"Makeshift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The tent, a makeshift affair, consisting of two sculls and a tree branch, which Mr Button had sawed off from a dwarf aoa, and the staysail he had brought from the brig, was pitched in the centre of the beach, so as to be out of the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... admiring comments. The man's skin was white and he was lithe and tense and muscular. Breeding showed in him as it shows in the muscles and conformation of a race-horse. When he was dried he threw down the makeshift towel and combed his shock of brown hair with his fingers. Now that the bristle of beard was off his face he ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... explained cheerfully. "You have one rug, I see. We can spare you a couple more. No danger at all, really, But isn't it really horrid? We have not a morsel of food to offer you, but I dare say you can, if you don't worry over it, put up with a makeshift bed—only for one ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... to remember it.) I know that she went on to say that by and by the tarnish began to dim the brightness of my life, too; and that was the worst of all, she said—that innocent children should suffer, and their young lives be spotted by the kind of living I'd had to have, with this wretched makeshift of a divided home. She began to cry again then, and begged me to forgive her, and I cried and tried to tell her I didn't mind it; but, of course, I'm older now, and I know I do mind it, though I'm trying just as hard as I can ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... shot at birds and prospected for diamonds along the wayside; and at night they took the hay from the mattresses to give to the cattle. Lolling indolence was in the air and plenty in the larder: big fruits, strange game, which they cooked in a makeshift oven consisting of a few stones. Then they rolled themselves up in a blanket, near the elephants tugging at their chains, and slept under the tent in the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... aspired to be an actor. One of the first things he did after settling in Sandusky was to organize an amateur theatrical company, composed entirely of people of German birth or descent. The performances were given in the Turner Hall, in the German tongue, on a makeshift stage with improvised scenery. Frohman became the directing force in the production of Schiller's and other classic German plays, comic as ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Christ dying for our sins, as taught by the Scriptures, a makeshift, but, rather, a real, full redemption, ransom. Just as a captain can honorably, honestly be given as a ransom for a number of private soldiers in an exchange of prisoners; just as a diamond can redeem a debt of many dollars; just as one man is allowed to pay another's ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... luxurious mood changed to one of dull irritation, and she looked sullenly at the enormous wardrobe and dressing-table with their speckled mirrors. These had delighted her at first, but in her heart she preferred the battered, makeshift furniture of Cardigan Street. A few licks with the duster and her work was done; but here the least speck of dust showed on the polished surface. Jonah, too, had got into a nasty habit of writing insulting words on the dusty ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... stilting the smaller arches to raise their crowns to the level of those of the larger arches was in constant use in Byzantine and early Romanesque architecture, in the kind of manner shown in the sketch, Fig. 99; and a very clumsy and makeshift method of dealing with the problem it is; but something of the kind was inevitable as long as nothing but the round arch was available for covering contiguous spaces of different widths. The whole of these difficulties were approximately got over in theory, and almost entirely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... act as the only mistress which the establishment possessed. This advent greatly changed the tenor of the doctor's ways. He had been before pure bachelor; not a room in his house had been comfortably furnished; he at first commenced in a makeshift sort of way, because he had not at his command the means of commencing otherwise; and he had gone on in the same fashion, because the exact time had never come at which it was imperative in him to set his house in order. He had had no fixed ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... administrative apparatus in India would be wanting, and without it the whole machinery would assuredly go out of order. Nor is it easy to see how we could replace him. Not one of the other castes would serve even as a makeshift. They are all too far removed from the Brahmin. But the Purbhoo is near him, irritatingly near him, and he has proved in practice to be just the sort of homoeopathic remedy we require, the counter-irritant, the outward blister by wise application of which we ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... possessed, as you always were, with the significance of legal marriage. You don't know that marriage is merely a human contrivance and, nine times out of ten, an infernally clumsy makeshift and a long-drawn pretence. Like every other human shift, it is a thing that gets out-grown by the advance of humanity towards higher ideals and cleaner liberties. We are approaching a time when the edifice will be shaken ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... moving antlers above the brake fern, one almost is compelled to withhold the word park from any enclosure without them. It is impossible to lose the feeling that the right place for cattle—even for Alderneys—is the meadow. Cows in a park are a poor makeshift; parks are for deer. To my eyes Goodwood House has a chilling exterior; the road to the hill-top is steep and lengthy; and when one has climbed it and crossed the summit wood, it is to come upon the last thing that one wishes to find in the heart of the country, among rolling Downs, sacred ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... almost any crews but sailors. Even the flagship Detroit had only ten real seamen, all told. Ammunition was likewise very scarce, and so defective that the guns had to be fired by the flash of a pistol. Perry also had a makeshift flotilla, partly manned by drafts from Harrison's army. But, on the whole, the odds in his favour were fairly shown by the number of vessels in the respective flotillas, nine ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... gamekeepers and hence were accustomed to outdoor life and the handling of guns, all of which aided them in saving the remnant of their command. They had been ordered to take some cottages, occupied by German soldiers as a makeshift fortification. The Cameronians on the way to the attack fell into a ditch which was both deep and wide. It was necessary for them to swim to get across the ditch in some places. In the meantime Highlanders were being slain by German shells and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... at me earnestly. "I love the country," he said; "it's fed me and harbored me. But I wouldn't lift a finger to put a single patch on this makeshift of a government; I wouldn't stave off the crash if I could. And it's coming! You and I have seen something of the rottenness of the underpinning which props up empires. You and I, Scarlett, have learned a few of the shameful ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... how this condition arose may be answered very briefly. The Church ordained that marriage is indissoluble, but, this being found impossible to maintain in practice, the State stepped in with a way of escape—a kind of emergency exit. But what a makeshift it is! how flagrantly indecent! how inconsistent! Adultery must be committed. To escape the degradation of an unworthy partner another partner must first be sought, and love degraded in an act of infidelity. Adultery ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... and cut a piece off, and rigged it up with paper inside the binnacle. This answered for about ten minutes, but finding it was again flickering, I opened the tin door, and found all the candle had melted into bright liquid oil; so this makeshift was a failure. However, another candle was cut, and the door being left open to keep it cool, with this lame light I worked on bravely, but very determined for the rest of my sailing days to have the oil bottle always accessible. Finally the wind blew out the candle, though it was very ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... feelings of far greater relief than they had experienced in many a day. Now at last they saw a feasible plan for leaving the island upon a seaworthy craft. There would be no more hard labour at ship-building, and no risking their lives upon a crudely built makeshift that would be quite as likely to go to the bottom as it would to ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... subject to inspection and to a rigid "lock-up rule" at twelve o'clock, are absent in Dublin not only at Trinity, but at the University College, where one can only suppose its absence to be due to the unorganised condition of a small and temporary makeshift. Not only, however, for the exercise of disciplinary control, but also because of the close association of men with each other which residence ensures, is this to be regarded as the best means of getting the heart out of a ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Bay of Great Bear Lake. The village was located upon the opposite bank which rose some twelve or fifteen feet above the river ice. Through the gathering darkness Connie made out some five or six log cabins, and many makeshift dwellings of poles, skins and ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... any dissatisfaction with it, and why any desire anywhere to be rid of it. All knew the answer to that question; all knew that if the war was due to disunion, disunion in turn was due to slavery. Unless some makeshift peace should be quickly patched up, this basic cause was absolutely sure to force recognition for itself; a long and stern contest must inevitably wear its way down to the bottom question. It was practical wisdom for ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... and before long they were hard at work trying to rig up a makeshift mast and sail out of such material as they could find. It was hardly likely to pass muster so far as looks went, but both boys believed they could make it useful, given ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... may as well cook ourselves a real dinner for this evening," said Dick. "No makeshift ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... trivial worldliness of life; in the last few years the shallowness of passion had seemed its crowning insult, and over the absolute sincerity of her own nature the primal emotion she had heard in Christopher's voice exerted a compelling charm. The makeshift of a conventional marriage had failed her utterly; her soul had rejected the woman's usual cheap compromise with externals; and in her almost puritan scorn of the vanities by which she was surrounded she had attained the moral elevation ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the preceding days—overtook us, but the rising tide, coming farther up the beach than it had done on the day before, forced us to labour at the boats, which we hauled slowly to a higher ledge. We found it necessary to move our makeshift camp nearer the cliff. I portioned out the available ground for the tents, the galley, and other purposes, as every foot was of value. When night arrived the 'Stancomb Wills' was still away, so I had a blubber-flare lit at the head ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... course there were wide possibilities of economy in this direction—the one match often putting the kettles to boil in half a street. The waste in the matter of pipe-kindling had to be modified, and the mediaeval makeshift of flint and steel restored. The fierce rays of Sol, through the media of our monocles, were also utilised to light cigars. What else on Saturday? Yes, Mafeking, they said, was fighting on still; and Generals Buller and Warren ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... were too crude, and they struck through the thick hide into the quick, into the human, and you winced a little; but this was rarely, for you were very nearly, oh, very nearly an animal: your temperament and intelligence was just that of a dog that has picked up a master, not a real master, but a makeshift master who may turn it out at any moment. Dickens would sentimentalise or laugh over you; I do neither. I merely recognise you as one of the facts of civilisation. You looked—well, to be candid,—you looked neither ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... ain't. Still, I can't help knowin' there's better ways to go at it than blunderin' along as I have to, an' sometimes I can't help wishin' I knew what the right way is. There must be folks that know how to do in half the time what I do by makeshift an' fussin'. Sometimes it seems a pity there never was anybody to steer me into findin' out the kind of things I've always wanted ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... literary touchstones. A polished and learned society, a society devoted to Shakespeare and to the stage, was taken in by a boy of eighteen. Young Ireland not only palmed off his sham prose documents, most makeshift imitations of the antique, but even his ridiculous verses on the experts. James Boswell went down on his knees and thanked Heaven for the sight of them, and, feeling thirsty after these devotions, drank hot brandy and water. Dr. Parr was not less readily gulled, and probably the experts, like Malone, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... dim lantern light she lifted the fallen tank and replaced it on its skids. Then she wiped up the floor as best she could with the makeshift mop which had been intended to serve a better purpose. She wiped off her soggy shoes and tried to clean that clinging oiliness from her hands. It seemed to her as if the whole world were nothing ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... she was any good to him in such a difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first marriage, he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that it had been the great passion of his life, and his marriage with herself but domestic makeshift. She had always kept the grudge of that up her sleeve, as it were, and used it commercially. He listened. A sound—the vague murmur of a woman's movements—was coming through the door. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and picturesque, but spoilt by carelessness, carelessness, carelessness. Either write verses, we say again, or prose. And unless the metre and accent coincide with the sense, and make music when read merely as prose is read, the lines are a makeshift and a failure, and neither worth writing or reading, though they were as fanciful and overloaded as Mr. Browning's, or as grandiloquent and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... organizations the men and women and boys and girls of the Church. Of course, elaborate, expensive decorations ought to be discouraged. Simplicity always is more consistent with the spirit of worship than is extravagance. But contrast the difference in effect on children of a bare, untidy, makeshift room as against a cozy room decorated with a few beautiful pictures or draperies and made homelike with comfortable seats ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... called back over his shoulder, "if I happened to need a makeshift dressing-gown. As it is, however, I am trying to get my spur out ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... occasion confine myself to the expression of my regret that such a proceeding should have become indispensably necessary to the tranquillity and welfare of the colony." Until 1849 the government was carried on by a General Assembly—a makeshift Assembly—in which members of the House of Assembly sat side by side with members of the Council, the latter losing their ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... came forth from the house, carrying a packing case on their shoulders. This makeshift casket had stenciled on its end: "Glass. Use No Hooks." The intimation that the corpse ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... war. It was tasking our factories to produce blankets and overcoats, knapsacks and haversacks, wagons and tents, and all that goes to make up the multifarious equipment of an army. It was peering into our dock-yards to find steamers and sailing-vessels out of which to gather makeshift navies, until it could find leisure to build stancher ships. Manifestly the Government had no time for such a work. The existing Medical Bureau was hardly equal to the task. Organized to take charge of an army of ten thousand men, in the twinkling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... under the arch, and drew up before a door just off Washington Square, where the landscape painter had a studio suite. There were sleeping-rooms and such accessories as seemed to the boy unheard-of luxury, though Lescott regarded the place as a makeshift annex ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... develop. Of course, with closer intimacy, there were temperamental adjustments, as always, but they came easily. The household machinery ran smoothly, almost from the first, because there was a machine, properly set up, operated and adjusted—rather than an uncertain makeshift. ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... "think of books merely as tools, others as tooling. I'm between the two; there are days when I use them as scenery, other days when I want them as society; so that, as you see, my library represents a makeshift compromise between looks and brains, and the collectors look down on me almost as much ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... lessons scarcely paid. They were only a pitiful makeshift. The Little Girl lived only in her terrible practice hours. She could not eat or sleep. ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... is the most important office to be filled by the people of California under the provisions of the proposed Direct Primary law. The so-called district plan for nominating United States Senators is worse than a makeshift. it provides for no pledge on the part of candidates and would be purely a straw vote, binding ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... Alliance, with its excellent Reinsurance Treaty, did not constitute a sufficiently powerful springboard from which to take our plunge into world-politics. The Reinsurance contract could not be anything but a makeshift, which merely deferred the inevitable choice which had to be made between Russia and Austria-Hungary. In the course of time, we should either have had to decide entirely in favor of Russia, in the manner ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... Pullman Car, that they in those days considered a triumph of elegant and convenient locomotion, because they could get tucked away on a shelf at night as a sort of apology for a bed, and be served with a mutton-chop by day, as a makeshift for lunch, and this they considered wonderful, because they were being dragged over their road at the marvellous, soul-thrilling pace of sixty miles an hour. (Loud laughter.) What would the poor benighted travellers of those days say to their present Grand Circular Express, that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... Mr. Ormond from his end of the table. "Does Harry know anything about it?" he added, alluding to a boy who had come in as a makeshift to clean knives and boots since the departure ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... of gradual heat in rendering clay fit for use in cookery and preferable to any previous makeshift. The modern Zuni name for a parching-pan, which is a shallow bowl of black-ware, is thle mon ne, the name for a basket-tray being thlae' lin ne. The latter name signifies a shallow vessel of twigs, ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... Honesty is a makeshift. A makeshift for saving time. Whoever wants to save time is not fit for ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... until a permissionnaire came home on his six days' leave, and that was for five weeks. More than once I decided to go back to the Crillon, where the bathrooms are the last cry in luxury, for I detest the makeshift bath, but by this time I was too fascinated by the Ecole to tear ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... ford, a makeshift boat was constructed by the aid of the useful tarpaulin, and the passage of the Hume safely accomplished. Still passing through good available country watered by fine flowing streams, on the 24th they crossed ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... passed narrow rifts in the walls of the trench, entrances to dugouts betrayed by glimmers of candle-light through the cracks of makeshift doors or the coarse mesh of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Strogeith, Muthill, and Strowane. Foulis—L80, and kirklands—had readers at Foulis, Madertie, Trinite-Gask, and Findo-Gask. Tullichettil—L100, and kirk-lands—had readers at Tullichettil, Cumrie, Monivaird, Monzie, and Crieff. The system of readers was a beggarly makeshift for the Christian ministry, and shows the sore straits to which the Reformed Church was reduced after what was supposed to be the grand victory of 1560. Then Tullichettle was more than Comrie, as Strageath ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... lighted the little lamp, and she was cooking supper over the oil stove. She had found where he stored his supplies in a tightly built box under a small ledge, and she had helped herself. She had two plates and two cups set out upon his makeshift table, and while he stopped in the door she turned from the stove and began cutting slices of bread off one of the loaves which Hank had brought that day. With her head bent toward the lamp, her hair shown like ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... and say you are unequal to your work, and want me, and I will come to London straight and do your work. I am quite confident that, with your notes and a few words of explanation, I could take it up at any time and do it. Absurdly unnecessary to say that it would be a makeshift! But I could do it at a pinch, so like you as that no one should find out the difference. Don't make much of this offer in your mind; it is nothing, except to ease it. If you should want help, I am as safe as the bank. The trouble would be nothing to me, and the triumph of overcoming a difficulty ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... heart never ceased. Day by day a fresh note was added; everything she touched; everything she saw was transformed. The old tumble-down house with its propped-up furniture and makeshift carpets seemed to have become already the place she planned it to be. There would be vines over the door and a new summer kitchen at the back'; and there would be a porch where her mother could sit, flowers all about her—her dear mother, bent no longer, but fresh ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... home possessed an unique interior. It was such as one would hardly have expected in a bachelor in Barnriff. There were none of the usual impedimenta of a prairie man's abode, there was no untidiness, no dirt, no makeshift. Yet like the man himself the place ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... they passed the mouth of the Ohio; they passed cane-brakes; they fought mosquitoes; they floated along, day after day, through the deep silence and loneliness of the river, drowsing in the scant shade of makeshift awnings, and broiling with the heat; they encountered and exchanged civilities with another party of Indians; and at last they reached the mouth of the Arkansas (about a month out from their starting-point), where a tribe of war-whooping ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "This rather makeshift plan I proceeded to execute. Transporting the material to the middle of the weed-grown space, I covered it lightly with twigs and various articles of loose rubbish. It was now quite invisible, and I was turning away to ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... and his family. In Newbury, April 20,1768, "Young ladies met at the house of the Rev. Mr. Parsons, who preached to them a sermon from Proverbs 31-19. They spun and presented to Mrs. Parsons two hundred and seventy skeins of good yarn." They drank "liberty tea." This makeshift of a beverage was made of the four-leaved loosestrife. The herb was pulled up like flax, its stalks were stripped of the leaves and were boiled. The leaves were put in a kettle and basted with the liquor distilled from the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... if consistent with its size, it should be on a vastly larger scale," said the doctor. "I never believed in the theory," he continued, "that the larger the planet the smaller should be its inhabitants, and always considered it a makeshift, put forward in the absence of definite knowledge, the idea being apparently that the weight of very large creatures would be too great for their strength. Of the fact that mastodons and creatures far larger than any now ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... adapted for their needs, so wasteful of labour and so devoid of beauty as this was, and it is only now as I describe this that I find myself thinking of the essential absurdity of an intelligent community living in such makeshift homes. It strikes me now as the next thing to ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... readers no doubt will not need to be reminded that this is the original title of The Marriage of Kitty,—literally "gangway," but in the sense of "makeshift" or ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... nature, and involves such a disparagement of the sex in a vital point, that the Drawer hesitates to put it in words. It is said that the cap and gown will be used to cover untidiness, to conceal the makeshift of a disorderly and unsightly toilet. Undoubtedly the cap and gown are democratic, adopted probably to equalize the appearance of rich and poor in the same institution, where all are on an intellectual ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the arrangement, and before the sun had set our professor of wood-craft had both in readiness. From a young yellow birch an oar took shape with marvelous rapidity,—trimmed and smoothed with a neatness almost fastidious,—no makeshift, but an instrument fitted for the delicate work it was ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... on the sign) the only hotel in the camp. A barroom with a dancing-floor. A cook who plays the violin. A popular place. Clinking glasses and swaggering drinkers. "No place for a lady". The log-cabin residence. Its primitive, makeshift furnishings. The library. No churches, society, etc. "No vegetables but potatoes and onions, no milk, no eggs, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... ship. But in the end we were taken into the first-class ranks, at a substantial reduction from the full first-class fares, on the understanding that we contented ourselves with a somewhat gloomy little single-berth cabin which no one else wanted. Here a makeshift bed was presently arranged for me, and within the hour we emigrants from the steerage had become first-class passengers. The translation brought such obvious and real relief to my father that my own spirits rose instantly; I began to take great interest in our surroundings, and, from that ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Mike went to work again. He showed Thompson how to arrange a mattress of hemlock boughs on the bed frame. It was a simple enough makeshift, soft and springy when Thompson spread his bedding over it. Then Mike superintended the final disposition of his supplies so that there would be some semblance of order instead of an indiscriminately mixed pile in which ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... when I, at the age of eighteen, picked out my walk in life, so to speak. After considering everything, I decided to be a literary man. A novelist or a playwright, I hadn't much of a choice between the two, or perhaps a journalist. Being a journalist, of course, was preliminary; a sort of makeshift. At any rate, I was going to be a writer. My Uncle Rilas, a hard-headed customer who had read Scott as a boy and the Wall Street news as a man,—without being misled by either,—was scornful. He said that I would outgrow it, there ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... our old front line, whether held by the French or by ourselves, was nothing but a post to be endured, day in day out, in all weathers and under all fires, in doubt, difficulty, and danger, with bluff and makeshift and improvisation, till the tide could be turned. If it be dull to read about and to see, it was, at least, the old line which kept back the tide and stood the siege. It was the line from which, after all those months of war, the tide turned and the ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... patience with you," cried Kate. "Why you should hang around here doing graduate work year after year passes my understanding. I declare I believe you stay here because it's cheap and passes the time; but really, you know, it's a makeshift." ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... our dearth of great prose. With the exception of Henry James and Hawthorne, Poe is our only master of pure prose. We lament our dearth of poets. With the exception of Lowell, Poe is our only great poet. Poe found short story writing a bungling makeshift. He left it a perfect art. He wrote the first perfect short stories in the English language. He first gave the short story purpose, method, and artistic form. In a careless reading one can not realize the wonderful literary art, the cunning devices, the masterly effects ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... hardly more comfortable. The cold, rain-beaten rock on which Jean had spread his own and David's blankets was a poor couch at best. But to Tom it represented the freedom he had despaired of ever again attaining, and he was more than satisfied with his makeshift bed. Worn out by his recent exertion, he had fallen asleep directly after they had eaten supper. He awakened at daybreak declaring that he felt refreshed ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... and Abe continued: "Mr. Worth, they are putting in the cheapest possible kind of wooden structures all through the system, even at points where the safety of the whole project depends on the control of the water. The intake itself is nothing but the flimsiest sort of a makeshift. One good flood, such as we have every few years, and there wouldn't be a damned stick of it left in twelve hours. You remember what the grade is from the river at the point of the intake this way into the Basin and you ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... and heavy in little Rackby's heart. Serene harbor master that he was, the unearthly quiet of his harbor was an affront upon him in his present mood. Now that she was lost to him, he could not, by any makeshift of reason, be rid of the impulse that had come upon him to jump fairly out of his own skin in an effort ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... generated, and freedom of will and of action is encouraged. Family life is nowhere so educative as in the country. The whole family co-operates for common ends, and in its individual members are bred the qualities of industry, patience, and perseverance. The manual work of the schools is but a makeshift for the old-fashioned training of the country-grown boy. Country life is an admirable preparation for the modern ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... German seasons, were in New York in February, 1894, and taking advantage of that fact Mr. Walter Damrosch arranged two performances of "Die Walkre," in the Carnegie Music Hall, for the benefit of local charities. They were slipshod affairs, with makeshift scenery and a stage not at all adapted for theatrical performances; but the public rose at them, as the phrase goes, and Mr. Damrosch felt emboldened to give a representation of "Gtterdmmerung," with the ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a condition the land is in politically. Cowardice and hypocrisy are slated to win, and makeshift and the cheapest politics are to take possession of national affairs. Better even obstinacy and ego-mania! Cox, I think, has made a gallant fight. He is to be beaten because Wilson is as unpopular as he once was popular. Oh! if he had been frank as to his ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... cooking, Lydia left her makeshift help in the kitchen, to see that nothing burned, and in a frenzy of activity flew at some of the manifold things to be done to prepare the house for the festivity. She swept and wiped up herself the expansive floors of the two large parlors, set the rooms in order, dusted ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... spectacle of a foreign commerce in decay and an empire in disorder, if the grand justification for the senate's authority—its government of the foreign dependencies of Rome—were first questioned, then tossed aside? Would not the Individual makeshift have in such a case as this to be invested with military authority? Might not his power be defended and perpetuated by a weapon mightier than the voting tablet? Might not his supporters be a class of men, to whom the charms of civil life are ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... but could make nothing of it, unless the words foreshadowed an attempt on the temporary dam. But there seemed to be little chance for the success of such an undertaking. Big acetylenes flared all night by the makeshift structure, and two men with shotguns watched by it. The whole camp was under almost ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... and young, working here in the wilderness like beavers, clearing and digging, scraping and building. All are pressed hard by a strong hope of establishing a permanent home and of earning future independence. But we still live in makeshift houses, and so far only a few families are able to make a living, bare and meager, out of their clearings, diggings, and cows. The vast majority—almost all of us—have, at times, to leave the farm in care of women and children and look for work elsewhere—in Duluth, Chicago, Detroit—for ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... down to a pleasant little schedule of sixteen hours a day work and called it ease; but that was not to he enjoyed for long. At the end of a week the Salvation Army Colonel swooped down upon them again with orders to erect a hut at once as the tents were only a makeshift and winter was coming on. He brought materials and selected a ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... one thing for another.] Substitution — N. substitution, commutation; supplanting &c v.; metaphor, metonymy &c (figure of speech) 521. [Thing substituted] substitute, ersatz, makeshift, temporary expedient, replacement, succedaneum; shift, pis aller [Fr.], stopgap, jury rigging, jury mast, locum tenens, warming pan, dummy, scapegoat; double; changeling; quid pro quo, alternative. representative &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... district. The chief town, Mooteeharree, consisted of a long bazaar, or market street, beautifully situated on the bank of a lovely lake, some two miles in length. From the main street, with its quaint little shops sheltered from the sun by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking, weather-stained shingles, or rotting bamboo mats, various little lanes and alleys diverged, leading one into a collection of tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up apparently by chance, and presenting the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... just testing it to see if it works. It does, although the end which I installed down below was necessarily only a makeshift. It is not this red light with the shrill bell that we are interested in. It is the green light and the low-toned ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... said Thorndyke. "Here is a makeshift cartridge of Polton's manufacture, containing an eighth charge of smokeless powder for ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... and 'those modest hues which the native appearance of the stone so pleasantly bestows.'[859] Everywhere else the dauber's brush had been at work. He spoke of it with indignation. 'I make little scruple in declaring that this job work, which is carried on in every part of the kingdom, is a mean makeshift to give a delusive appearance of repair and cleanliness to the walls, when in general this wash is resorted to to hide neglected or perpetrated fractures.'[860] The stone fretwork of the Lady Chapel at Hereford,[861] the valuable wall-paintings at Salisbury,[862] the carved work of Grinling ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... on deck next morning for his bath, which consisted of so many buckets of water fresh fished up and dashed upon him by the men as a makeshift, consequent upon Captain Chubb telling him that he could not have any swims on account of the sharks. "Can't spare you, my lad," he had said. "But I haven't seen a shark," grumbled Rodd. "No, my lad, but they would very soon see you. You never know ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... disc, they waited. Would that stupendous ray be hurled back upon itself? Or would it sear through their makeshift defense, plunging them and the whole great ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... plantation on which more than two hundred men and women worked for the owner. The children had no especial educational opportunities. Few of them were even permitted to attend the makeshift public school located near. For six months only, of the twelve years my father lived on that plantation, did I attend any school, and that a small one taught by a Southern white woman who had owned my father. When I was twelve years of age my father moved from the ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... week and teaching a boy four hours a week in the continuation school or evening class, the full measure of success cannot be expected. The employment of day teachers for night school work has never been other than a makeshift, and the insignificant results attained in night schools throughout the country have been due in great measure ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... Roman empire from imminent collapse; but it was impossible that it should be more than a makeshift, like Cromwell's protectorate. There were huge classes with perpetual grievances; the removal of the military forces to the provinces left the city of Rome without adequate governors of the provinces themselves. And there ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... leads inevitably to doubt, to insight into its own weakness, while life demands conviction. The doubter cannot act, the agent cannot know. It is true that a substitute is found for defective knowledge in belief based upon instinct and custom; but this is a makeshift, not a solution of the problem, an acknowledgment of the evil, not a cure for it. Further, Hume's greatness does not consist in the fact that he preached modesty to the contending parties, that he banished the doubting reason into the study and restricted ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... reaches the reader, will truthfully express either painter or critic. Such are the limitations of one art when it comes to deal with the ideas or material of another. Criticism is at two removes from its theme. Therefore criticism is a makeshift. Therefore, let critics be modest and allow criticism to ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... evenings, that of delivery boy for the local grocer. It did not bring in much, to be sure, and it kept him on his feet at the end of the day when often he was too tired to stand. However, all these disadvantages were lost sight of in the few additional dollars derived from the makeshift. ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... pleaded. "The hack-work is only makeshift, and I don't take it seriously. Give me two years. I shall succeed in that time, and the editors will be glad to buy my good work. I know what I am saying; I have faith in myself. I know what I have in me; I know what literature is, now; I know the average rot that is poured ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... anything about it," he said. "What are the doings of this silly world, of our makeshift appearances, to the essentials? Antics— filling up time! You speak as if she gave Ingram everything, and lost it. She did, but he never knew it—so never had it. Ingram had what he was fitted to receive. Her impulse, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... partially filling the space between ceiling and floorboards with sawdust or sheets of slag-wool laid on boarding nailed to fillets on the joists. The sawdust should be filled up to the top of the joists; over this a layer of thick felt, and the boarding above. This, however, is only a makeshift when compared with a solid floor ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... would be without workers in his mill. As a consequence Owen found himself in the position of education authority, privy purse and organiser, and he did not flinch from the situation; he imposed no cheap makeshift, because he believed in education as an end and not as an economic means; a twofold institution was therefore established by him in 1816, one part for the children of recognised school age, presumably ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... removal of the Valuation Department from the attic, the provision of stairs, and the adapting of the area as a stack room. This provided welcome relief, but only for a short while until in 1926 the attic space over the main reading room was shelved and provided a makeshift ...
— Report of the Chief Librarian - for the Year Ended 31 March 1958: Special Centennial Issue • J. O. Wilson and General Assembly Library (New Zealand)
... a half dozen of his section chiefs stood at the base of one of the makeshift towers. The chief hydraulic engineer had a headset clamped on for contact with all the ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... to stand between Scaife and Desmond. At the same time, he was uncomfortably aware that Scaife seemed to have climbed high above Desmond, who had stood still. In moments of depression John told himself that he was a makeshift, that Desmond would leave him and join the Demon whenever that splendid young person chose to whistle him up. Scaife had failed to get his Football Flannels, but he came so near to beating all previous records that the School began to regard ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the lower sash of which was up, and gazed out—down into that dust-fogged, noisy, turbulent main street, of floury human beings and grime-smeared beasts almost within touch, boiling about through the narrow lane between the placarded makeshift structures. I lifted my smarting eyes, and across the hot sheet-iron roofs I saw the country south—a white-blotched reddish desert stretching on, desolate, lifeless under the sunset, to a range of stark hills black ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... a general history of the state. It is sufficient to say that nearly all, if not all, of them succumbed to the financial disasters in 1857-58, and there was no banking worthy of the name until the passage of the banking law of July 26, 1858. But this act was a mere makeshift to meet a financial emergency, and it was not based upon sound financial principles. It allowed the organization of banks and the issue of circulating bank notes upon securities that were capable of being fraudulently ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... her big abdomen, perambulates all the nooks and corners of her makeshift dwelling, exploring them with her palpi, which she passes everywhere. After half an hour of groping and careful investigation, she ends by selecting the horizontal gallery dug in the cork. She thrusts her abdomen into this cavity and, with her head hanging outside, begins her laying. Not ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... is a makeshift, not an art," she said. "Before the war I could have shown you what ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... north and south were blue and more faintly azure. The little log cabin stood with small fields about it, for Purdee barely subsisted on the fruits of the soil, and did not seek to profit. It had only one room, with a loft above; the barn was a makeshift of poles, badly chinked, and showing through the crevices what scanty store there was of corn and pumpkins. A black-and-white work-ox, that had evidently no deficiency of ribs, stood outside of the fence and gazed, a forlorn Tantalus, at these unattainable dainties; now and then a muttered ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... the sciences and arts. It was not that he had anything so wonderful, or even comparable to the collection of his laboratory. But as I ran my eye over the box I would have wagered that from the contents he might have made shift to duplicate in some makeshift form almost anything that he might need. It was truly amazing, representing in miniature his ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... sheet blisters, the defective part must be cut out by hand-tapped holes drilled by ratchets and as it is frequently impossible to get space in which to drive rivets, a "soft patch" is necessary. This is but a makeshift at best and usually results in either a reduction of the safe working pressure or in the necessity for a new plate. If the latter course is followed, the old plate must be cut out, a new one scribed to place to locate rivet holes and in order to obtain room ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... a matinee performance, but the girls resisted this plan very strongly, feeling that the garish light of day would be bad for the makeshift costumes, and would be likely to rob them of what little ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... This pragmatist talk about truths in the plural, about their utility and satisfactoriness, about the success with which they 'work,' etc., suggests to the typical intellectualist mind a sort of coarse lame second-rate makeshift article of truth. Such truths are not real truth. Such tests are merely subjective. As against this, objective truth must be something non-utilitarian, haughty, refined, remote, august, exalted. It must be an absolute correspondence of our thoughts with an equally absolute reality. It must ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... horror of infinite flatness that is all about the literature of the Middle Ages, as if there had fallen upon them, in that Alean plain, the shadow of the enormous beast out of Aristotle's Poetics, they chose to renounce all superfluity, and throw away the makeshift wedges and supports by which an epic is held up. In this way they did great things, and Volosp (the Sibyl's Prophecy) is their reward. To write out in full the story of the Volsungs and Niblungs was left to the prose compilers of the Volsunga ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... that trouble was impending. For myself I never knew, and I suppose she read the signs among the men and got certain definite information from the women. We therefore slept some miles away from the encampment in a makeshift gunyah built of boughs, in front of which the usual fire was made. After we had retired to rest, Yamba woke me and said that she detected strange noises. I immediately sprang to my feet and looked all round our little shelter. It was much too ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... rheumatism and other local diseases the scratching is confined to the part affected. The instrument used is selected in accordance with the mythologic theory, excepting in the case of the piece of glass, which is merely a modern makeshift for the flint arrowhead. ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... perfectly, all the small details should be attended to—the door-locks, the framework of the doors and windows, the carving. All these must be taken into account if one wishes success. It is better not to attempt a style throughout if it is to be a makeshift affair and show the effects of inadequate knowledge. The elaborate side of any style carried out to the last detail is really only possible and also only appropriate for those who have houses to correspond, but one can choose the simpler side and have beautiful and ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... You have only to marry anybody outside of the higher nobility—and just as a makeshift——" She had drawn closer in the urgency of her desire to help him. An infinite despair and mirth as well was kindled by her nearness. And the man was insane and ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the house was only the bare earth beaten down hard. We lads made brooms, by tying the twigs of trees to a stick, which was not what might be called a good makeshift, and yet with such we kept the inside of our home far more cleanly than were some ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... own beef to-night—it was so pleasant to him to look on in the intervals of carving and see how the others enjoyed their supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year except Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a makeshift manner, under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden bottles—with relish certainly, but with their mouths towards the zenith, after a fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds. Martin ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... boats and we launched them. Never has been such a fleet; A packing-case for a bottom, a mackinaw for a sheet. Shapeless, grotesque, lopsided, flimsy, makeshift and crude, Each man after his fashion builded ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... caught his snowshoe on a buried branch and fell forward, breaking the frame. In his angry impatience he attempted no more than a temporary repair of the damage, such as he thought might see him to the end of his journey. But the poor makeshift broke down before he had gone a mile. There was nothing for him to do but to stop long enough to make a good job of it, which he did by chopping out a piece of ash, whittling down a couple of thin but ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... open towards the church with a wide arch, of which the jambs still remain; but this idea having been abandoned, and any part of the tower which then had been built having been taken down, the present makeshift gable was put up instead to fill up the gap, which, in these circumstances, would be left for the supposed opening into the church."[293] On the north side of the nave there is a large porch called Halkerston's ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... hands does not like to have hers show the effect of housework, when that means scrubbing the floor and cleaning the stove. Gloves? Ah, well, James Nasmyth once wrote: "Kid-gloves are great non-conductors of knowledge." I believe that gloves of any kind are a makeshift in real cleaning of dirty corners; but there should not be ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... "Fertilizers! Poo! Expedients, Weener—miserable, makeshift expedients!" Her unavoidable eyes bit into mine. "What is a fertilizer? A tidbit, a pap, a lollypop. Indians use fish; Chinese, nightsoil; agricultural chemists concoct tasty tonics of nitrogen and potash—where's your ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... makeshift as compared with the nitro-cellulose used by this Government. Ours is a far better explosive, and is less erosive on the guns, because the gases which it generates are not so hot. We have the best smokeless powder in the world, and, after this war ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... house, nevertheless, was very small, and he fretted at its inconveniences, not in a disagreeable way, but desiring to have a house and home of his own among more familiar scenes and within reach of the sea; he regarded the new move as a makeshift, and settled in West Newton, a suburb of Boston, where his wife's family lived, until he should purchase a place of his own. The change from the winter picturesqueness of Berkshire was marked, but the village ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... off on a trip round the world. That would not only amuse you royally but afford you a liberal education into the bargain; but I haven't the money to do that just now, I'm afraid. Some more modest entertainment must be found. H-m! I don't suppose as a makeshift you would care to go into the store with me for a week or two until a better plan can ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... brief Latin welcome depending from his mouth in legible characters, it would have been less confusing when the rain came on, and created an impatience in men and horses that broke off the delivery of his well-studied periods, and reduced the representatives of the scholarly city to offer a makeshift welcome in impromptu French. But that sudden confusion had created a great opportunity for Tito. As one of the secretaries he was among the officials who were stationed behind the Signoria, and with whom these highest dignities were promiscuously ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... representative was one Salathiel, who, on the failure of the direct line, was regarded as the 'son of Jeconiah' (1 Chron. iii. 17). He seems to have had no son, and Zerubbabel, who was really his nephew (1 Chron. iii. 19), was legally adopted as his son. In this makeshift fashion, some shadow of the ancient royalty still presided over the restored people. We see Zerubbabel better in Haggai and Zechariah than in Ezra, and can discern the outline of a strong, bold, prompt nature. He had a hard task, and he did it like ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... slavery was to play so prominent and fatal a role; and, finally, there were already in the South faint signs of a changing moral attitude toward slavery, which would no longer regard the system as a temporary makeshift, but rather as a permanent though perhaps unfortunate necessity. With regard to the slave-trade, however, there appeared to be substantial unity of opinion; and there were, in 1787, few things to indicate that a cargo of five hundred African ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of the election of the President and Vice-President of the United States was contested in 1877, Congress, as a temporary makeshift, bridged over the difficulty by creating a commission of fifteen, five from each house and five from the Supreme Court, to decide upon the returns. Four of the justices were especially selected by the act passed for ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... whom were more or less badly wounded; and at first, when we heard at the hospital that a train was about to be made up, we took down all the soup and coffee we could manage to spare in big pails and jugs. But this was a mere makeshift, and was superseded very soon by a more up-to-date arrangement. A proper soup-kitchen was established at the station, with huge boilers full of soup and coffee always ready, and after that it was never necessary ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... bitterly of his wound; he could no longer ride on horseback. They were forced to carry him the rest of the way on a makeshift ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... table, whilst the ship's doctor, a young man, himself in the horrible throes of seasickness, had performed a radical operation for acute mastoiditis. There had been no facilities. The whole thing had been in the last degree makeshift. The half-trained stewardess had held his instruments ready for him, and the sea-sickness, comic in retrospect, had weighed heavily against Mr. Fletcher's chance of seeing land again. Nevertheless, the eminent New York surgeon, consulted at the first opportunity, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... gives it, certainly, the main value it has. But the 'state satirist' is always on the heels of the poet; and imagination, whenever it appears for a moment, is led away into bondage by the spirit of the fantastic, which is its prose equivalent or makeshift. It is the fantastic that Ibsen generally gives us in the place of imagination; and the fantastic is a kind of rhetoric, manufactured by the will, and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons |
