"Fraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Broadway, for we were rather more than an hour in driving three miles in a stage, we crossed the Brooklyn Ferry in one of those palace ferry-boats, where the spacious rooms for passengers are heated by steam-pipes, and the charge is only one cent, or a fraction less than a halfpenny. It was a beautiful day; there was not a cloud upon the sky; the waves of the Sound and of the North River were crisped and foam-tipped, and dashed noisily upon the white pebbly beach. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... of such profound problems as, that the whole of a thing is more than a fraction of it; and things that are exactly alike resemble each other, for ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... will weigh the letter he reads to the smallest fraction of a fraction before he moves ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... didn't it work beautiful, Mr. Rockwall? I'm glad William A. Brady wasn't onto that little outdoor vehicle mob scene. I wouldn't want William to break his heart with jealousy. And never a rehearsal, either! The boys was on time to the fraction of a second. It was two hours before a snake could ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... fraction may, in certain cases, constitute an enormity. Again, the value of a standard, not the specific or numerical value which is an invariable basis, but the relative or moral value, must be deduced from the importance of the medium to which ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... atom, fraction, member, section, component, fragment, particle, segment, constituent, ingredient, piece, share, division, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Africa may number two hundred millions. I have outgrown, long since, the boundaries of North America, and with them have also outgrown the boundaries of their claims. I, therefore, cannot consent to sacrifice the prospects of two hundred millions, that a fraction of five millions may be benefitted, especially since the measures adopted for the many must ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... just one year to a fraction. You will remember, Mr. Rumgudgeon, that I called with Capt. Pratol on this very day, last year, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he and the schooner were safe. As to the welfare of his three companions he could not say. Nor did he dare leave the wheel in order to find out, for it took every second of his undivided attention to keep the vessel to her course. The least fraction of carelessness and the heave of the sea under the quarter was liable to thrust her into the trough. So, a boy of one hundred and forty pounds, he clung to his herculean task of guiding the two hundred straining tons of fabric amid the chaos of ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... For the barest fraction of an instant he hesitated, and then his quick American wits came to his aid. Feigning intoxication he answered the challenge in dubious Austrian that he hoped his ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... who among the Dead control our destinies. The universal human race is linked and bound together by those influences and sympathies, which in the truest sense do make men's fates. Humanity is the unit, of which the man is but a fraction. What other men in the Past have done, said, thought, makes the great iron network of circumstance that environs and controls us all. We take our faith on trust. We think and believe as the Old Lords of Thought command us; and Reason is ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... casting, he sometimes felt, a palpable chill on the fervour of the next quest. It was just this fervour that was threatened as, raising himself on his elbow, he stared at the foot of his bed. That his eyes refused to rest there for more than the fraction of an instant, may be taken—was, even then, taken by Keith Tantalus—as a hint of his recollection that after all the phenomenon wasn't to be singular. Thus the exact repetition, at the foot of Eva's bed, of the shape pendulous at the foot of his was hardly enough to account ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... an impulse that came through even that red fog of fury Parish Thornton turned his head and looked for the fraction of an instant down upon the gray roof and the green tree where the shadows lay lengthed in the valley—and in that half second of diverted gaze Rowlett launched himself like a charging bull, with head down to ram his adversary's solar plexus and with arms ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... remained relatively the same. The censor and the police continue to stifle the natural richness and the power of the Russian mind. To-day, as before, Russian literature is made up of just that small fraction of the whole ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... without noticing that the door was closed. Nobody was at home and she turned listlessly. When she reached the gate, she heard the clock beginning to strike, and with one hand on her breast she breathlessly listened, counting—"eight, nine, ten, eleven"—and her heart seemed to stop in the fraction of time that she waited for it to strike once more. But it was only eleven, and she went on down the road slowly, still thinking hard. The old miller was leaning back in a chair against the log side of the mill, with his dusty slouched ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... experiences of ourselves or somebody else. And of the rare individuals who leave the well-trod paths of thought to think new thoughts, only a minutely small percentage think right. This minutely small fraction represents genius, the one man in a million or rather ten million, or, to be more accurate, the one ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Creator—the Life of the universe. How can it be? How are we more than minutest points in that picture in his mind, which is the world? I speak in human metaphor, as one must speak. In truth, we are at once a fraction, a tiny fraction—oh! what a tiny fraction—of the picture, and the like little jot of what it exists for. And does what comes to us matter very much—whether we walk a little more or a little less cleanly—aim ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... of the others were. I have never served before, so have no means of comparing this with previous campaigns. I was often told by officers who had seen service against the Indians that, relatively to the size of the army, and the character of the country, we had only a small fraction of the transportation always used in the Indian campaigns. As far as my regiment was concerned, we certainly did not have one-third of the amount absolutely necessary, if it was to be kept in fair condition, and we had to partially make good the deficiency by the ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... but neither had he lost his temper. His vigilance had doubled and his whole frame seemed to be of steel springs. Blow after blow came crashing straight for him, but the alert Irishman evaded them by the merest fraction of an inch. Two fearful swings from Peavey Jo followed each other in rapid succession, both of which McGinnis avoided by stepping inside them, his right arm apparently swinging idly by his side. Then suddenly, at a third swing, he ran in to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... struggle with time, a ruthless antagonist whom she viewed with a personal enmity. Time must, would, of course, triumph in the end; but there would be no sign of her surrender in the meanwhile; she wouldn't bend an inch, relinquish by a fraction the pride and delicacy of her person. The skilful dyeing of her hair to its old absolute blackness, as natural and becoming in appearance as ever, was a symbol of her determination to cheat ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... government, always meeting the expenses of government, but at the same time taking as little as possible from the people. [Footnote: Some opponents of the single tax declare that the heaviest possible tax on land would yield only a fraction of the revenue needed to finance the government. Single taxers, however, maintain that the tax would yield more than enough revenue to meet public expenditures. The merits of ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... himself by the stars. Arriving at the place where he thought the camp ought to be, he was surprised to find no sign of it. Dismounting from his saddle, he was thinking of lying up for the night (rather than overshoot the mark) when a distant spark, for the fraction of a second, caught his eye. Jumping into the saddle again, he rode towards the place where the spark had flickered its brief moment, and there he found a sentry smoking a pipe. The red glow of the baccy in the ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... of great manly beauty nor of a refined exterior; he was not the man, in ordinary moods, to attract the eyes of the observer; but as he now stood in the doorway, he was marked so legibly with the extreme passion of terror that Challoner stood wonder-struck. For a fraction of a minute they gazed upon each other in silence; and then the man of the house, with ashen lips and gasping voice, inquired the business of his visitor. Challoner replied, in tones from which he strove to banish his surprise, that ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... proportions. Of these the most considerable are watery vapour and carbon dioxide; the former of these rarely amounts to one per cent of the weight of the air, considering the atmosphere as a whole, and the latter is never more than a small fraction of one per cent in amount. As a whole, the air envelope of the earth should be regarded as a mass of nitrogen and argon, which only rarely, under the influence of conditions which exist in the soil, enters into combinations with other elements ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Despatches, passionately long-winded, are exceedingly stiff reading to the like of us. O reader, what things have to be read and carefully forgotten; what mountains of dust and ashes are to be dug through, and tumbled down to Orcus, to disengage the smallest fraction of truly memorable! Well if, in ten cubic miles of dust and ashes, you discover the tongue of a shoe-buckle that has once belonged to a man in the least heroic; and wipe your brow, invoking the supernal and the infernal gods. My heart's desire is to compress these Strehlen Diplomatic horse-dealings ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Moxeys belonged entirely to the sphere in which he was at home. Hence a rather excessive politeness, such as the man who sets much store on breeding exhibits to those who may at any moment, even in a fraction of a syllable, prove themselves his inferiors. With men and women of the unmistakably lower orders, Buckland could converse in a genial tone that recommended him to their esteem; on the borderland of refinement, his sympathies were repressed, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Without the gift of sight there must always be (so I had been forced to decide) a black gaping hiatus which it seemed that no human power could fill. Of my helpers, till yesterday, Sadi was the only one who showed the least fraction of talent; yet even his best efforts could scarcely throw ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... therefore, "to make up in activity for lack of strength; to strike the enemy in detail, and overthrow his columns in succession. And the highest art of all is to compel him to disperse his army, and then to concentrate superior force against each fraction in turn." ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... place, tens of thousands—who knows it not?—lead sedentary and unwholesome lives, stooping, asphyxiated, employing as small a fraction of their bodies as of their minds. And all this in dwellings, workshops, what not?—the influences, the very atmosphere of which tend not to health, but to unhealth, and to drunkenness as a solace under the feeling of unhealth and depression. And that such ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of existing regulations, if it once got into shape, would I dare say be but a small fraction of that proposed by the "measures in contemplation." Still I do not like to join in unqualified resistance to interference in the affairs of the Established Colleges, with that generality of opposition to interference which the ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... once a woman. You who consult us in this imperfect way—you do not understand. You ask foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden. Much that we know and could impart in our speech is meaningless in yours. We must communicate with you through a stammering intelligence in that small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak. You think that we are of another world. No, we have knowledge of no world but yours, though for us it holds no sunlight, no warmth, no music, no laughter, no song of birds, nor any companionship. O God! what a thing it is ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... weight at the expense of comfort, but all possible saving would amount to but a mere fraction of one's loads. Supposing it were a grim struggle for existence and we were forced to drop everything but the barest necessities, the total saving on this three weeks' journey ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... himself suffered at the hands of Sextus. By this comparison he will find that conditions are not the same, but that all our advantages are more numerous and greater than theirs. And, in general, how large a part does Sicily form of the whole empire and how large a fraction of our equipment did the troops of Sextus possess, that any one should properly fear Caesar's armament, which is precisely the same as before and has grown neither larger nor better, just on account of his good luck, instead of taking courage ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... value, lost money. It is strange that the stock, after all, remained at a premium of one hundred per cent.; of course, the original proprietors gained one hundred per cent., and those who paid one hundred per cent. premium lost nothing. But these constituted a small fraction of the people who had speculated, and who paid from one hundred to nine hundred per cent. premium. Government, too, gained by reducing interest on irredeemable bonds from five to four per cent., although it lost the promised ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... is, a pair] of high-class Homers, properly mated, should average six pair of squabs per year. For one year our squabs averaged us a fraction over 60 cent per pair; say $3.60 has been the returns from each pair of breeders. It has cost us 90 cent per pair to feed for twelve months; remember, we buy in large quantities; it would cost the small breeder $1 a year per pair to feed. It would be well to allow 60 cent a pair for ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... woman with her quaint dignity of another decade failed to move; she did not unbend so much as the fraction of an inch. But hard upon the heels of Caleb's last words the boy went forward unhesitatingly. Hat in the hand that balanced his big steel trap, he stopped in front of her ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... almost all the publishers of London, many of whom were successful in launching one or two with or without the author's sanction. Thorpe seems to have taken particular care with Jonson's books, but none of Jonson's works fell into Thorpe's hands before 1605 or after 1608, a minute fraction of Jonson's literary life. It is significant that the author's dedication—the one certain mark of publication with the author's sanction—appears in only one of the three plays by Chapman that Thorpe issued, viz. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the look of my own person, since I grew to the stature of manhood, I have left wholly to the imagination of the reader. I will wager he knew long since what manner of man I was and has measured me to the fraction of an inch, and knows even the colour of my hair and eyes from having been so long in my company. If not—well, I shall have ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... than the desire to be closed with; the non-provision of bayonets was no careless omission on the part of their War department. During an assault the Commandants might set, as they often did, a splendid example of courage, but they could never rely on being followed to the end by more than a fraction of their men. The attack, therefore, of the Boers differed from that of a force of regulars in that it was never made in full strength, and was never pushed home; and from that of the Afghans, Afridis or ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... sent me to school, but I looked at the master, and saw that he was a smooth, round ferule—or an improper noun—or a vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars. He gave me all my schooling. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... one volunteers to go. To go, if you observe, would require that a man envelop himself thickly in asbestos or some similar non- conducting substance, leap boldly on the rapid Flies, and so be shot through the earth's atmosphere in two seconds and a fraction, carrying with him all the time in a non- conducting receiver the condensed air he needed, and landing quietly on B. M. by a precalculated orbit. At the bottom of our hearts I think we were all afraid. Some of us confessed to fear; others said, and said truly, that ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... of great extent. Its northern boundary is 95 miles long, its southern boundary 66, its eastern 45, and its western 102. This great area is to be taxed to construct a road which can, in the nature of things, be of advantage to but a fraction of it. There is no unity of interest or equality of advantage. It may very well be that a section of these lands along the line of the road, and especially town lots in Phoenix, would have an added value much greater than the increased burden imposed, but it is equally clear ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... jugum the area which a pair of oxen can plough in a day. The versus is one hundred feet square: the jugerum is the area containing two square actus: the actus quadratus or acnua, as it is called by the Latins, measuring 120 feet in width and as much in length.[66] The smallest fraction of a jugerum is called a scripulum and is ten feet square. From this base the surveyors some times call the butts of land which exceed a jugerum unciae (twelfths) or sextantes (seventy seconds) or some other such duodecimal division, for the jugerum contains ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... of Sir Redvers Buller and his men the Boers could destroy a considerable fraction of the British forces now in South Africa, their chance of prolonging the struggle would be greatly improved. These forces were in two groups. There was the small army of Sir George White in Natal, something more than fifteen ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... though, my darling! Such odds and ends! I cannot congratulate you upon your kindred, for I do not get on at all with these patchwork combinations, that are one-third man and the other two-thirds a vulgar fraction of bull or hawk or goat or serpent or ape or jackal or what not. Priapos is the only male myth who comes here in anything like the semblance of a complete human being: and I had infinitely rather ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... gave away my meat and bread, She has left me in spite of friends and church, She has carried with her all my shirts. Now ye who read this paper, Since she cut this reckless caper, I will not pay one single fraction For any debts of her contraction. LEVI ROCKWELL. East ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... to justify the act. On that occasion a second, or two seconds, signified, at least, two valuable lives, and a reasonable degree of prudence would justify a shot one or two seconds too soon rather than a fraction of a second too late. Upon our minds the evidence leaves no doubt whatever that the homicide was fully justified by the circumstances. Neagle on the scene of action, facing the party making a murderous assault, knowing by personal experience his physical ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... degree of variety, uniformity of organization was entirely lacking. As a rule, however, the borough was a close corporation, and the burgesses, or "freemen," in whom were vested peculiar trading and fiscal rights and an absolute monopoly of the powers of government, comprised but a small fraction of the general body of citizens. The governing authority of the borough was the town council, whose members were either elected by the freemen or recruited by co-optation. Government was regularly oligarchical and irresponsible; sometimes it was ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... its associations. The older memories came up but vaguely; an American finds it as hard to call back anything over two or three centuries old as a sucking-pump to draw up water from a depth of over thirty-three feet and a fraction. After this A—— went to a musical party, dined with the Vaughans, and had a ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Possibly it was the fraction of a second, but I had no knowledge of how long an interval had lapsed before I was myself again. There lay the Ghost, bow on to the beach, her splintered bowsprit projecting over the sand, her tangled spars rubbing against her side to the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... and dying out. So far from thinking the quality attributed to us a defect, I wish that those who complain of it were far more right than I much fear they are. Still, certainly, eager and violent action IS somewhat diminished, though only by a small fraction of what it ought to be. And I believe that this is in great part due, in England at least, to our government by discussion, which has fostered a general intellectual tone, a diffused disposition to weigh evidence, a conviction that much may ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... If he could handle a fraction of this great loan now—he could not possibly handle the whole of it, for he had not the necessary connections—he could add considerably to his reputation as a broker while making a tidy sum. How much could he handle? ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... necessary because a comparatively few persons out of an immense population have chosen to get up a civil war in order to protect and foster their slave-property, and the political power it confers. As this property is but a small fraction of the whole property of the country, and as its owners are not a hundredth part of the population of the country, does any sane man doubt that the slave-property will be relentlessly confiscated in order that the Slave Power may be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the fraction of a second. "It was Barker who was driving me to distraction. He knew that I was the woman in the taxicab. He really believes that I killed Mr. Warren. He has ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... secretly feels himself very wicked; knows not well what will come of it. Sauntering one day in his outer courts, he notices a certain female beggar; necessitous female of loose life, who tremulously solicits charity of him. Necessitous female gets some fraction of coin, but along with it bullying rebuke in very liberal measure; and goes away weeping bitterly, and murmuring about "want that drove me to those courses." Conrad retires into himself: "What is her real sin, perhaps, to mine?" Conrad "lies awake all that night;" mopes about, in intricate ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... He elevated his eyebrows the fraction of an inch. It was so politely contemptuous that I could almost ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... attendance, based on enrollment, is a fraction of 72 per cent. The loss is mostly to the rural children. Country people find it somewhat easier to provide employment for their children than do the people of our towns and cities, consequently the attendance in our city schools is larger and more regular, and a ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... goaded Dennison into giving up his name I should feel a brute for the rest of my existence. What I wanted to do was to prove that Ward was worth about ten of him, but it is very uphill work trying to convince a man that he is only a fraction of the fellow he thinks himself, I have often seen people going sorrowfully away ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... Laugh, but look to yourself: mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. It is a book which should, and doubtless will, attain a national popularity; but admirable, and, indeed, irresistible though it be in its way, it represents a very inconsiderable fraction of the author's real capacity. We shall hear of Eugene Field in regions of literature far above the aim and scope of these witty and waggish sketches. But as the wise orator wins his audience at the outset of his speech ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... moment for Mary, and a breathless one for all of them as she swung head downward over the tottering pile of china and glass ware. The china cupid was almost beyond her reach, but by a desperate effort she managed to swing a fraction of an inch nearer, and seizing its head in her mouth came ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to you and take some of my time with you away from me." Her eyes sparkled into his for the merest fraction of a second, and she laughed half mockingly. Then she dropped his lapel and they proceeded. She did not put the white rose in her ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... radicals but many moderate politicians were of opinion that the great number of convents of the contemplative orders formed an actual evil from the fact of their encouraging able-bodied idleness, and the withdrawal of so considerable a fraction of the population from the work and duties of citizenship. In the autumn of 1854, before the Crimean War was thought of, Rattazzi framed a bill by which the corporations that took no part in public instruction, preaching, or nursing the sick, were abolished. Since the last crisis ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... picked up the lantern, and a match that had been left handily near by. And so it took but a fraction of a minute for them to possess a light that ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... and asked us to pay it for her. That is the only explanation I can give of it. Sometimes she would ask to get a little meal; and as we did not have meal, we would tell her to go to anyone she liked and get it, and we would pay the party for it. I may say, at the same time, that I did not have a fraction upon that. There was no compact about in between me and the man who supplied her with the meal. We just paid her ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... exact adaptation of its organisation—including its instincts and habits—to its surroundings that it is enabled to live till it produces offspring which may take its place when it ceases to exist. We have seen also that, of the whole annual increase only a very small fraction survives; and though the survival in individual cases may sometimes be due rather to accident than to any real superiority, yet we cannot doubt that, in the long run, those survive which are best fitted by their perfect organisation to escape the dangers that surround them. This "survival ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the fraction of a second longer, as though perhaps expecting further reply, then turned on his heel ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... writing the lesson is clear. We have here demonstrably what we can find in other cases only inferentially, an intelligence manifesting itself continuously by written answers, of purport quite outside the normal subject's conscious mind, while yet that intelligence was but a part, a fraction, an aspect, of the normal subject's ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... very fine," the expert went on. "Of course I would have to use instruments to tell me if it is mathematically correct; and the weight, I imagine, is—is about six carats, perhaps a fraction more." ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... the reader with much about this period of my life. Dr. Collingwood Bruce, the father, by the way, of Mr. Justice Bruce, was then and long afterwards the most famous school master in the North of England, and under him I received that small fraction of my education which a man usually obtains during pupilage. Percy Street Academy, Newcastle, has long since disappeared, after having counted no inconsiderable proportion of the best-known residents among ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... caverns; and when of a sudden the wind agitates it or it be impelled by the clouds, and any slight disposition, on its part, supervenes to set itself in motion, or to break its bounds, and so little as even the minutest fraction does unexpectedly find an outlet, and happens to come across any spirit of perception and subtlety which may be at the time passing by, the spirit of right does not yield to the spirit of evil, and the spirit of evil is again envious ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... represented special cases. There was, of course, little Mr. Spillikins, with his vacuous face and football hair, who was there, as everybody knew, on account of Dulphemia; and there was old Judge Longerstill, who sat leaning on a gold-headed stick with his head sideways, trying to hear some fraction of what was being said. He came to the gathering in the hope that it would prove a likely place for seconding a vote of thanks and saying a few words—half an hour's talk, perhaps—on the constitution of the United States. Failing that, he felt sure that at least someone would call him "this ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... grotesque bow with a cold stateliness for which Leslie felt that he could have hugged her; and then, seeing that the man would not be denied, she allowed her hand to rest in his for just the barest fraction of a second. As Leslie approached, he heard Potter anxiously inquiring after her welfare, and doing the honours of his ship generally, with a ludicrous affectation of manner that amused him greatly, and even brought the ghost of a smile to ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... force lifted me from the floor and propelled me toward the half shattered door. Dimly I noted that the same thing had happened to Hawkins. For the tiniest fraction of a second he seemed to be floating horizontally in the air. Then I felt my head collide with wood; the door parted, and I shot through ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... soul's temperature by the thermometer of public deed or word. Yet the great sun himself, when he pours his noonday beams upon some vast hyaline boulder, rent from the eternal ice-quarries, and floating toward the tropics, never warms it a fraction above the thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit that marked the moment when the first drop trickled down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... a lead. During the last epidemic, a Terran scientist discovered a blood fraction containing antibodies against the fever—in the trailmen. Isolated to a serum, it might reduce the virulent 48-year epidemic form to the mild form again. Unfortunately, he died himself in the epidemic, without finishing his work, and ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... would still be both pleasure and use in games; they are vitally essential to human life. In a society of two sexes, wherein one has dictated all the terms of life, and the other has been confined to an extremely limited fraction of human living, we may look to see this great field ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... been voted without debate at the very close of the session. Years afterwards Morse declared that this was the turning-point in the history of the telegraph. 'My personal funds,' he wrote,' were reduced to the fraction of a dollar; and had the passage of the Bill failed from any cause, there would have been little prospect of another attempt on my part to introduce to the world my ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... half-crown reviews and devoted poultry farms to your sole support. And instead you have been narrowed down to this sordid back-street tragedy, a mere offence, tempting a struggling tradesman to risk the honour of my patronage of his books, for a paltry fraction of a pennyworth of profit. Why, I ask you, were you not hatched? Was it lack of courage? a fear of the unknown dangers that ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... a ministry as three years presents some difficulties, for all that is told us in the four gospels would cover but a small fraction of this time. John's statement (xx. 30) that he omitted many things from Jesus' life in making his book is evidently true of all the evangelists, and long gaps, such as are evident in the fourth gospel, must be assumed in the other three. Recalling the character of the gospels as pictures ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... ranchers were rapidly becoming interested in the business end of their venture, as they had been, for some time, in the more picturesque side. The difference of a fraction of a cent in the price of cattle on the hoof meant the difference of several hundred of dollars where there were many tons of meat ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... as grammar shows a sympathetic fraction then the time to elope is the same as richness. Any letter shows that. A mingling of not drinking is sweeter. There is no dust. There was a time when all the teeth that were were so expressed that some effect was bitten and yet morally, and ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... back was turned toward him, and the quarter-breed noticed that, as he talked, he leaned upon his rifle. It was a chance in a thousand. Never before had he caught MacNair unprepared—and the man's blood would be upon his own head. Drawing the revolver from its holster, he timed his movements to the fraction of a second; and deliberately snapped a twig, MacNair whirled like a flash, and Lapierre fired. His bullet went an inch too high, and when Chloe insisted upon carrying the wounded man to the school, ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... were divided into three orders, differing in legal rights. These were the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons, or Third Estate. The first two, which are commonly spoken of as the privileged orders, contained but a small fraction of the population numerically, but their wealth and position ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... of her present part. Like Allan Wayworth she found her encouraging only by fits, for she had fine flashes of badness. She was intelligent, but she cried aloud for training, and the training was so absent that the intelligence had only a fraction of its effect. She was like a knife without an edge—good steel that had never been sharpened; she hacked away at her hard dramatic loaf, she ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... more quickly than the previous morning had done. Mollie and Grannie worked hard at the jig-saw puzzle, and, without breaking her word by the smallest fraction, Mollie contrived to get a considerable amount of information about Australia from Grannie. Not, of course, that she was totally ignorant on the subject of our Australian colonies, but her knowledge was vague, and her interest before this time had been so faint that ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... the other former Soviet republics continued to decline, and support for the ruble as a common currency eroded in the face of Moscow's loose monetary policies and rapidly rising prices throughout the region. At the same time, Russia paid only a fraction of the $20 billion due on the former USSR's roughly $80 billion debt; debt rescheduling remained hung up because of a dispute between Russia and Ukraine over division of the former USSR's assets. Capital flight also ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... community. They divided the property in 1860, when one faction continued the community with its share. In 1861 this party also broke up, separating into three divisions. In 1862 these again divided the property after numerous lawsuits. A small fraction, I believe, still continues a community on the ruins. In this community the families lived separately, but ate all together. They had no president or single head, the business being transacted by a board of trustees. Their religion was their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... creating, swallowing—itself.'[9] Again, on the other side, he sets his face just as firmly against the excessive pretensions and unwarranted certitudes of the physicist. 'The course of Nature's phases on this our little fraction of a Planet is partially known to us: but who knows what deeper courses these depend on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident may have become familiar; but does the Minnow understand ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... it all meant, but knowin' didn't give me any great satesfaction, since I believed that in another minit the cyprus mout cave in too! I didn't stay the ten thousanth fraction o' a minit. I hurried to get back to the groun'; an' soon reached the place whar the grape-vine joined on to the cyprus. Thur warn't no grape-vine to be seen. It war clear gone! The tother tree to which its roots had been clingin' had gone into the river, takin' the fox-grape along wi' it. It war ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... rigidity of the enforcement of the law may account in some measure for this disparity. Let us then take the city of Washington, one-third of whose population are Negroes, and compare its police reports with those of Boston, whose Negro element is a negligible fraction. It will be conceded, I think, that the enforcement of law in both cities is rigid. The major of police for the District of Columbia, in his last report remarks: "Those familiar with the conduct of police affairs in this country generally contend that ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... sooner than let any cash of mine make her a fraction of a feather-weight the heavier, I'd outbeggar a beggar. By gad, she shan't give me the laugh in this world, never! My mind's made up—I'll count out every bit of that gold ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... may be ordered and as shall appear necessary, in this manner. The Indians living at Manila, inasmuch as they have more property and money, will give one or two pesos per house; and those more remote the half or third part of that sum, or the fraction that shall seem advisable, inasmuch as they are less established and are very poor. This sum shall be collected and placed in one depository, which shall be in common for all the islands, and shall be in charge ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... human race alone. It does not,—no more than the United States belong to Rhode Island. Human life is not a ten-thousand-millionth of the life on the planet, nor the race of men more than an infinitesimal fraction of the creatures which it nourishes. A swarm of summer flies on a field of clover, or the grasshoppers in a patch of stubble, outnumber the men that have lived since Adam. And yet we assume the dignity of lords and masters of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... mighty, is sometimes quite negligible. The most amazing mental illuminations may occupy only the fraction of a second. A light flashes and is ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Pope's advance, his army would not have been withdrawn. [Footnote: Id., vol. xi. pt. iii. p. 342.] He was then nearly twice as strong as Lee, but he did not venture even upon a forced reconnoissance. The situation of the previous year was repeated. He was allowing himself to be besieged by a fraction of his own force. Grant would have put himself into the relation to McClellan which he sustained to Meade in 1864, and would have infused his own energy into the army. Halleck did not do this. It would seem that he had become conscious of his own lack of nerve ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... silver from the surface of a pond or lake. Flocks of goats and fat-tailed sheep drifted up the valley, and now and then a herd of cattle massed themselves in moving patches on the hillsides. But they are only a fraction of the numbers which this ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... Tuvalu began deriving revenue from use of its area code for "900" lines and in 2000, from the lease of its ".tv" Internet domain name. Royalties from these new technology sources could raise GDP substantially over the next decade. With merchandise exports only a fraction of merchandise imports, continued reliance must be placed on fishing and telecommunications license fees, remittances from overseas workers, official transfers, and investment ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... but where are the doctors to conduct them? Here again, foreign doctors can fill the need of the merest fraction of India's suffering womankind. But the American doctor can multiply herself in just one way. Give her a Medical College, well equipped and staffed, and a body of Indian girls with a sufficient background of general education, and instead ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... corner of his trade cloth, under which, if he were ready to deal seriously, his hidden hand would meet that of the buyer, so that by finger pressure alone they could agree or disagree on price. But such boring sessions were part of Trade and Dane, keeping a fraction of attention on the speeches and "drinkings-together," watched those around him with an eye which tried to assess and classify what ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... "you've done it. I had it on the tip of my tongue, and now it has gone back for ever into the limbo of forgotten things, and all because you couldn't keep silent for the least little fraction of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... white; a gasp burst from all four. Then as if sent from the Gods of Justice a shot rang out, and Vandersee still stood. Those who had watched closely only saw Leyden's weapon fly from his hand simultaneously with a sharp jet of fire somewhere in the boat alongside; the report came a fraction of time later, and then, curling lazily up from Houten's great, ham-like hand, was a tiny wreath of smoke. The huge trader moved not an inch; his face altered not a bit; immovable as a statue, unruffled ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... means to quit the island made their way home as best they could. To conclude the business, the Leander was sold by order of the courts, and the few poor fellows who had remained by her received a small share of the proceeds. Nobody else was paid the smallest fraction of the sums the General ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... awkwardly, and for a fraction of a second he changed countenance under Steinmetz's ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... was between them, and it went over with a crash. Quick as he was, Varney was barely in time. His hand fell upon the reporter's coat when another fraction of a second would have been too late. Then he flung backward with a wrench, and Hammerton came toppling heavily ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to deal with the sun's motion through space, we shall see that this distance only represents a fraction of the sun's orbit, as it can be philosophically proved, that if the sun moves at all, it, too, obeys Kepler's Laws; and therefore, according to his First Law, it also describes and possesses an orbit of its own. So that by the time the earth has made its annual revolution ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... I found I had still eight hundred and ten cash in hand; and I knew that the hong-boat fare to Kia-hing Fu was one hundred and twenty cash, and thence to Shanghai three hundred and sixty, leaving me just three hundred and thirty cash—or twelve pence and a fraction—for three or four days provisions. I went at once to the boat office, but to my dismay found that from the dry state of the river goods had not come down, so that no boat would leave to-day and perhaps none to-morrow. I inquired if there were no letter-boats for Kia-hing Fu, and was told that they ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... tell who moved first, or who first made the suggestion, for the minds of all were the same, and the general purpose was instantaneous; but in the fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace, was on his hands and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful, but not interfering, the master of the troopers saw him set adrift in a canoe without a paddle, while he was pelted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sailing the whole circle, only 00 deg. 11' of longitude easterly; and as I had kept Brockbank's watch going the whole time, I examined its error also: I have already mentioned that it was, upon our arrival in Table-Bay, 3 deg. 01' eastward; but upon our return to this place, it was correct to the fraction of a second; so that whatever its errors might have been during the voyage, it had none upon our arrival. I did not keep the account of longitude by it, but every day, when the sun could be seen, I determined our place by the time-keeper; in doing which, ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... head—Bobby never lost his head in an emergency. He thought of everything. He feared there was not time to reload, but it was the only thing to do. As he ran he drew two shells, loaded with ball, from his pocket. For the fraction of a minute he halted, "broke" his gun, dropped the shells into place, snapped the gun back and threw it to his shoulder, but in the brief interval that had elapsed the bear and Jimmy had so far gained upon him that the distance between him and the bear loomed ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... past six o'clock, the barometer showed an elevation of 26,400 feet, or five miles to a fraction. The prospect seemed unbounded. Indeed, it is very easily calculated by means of spherical geometry, what a great extent of the earth's area I beheld. The convex surface of any segment of a sphere is, to the entire surface ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... class of perhaps some ten to twenty thousand families the difference would be very noticeable indeed. The pirate newcomers, though insignificant in number compared with the total population, were a very large fraction added to so small a body. The additional blood, though numerically a small proportion, permeated rapidly throughout the whole community. Scandinavian names and habits may have had at first some little effect ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... cessation was never twice in a week at the same spot; and Sabre found great interest in seeing every day exactly where it would be, and by intense wriggling of his front wheel and prodigious feats of balancing, squeezing out of the machine's momentum the last possible fraction of an inch. There was a magnificent distance record when, on one single occasion only, he had been deposited plumb in line with his own gate; and there was a divertingly lamentable shortage record, touched on more than one ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... as hot as the steam which enters it, of that which he enunciated relative to the advantage of expanding steam, and of that affecting the regulation of the machine; have reduced the costs of steam and of fuel to a small fraction of their earlier magnitude. One ton of engine to-day does the work of eight or ten in the time of Watt: one pound of fuel or of steam gives to-day ten times the power then obtained from it. A steamship now crosses the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... of a small fraction of the Nigerian left; leftist leaders are prominent in the country's central labor organization but have little influence on ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... moments and their concomitant changes of countenance that you paid your money. To taste the triumph of good marksmanship was only a fraction of your joy; the greater part of it consisted in liberating a little prisoner and setting in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... rustling under busy fingers, two stealthy glances were sent out like antennae among the pews and on the indifferent and absorbed occupants, and drew timidly nearer to the straight line between Archie and Christina. They met, they lingered together for the least fraction of time, and that was enough. A charge as of electricity passed through Christina, and behold! the leaf of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Villiers promptly. "No poet, and indeed no author whatsoever, who lays claim to a fraction of conscience, writes for money ONLY. Those with whom money is the first consideration debase their Art into a coarse huckstering trade, and are no better than contentious bakers and cheesemongers, who jostle each ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Her finger did not stretch a fraction of an inch—but the rose was nearer. For the bird that still sang invisibly had fluttered into view and perched itself deliberately upon the prickly branch. It lowered the rose towards the human hands. It hopped upon the twig. Its weight dropped the prize—almost ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... "coincidences," but be what they may, I give them as facts coming under my own eyes, and facts of the same nature came to the knowledge of hundreds and thousands of soldiers during every campaign, which none endeavor to explain, other than the facts themselves. But as the soldier is nothing more than a small fraction of the whole of a great machine, so much happens that he cannot fathom nor explain, that it naturally makes a great number of soldiers, like the sailor, somewhat superstitious. But when we speak of moral courage, where is there a courage more sublime than the ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... fragment which came into his possession dwindled into a fraction of its former value, and he found himself With a wife and four children—two sons and two daughters—struggling on a pittance of two hundred a year. This, to a man possessing the feelings and education of a gentleman, amounted to something ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... before Phorenice came out to me again, and I could not help feeling some grim amusement at the face of the merchant who followed. The fellow was clearly ruined. He had a store of jewels and gauds of the most costly kind, which were only in fraction his own, seeing that he had bought them (as the custom is) in partnership with other merchants. These had pleased Phorenice's eye, and so she had taken all and disposed them ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... more trustworthy, the principle already established in British social polity by Sir William Vernon Harcourt's Death Duties, the principle of whittling great properties at each transfer, might be very materially extended. Every transfer of property might establish a state mortgage for some fraction of the value of that property. The fraction might be small when the recipient was a public institution, considerable in the case of a son or daughter, and almost all for a distant relative or no kindred at all. By such devices the evil influence of ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... perplexity of the events of this world, and calculated to call forth the very same meditation in the minds of the spectators. This enigmatical work resembles those irrational equations in which a fraction of unknown magnitude always remains, that will in no way admit of solution. Much has been said, much written, on this piece, and yet no thinking head who anew expresses himself on it, will (in his view of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... to read the last line of this card at a distance of ten feet. This conclusion is not a guess, but is based upon the examination of thousands of eyes. In making the test, the number of feet the eye ought to see is written as the denominator of the fraction; the distance the eye can see clearly is the numerator. If the child's card reads, "Right eye 10/10, left eye 10/20," it means that the right eye sees without conscious strain the distance it is intended to see, while the left eye must be within ten feet to ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... of quick decisions. He snapped to the blank-faced guard who had assimilated only a fraction of all this, "Go on back to the boys and tell them to start packing to get out of here. Tell them the fix has chilled. It's all off. I'll be there in ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... to submit. In 1755-56 Ahmad Shah plundered Delhi and then retired, leaving his son, Timur, to represent him at Lahore. Meanwhile the Sikhs had been gathering strength. Then, as now, they formed only a fraction of the population. But they were united by a strong hatred of Muhammadan rule, and in the disorganized state of the country even the loose organization described below made them formidable. Owing to the weakness of the government the Panjab became dotted over with forts, ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... recognition of it in gifts of supernatural power. And this vast number is but a selection; the editors chose only out of the mass before them what was most noteworthy and trustworthy, and what was of catholic rather than of national interest. It is no more than a fraction of that singular mythology which for so many ages delighted the Christian world, which is still held in external reverence among the Romanists, and of which the modern historians, provoked by its feeble supernaturalism, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... rather been in controversy with his Predecessor), and thrown back to nearly his old position; where, without any regard had to his real talents and merits, he continued thirteen years, under the title of Consistorial Kanzlist; and, with the miserablest fraction of yearly pay, 'carried on the slavish, spirit-killing labours required of him.' In 1776,—uncertain whether as promotion or as mere abridgment of labour,—he was placed in the Library as now; that is to say, had become Sub-Librarian, at a salary of about 15l., with all the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the "fractions" have been converted to a one-line citation, e.g., Rom. III, v, 25 (signifying Act III, scene v, line 25). Where the original does not use the fraction format, the citation style has not ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... self-preservation, while motherhood is its basic necessity. When public opinion is educated in the essentials of eugenics much of this can be, and will be diverted to a nobler purpose. The total cost necessary to ensure the adequate care of dependent [19] motherhood would be a mere fraction of the national expenditure, and not a tithe of what we spend in pension allowances yearly. The latter is regarded as an honorable debt and is at best the direct product of a decadent ideal, while motherhood constitutes the very germ of the only altruistic ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... one-two hundred thousandth part of a geologic period. The time elapsed since the dawn of civilization is less than a three-thousandth part. Of the days and hours of this geologic year, our historic records cover but two or three minutes, our individual lives but a fraction of a second. We must not expect to find records of its changing seasons in human history, still less to observe ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew |
