to have an ample brow, something higher, and receding less abruptly, than the average brow of her princely kindred; a pair of noble blue eyes, and a delicately curved upper lip, that was more attractive for being at times slightly disdainful, and even petulant in its expression. No woman was ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... by historians and novelists as a singularly attractive woman, both physically and mentally. Of a little above the average height, her figure was well-rounded and graceful, her carriage dignified and commanding. One writer thus describes her: "Her eyes were full, black, and sparkling; she had bright, chestnut-coloured hair, and complexion fresh and blooming. Her skin was delicately ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... and as I took them in, I marvelled at their name—the Barrens; bare of trees, yes, but the plains were covered with rich, rank grass, more like New England meadows. There were stretches where the herbage was rank as on the Indiana prairies, and the average pasture of the bleaker parts was better than the best of central Wyoming. A cattleman of the West would think himself made if he could be sure of such pastures on his range, yet these are the ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... WORSHIP.—We see how the angels behave when in God's house. "Covered his face." Contrast this with the way the average church-goer acts. To look at the listless faces, the slovenly way in which men and women pray, the want of reverence, often in choirs, and sometimes in pulpits, makes us think there must be either a want of intellect or a lack of faith. If these people believe there is a God, how ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... difficulty of the inquiry. The order of the English letters after E is by no means well marked, and any preponderance which may be shown in an average of a printed sheet may be reversed in a single short sentence. Speaking roughly, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R, D, and L are the numerical order in which letters occur, but T, A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... reports of him gleaned by Sir Lukin sounded favourable. He was not taken to be preternaturally stiff, nor bright, but a goodish sort of fellow; good horseman, good shot, good character. In short, the average Englishman, excelling as a cavalier, a slayer, and an orderly subject. That was a somewhat elevated standard to the patriotic Emma. Only she would never have stipulated for an average to espouse Diana. Would he understand her, and value the best in her? Another and unanswered question was, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and big, startled brown eyes, which gave her an indescribably pathetic look. She wore her hair straight back from a high, round forehead, and coiled it neatly at the top of her head. Her features were smaller and more regular than those of the average native, and her pearl earrings seemed an integral part of herself. Her frock, made after a European model—and very far after, I am obliged to admit—fitted badly, and she eyed our summer gowns with polite interest, evidently taking notes for a readjustment ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... allotted in the preceding account to these reigns is quite inadmissible, and on an average, I think, that more than ten years should not be allowed for each. According to this, we ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... and the lumbermen changed the subject. They were for peace, but it may be as well to state here that, in the end, they joined the army, and fought as nobly for liberty as did the average ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... owns the farm on which he lives, and it is valuable; not quite so valuable though as it once was, for Mr. Stokes's eccentric disposition has somewhat changed the usual tactics that farmers pursue when they own fertile acres. The average man clears his soil of stones; Mr. Stokes has been piling rocks all over his land. Little by little the weakness—or philosophy—has grown upon him; and not only from every part of Middlesex County, but from every part of this State he has ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... mental attitude of the average woman taking part in the readjustive sexual movement of today; that so often on the public platform and in literature adduces merely secondary arguments, and is wholly unable logically to give an account of the great propelling conditions behind it, is ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... Average Number of Miles marched by the Different Army Corps of the United States Forces under Command of Major-General W. T. SHERMAN, United States Army, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Daoine Sidhe, and the Welsh y Mamau ('the Mothers')—undoubtedly gods of the Celts. Again, although in many countries, especially in England, the fairies are regarded as small of stature, in Celtic countries the fay proper, as distinct from the brownie and such goblins, is of average mortal height, and this would seem to be the case in Brittany. Whether the gorics and courils of Brittany, who seem sufficiently small, are fairies or otherwise is a moot point. They seem to be more of the field spirit type, and are perhaps classed more correctly with the gnome ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... answer this, write to me as you would to a person in an average state of tranquillity and happiness. I want to keep myself as firm and calm as I can. While papa and Anne want me, I hope, I pray, never to fail them. Were I to see you I should endeavour to converse ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the Continent. We had thus all the exhaustion of hostilities without the excitement of triumph; and, to increase public anxieties, the failure of the harvest threatened a comparative famine. Wheat, which on an average of the preceding ten years had been 54s. a quarter, was now at 110s., then rose to 139s., and even reached as high as 180s. At one period the quartern loaf had risen to 1s. 10-1/2d. The popular cry now arose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... something false and affected in our highest taste for art; and I suppose, furthermore, we are the only people who seek to decorate their public institutions, not by the highest taste among them, but by the average at best. