"Inefficient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dropped from his knees. He nodded, took the pipe from his mouth, lay back comfortably, and went to sleep. Major Kent satisfied himself that the English navy, though in some ways the best in the world, was in other respects inefficient and utterly useless as a national defence. Then, at about ten o'clock, he too went asleep. A few minutes later he began to snore, and the noise he made woke Meldon. He felt for his pipe, filled and lit it. He sat gazing at Major Kent for a quarter of an hour, then ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... point out what, in my humble opinion appears to be the only efficient remedy, namely, the education of the infant poor. It may not be amiss, however, to glance at the means which have heretofore been employed, and found, though productive of some good, inefficient for ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... unions has not been specially acquired, but follows as an incidental result from the sexual elements of the two or three forms having been adapted to act on one another in a particular manner, so that any other kind of union is inefficient, like that between distinct species. Another and still more remarkable incidental result is that the seedlings from an illegitimate union are often dwarfed and more or less or completely barren, like hybrids from the union of ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... they imply, at most, a wish to see all men start fair in the race of life, the only advantages allowed being not those of rank or station, but solely of innate capacity. And the reason the Socialist desires this is, because he believes, rightly or wrongly, that many inefficient men are, at present, only artificially protected from betraying their inefficiency; and that many efficient men are only artificially prevented from showing their efficiency; and that the fair start he proposes would not result in keeping all men on a dead level, but ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... mode of discharge. Powder is poured in, the end knocked on the ground, and the slug with another knock sent on the powder, without either ramming or cartridge. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any weapon more rude, awkward, or inefficient. ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... but was, on the contrary, of a dull blue colour, marked with ten millions of meandering lines, which showed how anxiously the metal had been welded by the armourer. Wielding this weapon, apparently so inefficient when compared to that of Richard, the Soldan stood resting his weight upon his left foot, which was slightly advanced; he balanced himself a little as if to steady his aim, then, stepping at once forward, drew the scimitar across the cushion, applying the edge so dexterously and with so little apparent ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... College had been hopelessly inefficient in its system of training, if I am justified in forming such an opinion from specimens produced by it, who had the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam. There was also a close corporation among the officers ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... hand, he undertook to correct faults of administration as well as inefficient methods of execution, demonstrating to each manager the cash value to the Consolidated Companies of this close co-operation with his workmen. It was shown that greater product was to be obtained from workmen who performed their tasks under conditions which tended to make them happy and ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the Padre, felt alike by Englishmen and Hindoos, was inestimable in procuring and carrying out regulations for the temporal prosperity of the peasantry at Tanjore, under the Board which had pretty well taken the authority out of the hands of the inefficient and violent Ameer Singh. Districts that, partly from misery, had become full of thieves, were brought into order, and the thieves themselves often became hopeful converts, and endured a good deal of persecution from their heathen ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the capitalist] is high or low. The reverse of this would be oftener the truth: the cost of labor is frequently at its highest where wages are lowest. This may arise from two causes. (1.) In the first place, the labor, though cheap, may be inefficient. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... sub-lieutenant; Silz is an officer good for the open field, but not suited for a war that needs a man of expedients; Cathelineau is a simple teamster; Stofflet is a crafty game-keeper; Berard is inefficient; Boulainvillers is absurd; Charette is horrible. I make no mention of Gaston the barber. Mordemonbleu! what is the use of opposing revolution, and what is the difference between ourselves and the republicans, if we set barbers over the heads of noblemen! The fact is, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... impatience of the idea of Devachan arises from the delusion that fussing about in gross matter is the only real activity. Whereas, in truth, all effective action has its source in deep meditation, and out of the Silence comes ever the creative Word. Action on this plane would be less feeble and inefficient if it were the mere blossom of the profound root of meditation, and if the Soul embodied passed oftener out of the body into Devachan during earth-life, there would be less foolish action and consequent waste of time. For Devachan is a state of consciousness, the consciousness ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... astonished one morning by my application for a tooth-brush. Such a thing was never seen or heard of in a prison. I was obliged therefore to use my middle finger, which I found a very inefficient substitute. Another difficulty arose on the shirt question. The prisoners are allowed a clean outer shirt every week, and a clean inner shirt every fortnight. I explained that I would prefer the order reversed, but was told that I could not be accommodated. But I persisted. I wearied ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... public outside. When the office-holders begin to see themselves,—or rather when the outsiders, the chiefs, and the subordinates all begin to see the same facts, the same damning facts if you like, the obstruction will diminish. The reformer's opinion that a certain bureau is inefficient is just his opinion, not so good an opinion in the eyes of the bureau, as its own. But let the work of that bureau be analysed and recorded, and then compared with other bureaus and with private corporations, and the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... Maestricht in 1632. He was supported, in these last operations, by Louis XIII, who, prompted by Richelieu, took this opportunity of humiliating the Hapsburg dynasty. The Spanish commander, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, proved so inefficient that some Belgian patriots tried to take matters into their own hands and to deliver their country from a foreign domination which was so fatal to its interests. It soon became clear, however, that any step taken against Spain would ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... well as ungenerous, competition. Clearly the bulk of the shame lies with the shareholders, who encourage opposition for the sake of increasing their own dividends at the expense of their neighbours, and who insist on economy in directions which render the line inefficient—to the endangering of their own lives as well as those of the public. Economy in the matter of railway servants—in other words, their reduction in numbers—necessitates increase of working hours, which, beyond a certain point, implies inefficiency and danger. But the general public are ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... with modern languages, and that when we come to more ancient periods, we should always infer similar causes from similar effects, and never admit new forces or new processes, except when those which we know prove totally inefficient. In my own Lectures I had laid it down as one of the fundamental principles of the Science of Language that "what is real in modern formations must be admitted as possible in ancient formations, and that ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... nowadays—excitable people talk of it as though it was the most monstrous and singular of vices instead of a slightly debasing but almost unavoidable and very obvious result of heaping boys together under the inefficient control of a timid pretentious class of men—of such uncleanness as I say, scarcely more than a glimpse and a whisper and a vague tentative talk or so reached me. Little more will reach you, for that kind of thing, like the hells of ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... has the right and power to organize and control the economic system, comprehending in that term the production and distribution of all social wealth, wherever private enterprise is dangerous to the social well-being, or is inefficient; the defense of the community from invasion, from fire, flood, famine, or disease; the relations with other states, such as trade agreements, boundary treaties, and the like; the maintenance of order, including the juridical ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... too, for keeping these discordant elements in check were ludicrously inefficient. The whole military establishment during the greater part of this century consisted of some 80 archers, and about 40 "spears;" the whole revenue amounted to a few hundred pounds per annum. The Parliament was a small and irregular body of barons and knights of the shires, with a few burgesses, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... that kind has been long since considered," was the answer. "Our alliances have all failed; and we are now reproached, not simply with the folly of paying for inefficient help, but with the cruelty of dragging the states of Europe into a contest, where to be crushed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... husbandless and its children left fatherless; I had seen what was once a Garden of the Lord turned into a land of desolation; and I had seen its people—a people whom I, like the rest of the world, had always thought of as pleasure-loving, inefficient, easy-going—I had seen this people, I say, aroused, resourceful, unafraid, and fighting, fighting, fighting. Do you wonder that they captured my imagination, that they won my admiration? I am pro-Belgian; I admit ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... with policy, a foe that is disregarded and neglected, being all along unsubdued at heart, smites at the proper season, especially when the enemy makes a false step. By employing trusted agents of his own, such a foe would also render the other's forces inefficient by producing disunion. Ascertaining the beginning, the middle and the end of his foes,[309] a king should in secret cherish feelings of hostility towards them. He should corrupt the forces of his foe, ascertaining everything by positive proof, using the arts of producing disunion, making gifts, and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... administration, account for 48% of GDP and employ nearly 20% of the labor force. Basic problems facing the economy include a high population growth rate, a high unemployment rate, a lack of basic services, a large and inefficient public sector, and an export sector dependent mostly on coffee and bananas, which are subject ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... and carnivorous in nothing; he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre. A Mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches long, would probably find them alone inefficient to hold even a hare. After every subterfuge of gluttony, the bull must be degraded into the ox, and the ram into the wether, by an unnatural and inhuman operation, that the flaccid fibre may offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... precisely in those matters in which they most resent interference. It may be illogical for men to accept cheerfully unpardonable public scandals, benighted educational systems, bad sanitation, bad lighting, a blundering and inefficient system of life, and yet to resent the tearing up of a telegram or a post-card; but the fact remains that the sensitiveness of men is a strange and localised thing, and there is hardly a man in the world who would not rather be ruled by despots chosen by lot and live in a city like a mediaeval ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... in these words. "We will have no share in a traffic, consisting in rapine, blood, and murder." He then took a survey of a system of duties progressively increasing, and showed, that it would be utterly inefficient; and that there was no real remedy for the different evils complained of, but in the immediate prohibition ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... been to import only Christian negroes, this provision of the law had been easily and persistently evaded, under the leniency and indifference of the authorities, who connived at such profitable violation. It was contended that the labour problem in the colonies admitted of no other solution; the inefficient Indians were rapidly disappearing, of white labour there was none, and, to respond to the demand for labourers, the Dominican Order, in 1510, sanctioned the importation of negroes direct from ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... that he was of a virtuous and austere renown—that he wrote a great number of verses, as little durable as his laws [98]. As for the latter—when we learn that they were stern and bloody beyond precedent—we have little difficulty in believing that they were inefficient. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... non-supporter has less courage, initiative and aggressiveness than the deserter. "He is less deliberately cruel—for at least he 'sticks around.'" He has not the roving disposition, but is apt to be intemperate and industrially inefficient as compared with the deserter. Often the married vagabond, as he has been called, is a "home-loving man who simply shirks responsibility and dislikes effort." He may "sometimes feel parental responsibility even though he does not support," ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... that sooner or later he is doomed to go down." His uncle knew, then, that sooner or later discovery must come? He had talked about having tried to do his duty and wanted his nephew to believe it no matter what happened. But, as Cristy had pointed out, new brooms had time to become worn and inefficient in twelve years of use. His uncle had been talking in the past tense! He had tried to do what he thought was his duty—at first, when he swept into politics, inspired by the victory over the Rives crowd. Twelve years ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... could possibly effect or devise under the circumstances which prompted me to think or act; and it grieved me that I was unable to afford the slightest assistance to the young Count of Riverola. But I dare not wait longer in Italy; and I was convinced that the authorities in Florence were too inefficient to root out the horde of banditti, even had I explained to them the clew which I myself obtained to the stronghold of those miscreants. I accordingly quitted Florence in the afternoon of the day following the numerous arrests which I have mentioned; ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Dewey of Our Day," which was drunk sitting, the guests rising from their recumbent postures in honor of it. The chairman's opening address was almost wholly a plea for the enlargement of the Athenian navy: the implication that the republic had been saved, in spite of its inefficient armament, was accepted as the finest possible compliment to the guest of the evening. The note of all the other speeches was their exquisite impersonality. They got further and further from the occasion of ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... unlike many civil rights advocates he seemed willing to pay the price of slow progress to obtain lasting improvement. According to those who knew him, Hastie was confident that he could demonstrate to War Department officials that the Army's racial policies were both inefficient and unpatriotic.[2-5] ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... rich ones had other means, and the poor ones could not get the loan, and may have had the remains of subscriptions. The Commissioners had much difficulty in getting the accounts from committees; the clerks in rural districts were, for the most part, totally inefficient, and the weekly stipend of twenty-one shillings was not sufficient to induce any person accustomed to keep accounts to quit the towns and undertake ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... miserably under a tent, until the surveyor-general should be able to point out to him the land which had fallen to his share, in the general lottery of the Government. In many cases this was not done for one or two years after the formation of the colony, in consequence of the lamentably inefficient force placed at the disposal of the able and indefatigable surveyor-general; and even then, the boundaries of the different allotments were not permanently defined. This state of incertitude had the most fatal effect, not only upon the fortunes, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... between the armies, the Lacedaemonians drew up their cavalry before their main body and the Thebans drew up theirs over against them; but the cavalry of the Thebans had been exercised in wars with the Orchomenians and Thespians, while that of the Lacedaemonians was at that time in a very inefficient condition; for the richest men maintained the horses, and, when notice of an expedition was given, the men appointed came to ride them, and each taking his horse, and whatever arms were given him, proceeded at once to the field; and thus the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... the barn. He could hear loud talking in the saloon opposite and thought he could distinguish Cheyenne's voice. Bartley wondered what would happen in there, and when things would begin to pop, if there was to be any popping. He felt foolishly helpless and inefficient—rather a poor excuse for a partner, just then. Yet there was that husky rider, back there in the straw. He was even more helpless and inefficient. Bartley ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... his men to stand still and keep their ground; when they came within reach, to throw their javelins, then use their swords, and, joining their shields, force them back; pointing out to them that the steepness of the ground would render the enemy's blows inefficient, nor could their shields be kept close together, the inequality of the ground hindering ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... war. William had difficulties to encounter in his new kingdom. Its people cared little for his Continental aims and gave him little loyalty of service. In fact, peculation among public officials was so widespread that, despite large expenditures of money, England had only a most feeble, inefficient army in the field, and William was in black disgust against his new subjects. It was partly to aid the Government in its financial straits that the Bank of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... industrially inefficient are often of subnormal intelligence has already been demonstrated in a number of psychological investigations. Of 150 "hoboes" tested under the direction of the writer by Mr. Knollin, at least 15 per cent belonged to the moron grade of mental deficiency, and almost as many more ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... shall know in three days' time about the charge of lese majeste. In that case he is at a disadvantage from the hatred entertained by all classes for him; witnesses against him as damaging as can be: accusers in the highest degree inefficient: the panel of jurors of varied character: the president a man of weight and decision—Alfius: Pompey active in soliciting the jurors on his behalf. What the result will be I don't know; I don't see, however, how he can maintain ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... as her first crew were those who had helped to form her model. During succeeding generations inefficient hands were occasionally shipped to take the place of worn-out members of the original crew. Often the vessel was put out of her course to serve the personal ends of this or that sailor, and ere long mutiny broke out among her passengers, headed by John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. Finally, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... to be proportioned to its means. If individuals do not compete, the whole society has, presumably, to compete with other societies; and, in every case whatever, with the general forces of nature. An indolent and inefficient majority might decide, if it pleased, that the amount of work to be exacted should be that which would be just enough to provide the simplest material necessities. If, again, the indolent and inefficient are to exist at all,—and we ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... debating whether they should yield to the demand of the Russian troops, and give up the town without any defence, or, with twelve hundred garrison troops, two rusty cannon, a few thousand wounded soldiers, and an inefficient body of citizens, give battle to the twelve thousand irregular troops of General Tottleben, who would soon he reenforced by the army of General Tschernitscheff, twenty thousand strong, and fourteen thousand Austrians under Count Lacy, who, as they well knew, were coming on by forced ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... dramatic representation; to criticise the absurd system pursued by the physicians, abuses of subordinate officers of justice, the follies of false pretenders to philosophy, the disorders and corruptions which swarm in every department of a despotic and inefficient government, the multitude of sharpers and robbers in the towns and highways, the subterranean habitations in which they found shelter and security, the ingenuity of their frauds, and daring outrages of their violence—in short, to hold up every species ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... to go homewards, would have been thrown upon the enemy, and with as much more of ruinous effect as the distance was greater. As it never was alleged that the cantonments were meant for the overawing of Cabool, and in effect they were totally inefficient as regarded that city—it is clear that the one great advantage by which the Affghans accomplished our destruction, was coolly prepared for them by ourselves, without the shadow of any momentary benefit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... where he received his education. It was easily come by, but he was of opinion that if he had not had it, "if I had been brought up a milksop, with a nurserymaid everlastingly at my heels, I should have been this day as great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any of those frivolous idiots that are turned out from Winchester and Westminster School, or from any of those dens of dunces called Colleges and Universities." The spot is a sandy bank above the Bourne, a little stream, dry in summer, which runs a mile south of Farnham, from ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... destruction would be the gravest mistake that you could possibly make; for we, who are natives of the greatest fighting nation that the world has ever known, can teach you much in the art of war, your knowledge of which is of the slightest. Your weapons are poor and inefficient, and you know nothing of strategy and generalship; but we can instruct you in those important matters, and also teach you how to make new and powerful weapons, by means of which you will be able effectually to subjugate the nations which now ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... to him his lips were making words out of wood, and that the words were fatuously inefficient compared with what he should have said, or acted, under ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... neighbor and particularly at the moment when the United States must be free to face European complications. But the Mexican crisis proved definitely the weakness of the military system. Though the regulars who accompanied Pershing proved their worth, the clumsy inefficient mobilization of the National Guard, on the other hand, indicated as plainly as possible the lack ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... wherein the women had concealed themselves. The boughs of the vine-maple, together with other slender shrubs constituting the underbrush, had been rudely woven together, forming, at best, but a very inefficient shelter from the wind, which swept in freezing currents through the valley. Had it rained, they must soon have been drenched, or if snow had fallen heavily, the 'wickey' house and its occupants soon would have been buried. How had they existed? This ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... hampered by a newly created office and insufficient means, did not show to advantage in organizing the campaign, and was slow in carrying out his plans; while there was positive dereliction of duty on the part of the quartermaster, and the contractors proved both corrupt and inefficient. The army was often on short commons, lacking alike food for the men and fodder for the horses; the powder was poor, the axes useless, the tents and clothing nearly worthless; while the delays were so extraordinary that the troops did not make the final move ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Congress wrong, but being in the right did not help Washington, nor did he take petty pleasure in being able to say, "I told you how it would be." The hard facts remained unchanged. There was the wholly patriotic but slumberous, and for fighting purposes quite inefficient Congress still to be waked up and kept awake, and to be instructed. With painful and plain-spoken repetition this work was grappled with and done methodically, and like all else as ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... in equal force had mustered in the vicinity of Dovai. They kept, as at Courtrai, on the defensive; and the King of France, too cautious to attack them, allowed the whole autumn to pass, and returned to France after a campaign as inefficient ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... await justice, or at least judgment, in the next. As he said, Lapham had dealt fairly by his partner in money; he had let Rogers take more money out of the business than he put into it; he had, as he said, simply forced out of it a timid and inefficient participant in advantages which he had created. But Lapham had not created them all. He had been dependent at one time on his partner's capital. It was a moment of terrible trial. Happy is the man for ever after who can choose ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the people might meet in a convention of delegates empowered and instructed to conclude a new and effective federation. Few were ready to go as far as the impetuous Hamilton in thus virtually overthrowing the "Articles of perpetual union" which were legally binding although inefficient. To amend them according to their own provisions would be legitimate if it ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... Inefficient, Craven spirits! leave this labor Unto time, the great Destroyer! Come away, ere night ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... professors seemed rather irritated by the advent of these searchers for ancient mining history, for, as the savants explained, the Freiberg methods and machines were all the most modern in the world; there were "no left-overs, no worn-out rubbish of those inefficient ages" around Germany's great ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... Many could pass for great if their physical proportions were less mean. There are thousands of worthy and virtuous young men who never receive their due in social life because they have red hair or stand four-feet-six high, or happen to be the victim of an inefficient dentist. The world, it would seem, does not want virtue or solid worth. It prefers appearance to either. Albert de Chantonnay would, for instance, have carried twice the weight in Royalist councils if ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... school of literature. If we want to teach young men a good manner of writing, we should teach it from Shakspeare,—not from Burns; from Walter Scott,— and not from Dickens. And I believe that our schools of painting are at present inefficient in their action, because they have not fixed on this high principle what are the painters to whom to point; nor boldly resolved to point to the best, if determinable. It is becoming a matter of stern necessity that they should give a simple direction to the attention ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... as 1814 two-thirds of the army of Canada were eating beef supplied by Vermont and New York contractors. Weak as was the militia of the Canadas, it was stiffened by English and Canadian regulars, hardened by frontier experience, and led for the most part by trained and able men, whereas an inefficient system and political interference greatly weakened the military force of the fighting States. Above all, the Canadians were fighting for their homes. To them the war was a matter of life and death; to ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... to do at Cambridge was to get rid of the inefficient and the corrupt. Washington had never any belief in a militia army. From his earliest days as a soldier he had favored conscription, even in free Virginia. He had then found quite ineffective the "whooping, holloing ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... his impedimenta from San Francisco to New York without extra charge; but in going from Rome to Naples, or from Florence to Genoa to sail, the same luggage will cost from six to eight dollars to convey it to the steamer. Again, these railroads pay their employes so poorly that only the most inefficient service can be retained at all; only those persons who are the absolute prisoners of poverty will consent to accept ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... were made at enfranchising the masses (as in 1896 and finally in 1905), the motive again was purely dynastic. Such constitutional measures as were taken, only strengthened racial dissensions and were equally insincere and inefficient. The present constitution of 1867, as well as the previous constitutions of 1849, 1860 and 1861, was granted by the crown, to whom it was reserved to reverse or modify the same. The parliament is absolutely powerless in Austria. It is a mere cloak for absolutism, ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... there would be required an almost impossible degree of discrimination on the part of taxing officials to dissociate this value from other considerations; and there would be required further the differentiation between efficient and inefficient management, which involves so many considerations that ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... took up another report. "Here we have some comments upon service in our restaurants, right here in Zagurest, from an evidently widely published American travel reporter. He contends that the fact that there is no tipping leads to our waiters being surly and inefficient." ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... it—why we must have it settled. There was a time when the embargo law threw our slaves out of employment. The North then contemplated a dissolution of the Union. Why? Because she thought the Government wanted power—was inefficient. Now, there is a sense of insecurity felt throughout the South. Our property is depreciating, going down every day. We feel this want of security very deeply, this want of faith in the Government under which we live. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... very busy man, even far too busy. Commodus left the treasury empty and every department of the government inefficient. Pertinax refilled the treasury, but his attempts at reorganization merely disorganized everything and prepared for the general confusion which came about under Julianus. With insufficient funds I must fill the Treasury, reorganize ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... when they seemed to be willing to submit without compulsion to orders from the same source. These circumstances, quite as much as the inexperience of Congress and the jealousy of the States, account for the inefficient form of government which was devised; and inefficient the Confederation certainly was. The only organ of government was a Congress in which every State was entitled to one vote and was represented by a delegation whose members were ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... of Prussia the railways pay well and are well managed, but they are clogged to a certain extent by inefficient and unnecessary employees, and were the system spread over the United States the chaos in a dozen years would be almost irreparable, and even here the complaints are many and vigorous. Probably one male over twenty-five years of age out of every four is in government employ. This alone ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... learn that Badeloden was formerly overrun by Germans; that Franzheim was excellent if you stayed at the Grand, but at the Kurhaus the guests were unsociable, while at the Oberalp you were not done well and the central-heating was inefficient. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... one moment did he understand that other scepticism which, forced out of faith, clasps and clings to reverence; which, though it count the rite inefficient, yet sees the meaning, and counts the moment so holy that to contaminate the rite is ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... impression of the lords of the East at the close of the fifth century B.C. Corrupt and treacherous central rule, largely directed by harem intrigue; an unenthusiastic body of subjects, abandoned to the schemes of satraps; inefficient and casually collected armies in which foreign mercenaries were almost the only genuine soldiers—such was Persia now. It was something very unlike the vigorous rule of Cyrus and the imperial system of the ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... wearisome for those who are waiting to ascend. Beginning to melt farther south, the ice at the mouth is always last to move. Besides, the arrival was anxiously awaited of Bird, Sinclair and House. By continuous urging of the dull and inefficient workmen to greater effort, Miles Macdonell had succeeded in securing four boats—none too well built—but commodious enough to carry his boat-crews, workmen, ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... home we paid a visit to the Mayne plantation; my sister enjoyed herself very much there, and was pro-slavery from that time; I was then sixteen, and had always hated it, and what with my fears of snakes, and my dislike of the black servants, whom I thought either inefficient or impertinent, and my unconquerable liking for freedom, I was not so fascinated. Edward Mayne himself did not like a planter's life, and he thought slavery an evil, but an evil inherited and past curing. He argued that the disease was not mortal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Children.—A typical case of chronic dependence is that of a widow with six children. When she was referred to us, nearly four years ago, her children were very young, and she, though well-meaning, was stupid and inefficient. The problem was not whether aid should be given,—that was clearly necessary, for the woman could not earn anything with her little children to care for,—but if the aid could be given in such a way as to really benefit them. Relief was procured from the ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... taxation, which drained the money of the people to Italy. The whole German people, from the princes down to the peasants, felt themselves unjustly treated, that the German money which flowed to Rome should be kept at home, and that the immoral and inefficient clergy should be replaced by upright, earnest men who would attend better to their religious duties (R. 150). It was these conditions which prepared the Germans for revolt, and enabled Luther to rally ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... was an insane policy on the part of the two last, as they knew perfectly well they wouldn't gain anything by upsetting the actual cabinet. They would only get another one much more advanced and more masterful. I suppose their idea was to have a succession of radical inefficient ministers, which in the end would disgust the country and make a "saviour," a prince (which one?) or general, possible. How wise their reasoning was time has shown! I wanted to go to the Chamber to hear the debate, but W. didn't ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... the lower officers; the same, with room for royal discretion, among the higher grades; division of the forces into regulars, reserves, and national guards, the two former to be still recruited by voluntary enlistment. The ancient and privileged constabulary, and many other formerly existing but inefficient armed bodies, were swept away, and the present system of gendarmerie was created. The military courts, too, were reconstituted under an impartial body of martial law. Simple numbers were substituted for the titular distinctions hitherto used by the regiments, and a fair schedule ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... to the reputation of keeping bad company, efficiency has to bear the odium of many foolish and inefficient deeds performed by its self-appointed prophets. The quest for efficiency has called forth in business a new functionary known as the "efficiency expert." Many of these men have done a vast amount of valuable work, but many others have not. While the real expert has been raising the level of business ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... Carolina Presbyterian, in an article published in the New York Independent of November, 1898, explains as follows:—"In 1897 was passed at Governor Russell's wish and over the protest of the Western Republicans, a bill to amend the charter of the city. If there had been any condition of bad or inefficient government, there might have been some excuse for this action; but the city was admirably governed by those who were most interested in her growth and welfare. Here is the law that is responsible for ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... Moments when, wrought upon by a single word—a look—an emphasis and rising inflection, all logical sequence is cast away, processes are lost—inductions lead nowhere. Moments when the inharmonious becomes harmonious, the indiscreet discreet, the inefficient efficient, and the inevitable evitable. I mean," she corrected herself hurriedly—"You know what I mean! If you have not felt it ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... of interest may lead to a good deal of friction; but for the present at least the mixed system of public ownership and private operation offers the better chance of satisfactory results. As long as the municipal civil service remains in its existing disorganized and inefficient condition, the public administration should not be granted any direct responsibility which can be withheld without endangering an essential public interest. A system of public operation would be preferable to one of divided personal responsibility between ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... or what she ought very reasonably to demand. There is no reason why London should remain telephonically deaf and dumb. There is nothing which strikes the visitor more forcibly, however, than the long-suffering patience of the Londoner. The exasperatingly slow, inefficient apology for a telephone service that would not be tolerated anywhere else is good enough for London. It is no excuse to plead in apology the great size of the City, when there is the example of New York before one, where there are more telephones, where they are cheaper, ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... true method of managing all the Public Departments, and every branch of the public service. I believe it would contribute immensely to both the efficiency and economy of the public service. Needless and inefficient appointments would not then be made; and it would greatly elevate the standard of action and attainments, and emulate the ambition of the young men and youth of the country, when they know that their selection and advancement in their ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... citizens. Even with such material, the ships were very inadequately manned. The shipmaster found himself upon the deep, with a vast responsibility of property and human life upon his hands, and no means of salvation except by compelling his inefficient and demoralized crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably be required of the same number of able seamen. By law he had been intrusted with no discretion of judicious punishment, he therefore habitually left ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in fact, a negative to every legislature, on every measure proposed by Congress; a negative so frequently exercised in practice, as to benumb the action of the Federal government, and to render it inefficient in its general objects, and more especially in pecuniary and foreign concerns. The want, too, of a separation of the Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary functions, worked disadvantageously in practice. Yet this state of things afforded a happy augury ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... what's to be done, I'll not tell them." This was her declaration of independence. Needless to say, Mrs. M. had a large domestic help problem. Her domestic helpers were continually going and coming. The inefficient ones she would not keep, and the efficient ones would not stay with her. So the burden of the home fell heavily on her, and, pulling her martyr's crown close down on her head, she worked feverishly. When she was not working she was bemoaning her sad lot, and indulging ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... is a very inefficient and rather absurd translation of the French. It turns upon the fact that in the French language the word for ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Government knew nothing of the inefficient state and the endless difficulties of the great fleet concentrated at Cadiz, and regarded its presence there as a standing danger. Collingwood was reinforced, and it was decided to send Nelson out to join him, take over the command, blockade the enemy closely, ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... listen to Me who am the absolute utterance of God, who spake by the prophets, who spake through Christ,—who speaks through Christ and all things still,—your little systems, your uncertain churches, your inefficient creeds, your quarrelsome sects, shall crumble away into dust and ruins! For humanity is waiting for the true Church of Christ; the one pure House of Praise from which all sophistry, all superstition ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... man was right. The two children did not understand the blustering, pretending, inefficient old man. Having moved shoulder to shoulder with grim, silent men to the consummation of great deeds Windy could not get the flavour of those days out of his outlook upon life. Walking half drunk in the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... of its temperature range, then rejects heat at the bottom of the range, and is finally brought back by adiabatic compression to the highest temperature at which it again takes in heat, and so on. An air-engine working on this cycle would be intolerably bulky and mechanically inefficient. Stirling substituted for the two stages of adiabatic expansion and compression the passage of the air to and fro through a "regenerator,'' in which the air was alternately cooled by storing its heat in the material of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... be the cart that takes Away my books, my curse, my clog, Blessed the auctioneer who makes Their inefficient catalogue. ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... contest most unequal, and the ultimate result of discomfiture to them inevitable. The Federal Government, like a sluggish but powerful man scarcely yet aroused to the exertion of his full strength, moves slowly and awkwardly, and lays about him with careless and inefficient blows; while his active adversary, inferior in strength and in the moral power of his cause, but more fully aroused and more energetic, strikes with better effect, and makes every blow tell. Nevertheless, the strength of the one remains unexhausted, and even increases ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... who poured out his grief in language which even to-day no man can read unmoved. To us he showed only a gravely tranquil face, which had in it something which reassured those starving and naked ones. Most wonderful is it, as I read what he wrote to inefficient, blundering men, to see how calmly he states our pitiful case, how entirely he controls a nature violent and passionate beyond that of most men. He was scarcely in the saddle as commander before the body which set him there ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... up heavy bills, and his temper had been sorely tried during the last three weeks. A sullen, disaffected populace, whose dangerous mood grew daily more apparent; a district honeycombed with plots and bristling with hidden weapons; an inefficient garrison, of whose loyalty he was more than doubtful, and a Cardinal whom he had pathetically described to his adjutant as the "incarnation of immaculate pig-headedness," had already reduced him to the verge of desperation. Now he was saddled with the Gadfly, an ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... generation? It is certainly true that evidence has been adduced purporting to support, if not establish, the origin in dead matter of the least and lowest forms of life. But it evinces no prejudice to say that it is inefficient. For a moment study the facts. The organisms which were used to test the point at issue were those known as septic. The vast majority of these are inexpressibly minute. The smallest of them, indeed, is so small that, as I have said, fifty millions of them, if ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... during a short time braced to a firm tone, were now so much relaxed by vice that he was utterly incapable of selfdenial or of strenuous exertion. The vulgar courage of a foremast man he still retained. But both as Admiral and as First Lord of the Admiralty he was utterly inefficient. Month after month the fleet which should have been the terror of the seas lay in harbour while he was diverting himself in London. The sailors, punning upon his new title, gave him the name of Lord Tarry-in-town. When he came on shipboard he was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Germans drawn up to meet them, in which case they relied on their own superior discipline and tactics for such a victory as should reassure the supremacy of Rome. But Arminius was far too sage a commander to lead on his followers, with their unwieldy broadswords and inefficient defensive armor, against the Roman legionaries, fully armed with helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield, who were skilled to commence the conflict with a murderous volley of heavy javelins hurled upon the foe when a few yards distant, and then, with their short cut-and-thrust swords, to hew their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... the assertion with each reason, or run the risk of confusion. If under I in the brief on page go, for example, you began with the reason, "In the present system partisan politics determine nominations to office," and then added the result, "Therefore the city government is inefficient," you would have to repeat the result with B and C; and when you came to the third degree of support, the repetition would be ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... other class of cases, insufflating the oxygen and amyl nitrite through the tracheotomic wound. The pulmotor and similar mechanisms are, perhaps, the best things the use of which can be taught to laymen; but as compared to bronchoscopic oxygen insufflation they are woefully inefficient, because the intraoral pressure forces the tongue back over the laryngeal orifice, obstructing the airway in this "death zone." By the introduction of the bronchoscope this death zone is entirely eliminated, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... ironclad vessels appears to be the concentration of armor at a few points and the protection of the remainder of the vessel from the entrance of water by a streak of armor at the water-line and numerous bulkheads, etc., in distinction from necessarily thin and inefficient plating over all; high speed without great increase of weight of the driving parts, by means of improved engines and boilers and high pressure; the production of tenacious iron in large, thick, homogeneous masses; and the rapid manoeuvring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her presently," continued Lord Tremlyn. "There was a great deal of corruption in the government of the kingdom under the native king. The people were robbed of vast sums in the guise of taxes, the police was miserably inefficient, and it was not a safe region for the traveller. The East India Company drew up a treaty with the king, transferring to the corporation the government, but providing liberally for ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... path, planted quantities of food, and enclosed a horse paddock and some acres of pig run; but 'tis a good deal of money regarded simply as money. K. is bosh; I have no use for him; but we must do what we can with the fellow meanwhile; he is good-humoured and honest, but inefficient, idle himself, the cause of idleness in others, grumbling, a self-excuser - all the faults in a bundle. He owes us thirty weeks' service - the wretched Paul about half as much. Henry is almost the only one of our employes ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lieutenant M. T. Woolsey. Great Britain possessed the Royal George, 22, Prince Regent, 16, Earl of Moira, 14, Gloucester, 10, Seneca, 8, and Simco, 8, all under the command of a Commodore Earle; but though this force was so much the more powerful it was very inefficient, not being considered as belonging to the regular navy, the sailors being undisciplined, and the officers totally without experience, never having been really trained in the British service. From these causes it resulted that the struggle on the lakes was to be a work ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... directing the eyes of men toward Heaven, making them believe that all their evils are due to Divine wrath, in furnishing them but inefficient and futile means of lessening their troubles, it would appear that the only object of the priests is to prevent the nations from dreaming of the true sources of their miseries, and to perpetuate them. The ministers of religion act like those indigent mothers, who, in need ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... would be none who were not sufficiently clothed and fed; that the laws, habits and ethical training in vogue were alike responsible for the inequalities in opportunity and the consequent wide difference between the few and the many; that the result of such conditions was to render inefficient a large part of the population, the percentage differing in each country in the ratio that education and enlightened and unselfish laws bore to ignorance, bigotry and selfish laws. But little progress, he said, had been made in the early centuries ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... fuel of locomotives is property and represents money invested the same as do buildings, rolling stock, etc.; careless or inefficient firemen who waste fuel destroy property as certainly as though cars or engines were smashed up. The coal should be carefully raked off the deck and in from the gangways; it should not be allowed to fall, as it is wasted and ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... found to be worse than useless against this strange antagonist. Our finest steam-frigates, though accidentally prevented from getting fairly into action, seemed likely, however skilfully handled, to have proved almost as inefficient; for all our batteries and broadsides had produced no effect on this iron-clad monster. She had gone back to her lair uninjured. What was to prevent her from coming out again to break the blockade, bombard our seaports, sink and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... advanced I grew more and more to the inhabitants of our city into two kinds, the who were served, and the inefficient, who were separate efficient, neglected; but the mental process of which the classification was the result was not so deliberate as may be supposed. Sometimes, when an important client would get into trouble, the affair took me into ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... one, since dissenters no longer dreaded persecution at home, the people of New England could not remain entirely uncontaminated by an extensive intermixture with worldly men. The trade carried on by the colonists (in the face of several inefficient acts of Parliament) with the whole maritime world, must have had a similar tendency; nor are the desperate and dissolute visitants of the country to be forgotten among the agents of a moral revolution. Freebooters from the West Indies ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... believed, that, in the present state of public opinion, the above method would be impracticable, and feared, that, if inspectors were appointed, it would be by political influence, and that the result would be worse than at present, as the inspectors would be inefficient, and yet, to a great extent, would relieve the owners of bad bridges from legal responsibility. They held that the best that could be done would be to provide means, in case of disaster, to fix plainly the responsibility, ...
— Bridge Disasters in America - The Cause and the Remedy • George L. Vose
... yet been acted on but in a small and inefficient degree, it is still considered as before the legislature, with other bills of the revised code, not yet taken up, and I have great hope that some patriotic spirit will, at a favorable moment, call it up, and make it the key-stone of the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... there been any possibility of hearing the words spoken in the adjoining room, that possibility would now have been entirely destroyed by the noise of the storm; and whatever of curiosity either may have felt for the result of Bell's adventure, was rendered inefficient for the time. Meanwhile, something else was working of quite as ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... considering the material they have at command - an assertion which I think is not at all unlikely; but the wonder is that destructive fires are not much more frequent, when the fire department is evidently so inefficient. In addition to the regular police force and fire department, there is a system of night watchmen, called bekjees, who walk their respective beats throughout the night, carrying staves heavily shod with iron, with which they pound the flagstones with a resounding "thwack." Owing to the hilliness ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... I, in a way—you see, I helped design her and her sister-ship, the Sirius, which Brandon and Westfall are using as a floating laboratory. But times change, and the inefficient must go. She's a good old tub, but she was built when everybody was afraid of space, and we had to put every safety factor into her that we could think of. As a result, she is four times as heavy as she should ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... left solely to bad men, and if virtue is confined solely to inefficient men, the result cannot be happy. When I entered politics there were, as there always had been—and as there always will be—any number of bad men in politics who were thoroughly efficient, and any number of good men who would like to have done lofty things in politics but ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... gone mainly to one party, the other party are now to have their turn. There are periods when the country is well satisfied with the general policy of a government but not with the men who carry it on. Ministers of excellent principles prove inefficient, tactless, or unfortunate, or quarrels and jealousies arise among them, or difficult negotiations are going on with foreign nations which can be best brought to a successful termination if they are placed in the hands of fresh men, unpledged and unentangled by their past. The country wants a change ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... had suffered considerably at the hands of various inefficient maids and this, added to the strain of her own professional work, had brought her at one time to the verge of a ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... as to the instrumentalities which God's Spirit employs, these may be often exceptional to His general rule. For it is surely a great mercy when the regular ministry, or any other ordinance of His, becomes inefficient through sinful indifference or unbelief, that He should raise up in such an emergency, and that too from the most unexpected quarters, those who will do the work which others ought to have done. The grand end of saving lost souls, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... of our forefathers. And see the ignoble and feeble method we have put in its place. We cowardly promote our inefficient persons to the House of Lords, or similar obscure heights. We shelve them, or swathe them, or drop them. Sometimes, indeed, we apply a simulacrum of the ancient method of punishment, especially if the offence is sexual, ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... pasture, it soon made its appearance. The remedy is timely and constant paring of the hoof before any tendency to lameness is observed, and when this is properly attended to no caustic application is necessary. Lame sheep indicate an inefficient shepherd, and the disorder has ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... nationality, for his race are generally more gallant. But he was wealthy, had an intense admiration for Mrs. Falchion, and had managed to secure her in his boat, to separate from the rest of the picnic party— chiefly through his inefficient rowing. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that it would be like this.... But it would never do for her to miss Mass, and she sat on the edge of the bed, unable to think of any solution of her difficulties. The only glass in the room was about a foot square; it had been placed on the chest of drawers, and nothing seemed to Evelyn more inefficient than this wretched glass. Its very position on the top of the chest of drawers was vexatious. She could not even get it into the proper angle, and when she removed the piece of paper that held it in position, it swung round and its back confronted her. That ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... moment, her father would certainly decide for her,—and had her experience of the world been greater, she might have been quite sure that her father would decide in her favour. But as it was, she was quivering and shaking in the dark, leaning on her mother's very inefficient aid, nearly overcome with the feeling that by one o'clock she must be ready to say something ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... THE attainment of a stable peace is the first public duty; the second is the achievement of an efficient government. Where politics are corrupt and inefficient all social progress is obstructed; and all such ideals of a reshaped human society as the Socialists yearn toward must be postponed until we have learned to run the machinery of government smoothly and effectively. The backward condition ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... White House, while Mr. Lincoln occupied it, was a fertile field for news, which he was always ready to give those correspondents in whom he had confidence; but the surveillance of the press—first by Secretary Seward, and then by Secretary Stanton—was as annoying as it was inefficient.... Often when Mr. Lincoln was engaged, correspondents would send in their cards, bearing requests for some desired item of news or for the verification of some rumor. He would either come out and give ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... wild honey bees. Bees! Wherever there were bees, he had found flowers that reproduced themselves, trees that bore fruit. Some of these bees he found to be good workers and others he found lazy, quarrelsome and inefficient. He killed out the quarrelsome colonies and built hiding places for the better ones. In short, he did so much to make the camping places cozy, comfortable and in every way desirable that finally it became more and more difficult for the tribe to tear itself away on ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... afterwards laid proved that the second copulation had been more successful than the first and that there are some males more fit for impregnating queens than others. However, it is very rare that the first copulation is inefficient; we have only seen two that required it twice; all the rest were impregnated by ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... population, and a vastly higher average of general intelligence. If our laws are too often loosely administered, it is at least in the power of the people to remedy the difficulty by substituting good and faithful for corrupt and inefficient officers; and if any law should prove burdensome, it can be repealed at the will of the majority. So far as injustice is concerned, I have seen more of it in Europe, individual rights were concerned, than I ever saw in California. We have a public ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... ties preclude any warmth of affection. But all the longing of my life seems to be culminating in a driving force which will carry me to the male prostitute or to death. I can concentrate my mind on nothing else, and consequently have become inefficient in work and have no heart for play. I know if my longings could be occasionally satisfied I should immediately recover, but my fear is that if I killed myself those who knew me in happier days would only be confirmed in the impression of my degeneracy and would ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ordered Bramante to construct the necessary scaffoldings, but the latter did it in so inefficient a manner that Michelangelo was obliged to dispense with his assistance, and construct the whole machinery himself. He had sent for some of his fellow-students from Florence, not, as Vasari, by some strange aberration, states, because he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... state of great confusion, and was farmed on the four-field system—wheat, beans, oats, fallow—though 200 years before the three-field system had been most common in the district. Many of the common arable fields evidently often contained, in those days of poor cultivation and inefficient drainage, patches of boggy and poor land which were left uncultivated.[229] In the rolls of the Manor of Scotter in Lincolnshire, in the early part of the sixteenth century, no one was to allow his horses to depasture in the arable fields unless they were tethered on these ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... quite early, just after they had come back from supper and were talking about reading a story aloud, there came a knock at the door. Their first caller! And behold, there stood the inefficient-looking young man who had led the Christian Endeavor meeting, the boy with the goggles who had prayed, and the two girls who had sat by ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... hand, each convoy is usually provided with some guard of its own, though it is often absurdly inefficient. These valleys and ravines which branch out of the main pass are alive with Afridis and Pathans, who are keen robbers as well as religious fanatics. I wonder they don't swoop down on some of our caravans. They ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seem to forget that I cannot go against my principles, however much I may be sorry for Betty. She should not have given way to ill-temper. As I said before, although I never liked her, and considered her a most inefficient servant, thoroughly spoilt by having had no mistress for so long, I should have borne with her—at least, I think I should—as long as I could. Now I have all but engaged Maria, who was under-housemaid at the Towers, so don't let me hear any more of Betty's sorrow, or anybody else's sorrow, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... wise and right if, under such circumstances, the vessel had not attempted to pursue her course, but had put into the nearest port. Such was not the case, however, and though she was known to be in a most inefficient state, she proceeded on her voyage. It was about six o'clock on Thursday evening when the "Forfarshire" passed through the Fairway, the water which lies between the Farne Island and the mainland. It was night when she entered Berwick Bay, and at that time the ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... The special object was to cancel the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea. No fewer than seven different plans were simultaneously or in turn propounded. They were every one of them admitted to be dubious, inefficient, and imperfect. I will spare the reader the mysteries of limitation, of counterpoise, of counterpoise and limitation mixed. Russia preferred counterpoise, the allies were for limitation. Was this preference between two degrees of the imperfect, the deficient, and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Wills, of Brumingham, with several county esquires and gentlemen, were appointed Commissioners under an Act passed towards the close of "The Long Parliament," to summon and examine any "publique preachers, inefficient ministers, and scandalous schoolmasters who shall be proved guilty of drunkenness, common haunting of taverns or alehouses, dealing with lewd women, frequent quarrelling or fighting, frequent playing at cards or dice, profaning the Sabbath Day, or do incourage or countenance by word ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... have top-grade men. They couldn't be spared from work that required their total capacity. It's inefficient to waste a man on a job that he can do without half trying where there are more important jobs that will tax ...
— In Case of Fire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... beat me, and let me go to finish cooking the Sitt's dinner.' I remitted the beating, with a threat that if he bullied the neighbours again he would get it at the police, and not from Omar's very inefficient arm. In half an hour he was as merry as ever. It was a curious display of negro temper, and all about nothing at all. As he stood before me, he looked quite grandly tragic; and swore he only wanted to run outside and die; that ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... as stated by Charles de Haldimar to the unfortunate wife of Halloway, with what little success he had pleaded in the interview he had requested of his father, for the preserver of his gallant brother's life; and we have also seen how equally inefficient was the lowly and supplicating anguish of that wretched being, when, on quitting the apartment of his son, Colonel de Haldimar had so unexpectedly found himself clasped in her despairing embrace. There was little to be expected from an intercession on the part of one claiming ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... fields of a portion of the United States, bringing with it its attendant train of misery. What was the employment of ladies who had graduated in universities in this crisis of their country? Had their knowledge of Latin and Greek made them either inefficient or hard? The weary, wounded soldier in the hospitals would testify that the kind hand of an educated and refined woman bathed his feverish temples, while her gentle voice breathed into his ear the glad tidings of a peace to be attained by repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... militia of the neighborhood, as well as those which had been summoned from the interior. It was to Marion that Lincoln chiefly looked for the proper drilling of the militia. In his hands they lost the rude and inefficient character, the inexpert and spiritless manner, which, under ordinary commanders, always distinguish them. Feeling sure of their Captain, he, in turn, rendered them confident of themselves. Speaking of Marion's "PATIENCE with the militia"—a phrase of great ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... and were greatly alarmed by them, since they had no certain knowledge of the number and nature of their enemies, and the means they had invented for protecting themselves from them or of overcoming them too often proved inefficient. In the eyes of these barbarians, the Chaldeans seemed to be possessed of the very powers which they themselves lacked. The magicians of Chaldaea had forced the demons to obey them and to unmask themselves before them; they read with ease in the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... yet but fairly commenced, when a break in the 'piff-paff' chorus warned Andreas that he was losing influence, women and men were handing on a paper and bending their heads over it; their responses hushed altogether, or were ludicrously inefficient. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... desert, it might have blossomed like the rose, or, at all events, like that chimerical flower, the Rose of Jericho. As it was, the conventionality around me, the intellectual drought, gave me no opportunity of outward growth. They did not destroy, but they cooped up, and rendered slow and inefficient, that internal life which continued, as I have said, to live on unseen. This took the form of dreams and speculations, in the course of which I went through many tortuous processes of the mind, the actual ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse |
