"Figuring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... against Fillmore's interest to gain votes from Fremont in Illinois. He demonstrated his point, but he was not always judicious in his way of addressing solemn strangers, and in his rural manner he concludes his letter, "the whole thing is as simple as figuring out the weight of three small hogs," and this inelegant sentence conveys with little exaggeration one especial merit of his often austerely graceful language. Grave difficulties are handled in a style which could arouse ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... and spools and little wooden wheels he had made and which he and his father "played with" each evening. Beryl had often wondered why Dale seemed to care so much about it; why he spent hours and hours drawing and figuring on bits of paper. Of course it amused the father, who, during the day, cut the spools into tiny wheels, with a sharp jack-knife; but it must be stupid for Dale to spend all of his evenings over the silly thing. Beryl often lounged on the back of his chair and listened ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... suggestion, I believe, of Dr. George Bird Grinnell and Hamlin Garland, an attempt was made under President Roosevelt to systematize the Indian nomenclature. The Indian in his native state bears no surname; and wife and children figuring under entirely different names from that of the head of the family, the law has been unnecessarily embarrassed. I received a special appointment to revise the allotment rolls of the Sioux nation. It was my duty to group the various members of one family under ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... many beet seeds for a meal; so many meals for a row, with never two rows of anything, with hardly a full-length row of anything, and with all the rows of different lengths, as if gardening were a sort of geometry or a problem in arithmetic, figuring your vegetable with the meal for a common divisor—how many times it will go into all your rows without leaving ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... grows up to the sky, and an old man, meaning the sun, climbs up by it to heaven, and sees everything. This comes very near the story of Jack, who sells his cow for a handful of beans, and his mother scatters them in the garden, and throws her apron over her head and weeps, thus figuring the Night and the Rain; and, shielded by the night and watered by the rain, the bean grows up to the sky, and Jack climbs to the Ogre's land, and carries off the bags of gold, and the wonderful hen that lays a golden egg every day, and the golden ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... figuring," growled another, in whose grating tones no echo remained of Hector Westonhaugh's formerly honeyed voice. "I am making out a list ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... theistic position and Mr. Spencer's, may be supplied by an example he has himself proposed. Thus,[254] he imagines an intelligent watch speculating as to its maker, and conceiving of him in terms of watch-being, and figuring him as furnished with springs, escapements, cogged wheels, &c., his motions facilitated by oil—in a word, like himself. It is assumed by Mr. Spencer that this necessary watch conception would be completely false, and the illustration is made use of to show "the presumption ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... pile fabric known as "BRUSSELLETTE." The figuring warp is composed of dyed and printed yarns mixed to form an indefinite pattern, and works in conjunction with a ground warp and weft. The weave is again plain, although the structure of the fabric is quite different from the other plain cloths illustrated. The cloth is reversible, ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... "I'm figuring these syndicate books," said the Kid. "He'll open around 3 to 1 and stay there whether there's a dollar bet on him or not. False odds? Certainly, but they're taking no chances on you. They figure you won't be trying ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... parish, which differed, as Monkbarns used to remark, like the three degrees of comparisonSir Arthur's ramilies being the positive, his own bob-wig the comparative, and the overwhelming grizzle of the worthy clergyman figuring as the superlative. The superintendent of these antique garnitures, deeming, or affecting to deem, that he could not well be absent on an occasion which assembled all three together, had seated himself on the board behind the carriage, "just to be in the way in case they wanted a touch before ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... not to avail ourselves of our immediate privilege to give sentence of life or death—to seem in ignorance of what every one else is full of—to be behind-hand with the polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of mankind—to be at a loss and dumb-founded, when all around us are in their glory, and figuring away, on no other ground than that of having read a work that we have not! Books that are to be written hereafter cannot be criticised by us; those that were written formerly have been criticised long ago; but a new book is the property, the prey of ephemeral criticism, which it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... stars were shining, I took a walk upon the side of the river opposite to Cologne. Before me was the whole town, with its innumerable steeples figuring in detail upon the pale western sky. To my left rose, like the giant of Cologne, the high spire of St. Martin's, with its two towers; and, almost in front, the somber apsed cathedral, with its many sharp-pointed spires, resembling a ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... mechanic. "You and Fogg will run No. 999 on the Tipton accommodation to-morrow. It's a shift berth, though. I don't want you to go dreaming quite yet, Fairbanks, that you're president of the Great Northern, and all that, but, under the hat, I will say that you can expect a boost. We are figuring on some big things, and I shouldn't wonder if a new train is soon to be announced that will wake up some of our rivals. Get out now for good, for ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... room: fresh guests—country people of consequence, for they were ushered in by Mrs. Price herself, who received in person their orders for an incongruous meal, neither dinner nor supper, to recruit them for some gala in which they had the prospect of figuring, to judge from a torrent of exclamations which pierced through a convenient ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... early period of his life to have had dreams of some day figuring as a poet himself, and his extensive familiarity with the poets always struck Dugald Stewart as very remarkable in a man so conspicuous for the weight of his more solid attainments. "In the English language," ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... colour drawn by a "chubby sort of brown horse." I pass over the ghostly mailcoach horses that flew through the night in "The Story of the Bagman's Uncle," flowing- maned, black horses. There are many post horses figuring in Mr. Pickwick's journey from Bristol to Birmingham and thence home; horses in the rain and ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... channels of the earth and the fullness thereof made a joyful gurgle in his thoughts. And if he ever wandered in the country and ever saw a primrose on the river's brim—which I consider unlikely, his attention being engaged at the moment on figuring the cost of oil barrels, with special consideration for the price of bungs—if this man ever did see a primrose, would it have been a yellow primrose to him and nothing more? Bless your dear eyes, it would have been a compound of by-products—parafine, wax-candles, cup-grease, lamp-black, beeswax ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... the crutches. My mind, figuring you after receiving the benefit of my art, overlooked you as you ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... said the banker, "working and figuring go hand in hand, and if you keep that up Brookside Farm will soon be paying a ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... a pained look on his face as he tried to do the subtraction in his head. He was never any good in mental arithmetic. Give him a pencil in his hand and he could do pretty well at figuring. But his mind seemed to go blank when he had to carry and all that in his head. He reached in all his pockets but did not have a pencil. And he knew he had to ask for ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... which are all classical in character; and though there is no particular grace in the outline or form of the cabinet, there is a certain dignity and solemnity, relieved from oppressiveness by the fine chasing and gilding of the metal enrichments, and the excellent colour and figuring of the rich Spanish ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... arise from churches, or from schools of thought independent of the ordinary parties, does not seem, as a matter of fact, to have arisen. The Democratic party had, as we have seen, revived in force in the latter part of 1862. Persons, ambitious, from whatever mixture of motives, of figuring as leaders of opposition during a war which they did not condemn, found a public to which to appeal, mainly because the war was not going well. They found a principle of opposition satisfactory to themselves in condemning the Proclamation ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the locality fixed upon for the school. Then there were sent out two native teachers (one a woman, capable of teaching spinning and loom weaving), to begin the instruction of the children in language, figuring and in industrial arts not known to the Ilongot. This school experiment promises to succeed and has already led to starting one or two other schools in communities still more distant in ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... that ever gave a wriggle, and the only reason its owners had not made a fortune was because it was never properly advertised. I used to know just how much he weighed and how long he was, but my brain got so tired figuring up the money we made out of him that I've had no memory for ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... bent down, as if figuring out some puzzle of a baffling trail. Picking up a bit of stick, he traced here and there, in the ashes at his feet, points and lines, as if it were some problem in geometry. Uneasy, strange of look, now and again ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... admiration, and how it was still further increased by the boy's admiration, successively, for Scott and Byron. Certain early friendships held out to the young versifier the prospect of publication, and thus it is that we find him, in his sixteenth year, figuring as a contributor to 'Friendship's Offering and Winter's Wreath: a Christmas and New Year's Present' for 1835. This was the era of the old-fashioned 'annuals,' and 'Friendship's Offering' was one of the most notable of its kind. In the issue ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... captain looked up, and after "figuring" a moment on a slip of paper, touched a bell. Instantly a panel flew open, and a hoarse ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... The man whose line of work before marriage led him from place to place seems, in fact, hardly to contribute his quota to the ranks of wife-deserters, and it is unusual to find sailors or other wanderers from force of circumstance figuring ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... large sums of money. It must of been like sweetest music to his ears. One says how much would it be safe to count on cutting up the first year—how much in round numbers; and another would say that in round numbers, what with the expense of getting started and figuring everything down to the last cent, it wouldn't be safe to count on more than a hundred thousand dollars; but, of course, for the second year, now, why it would be nearer two hundred thousand in round numbers, even figuring everything fine and making big ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... lbs. per cu. ft. Mr. Sanford E. Thompson, Consulting Engineer, Newton Highlands, Mass., assumes for dead load, weight of concrete including reinforcement as 154 lbs. per cu. ft., and for live load, 75 lbs. per sq. ft. on slabs and 50 lbs. per sq. ft. in figuring beam and girder forms ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... Tipperary was again in arms, under the command of my friend, O'Mahony. The report added that I was associated with him in command. Hour after hour brought some story stranger than that which preceded it; but in each and all I found myself figuring in some character or other, all, of course, contrary to the truth. This fact led at once to a suspicion of the accuracy of the whole. But I was aware that caution was a leading characteristic of O'Mahony's genius, and I felt assured he would not attempt ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... from getting near to the steamer, he did not venture to consider. But he could not help figuring up the number of soldiers on board of the tug; the force which had captured him and Percy consisted of four men, and two men were with the lieutenant. Two officers and six men was the available force of the enemy on board of the little ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... Joe, figuring that in view of the double role, unknown even to the higher ranking officers of the embassy, he could best secure protective coloring by conforming and would have slipped into embassy routine without more than ordinary notice. ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... I feel," he ejaculated. "I hope the girl won't die. Anyhow, I have no notion of figuring at a death-bed scene. So I'll just keep myself out of the way until the thing is decided. Then, I'll run down and let Cora coddle me up a bit. I can explain my wounded arm as the result of a little affair at ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... die—and that is just what we are trying to guard against. On my seventy-fifth birthday, there will be a fine, healthy two-year-old babe crying and goo-gooing for my especial benefit, and by working backwards in your figuring you can also credit us with a three-year-old, a four-year-old, and so on up the line. Naturally we will have lost a goodly number of the first- comers, but we provide against a deficit, so to speak, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... to spend it," spoke up the sole heir to the mustard millions, cheerfully. "I'll tell you what I'll do, pater—you stop making it and I'll stop spending it. That's a bargain. It'll be a great lark for us both. It keeps me awake nights figuring out how I'm going to spend it and it keeps you awake nights puzzling over how you can make it—or, that is, make more ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs, and showing ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... If I ever get to solid ground again, you may have your old air ship and sail away to the South Pole with it. I am figuring on getting back ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... boys,—who principally interest me as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of nature, loses all shyness, and moves regally like a king. One afternoon, Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him down the river. Henry Thoreau is an experienced skater, and was figuring dithyrambic dances and Bacchic leaps on the ice—very remarkable, but very ugly, methought. Next him followed Mr. Hawthorne who, wrapped in his cloak, moved like a self-impelled Greek statue, stately and grave. Mr. Emerson closed the line, evidently ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... wool blanket and call it genuine flesh, blood and bone. Now, take a blanket made of one of the new synthetics—Dacron or any one of the other equally serviceable materials—call that the material this creature is made of. Figuring it that way—" ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... which longest endured, the Egyptian, the Pharaohs carried their conquests and their power deep into Africa. In the story of their invasions and occupancy of the interior, told in pictures on temple walls, we find the negro figuring as captive and slave. This contact may not have been a fruitful one for the elevation of the negro, but it proves that for ages he was in one way or another in contact with a superior civilization. In later days we find ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... it if you want to. It'll pay for the hundred cows you are figuring on buying. But I was just thinking: can two men at our time of life, who have always been friends, afford to take the risk of letting a business transaction like this possibly make us enemies? You know I started ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... more! Instead of losing the accursed thing that had hung over him these past three years, it had merely redoubled its hold; that mocking power had held the bait of Tantalus before his eyes, only to hurl him back into hopeless despair; for, figuring with the utmost nicety, he had reckoned that there was just time to execute his mission, and even a month's delay would mean certain failure. He turned hopelessly toward his two companions, but Fraser had relapsed into a state of coma, while Big George ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... me to know was the fact of her first escapade with the fellow called Jimmy. She had arrived at figuring out the sort of low-down Bowery tough that that fellow was. Do you know what it is to shudder, in later life, for some small, stupid action—usually for some small, quite genuine piece of emotionalism—of your early life? Well, it was that sort of shuddering that came over Florence at ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... expense account of that year and the previous one, I found that I should be able in future to say with a good deal of exactness what the gross amount would be, without much figuring. The interest account would steadily decrease, I hoped, while the wage account would increase as steadily until it approached $5500; that year it was $4662. Each man who had been on the farm more than six months received $18 more that year than he did the year before, and this ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... circumstances in my life. Though then but two-and-twenty[1134], I had for several years read his works with delight and instruction, and had the highest reverence for their authour, which had grown up in my fancy into a kind of mysterious veneration[1135], by figuring to myself a state of solemn elevated abstraction, in which I supposed him to live in the immense metropolis of London. Mr. Gentleman, a native of Ireland, who passed some years in Scotland as a player, and as an instructor in the English language, a man whose talents and worth were depressed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the working people; old and young, skilled and unskilled hands, the industrious and the idle, were held worthy of equal reward, the actual allowance to each being measured by his need and not by the value of his work; while the parochial authorities, figuring as an earthly providence, exercised a benevolent superintendence over the welfare and liberty of every day-labourer in the village community. The fruits of that superintendence were the decline of a race of freemen into a race of slaves, unconscious of their slavery, and the gradual ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... then he spoke with real earnestness. "Listen, Neale. Here's the matter in a nutshell. You will be called upon to run these particular and difficult surveys, just as yesterday. But no more of the routine for you. Added to that, you will be sent forward and back, inspecting, figuring. You can make your headquarters with us or in the construction camps, as suits your convenience. All this, of course, presently, when we get farther on. So you will be in a way free—your own boss a good deal of the time. And fitting yourself ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... trees, flowers, or birds doubtless seems of trivial interest to one who occupies his leisure hours with such weighty problems as figuring out how rich he would have been to-day if he had bought Bell Telephone at 15, but such study is far more restful, and in the long run quite as useful ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... friends, always willing to help me out in figuring the cost of my hunting and fishing gear, made the following business-like estimate, which they placed where I would be certain to see it the first thing in the morning. Premising that of the five who assisted in that little joke, ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... way of making calculations where measurements are necessary, as is the case in figuring out and placing the different celestial marks which guide the sailors. I think this is a marine pad. Now, let us see what it contains, before ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... figured, the less pleased he seemed to be with the results. Finally, "Ahem," said Tommy, "I've got to work now: this'll never do; can't let the wife and kiddy want for anything. Wonder what we'll have to get for him first?" And after more figuring, "Well, it's no good getting cold feet over the proposition: it's me with me nose to the grindstone, and I guess I can stand it for some ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... were necessary. "It's like this," he said. "You see, if your father decided to keep his works going over yonder, I don't say but he might give us some little competition for a time, 'specially as he's got the start on us and about ready for the market. Then I was figuring we could use his plant—it's small, but it'd be to our benefit to have the use of it—and he's got a lease on that big lot; it may come in handy for us if we want to expand some. Well, I'd prefer to make a deal with him as quietly as possible—-no good in every Tom, Dick ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Steve spoken of and who had slipped away with his new steel-jointed bait-rod, and a handful of fat grubs, as soon as he heard Max say they had gone far enough on their way. Steve, being one of those hasty lads who do a thing while many people would be only figuring it out, had long ago fallen heir to a number of suggestive nicknames, among others "Touch-and-Go Steve," ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... public prints, and day after day led his crew upon the high seas of finance. He did not dare think and in his heart he was sick of it. Sick to the soul, so that when thought came to him he got out of his bed to seek roistering companions or, getting pen and paper, sat for hours figuring out new and more daring schemes for money making. The great forward movement in modern industry of which he had dreamed of being a part had for him turned out to be a huge meaningless gamble with loaded dice against ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... also great prowess or distinction is ascribed to the progeny of human and divine unions. We have already noted that, according to the traditions the records embody, the Sumerians looked back to a time when gods lived upon the earth with men, and we have seen such deities as Tammuz and Lugalbanda figuring as rulers of cities in the dynastic sequence. As in later periods, their names are there preceded by the determinative for divinity. But more significant still is the fact that we read of two Sumerian heroes, also rulers of cities, who were divine on ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... "Figuring in the pages of this story there are several strong characters. Typical New England folk and an especially sturdy one, old Cy Walker, through whose instrumentality Chip comes to happiness and fortune. There is a chain ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... help following him, whose loss we now mourn, into that region, and figuring to ourselves his great, childlike spirit, when that unspeakable scene bursts upon his view, when, as by some inward, instant sense, he is conscious of God—of the immediate presence of the All-seeing Unseen; when ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... could not have arranged the schedule with any accuracy at all, as regards daylight and darkness and the lapping of time. With our watches set to New York time, we might expect to land at a station in broad daylight, only to find that we were really coming in after dark. Another thing: Our figuring showed us that the lappages of time, all added together, exactly totaled one day of twenty-four hours, which we gain by traveling eastward. So, while the schedule on a calendar at home would only show ten days which ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... he said, "they'd probably have a hard time figuring out this country by listening to our broadcasts. Imagine tuning in soap operas, 'The Lone Ranger,' and a couple of crime yarns, along with newscasts about strikes and murders and the cold war. They might pick up some of ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... over 500 or 600 men, but for the sake of argument we can say a thousand. In round numbers, then, we had immediately about the city 8,500 troops. These were scattered from the cemetery around to Aguadores. In front of us, actually in the trenches, there could not by any possible method of figuring have been less than 6,000 men. You can twist it any way you want to; the figures I have given you are absolutely correct, at least they are absolutely ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... hold of a Shaker book that set me thinking. Sister Lydia gave it to me. I met Sister Lydia when she had come down to the place I lived to sell baskets. And she was interested in my salvation, and gave me the book. Then I got to figuring out the Prophecies, and I saw Shakerism fulfilled them; and then I began to see that when you don't own anything yourself you can't worry about your property; well, that clinched me, I guess. Poor Sister Lydia, she didn't abide in grace herself," he ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... birds, but the most admired of our ornithological discoveries was a white-winged superb warbler from the junction of the Darling and the Murray, all the plumage not white being of a bright blue colour; but of this we had obtained only one specimen. I had not many opportunities of figuring the birds from life, so very desirable in ornithological subjects. The eye of the eagle and the rich crest of the cockatoo of the desert could not be preserved in dead specimens, and were too fine ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... take-it-or-leave-it proposition an' two-thirds o' the stock is represented in me an' Mac an' accordin' to your rulin' the majority's got the decidin' vote, we ups an' smothers his offer. Lemme see, now," he continued, and got out a stub of lead pencil with which he commenced figuring on the white oilcloth table cover. "We paid twenty dollars for them two derelicts an' a dollar towage. That's twenty-one dollars, an' a third o' twenty-one is seven, an' seven dollars from twenty-five leaves eighteen dollars comin' to you. Here's your eighteen dollars, ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... a figuring iron[7] with a thousand compartments. The Ortach is a wall. To be wrecked on the Caskets is to be cut into ribbons; to strike on the Ortach is to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... was tenfold preferable to figuring in a Roman triumph. Finding the avenues to his house secured by the king's guards, the great Carthaginian took poison, which he is said to have long carried with him in a ring, in readiness for such an emergency. He died at Libyssa, on the eastern shore of the sea of Marmora, in his sixty-fourth ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Every asteroid has its own orbit around the sun, and everyone that's been registered as a claim has the orbit charted. The one we want isn't where it was when your Dad's body was found ... it's been travelling in its orbit ever since. But by figuring in the fourth dimension, we ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... moldable; very; and it is desirable that he should aspire. But he is apt to be hasty about accepting any and all general ideals without figuring out whether they ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... profession than literature is the surest recommendation to the favour of the publishers. If I had to start my literary career over again, I should commence by hopping on one leg through the Pyrenees, or figuring in a big divorce case; anything short of assassination, which makes one's success too posthumous. It is most unfair, this doubling of the parts of doing and writing. Our modern heroes and heroines are quite too self-conscious; amid all their deeds ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... population of the one is the most civilised, that of the other by far the most barbarous, of Polynesians; and they are two of those that perish the most rapidly. Here is a strong case against opium. But let us take unchastity, and we shall find the Marquesas and Hawaii figuring again upon another count. Thus, Samoans are the most chaste of Polynesians, and they are to this day entirely fertile; Marquesans are the most debauched: we have seen how they are perishing; Hawaiians are notoriously lax, and they begin to be dotted among deserts. So here is a case ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lit up the old pipe again, and got his thinker a'thinking. "I know what you want. You want to get me in on the ground floor, I have been in more things on the ground floor than anybody, but there was always another fellow in the cellar. You are figuring hens the way you do compound interest, but you are away off. Life is too short to wait for compound interest on a dollar to make a fellow rich, and cutting coupons off a hen is just the same. I started a hen ranch fifty years ago, on the same theory, ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... regard to one form of life are equally applicable to any other plant, insect, or animal, and there is no greater or less mystery in the life of a blade of grass than in the cedar of Lebanon figuring so conspicuously in ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... the door, pushing the cradle in front of her. Steve stepped between, slammed the door and locked it, putting the key in his pocket. "Now you jest stay still where you are or it'll be the worse for you and for the baby, too! Don't be figuring on the window or the back door, 'cause I've got eyes in the side of my head and I'll catch you before you get there! That thar cupboard ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... gold-bricking myself—trying to find a way out that would not deprive me of things I liked to do, of pleasures I wanted to enjoy. It was pure selfishness that dominated me and made me do so much figuring on a proposition I knew was contained in a sentence; but I did fight to hang on to ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... she opened Timmy's bureau drawers, to find little suits and coats and socks in snowy, exquisite order; when Timmy, trim, sweet, and freshly clad, appeared for breakfast every morning, his fat hand in Belle's, and "Dea' Booey"—as he called her—figuring prominently in his limited vocabulary, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... as Lord Proditor, Lussurioso, and Infesto, is one of the signs that we are here still on the debatable borderland between the old Morality and the new Comedy—a province where incarnate vices and virtues are seen figuring and posturing in what can scarcely be called masquerade. But the two fine soliloquies of Phoenix on the corruption of the purity of law (act i. scene iv.) and the profanation of the sanctity of marriage (act ii. scene ii.) are somewhat riper and graver in ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... two years after (June 29, 1406), the cousins were married at Compiegne, he fifteen, she seventeen years of age. It was in every way a most desirable match. The bride brought five hundred thousand francs of dowry. The ceremony was of the utmost magnificence, Louis of Orleans figuring in crimson velvet, adorned with no less than seven hundred and ninety-five pearls, gathered together expressly for this occasion. And no doubt it must have been very gratifying for a young gentleman of fifteen to play the chief part in a pageant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... think. Don't you suppose that mother moose was thinking when she stopped out there in the plain? Wasn't she turning the situation over in her mind, if you want to speak of it as that, and mentally figuring just where the danger lay, and in which direction she ought to take flight? And besides reason wild animals have instinct. One proof of this is their sixth sense; the sense of—of—what ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... different objects, toss up his gun, and catch it by the handle; and once he startled Bartley by making a quick fall from the saddle and shooting from the ground. Cheyenne explained to Bartley that often, when riding alone, he had spent hour after hour figuring out the possibilities of gun-play, till it became evident to the Easterner that, aside from being naturally quick, there was a very good reason for Cheyenne's proficiency with the six-gun. He practiced continually. And yet, thought Bartley, one of the Box-S punchers had said that Cheyenne had never ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Maurice was figuring on the swiftness of the current, just how many miles an hour it ran at this point, and when they were likely ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... inhospitable universe. And mingled with it all was self-pity, for drink had made him maudlin. He wanted so little—only a modest comfort, a little ease. He had forgotten that half an hour before he had been figuring in princes' cabinets. He would give up this business and be quit of danger and the high road. The Duke must give him a reasonable reward, and with it he and his child might dwell happily in some country place. He remembered a cottage at Guildford all hung with roses.... But the Duke was reputed ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... went to work to calculate our position as nearly as I could, although the roughness of my data rendered it exceedingly difficult to arrive anywhere near the mark; but at length, by patient and careful figuring, I reached the exceedingly unsatisfactory conclusion that not only had we lost all the ground previously gained, but we were somewhere about thirty miles south of the spot where Bainbridge had ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... wet and dry, law mundane and spiritual, for although neither court nor churches were working overtime, they were available for the few who had any use for them; second, gambling, at monte, poker, or faro; and, third, figuring how to slip through the next twenty-four hours without getting a heavier load of lead in one's system than could be conveniently carried, or how to stay happily half shot and yet avoid coming home on a shutter, unhappily shot, or, having ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... defend a Latin thesis drawn from some department or other of medical science, and this, like his fellows, had Dr. Thomson to do. "De Evolutione Cordis Animalibus Vertebratis," was the title of his dissertation, a subject wide as the poles apart from the customary jejune hackneyed topics figuring on such an occasion, and, at this period, one of all others, we would imagine, where learned professors, if modest men, would in all probability be the pupils, and the trembling candidate the instructor. It would appear from this that microscopic embryology ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... successor Archelaus, and Justus of Tiberias, who was the contemporary and rival of Josephus in Galilee, equally knew nothing of the movement. Philo-Judaeus, who occupied the whole period ascribed to Jesus, and engaged himself deeply in figuring out the Logos, had heard nothing of the being who was realising at Jerusalem the image his fancy was creating" ("Portraiture and ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... discovered might be set in place, the old blocks of brick and concrete, despoiled of their sculptured-work and rising up like seared rocks, yet still suggesting their original shapes as shrines, cippi, and sarcophagi. There is a wondrous succession of high reliefs figuring the dead in groups of three and five; statues in which the dead live deified, erect; seats contrived in niches in order that wayfarers may rest and bless the hospitality of the dead; laudatory epitaphs celebrating the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... spent a sleepless night trying to put two and two together. Instead of the answer being "four" as it should have been each time he completed his figuring the result was "zero." Time and again he mustered the facts into columns, only to succeed in ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... consists in jumping about with the legs bent in a sitting posture? If so, have they not been struck with a philological mania, on seeing his picture of the Kutchin-Kutcha Indians dancing; in which the principal performer is actually figuring in the midst of the wild circle in the way described. Is not the nursery term something more than ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... above events, and Miss Rebecca Sharp still remaining at her patroness's house in Park Lane, one more hatchment might have been seen in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the many which usually ornament that dismal quarter. It was over Sir Pitt Crawley's house; but it did not indicate the worthy baronet's demise. It was a feminine hatchment, and indeed a few years back had served as a funeral compliment to Sir ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... does. I'm part Earther," Rolf said. "My grandmother on my mother's side. She raised me as an Earther. She wanted me to be an Earther. But I kept getting bigger and uglier all the time. She took me to a plastic surgeon once, figuring he could make me look like an Earther. He was a little man; I don't know what he looked like to start with but some other surgeon had made him clean-cut and straight-nosed and thin-lipped like all the other Earthers. I was bigger than he was—twice as big, and I was only fifteen. He ...
— The Happy Unfortunate • Robert Silverberg
... darned sight bigger island than I think we are, we can see from one end of it to the other from the top of that hill. It isn't much of a climb. A few huskies with axes to cut a path through the underbrush, and we might get up there in a few hours. I've been figuring it out. That's why I got up so early. Had it on my mind all night. The sensible thing to do is to send a gang of us up there to have a look around. Strange Captain Trigger never thought of it. I suppose it's because he's an old sea-dog and ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... life insurance offices there was much figuring over the lists of those thought to be lost aboard the Titanic. Nothing but rough estimates of the company's losses through the wreck were ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... whisper in your ear, (supposing you to be a Christian,) this would be a prelibation drawn prematurely from the cup of millennial happiness; and, strictly speaking, there is no great homage to religion, even thus far—in figuring that to be the purchase of man for himself, and through his own efforts, which is viewed by Scripture as a glory removed to the infinite and starry distance of a millennium, and as the teleutaion epigeinaema, the last crowning attainment ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Piccadilly." Of this ballad of Young Beichan there are numerous renderings, the name of the hero undergoing many variations,—Bicham, Brechin, Beachen, Bekie, Bateman, Bondwell—and the heroine, although Susie Pye or Susan Pye in ten of the fourteen versions, figuring also as Isbel, Essels, and Sophia. It was probably an English ballad at the start, but bears the traces of the Scottish minstrels who were doubtless prompt to borrow it. There is likelihood enough that the ballad was originally suggested by the legend of Gilbert Becket, ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... history in all men's lives, Figuring the natures of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, who in their seeds And weak beginning lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time; And by the necessary form of this King Richard ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... of my health, I'm figuring very clearly to myself all the physical features of this place. It's a long white house, two-storied. The front door has broken glass over it and there's a litter of tumbled bricks on the top step. After you've ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... matter, was for investing every cent of theirs where it would draw the largest interest possible. Mrs. Jane had never before known very much about interest, and she was fascinated with its delightful possibilities. She spent whole days joyfully figuring percentages, and was awakened from her happy absorption only by the unpleasant realization that her husband was not in sympathy with her ideas at all. He said that the money was his, not hers, and that, for once in his ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... gentleman, my dear. You are improving in your selection. I really was ashamed of you before, figuring away with that attorney's clerk. Molly, do you know whom you have been dancing with? I have found out he is ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... country for specifying the size of silk is based on the weight in drams (avoirdupois) of a skein containing 1000 yards. A skein, thus weighing 5 drams, is technically called 5-dram silk. The number of yards of 1-dram silk to a pound must accordingly be 256000. The formulas for figuring the amount of silk required for a piece ...
— Theory Of Silk Weaving • Arnold Wolfensberger
... and our boats. Here have we been figuring about holding up our rifles in the sun, and with these here cutlashes getting in the men's way wherever we rowed. Regular ornamental I calls us, never so much as fired a shot or hit any one on the nose with one's fist. We have done a ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... Clara,' exclaimed James, 'or you will drive me distracted with your folly. One grain of sense, and even you would have stopped it; but neither you nor he could miss a chance of his figuring in that masquerade dress! Look at the sun, exactly like a red-hot oven! We shall have him come home as ill ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... represented, with very good effect, Maid Marion, under the escort of young Snaffle of the Lancers, who rode over from the nearest Garrison Town to captivate some stray heart by personating Young Lochinvar. The other two sets, figuring in costumes as handsome as they were varied, were made up of the youth and beauty of the neighbourhood, with the exception of the bottom couple of the last set; here, Mrs. Fraudhurst appeared, gorgeously attired, as Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, with no other for her partner than Ralph Coleman ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... in which he recognised his friend's touch. In this society of polished dilettanti such documents were valued rather for their literary merits than for their political significance; and the pungent lines in which the Duke's panaceas were hit off (the Belverde figuring among them as a Lenten diet, a dinner of herbs, and a wonder-working bone) caused a flutter of professional envy ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... I replied—and meantime I was racking my poor wits figuring out how to present this strange acquaintance of mine most tactfully to the world. I knew the reporter would not tarry long; he would grab a few sentences, and rush away to telephone ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... just outside the starboard entrance to the engine room, loaded his pipe, laid his trusty monkey wrench across his knee and gave himself up to the contemplation of this riot we call life. He resembled a cat watching beside a gopher hole. By half-past three o'clock he had finished figuring out approximately the amount of money Mrs. Reardon would have in the Hibernia Bank at the end of five years—figuring on a monthly saving of fifty dollars and interest compounded at the rate of four per cent. So, having satisfied himself that ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... just fires it! No," he corrected himself, "he doesn't either. I see what you're driving at. That's right, I did see him doing some figuring ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... "We've been figuring out this proposition of Mr. Vedder's. Your idea is all right, and it would be a fine thing if we could really get together as you suggest upon terms of common ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... to destroy them, and shows great sagacity in defeating those intentions. But, while the crow is a very intelligent bird—one of the wisest of the bird family, in fact—it obtains its knowledge of what is in the mind of the man not alone from "figuring on his intentions," but rather from that instinctive sensing of his mental states. The hen, as all know, is a very stupid bird, showing but little intelligent activity. But, nevertheless, she is very quick about sensing the poultryman's designs on her, though generally ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... moderate-sized drawing-room, with tasty things scattered about it to catch the eye, stood a young lady, figuring off before the chimney-glass. Had you looked critically into the substantial furniture you might have found it old and poor; of a different class from the valuable furniture at Verner's Pride; widely different from the light, elegant furniture at Lady Verner's. But, what with white ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... been shut up that evening: it was deemed advisable. Darcy went round to the side-door, and was admitted. Hay and three other workmen were within. They had been figuring up possible and probable profits by the end of the five years, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... there were individuals who had betrayed a bias towards monarchy, and there had always been some not unfavorable to a partition of the Union into several confederacies; either from a better chance of figuring on a sectional theatre, or that the sections would require stronger governments, or by their hostile conflicts lead to a monarchical consolidation. The idea of dismemberment had recently made its ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... a good clear black-and-white contrast; when two words so definitely promise one of these contrasts as explicit and implicit, and then dash our hopes by figuring in phrases where contrast ceases to be visible—say in 'explicit support' and 'implicit obedience', with absolute or complete or full as a substitute that might replace either or both—, we ask with some indignation whether after all black ...
— Tract XI: Three Articles on Metaphor • Society for Pure English
... out a theory. Guesswork, of course, was rather dangerous in a delicate matter such as this; but the doctor's report after breakfast had been the very worst yet. Peter never faltered. He picked up his hat from the study table, in front of which he had been figuring these things out, and started down ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... thought hard, then set to work figuring and rubbing out, figuring and rubbing out. The rest of us eyed ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... as he is able and conditions permit. Besides, it is expensive. Besides that, it is a confounded nuisance, especially when potio gives out and more must be sought, near or far. Then, if he is wise, he begins to do a little figuring ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... able to suggest so many comforts and conveniences, and so to revise these plans that, at first in a desultory way, later in real earnest, she had begun to draw plans for houses. Then, being of methodical habit and mathematical mind, she began scaling up the plans and figuring on the cost of building, and so she had worked until she felt that she was evolving homes that could be built for the same amount of money and lived in with more comfort and convenience than the homes that many of her friends were having ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... have to spend more money to protect it. I'm sorry Jeff, if that's what you have been figuring on, but we are not an insurance company—we are in the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... commander's cheery remarks there was little comfort in his words. Trusting implicitly their gallant chief, every man aboard the stranded submarine was keenly alive to the seriousness of the situation and mentally figuring on the possibilities of escape from the prison ship in case it was found at last impossible to float the vessel. The boys knew their dauntless commander, in a final extremity, would resort to heroic measures of escape rather than allow his men to be suffocated ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... all the care and love his heart and mind were capable of, to produce this finished child of fancy; or that this same author, even at this very moment, might be seated on the veranda of his beautiful summer villa, figuring out royalties on the backs of stray envelopes. No, he never ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... torment, lying tense on his bed in the dark, and figuring out how long it would take him to pay back the money he was advancing to himself. Any fool could do it in five years, he reasoned, but he was going to do it in three. The trouble was that his expensive courtship had taken every penny of his salary. With competitors like ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... evening, December third. We can't make quite as good connections as I did in coming, so, according to Doctor Wood's figuring with the time-tables, we shall go through the home city at one o'clock on Saturday morning. We shall be in the station twenty minutes, being switched around, and—well, I don't like to ask anybody to stay up till that hour, but—I shall be up, and looking out—and—and—I'm almost afraid that ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... the upper part rested being still there. It is very heavy, formed of three layers of thin bronze bound at the edge with brass—evidently a later thought, and done for preservation. There are three bands of silver across it, which show the remains of rich figuring. There was originally a setting of three stones, one of which still remains and looks as if it might be amber. It is as large as a soup plate. Something is among the layers of metal which rattles when shaken. It is one of the ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... a lot of things, and I don't know what to do. I think you may be right, and that I have been all wrong. I give it up. But I do know that a fellow can't make any mistake if he tries to do what is right, and, in figuring out the thing, takes the side that seems to be against him. He can fight, he can do anything better after he feels that he has done that. ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... meantime, he decided to while away the lonely hours by a review of his financial status, so he locked the door and devoted the succeeding five minutes to the comparatively trifling task of counting his money and figuring on the outlay necessary to carry him back to San Pasqual. He was horrified to discover that after providing twelve hundred and fifty dollars for the registrar of the state land office (in the event that the day ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... a good raison why you're wrong. When you git lost, and think you're on the right way, ye may be sure that ye're wrong; and after figuring the whole thing over, and getting sartin of the right coorse, all you've got to do is not to take it, and ye're ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... triumph, a feeble addition of glory assuredly, but which had, after all, the merit, in her eyes, of having been contested. During the evening, as I was leaving the whist-table, she advanced toward me deliberately, and requested me to do her the honor of figuring with her in the character dance called the cotillon.[B] I excused myself laughingly on my complete inexperience; she insisted, declaring that I had evident dispositions for dancing, and reminding me of the agility I had displayed in the forest. Finally, and to close the debate, she led ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... they are figuring she hasn't spotted them yet," said Jack. "Believing he has only one enemy to contend with, Admiral von Spee evidently is trying to get as close ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... "We're figuring on camping here for a time, and looking the country over. What's your business?" asked Garry, with the true ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... something that strips our spars," returned the captain confidently. "Of course, a hurricane might knock us out in our calculations. Taking it by and large though, and allowing for the time we may have to cruise around before we find the island we're looking for, I'm figuring that we'll make Sandy Hook again in ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which in their seeds, And weak beginnings, lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time; And, by the necessary form of this, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton |