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is better, and because it is we do not use it all by itself. Instead we use it to grade up some that is less fine in quality. After the bales have been classified we take a little of this and a little of that until we have struck a good average. It goes without saying that we never mix two extremes, or put the best and the worst together. That wouldn't do at all. We aim to produce a mean between these two qualities. All this mixing is not, however, done by hand, as you might think to hear me talk. No, indeed! We have ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... vines, his best source of revenue, but he probably exaggerated the damage. Francis one day heard him giving vent to his bad humor. "Father," he said, "it is useless for you to disturb yourself for what you cannot hinder; but, tell me, how much wine do you get on an average?" ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... was about two feet high, and of spotless Parian, which well symbolized the angelic purity it was intended to portray. To many, perhaps, it might appear simply a specimen of modeling, but little better than the average. However, those who looked on it with the eyes of faith saw before them, not so much the work itself, as ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... existing conditions, it is the duty of every citizen to confine his present consumption to an average of six matches a day, which with careful economy ought to suffice for all reasonable meals during ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... cooking, the great art in this process is to boil the article sufficiently, without its being overdone, the necessity of slow boiling cannot be too strongly impressed upon the cook, as the contrary, renders it hard and of a bad color; the average time of boiling for fresh meat is half an hour to every pound, salt meat requires half as long again, and smoked meat still longer; the lid of the saucepan should only be removed for skimming, which is an ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... women, especially of working women, the whole welfare of society rested. Yet what was their condition? Think of it—their dependence on man, their temptations, their rewards, their punishments! Three halfpence an hour was the average wage of a working woman in England!—and that in the midst of riches, in the heart of luxury, and with one easy and seductive means of escape from poverty always open. Ruin lay in wait for them, and was beckoning them and enticing them in the shape of dancing ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... best Spanish cigars, pay a tax, I am informed by good judges, of not less than fifty dollars a year. While the moderate consumer of Scotch snuff pays from one to two dollars. Somewhere between these wide extremes, may be found the fair estimate of an average cost. If one fifth of the whole number of consumers should pay the highest estimate, it would amount to ten millions annually. Then if three-fifths pay but ten dollars apiece, it will amount to six millions; ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... the excrescence became as large as an average melon, much to the amazement of Manucci and the ambassador, and even of the king's surgeon, a Frenchman who declared he had never seen the like before. I was not alarmed personally, for, as I suffered no pain and the lump was quite soft, I guessed it was only a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... study of theoretical music, and in a very short space of time mastered the notes sufficiently to be able to read a tolerably hard score or piece of music. This seemed to him like a phenomenal phase, and he can only account for it on the ground that a love of music is inherent in the average bad boy. He has usually in training a band of twenty pieces: but he says that this number he could easily augment at any time to two, three, or even four times as many; for he very rarely finds a boy that has not a taste for some musical instrument. The greatest trouble ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... tatting fallen to the floor, her breath coming with difficulty. It is impossible for the average modern mind, calloused by promiscuous reading, to conceive the effect upon her primitive organism of this attack from the printed page. She not only did not dream that these stories might not be true, they seemed as real to her as though she had seen the people. ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... had this silencer for some time, you may be sure that other people know about it. These silencers must be pretty rare in England. You see, an average person like myself didn't know what it was. By the way, another point which we haven't yet cleared up is this: supposing we are right in believing Parrish to have been murdered, how do you explain the fact that the bullet removed from ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... some obvious reasons. It is more human than any other of his plays, and at the same time more farcical. By 'more human' it is not meant that the characters are truer to life than those in The Way of the World, but that they are truer to average life, and therefore more easily recognisable by the average spectator. Tattle, for instance, is so gross a fool, that any fool in the pit could see his folly; Witwoud might deceive all but the elect. No familiarity—direct or indirect—with ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Livingston. She lay there until nine the next morning, when she continued her voyage toward Albany, reaching that city at five in the afternoon, having made the entire distance between New York and Albany (one hundred and fifty miles) in thirty-two hours of actual running time, an average speed of nearly five miles per hour. On her return trip, she reached New York in thirty hours running time—exactly five miles per hour. Fulton states that during both trips he ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... found it still flourishing and extremely fertile. "This territory", he wrote, "is of all that we know the best by far for producing grain; it is so good that it returns as much as two hundredfold for the average, and, when it bears at its best, it produces three hundredfold. The blades of the wheat and barley there grow to be full four fingers broad; and from millet and sesame seed, how large a tree grows, I know ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... with you, father-in-law," Matt Peasley declared, "the less I know you. You can have your Tyee, but for every day she is held awaiting your pleasure your personal account will be charged with something in three figures. I'll figure out her average profit per day for the last five voyages and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... informing idea constantly is that all we need to make economic happiness for everybody is to turn out the company now in and get another from the furrows. These latter believe that a nation is a condition of free trade—mainly on behalf of the farmer whose average idea of industry is a ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... credits,[229] dating back to the French period, had become systematized so that books were kept, with each Indian's account. The amount to which the hunter was trusted was between $40 and $50, at cost prices, upon which the trader expected a gain of about 100 per cent, so that the average annual value of furs brought in by each hunter to pay his credits should have been between $80 and $100.[230] The amount of the credit varied with the reputation of the hunter for honesty and ability in the chase.[231] Sometimes he ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... orchard, the doctor pointed out to us several wheat-fields in the neighborhood, cultivated with true German love for neatness, which formed, with the pleasant dwellings adjoining, separate farms. The average yield per acre, he observed, was from twenty-five to forty bushels of wheat, and from forty to fifty of oats. He then took us into a neighboring grove, to a place where the pic-nics and holiday feasts of the colony ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... rank, during the period between November, 1918, and September, 1919, inclusive, by number and percentage of distinctive stories published, of the twenty-one periodicals coming within the scope of my examination which have published an average of 15 per cent in stories of distinction. The lists ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Spofford, if that conveys anything to you. Not that they would not have been proud to have known him, for he was a gentleman. As for my own case, I can only say that I am not a fugitive from justice, nor have I done anything more disgraceful than the average young man who has been through college and who, ignoring the counsel of his father, proceeds to find out for himself the same things that his father had found out a great many years before,—and his father before him, and so on back to the beginning of man. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... ballast he so greatly needs. But, although I am the master of this house, I seem scarcely ever to see him. I hear him, though. I hear him this minute. He and his chum occupy the room over me, and when they execute a war dance—which occurs on an average six times a day—it makes me tremble for my ceiling. I have a notion Arthur spends his weekly allowance rather recklessly, and am thinking of suggesting to your father that a reduction might ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... kick on Mary's Lam and I went through it, and they let me go home. That's about the safest thing a boy can speak in school, now days, either "Mary had a Little Lam," or "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." That's about up to the average intelleck of the committee. But if a boy tries to branch out as a statesman, they choke him off. Well, I am going down to the river, and I will leave my coat and hat by the wood yard, and get behind the wood, and ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... be the most common form in the United States. It is distinguished from the preceding by the longer, more delicate, generally orange-yellow, stem with pale or white columella. The spores also average a shade larger. N. A. F., 412 and 2089, are illustrations of D. xanthopus. The columella in blown-out specimens is very striking, well confirming the diagnosis of Fries, "valde prominens, globosa, stipitata, alba." Berkeley makes the color of the capillitium diagnostic ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... Sicilian subjects no duty for gunpowder or salt. The fixed fisheries for thunny, round the Sicilian coast, are upwards of a dozen, the most famous being that of Messina. At Palermo, however, they sometimes take an immense strike of several hundred in one expedition. The average weight of a full grown thunny, is from 1000 to 1200 pounds; of course the men with poles who land him, can carry him but a little way, and he reaches the market by relays. Every bit of him is eaten, except his bones and his eyes, and even these yield ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... buried herself in a book. Slight, pale, and narrow-chested, her constitution was not robust; and though a year and a half at Chessington College had already worked a wonderful improvement, she was still far below the ordinary average of good health. She was a quiet, mouse-like girl, who seldom obtruded herself, or took any prominent part in the life of St. Chad's—a girl who was continually in the background, and passed almost unnoticed among her schoolfellows. She had little self-confidence and a sensitive ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... in the world, was immediately planned and put in operation for the training of the soldiers, for few men unacquainted with military life are able to handle modern high-powered military rifles with any degree of success, although the average man, under capable instructors, rapidly becomes proficient. Artillery ranges in the Laurentian Hills were established for the training of the field artillery. Here the big sixty-pounders, which throw a shell for nearly five miles, ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... A fine conspicuous serpentine range, extending from the E. side of Piccolomini in a north-easterly direction to the region between Tacitus and Catherina, a length of about 275 miles. The loftiest peak is over 13,000 feet. The average height of the southern portion is about 6000 feet. The region lying on the S.E. of this range is a vast tableland, devoid of prominent objects, rising gradually towards the mountains, which shelve rapidly down to an equally barren expanse on ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... that no new constable had joined the station. The two men realised then that they had seen a ghost, but refrained from saying anything about it to the men at the station—a very sensible precaution, considering the loneliness of the average policeman's life ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... arms, leant against the wall and looked down upon her. "I wish," he said, "if it isn't too much trouble that you would give me a detailed account of one of your average days." ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... nuts in North Dakota has hardly been considered as a possibility even by the average amateur up to the present time. Nevertheless, evidence is gradually accumulating that some varieties of nuts can be grown as an addition to the home orchard in nearly all ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... more letters, one from Lady Considine, one from Mrs. Sinclair, one from Miss Macdonnell, and one from Mrs. Wilding, and found that all these ladies were obliged to postpone their dinners on account of the misdeeds of their cooks, she felt that the laws of average were all adrift. Surely the three remaining letters must contain news of a character to counterbalance what had already been revealed, but the event showed that, on this particular morning, Fortune was in a mood to strike hard. Colonel Trestrail, who ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... bank-notes!' Of this theory, it need only be said that the notion of Lord Palmerston (for it comes to that) supporting a foreign revolution out of the British exchequer is not one that commends itself to the belief of the average Englishman. With regard to the other theory—namely, that Cavour 'got up' the Sicilian expedition, it has been favoured to a certain degree, both by his friends and foes; but it will not bear careful examination. As far as Sicily goes (Naples is another thing), the most that can be brought home ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... than that," Benson answered, nodding his head emphatically. "Lots of them, like Luke Scurich, are in it on a large scale. Several of them are worth a quarter of a million already. I know ten of them who will average one hundred and fifty thousand each. They have a WAY with apples. It's almost a gift. They KNOW trees in much the same way your husband knows horses. Each tree is just as much an individual to them as a horse is to me. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... is concerned with Richard Mutimer, a young socialist whose vital force, both mental and physical, is well above the average, corrupted by accession to a fortune, marrying a refined wife, losing his money in consequence of the discovery of an unsuspected will, and dragging his wife down with him,—down to la misere in its most brutal and humiliating shape. Happy endings and the Gissing of this period are so ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... breasting the rigor of the night. Frank Rainer introduced them as Mr. Grisben and Mr. Balch, and Faxon, while their luggage was being lifted into the second sleigh, discerned them, by the roving lantern gleam, to be an elderly gray-headed pair, apparently of the average prosperous ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... chapter in natural history. Infinitely more wholesome reading than the average tale of sport, since it gives a glimpse of the hunt from the point of view of the hunted. "True in substance but fascinating as fiction. It will interest old and young, city-bound and free-footed, those who know animals and those who ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... from the extraordinary, the politics of Elgin's daily absorption were those of the town, the Province, the Dominion. Centres of small circumference yield a quick swing; the concern of the average intelligent Englishman as to the consolidation of his country's interests in the Yangtse Valley would be a languid manifestation beside that of an Elgin elector in the chances of an appropriation for a new court house. The single mind is the most fervid: Elgin ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... plenty of men with only average ability who get along very creditably; but I advise you, if you make up your mind to enter the lists, to try for ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... arranged in alternate layers. The short pastes are the simplest, and for this reason should be experimented on to begin with. With pastry, a good deal always depends on the mixing. The best way is to measure out the average quantity of liquid, to pour about three-quarters of this gradually into the flour, at the same time stirring this briskly with a knife, so as to get it evenly moistened, and then add, in very small quantities at a ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... covering a territory of one-sixth of the surface of the earth and a population of 185,000,000, the Russians have remained to the outside world the apaches of Europe, wild tribes of the steppes. In the imagination of an average American or Englishman, Russia was something Asiatic, something connected with the barbaric East, a country beyond the horizon. It was considered as lacking in culture and civilization, and as a menace to the West. "Nichevo, sudiba!"—(It ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... mean to be head-gardeners before they are thirty, and eliminate woman from their lives as a dangerous obstacle to the successful career, pay a heavy penalty when they do fall in love. The average irresponsible young man who has hung about North Street on Saturday nights, walked through the meadows and round by the mill and back home past the creek on Sunday afternoons, taken his seat in the brake for the annual outing, shuffled his way through the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... duties the measure of time exacted from FIRST LORD OF ADMIRALTY. Essentially a man of action, he has little patience with custom of talking round a matter. Nevertheless well to know that, if occasion serve, he can make a speech far beyond average in respect of power and originality. Discovery made when, six or seven years ago, he fluttered the decorous dovecotes of the Royal Academy by delivering at its annual banquet a memorable speech on condition and prospects ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... voluntary surrender of some private good for the upbuilding of some community good. It is in such exercises that the fibre of democracy grows sound and strong. There is, after all, in this world no real good for which we do not have to surrender something. In the city the average voter is never conscious of any surrender. He never realises that he is giving anything himself for good schools or good streets. Under such conditions how can you expect self-government? ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... conformation of the island is slightly undulating, with the exception of a mountain range which traverses it from east to west, running through nearly its whole length in a zig-zag course, and on the average about twenty-five miles distant from the ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... of an entire people." Nothing can be truer. Not only was he Irish of the Irish, but Celt of the Celts, every quality, every characteristic, good, bad, loveable, or the reverse which belongs to the type being found in him, only on an immense scale. To the average Irishman of his day he stands as Mont Blanc might stand were it set down amongst the Magillicuddy Reeks. He towers, that is to say, above his contemporaries not by inches, but by the head and shoulders. His aims, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... the primordial ocean; a large triangular mass in Canada, and two broken lines of smaller masses running south from it on each side of the continent, inclosing a vast interior sea between them. To end with, we have the finished continent of eight million or more square miles, of an average height of two thousand feet above the sea, built up or developed from and around these granite centres very much as the body is built up and around the bones, and of such prodigious weight that some of our later geologists seek to account for the continental submarine ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... the comfort of living, and ease of mind as to support, the advantages are not all on the side of the home minister. To counteract the advantages of the missionary's position to which I have referred, it must be remembered the average career of service in India is short—some returning very soon, and others after a few years. Those who return after years spent abroad, and yet in the prime of life, are rightly expected to enter the list of the home ministry; but the work they have left and that on which they are entering ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... House Furnishings.—The average house has only one room. Inside the door, at the left, one usually finds the stove, three stones sunk in a box of ashes or dirt, or a similar device of clay (Fig 5, No. 1). Above the fire is suspended a hanger ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Every player should own his racket and become accustomed to it. They cost almost any price up to eight dollars, which will buy the very best rackets made. The weight and size of the racket will depend on our strength. The average weight for a man is about fourteen ounces and for a boy an ounce or two lighter. A skilful player becomes so accustomed to the feeling and weight of his own racket that often he will play an indifferent game if he is forced to use ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... girls are here let out in groups, as in other Japanese cities, to entertain foreigners or natives at their meals; but the performances and the purpose are highly objectionable, morality in this latitude being much like that of the average European capitals, that is, at a very low ebb, as viewed from our stand-point. There are also public exhibitions of acrobats in wrestling, fencing, and the like, while others are devoted entirely to sleight-of-hand tricks, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Forbush, Ornithologist of the Board of Agriculture of Massachusetts, states that the stomachs of four chickadees contained 1,028 eggs of the cankerworm. The stomachs of four other birds of the same species contained about 600 eggs and 105 female moths of the cankerworm. The average number of eggs found in twenty of these moths was 185; and as it is estimated that a chickadee may eat thirty female cankerworm moths per day during the twenty-five days which these moths crawl up trees, it follows that ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... chairs, glad that their work in the matter at issue was nearly done, yet regretful that a case had not been made out which might have called for the exercise of that large intelligence, that critical acumen, that capacity for close reasoning, of which the members of the average jury feel themselves to be severally and collectively possessed. As it was, there would be little for them to do. The case was extremely one-sided, "like the handle on a jug," as one of them ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... match those surmounting his own dwelling, Simeon was set aback with his canvas flapping. At the end of a week he had not driven a nail. "Godfrey's mighty!" he is reported to have exclaimed. "I don't know whether to build the average cupola and trust to a hen's fittin' it, or take an average hen and build a cupola round her. Maybe I'll be all right after I get started, but it's where to start that ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... limits of his own command. Occasion soon arose, however, to require more exceptional action, and thus to illustrate at once the breadth of view, and the readiness to assume responsibility, which already raised Rodney conspicuously above the average level. On the 9th of March two lookout vessels came in with news that they had sighted a fleet, corresponding in numbers to the Brest division, fifteen miles to windward of Martinique and standing to the southward; the trade wind making it generally ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... equatorial exceeding the polar axis in the proportion of 300 to 299, and which slight inequality, in consequence of its diurnal revolution, is necessary to preserve the land near the equator from inundation by the sea. The mean density or average weight of the earth is, in proportion to that of distilled water, as 5.66 to 1. So that its specific gravity is considerably less than that of tin, the lightest of the metals, but exceeds that of granite, which is three times ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... and not one in ten of them could tell you whether transubstantiation is a Roman Catholic or a Dunkard doctrine. About two per cent. have dallied more or less gingerly with Christian Science, their average period of belief being ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... essential core of thoughts, though the words might not always be discoverable in Johnson's dictionary or the grammatical constructions such as would be warranted by Lindley Murray. They were, upon the average, good-looking, active, able men, and most of them were on the sunny side of forty. They were ready to converse on any subject, but if left to themselves they would choose topics proper to their calling-ships and shipwrecks, maritime usages of various countries, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... their room. She went below and sat alone, hoping Howard would come to her. He had gone into his study, where he sometimes passed a greater part of the night in writing, for he was a lawyer by profession, being a man of more than average abilities, his services were sought for many miles around. Mabel waited, but he came not, and being unable longer to bear delay, she sought him in ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... elevators, which do not stop before the fifteenth, eighteenth, twentieth floor, as the case may be. Some such arrangement seems very necessary, for the elevator Bummelzugs, which stop at every floor, take quite an appreciable slice out of the average New York day. I wonder that American ingenuity has not provided a system of pneumatic passenger-tubes for lightning communication with these aerial suburbs, these "mansions in ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... could such people, with few exceptions little above the average of an English farm-labourer, do with independence. Many years were wasted in quarrelling and even fighting among themselves, every leader of a district with a few scattered farms claiming independence, ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... South Latitude, and is distant about sixty sea-miles from the westernmost point of German New Guinea. It is a coral island, surrounded by a barrier reef and rising for the most part only a few feet above the sea.[361] In stature the natives fall below the average European height; but they are well fed and strongly built. Their colour varies from black to light brown. Their hair is very frizzly. Women and children wear it cut short; men wear it done up into wigs. They number less than three hundred, divided into four villages. The population ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... always, not to mind being shot at. But when the British public has really made up its mind that a man is a great man, and that however low they rate him at market value he is sure to be above the average, they sing a psalm of thanksgiving, and they cry, "Where is his coffin? Let us drive nails into the coffin of this great man! Let us show our magnanimity, our respect for the higher life, our reverence for the lofty soul! Give us ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... the force of suggestion will, in times of excitement, carry folk otherwise sober and truthful. Manifestly preposterous evidence, freely given, was freely admitted by trained legal minds—evidence on which innocent lives were sacrificed at the average rate of over a thousand a month in England and Scotland in the two centuries of the chief witch-baiting period. But, after all, have we not, most of us, near relations who saw a quarter-of-a-million of astrakanned Russians steal through ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... impossible to get a novel printed in an English journal unless it is warranted to contain nothing at all to which anybody, however narrow, could possibly object, on any grounds whatever, religious, political, social, moral, or aesthetic. The romance that appeals to the average editor must say or hint at nothing at all that is not universally believed and received by everybody everywhere in this realm of Britain. But literature, as Thomas Hardy says with truth, is mainly the expression of souls in revolt. Hence the antagonism ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... to have been covered on an average, but they had delayed here and there to shoot, and the extra porters, whose duty it was to carry the ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... adopted in Paris. The mineral, being reduced to a fine powder, is mixed with very pure powdered clay, and the two are calcined in a crucible at a white heat; the proportion of clay employed is greater as the pencil is required to be harder, the average being equal parts of both. The ingredients are ground with a muller on a porphyry slab and then made into balls, which are preserved in a moist atmosphere in the form of paste. The paste is pressed into grooves cut in a smooth board, and another board, previously greased, is pressed down upon ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... the method of the Talmud. Rabba was a man of the people; he was a clear thinker, and loved to attract all comers by an apt anecdote. Rava had a superior sense of his own dignity, and rather neglected the needs of the ordinary man of his day. Abayi was more of the type of the average Rabbi, acute, genial, self-denying. Under the impulse of men of the most various gifts of mind and heart, the Talmud was gradually constructed, but two names are prominently associated with its actual compilation. ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... persons, as in the Laws, or at Athens after the days of Cleisthenes, held office for a month, or for thirty-five days only. It was almost as if, in our own country, the Ministry or the Houses of Parliament were to change every month. The average ability of the Athenian and Magnesian councillors could not have been very high, considering there were so many of them. And yet they were entrusted with the performance of the most important executive duties. In these ...
— Laws • Plato
... have so far kept up an average speed of seven and a half knots an hour, and Captain Holding thinks we shall make even better sailing when the hands are more accustomed to their work. I spend my time mostly with the Concanens—who readily, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the laws of average, when millions of men are wearing a uniform, there must be some rogues in it. But it was Alec's way to hold himself responsible for the whole of His Majesty's Forces. Their honor was his; for their misdeeds he must ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... shorthanded we had used skilled nurses; but when Mrs. Fontenette grew haggard and we mentioned them, she said distressfully: "O! no hireling hands! I can't bear the thought of it!" and indeed the thought of the average hired "fever-nurse" of those days was not inspiring; so I served as her alternate when she would accept any and throw herself on the couch Senda had spread in the ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... could put my hand on the thief, but I had no real clue to work upon—nothing beyond a nameless suspicion. Strange as it may seem, I was moved by sentiment. I had spent some pleasant hours in Vyner's society—I had enjoyed his conversation; I had liked the man for himself. He had abilities above the average, of that I was certain—if he were proved guilty, I did not want to be the one to bring his crime home to him. So uncomfortable were my feelings that at last I made up my mind to take a somewhat bold step. This was neither more nor less than ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... Gar Sahai or Luckman Narain to supply England with her wheat. India can cut in not without profit to herself when her harvest is good and the American yield poor; but this very big country can, upon the average, supply the earth with all the beef and bread that ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... wheat and miscellaneous food-stuffs, which were being poured into their holds from the glutted markets of America and Canada. Every one of these vessels was fitted up as a troopship, and by the time all arrangements were complete, more than a thousand vessels, carrying on an average twelve hundred men each, were ready to ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... Marshall Davidson, a rough-rider from New Mexico, Lieutenant Llewellyn of the Rough Riders, Sterling Morton (former Secretary of Agriculture), a big impassive Nebraska pioneer; Louis Ehrich (humanist and art lover), and myself—I cannot say that I in any way reduced the high average of singularity, but I was at least in the picture—Morton and Ehrich were not; they remained curious rather than sympathetic listeners. While no longer a hunter I was a trailer and was able to understand and keenly enjoy the spirit of these hardy ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Avicenna held that the substantial forms of the elements remain entire in the mixed body; and that the mixture is made by the contrary qualities of the elements being reduced to an average. But this is impossible, because the various forms of the elements must necessarily be in various parts of matter; for the distinction of which we must suppose dimensions, without which matter cannot be divisible. Now matter subject to dimension is not to be found except in a body. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... mission Indian, had been connected with the religious establishment since boyhood, and had made, great progress on the way to becoming a civilized human being. He had a mind above the low level of the average Californian Indian intellect, and had been an object of solicitude to the padres, arousing in them an interest in his mental and spiritual welfare seldom evoked by the neophytes in general. For years Pomponio had been contented with ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... character and adventures of Roy Blakeley are typified the very essence of Boy life. He is a real boy, as real as Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. He is the moving spirit of the troop of Scouts of which he is a member, and the average boy has to go only a little way in the first book before Roy is the best friend he ever had, and he is willing to part with his best treasure to get the ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... commercial activity, the richest agricultural production, and she was more thickly populated than any other State, with the exception of Saxony. Nowhere were the imports and exports so important, in proportion to the number of the population, nowhere did the average square mile yield such rich crops, nowhere was the railway system so developed. Pauperism was practically unknown, and, even in the large towns, the number of people dependent on public charity was comparatively very small. To this picture of unequalled prosperity oppose the present ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts |
