"Middling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dignities, strong alliances by birth or marriage, fortified by a superlative degree of zeal and loyalty; but, however, they were all at first no more than young beginners; and before their great promotion, were known by their plain Christian names, among their old companions, the middling rate of clergymen; nor could, therefore, be strangers to their condition, or with any good grace, forget it so soon as ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... but heard no noise of voices, nor movements of people in the cabin. Through the planks, overhead, however, came the sound of a rapid tread of feet, accompanied by the thud of coils of rope flung hastily down. The cabin porthole was a middling-sized, circular window. I saw the whaler in it as in a frame. I unscrewed the port, but with no intention to cry out, never doubting for a moment from the looks of the men that they would silence me in some bloody fashion as ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... and no other dissent than what was expressed by a look or a low murmur. But I perceived the corpulent gentleman and the wan mathematician slily exchange their dishes, by which they both seemed to consider themselves gainers. The dish allotted to me, being of a middling character, I ate of it without repining; though, from the savoury fumes of my right-hand neighbour's plate, I could not help wishing I had been ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... retired green-grocer, rejoicing in the euphonious name of TIBBS, living at Hackney, near London, sorely against his will, and after warm remonstrance, finally yielded to his wife's entreaty that he would go in character to a masquerade-ball, given to the 'middling interest' by one of his old neighbors. He went accoutred as a knight, wearing his visor down. What was his surprise on entering the room, to find first one and then another member of the motley company slapping him familiarly on the back, with: 'Halloa! TIBBS! who thought to see ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... constant coming and going of the promenaders, who each formally paced back and forth upon the planking for a certain time, and then went quietly home, giving place to the new arrivals. They were nearly all French, and they were not generally, it seemed, of the first fashion, but rather of middling condition in life; the English being represented only by a few young fellows and now and then a redfaced old gentleman with an Indian scarf trailing from his hat. There were some fair American costumes and faces in the crowd, but it was essentially Quebecian. The young girls walking in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... guess I can't have you call Utica inferior. It isn't supreme—that's what's the matter with it, and I hate anything middling," said Pandora Day. She gave a light dry laugh, tossing back her head a little as she made this declaration. And looking at her askance in the dusk, as she trod the deck that vaguely swayed, he recognised something in her air and port ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... liquors among other nations, is a species of luxury which all ranks adopt according to their ability, and which, when once become habitual, it is almost impossible to shake off. Being however like other luxuries expensive, few only among the lower or middling class of people can compass the regular enjoyment of it, even where its use is not restrained, as it is among the pepper-planters, to the times of their festivals. That the practice of smoking opium must be in some ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... a breeze engaged in shaking out a table-cloth should have fancied itself inflating a banner. But this criticism may have been a mere mark of my own fastidiousness, for the man seemed a simple fellow, satisfied with his middling fortunes, and already (he was not much past thirty) deep-sunk ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... through the porch into the house. There was no hall; they walked straight into the sitting-room, where a table was spread with tea, and Miss Hilton, a rather faded-looking lady of middling age, was already seated behind ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... that the lower and middling classes of society never entertained the opinion that the highest classes exhibited models of piety and virtue, and were, indeed, disposed to believe them worse than they ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... middling, poor dear," answered Miss Blake—on that occasion she called her niece Hallana. "She frets, the creature, as is natural; but she will get better when we leave England. England is a hard country for anyone who is all ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... it at its utmost need, and refused to act with the only man whose military talents and prosperity were equal to the emergency."—TYTLER'S History of Scotland.] Yet, notwithstanding this unwillingness of the great nobility to support him, Wallace assembled a large army; for the middling, but especially the lower classes, were very much attached to him. He marched boldly against the King of England, and met him near the town of Falkirk. Most of the Scottish army were on foot, because, as I already told you, in those days only the nobility ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... pretty middling, within doors; but I don't like the climate, Mr. John I don't the climate, Sir. There's no country like h'England, I believe, for my business. 'Ere's a fine rose, Sir if you'll step a bit this way quite a new kind I got ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... failed in his larger poems, he had a genius little short of perfect in his handling of shorter forms. The Arthurian story which produced only middling moralizing in the Idylls, gave us as well the supremely written Homeric episode of the Morte d'Arthur, and the sharp and defined beauty of Sir Galahad and the Lady of Shallott. Tennyson had a touch of the pre-Raphaelite faculty of ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... for governing—except that they were loyal; and this was of no more use to them in this great work, than piety in the pulpit when the preacher cannot repeat the Lord's prayer without biting his tongue. The carpet-baggers ran all the way from "good to middling." Some went South with fair ability and good morals, where they lost the latter article and never found it; while many more went South to get all they could and keep all they got. The Negro could ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... village there are numerous hotels and boarding-houses, capable of suiting the pockets and the wishes of all the middling, and even of the lower classes of society:—but there are three or four principal houses,—and especially two, reserved for the aristocracy; and here all the elite of the visitors congregate. We wealthy English may laugh at the moderate expense for which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... we was fifty miles away from home, and then we could keep the road middling well, though I kept my bonnet tied across my face. And so we drew nigh to Gloucester town, and then the old Betsy told me that Jan was there with his ridgment, and that I must find he by myself. And she wished me good-bye, and then the poor soul fell a-crying, for she said that there was no one ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... are usually collected at a muster, or on similar occasions, lounging about, without any apparent enjoyment; but the observation of this may serve me to make a sketch of the mode of spending the Sabbath by the majority of unmarried, young, middling-class people, near a great town. Most of the people had ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... certainly does not prevail in an equal degree in the country, but the subject has not hitherto received sufficient attention to enable anyone to say that there are not more deaths in proportion among the children of the poor, even in the country, than among those of the middling and higher classes. Indeed, it seems difficult to suppose that a labourer's wife who has six children, and who is sometimes in absolute want of bread, should be able always to give them the food and attention ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... on the street corners and in the stores. The next week there was another editorial, personal and local in its application, and thereby it became evident that the new proprietor of the "Herald" was a theorist who believed, in general, that a politician's honor should not be merely of that middling healthy species known as "honor amongst politicians"; and, in particular, that Rodney McCune should not receive the nomination of his party for Congress. Now, Mr. McCune was the undoubted dictator of the district, and his followers ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... institution pay a sum of money, and are entitled to a room, fire, and food, so long as they live, and some enter even as young as the age of twenty. There is another establishment in Paris where only the middling classes are received, and who pay for the attention they receive. Single men who have no homes of their own, when attacked by violent diseases, can by paying a moderate sum enter this institution and ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Shurtleff, D.D., says of him: 'Dr. Smith was rather above the middling stature, straight, and well proportioned. His head was well formed, though blanched and bald somewhat in advance of his years. His face, too, as to its lineaments, was very regular and comely. His eyes were of a ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... was thin; the oats only middling; and the corn sold very badly on account of its smell. A curious circumstance was that La Butte, with the stones cleared away from it at last, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... instance, recited his grammar lesson without a slip, the letter B—standing for bene, well—was put in the grammar column. If he made one mistake, the entry was V B, vix bene—scarcely well; if two mistakes, Med, mediocriter—middling; and if three, M, male—badly, equivalent to not knowing it at all. The same system prevailed for all the lessons, and in a modified form for the behaviour or deportment also. As regards behaviour, the arrangement was one bad ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... light, but it was only a glimmering. He could understand that a man should not call his own goods middling; but he could not understand that a man is only carrying out the same principle in an advanced degree, when he proclaims with a hundred thousand voices in a hundred thousand places, that the article which he desires to sell is the best of its kind that the world has yet produced. He merely ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... face joyfully write: "This book is, so-so, but bears evident marks of hurry in its execution. If the author shall ever learn the self-possession of the true artist, and come to tell his stories with leisurely dignity of manner—and so on—and so on—and so forth—he will—well, he will—do middling well for a man who had the unhappiness to be born in longitude west from Washington." Ah! well, I shrug my shoulders, and bidding both Cormorant and Critic to get behind me, Satan, I write my story in my own fashion for my gentle ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... middling. Just look in and see;" with which cheerful remark Gus tipped up his basket and displayed a few bits of green ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... without fatigue. I had now got greatly stronger; and, if not quite up to my old thirty miles per day, nor altogether so bold a cragsman as I had been only a few years before, I was at least vigorous enough to enjoy a middling long walk, and to breast a tolerably steep hill. And so I resolved on at least glancing over, if not exploring, the fossiliferous deposits of the Orkneys, trusting that an eye somewhat practised in the formations mainly developed in these islands might enable ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... watercourses again call for a considerable expense to keep them properly scoured and duly levelled. Taking the district in that map as a measure, there cannot be in the Carnatic and Tanjore fewer than ten thousand of these reservoirs of the larger and middling dimensions, to say nothing of those for domestic services, and the use of religious purification. These are not the enterprises of your power, nor in a style of magnificence suited to the taste of your minister. These are the monuments of real ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that "it may be regarded as a test of any reader's insight into the most poetical aspects of poetry," and his Horatian Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland. The town of Hull voted him a monument, which was, however, forbidden by the Court. His appearance is thus described, "He was of middling stature, pretty strong-set, roundish-faced, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery, and brilliantly illuminated with the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... followed each other in volume that grew as the twilight deepened. Along with the troops, the motors flowed up, and soon there was an unbroken roar. Limousines glided through an enormous sea of lorries, little, middling, and big. All these cleared aside, wedged themselves in, subsided in their appointed places. A vast hum of voices and mingled noises arose from the ocean of men and vehicles that beat upon the approaches to the station and began ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Why should a woman be so circumspect in her choice? Is it not because when once made she must abide by it? "She sets her life upon the cast, and she must stand the hazard of the die." From domestic uneasiness a man has a thousand resources: in middling life, the tavern, in high life, the gaming-table, suspends the anxiety of thought. Dissipation, ambition, business, the occupation of a profession, change of place, change of company, afford him agreeable and honourable relief from domestic chagrin. If his home ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... to cut out in Shivers as Dutch-Beef:—Take a middling leg of mutton, then take half a pound of brown sugar, and rub it hard all over your mutton, and let it lie twenty-four hours; then take an ounce and half of saltpetre, and mix it with a pound of common salt, and rub that all over ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... the middling and poorer classes, have certainly less sincerity and straight-forwardness than their neighbours. An anecdote is related illustrative of the slyness of the Bohemians, compared with the simple honesty of the German, and the candid unscrupulousness of the Hungarian: "During the ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... land-owners sometimes cultivate the soil with their own hands—sometimes with hired labourers—and sometimes they rent them for about a third of their produce. The smallest proprietors commonly adopt the first course; the middling, the second; and the great ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... middling young fellow, only about a thousand years old or so, he went walking up and down the earth one ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... have to be included. But I find the case of a man entering the Indian Service by force of Languages alone, which I cannot but think a miscarriage. Then the very high marks assigned to Mathematics allow a man to win with no other science, and no other culture, but a middling examination in English. To those that think so highly of foreign languages, this must seem a much greater anomaly than it does to me. I would prefer, however, that such a candidate had traversed a wider field of science, instead of excelling in high ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... agricultural population of Norway 'much better lodged than our labouring and middling classes, even in the south of Scotland;' and that no nation was at that period either better housed, or so well provided with fuel. The standard of living appeared to be higher in Norway than in most of our Scotch highland districts, although the materials were the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Wesleyan Chapel-keeper's house. And as it appeared it burst into music. First a purple banner, upheld on crimson poles with gilded lance-points; then a brass band in full note; and then children, children, children—little, middling, and big. As the procession curved down into Trafalgar Road, it grew in stature, until, towards the end of it, the children were as tall as the adults who walked fussily as hens, proudly as peacocks, on its flank. And last came a railway lorry on which dozens of tiny infants ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... his thirtieth year. He was a man of middling height, spare figure, and olive complexion, wearing a short chestnut-colored beard. He spoke with vivacity and copious rhetoric, aiming rather at force than at purity of diction, indulging in trenchant metaphors to adumbrate recondite thoughts, passing from grotesque ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... ticket to see the Imperial treasure. (Tell Henrietta that I saw there the diamond of Charles the Bold; it is as large as a walnut.) I likewise saw the finest opal, as I suppose, in the world; it was the size of a middling pear; there was likewise a hyacinth as big as a swan's egg; I likewise saw a pearl so large that they had wrought the figure of a cock out of it, and the cock was somewhat more than an inch high, but the thing which struck me most was the sword of Tamerlane, generally called ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... At middling distances or better, Ed could still see as well as ever, but close up he needed help. He got out his pocket magnifier and studied the spine. It looked hollow, grooved back for a distance from the point. A drop of milky looking ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... two dry leaves that were picked up by one of them on his return; and all I could learn from him, concerning the tree itself, was, that it stood on the border of a rivulet, as described by the old priest; that it was of a middling size; that five or six young trees of the same kind stood close by it; but that no other shrub or plant could be seen near it; and that the ground was of a brownish sand, full of stones, almost impracticable for travelling, and covered with dead bodies. After many conversations with the old ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair "Why didn't the man die? He is only forty now. He will take my last penny from me, he will marry, will enjoy life, will gamble on the Exchange; while ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... George Daniel, we are informed by his representatives, gave about L220 for his first Shakespeare to William Pickering, and Mr. Corser kept his 1632 book in his dining-room at Stand Rectory among the commoner volumes, although it was a fine copy. A middling set now fetches L600 ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... "Middling," said the boatswain grudgingly. "Might be better; might be wuss. But look here, young fellow; I don't like working ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... is an excellent example of Miss Austen's genius for making her characters talk. Luckily, conversation was still formal in her day, and it was as possible for her as for Congreve to make middling men and women talk first-rate prose. She did more than this, however. She was the first English novelist before Meredith to portray charming women with free personalities. Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse have an independence (rare in English fiction) of the accident of being fallen ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... in the spirit of welcome and stood a moment watching the others approach. "There will be no difficulty in talking, to judge by the gentleman," he dropped; and while he remains so conspicuous our eyes may briefly rest on him. He was middling high and was visibly a representative of the nervous rather than of the phlegmatic branch of his race. He had an oval face, fine firm features, and a complexion that tended to the brown. Brown were his eyes, and women thought them soft; dark brown his hair, in which ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... bear him company. He had pretty well recovered of his fit of discontent, for morning air and exercise can soon chase gloom away; so he cheerily tramped along, thinking as he went, how that, after all, it is a middling happy world, and how that the raindrops, now that it had cleared up, hung like diamonds on the laurels, when of a sudden, as he turned a corner near the house, there broke upon his ear, at that quiet hour, such a storm of boisterous sounds—voices ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... accompanied by only a few priests, and often without a single taper, it was borne to the very nearest church, and lowered into the first grave that was not already too full to receive it. Among the middling classes, and especially among the poor, the misery was still greater. Poverty or negligence induced most of these to remain in their dwellings or in the immediate neighborhood; and thus they fell by thousands; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "Middling. I thought you might know him because he's the only poet who was ever a druggist. And he's rather what's ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... comfortable than outside at eighty-two. The Turkish bath in the hotel is very nicely fitted up, but the native masseur wasn't a pleasing experience, his weak chocolate-coloured hands gave me the sensation of the touch of a middling strong eel; his lean, lithe figure and the charms round his neck, and grey hair died brick-red I expect to see again in dreams—a crease in his teeth and venom in his ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... "Why, yes, sir, pretty middling within doors; but I don't like the climate, Mr. John, I don't like the climate, sir. There's no country like h'England, I believe, for my business. 'Ere's a fine rose, sir—if you'll step a bit this way—quite a new kind—I ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... taking place at one end of the exercising ground, a horseman rode up to the front of the reposing soldiers. He was of middling stature, but of athletic frame, and was clothed in a shirt of linked mail, his head protected by a helmet, and in full warlike equipment, and followed by five noukers. By their dusty dress, and the foam which covered their horses, it might be seen that they had ridden far and fast. The first ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Gallons of Water, and forty Pounds of fine Sugar, mix these together, boil and clarify it with the Whites of Eggs: against this is done, have two hundred middling Oranges, pared so thin that no White appear upon the Rinds; and as soon as the Syrup is taken off the Fire, put the Peels of five and twenty Oranges into it; and when the Liquor is quite cold, put in the Juice of the Oranges, with some fresh Ale-Yeast spread upon a warm Toast of white Bread; ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... good for me, aunty. I'm gone. This sweet civilization of ours has got me. The first reform school I went to reformed me, all right—formed me into a crook. I used to show signs of growing up to be fair to middling intelligent, once. But now—nothing to it. You people, though you're twice as old as I am, you're twice as young. You got a chance. Look here, Uncle Appleby, why don't you go out for being one of these famous old pedestrians that get their mugs in the papers? Will you do what I tell ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... need to eat—at least with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you want for the present; not the largest kind, but simply good, middling-sized whales!—Mark Twain's Letter to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... and Stanley Hicks that divided the trade of the place, which was poor to middling, with maybe a couple of hundred tons of copra a year and as much pearl shell as the natives cared to get. It was deep shell, you understand, and sometimes a diver went down and never came up, and you could see him shimmering down ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... five groups of collections called the Nikayas. These are (1) Digha Nikaya, called so on account of the length of the suttas contained in it; (2) Majjhima Nikaya (middling Nikaya), called so on account of the middling extent of the suttas contained in it; (3) Sa@myutta Nikaya (Nikayas relating to special meetings), called sa@myutta on account of their being delivered owing to the meetings ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Mr. Shrimplin, looking into the round innocent face of his son, "that's the stuff the traders used to sell the Indians. Strong? Well, you might say it was middling strong—just middling—about three drops of it would make a rabbit spit in ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... about human nature, and that the conclusion was not flattering. Miss Ingate was a Guardian of the Poor, and the Local Representative of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association. She had studied intimately the needy and the rich and the middling. She was charitable without illusions; and, while adhering to every social convention, she did so with a toleration pleasantly contemptuous; in her heart she had no mercy for snobs of any kind, though, unfortunately, she was at times absurdly ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... on the ground and being secured, according to computation, the largest cotton crop ever known. The last estimates vary from 3,550,000 bales to 3,700,000 bales. A very few years ago it was calculated that cotton at any thing above four cents the pound for "middling quality" on the spot was a profitable crop. Now, the price for the same quality on the spot is fully ten cents the pound;—and it has been about the same or higher for a long time. What is the consequence? A correspondent ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... can do something," she said, with a manner less cordial but more sincere than that she had previously assumed. "Leave the matter with me, and I may be able to open to you a grand house, not a plain, middling place like mine"—and she waved her hand deprecatingly toward the furnishings which seemed to Mrs. Frankland inconceivably rich—"a grand house with all the prestige of a great family. I don't know that I shall succeed with my friend, but for ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... II, for example, the king, the prelates, the nobles, the knights, and the rest of the company, danced in Westminster Hall to the music of the minstrels. The example of the court was followed by the middling classes, and so down to the lowest, and the whole nation was a dancing, jovial nation. He quotes a lively city picture of the times, given by Stow, which resembles the lively scenes one may often see in the gay city of Paris; for ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... who return'd. I spoke of it to Volatilio who bid me apprehend nothing; for, said he, the Magnetick Virtue of the Load-stone is so far from being in Proportion to its Size, that the very large ones have less attractive Power than those which are middling. ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... means good in law) Humming like flies around the newest blaze, The bluest of bluebottles you e'er saw, Teasing with blame, excruciating with praise, Gorging the little fame he gets all raw,[bp] Translating tongues he knows not even by letter, And sweating plays so middling, bad ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... writes Michelet, "is prodigious, far more marvellous than that of Bonaparte. The threads, the wheels, the preparation of forces, are far less visible. It is an honest man, an austere but pious figure, of middling talents, that shoots up one morning, borne upward by I know not what cataclysm. There is nothing like it in the Arabian Nights. And in a moment he goes higher than the throne. He is set upon the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... mashed potatoes. 1 middling-sized head of celery. 1 ounce butter or frying oil. 1/2 teaspoon ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... different. The effect of civilization is to increase the number of our wants. The same degree of education which, during the last century, was considered, even by the upper classes, a superfluity, is now a necessary for the middling class, and will soon become a necessary for the lowest, or all but the lowest, members of society. Most of our readers are acquainted with the story of the Highland chief who rebuked his son indignantly for making ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... worst. Ralph, with his experimental geniality, suggested, by way of healing the breach, that the truth lay between the two extremes and that the establishments in question ought to be described as fair middling. This contribution to the discussion, however, Miss Stackpole rejected with scorn. Middling indeed! If they were not the best in the world they were the worst, but there was nothing middling about ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... had been in middling circumstances, but having lost her husband by a railroad accident six months previously, the widow was reduced to quite a straightened condition. And when the fever seized her, she was in utter despair at the thought of being taken away from ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... of a widow with three children in destitute circumstances following the father's death. The boy asserted there were no children in the family. And they had just moved in, within a very few days, during which time the neighbourhood had only glimpsed a "middling old" woman. It was strange at least, adding distinctly to the puzzle of the whole affair. West grew nervous, wondering why the two should remain so long within, out of sight and hearing. If this was ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... middling; but as obstinate as a mule. When he gets his mind set on a thing, it's no use to try to budge him. I've whipped him till he was black and blue, and it didn't do ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... I kept one of middling size for many months. During two or three weeks I wondered how he lived, for he was never seen to eat. He used to climb to the top of the tank and slide down the slippery glass as though it were a montagne ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... more occupied with national than with religious interests, either because they want that feeling of self-devotion recommended by M. Thiers, or because the government of the priests has given them a horror of Heaven. Very middling Catholics, but excellent citizens, they everywhere demand the freedom of their country. The Bolognese affirm that they are not necessary to the independence of the Pope, which they say could do as well without ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... Apothecaries or Druggists; for furnishing these moving Shopkeepers with Barrows, Baskets, Money to purchase unwholesome Fruit, or any other Necessaries and Conveniences for carrying on this dangerous Traffick with the middling People: but thus much must be said, that we generally find them posted at, or near the Doors and Shops of those Traders. And then, what a horrible Squall and Outcry is there, according to the Season, of Green Goosberries ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... the number of middling Orators, the two brothers L. and Sp. Mummius, both whose Orations are still in being:—the style of Lucius is plain and antiquated; but that of Spurius, though equally unembellished, is more close, and compact; for he was well versed in the doctrine of the Stoics. The Orations of ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... rice, meat, dancing, wine, and fiddling, Which turned the isle into a place of pleasure; The servants all were getting drunk or idling, A life which made them happy beyond measure. Her father's hospitality seemed middling, Compared with what Haidee did with his treasure; 'T was wonderful how things went on improving, While she had not one hour to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the distinctions between the lower, the middling, and the higher classes of society are eternal, and nothing can be a greater calamity than the effacement of those distinctions. Equality of men, in their eyes, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... independency which is the comfort of my life. I never sought out of myself for patrons. My own industry and God's providence have been my whole reliance. The great are not great to me unless they are good, and it is a glorious privilege that a middling man enjoys, who has preserved his independency, and can occasionally (though not stoically) tell the world what he thinks of that world, in hopes to contribute, though by his mite, to ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... pretty middling doleful!" cried he, casting an eloquent glance towards the inn windows, then lowering his voice to a stage whisper, "Macalisteritis, eh? Too much stuffy parlour and domestic reminiscences? Never mind! Pack clouds ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... mighty Rome, Aricia received me in but a middling inn: Heliodorus the rhetorician, most learned in the Greek language, was my fellow-traveller: thence we proceeded to Forum-Appi, stuffed with sailors and surly landlords. This stage, but one for better travellers than we, being laggard we divided into two; the Appian way is ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... the plain of Hazeldale, which was a wide valley with a middling river winding about it, the wild-wood at its back toward the Tofts, and in front down-land nought wooded, save here and there a tree nigh a homestead or cot; for that way the land was builded for a space. Forsooth it was not easy for the folk thereabout to live quietly, ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... quoth she, in a disappointed tone. "I thought they'd have been middling grown by now. But may-be He keeps th' wings till we've got yon? Ay, I reckon that's it. She'll have 'em all ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... princess in disguise?" said Andres to himself, considerably puzzled how to act. "If I hold my tongue, I shall look like a fool, or, at any rate, like a very middling sort of Don Juan: if I persist, I shall perhaps cause the poor girl some disagreeable scene. Can she be afraid of the duenna? Hardly. When that amiable old sorceress devoured my comfits, she became in some sort an accomplice. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... particularity on certain points is really detachable from any definite social ambitions; these things are not a part of getting into society but merely of keeping out of savagery. Those millions and millions of middling people, that huge middle class especially of the Middle West, are not near enough to any aristocracy even to be sham aristocrats, or to be real snobs. But their standards are secure; and though I do not really travel in a bath-tub, or believe in ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... And—as I heard how you'd been disabled along of the rheumatism, Miss Hannah, and wasn't able to do no weaving, and as I knowed young Ishmael would be out of work as long as I was, I just made so free, Miss Hannah, as to bring you this bag of flour and middling of bacon, which I hope you'll do me the honor of ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... well-dressed every body amaze me. Canterbury, which on my setting out I thought deplorable, is a paradise, (236) to Modena, Reggio, Parma, etc. I had before discovered that there was nowhere but in England the distinction of middling people; I perceive now, that there is peculiar to us middling houses: how snug they are! I write to-night because I have time; to-morrow I get to London just as the post goes. Sir Robert is at Houghton. Good night till another post. You are quite well I trust, but tell me so ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... gestures, and grimaces of the village politicians, who, in those days, before coffee-houses were introduced into France, used to congregate in this place of resort. The fruits of this study may be easily discerned in those original draughts of character from the middling and lower classes with which his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... could conveniently read a paragraph. She remembered his gentle, pensive speech. "Ain't it funny, though, those things happen in the slums and they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so often to just middling folks like you and me! Don't it sound like a Tenderloin tale, though, South American wife and American husband and her getting jealous and up and shooting him? Money sure makes love popular. Now, if it had been poor folks, why, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... to my study, consulted London, Lindley, and Linnaeus,—the thick Gray, the middling Gray, and the child's Gray,—Worcester's Dictionary, and Webster's, in both of which you can usually find almost anything but what should be there,—Johnson's "Dictionary of Gardening," and Gardner's "Dictionary of Farming,"—and none of these treatises mentioned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... magnificent blooded steed of the Rothschilds by the side of the old plug of the cabman. Fresh beef, mutton, pork are now out of the question. A little poultry yet remains at fabulous prices. In walking through the Rue St. Lazare I saw a middling-sized goose and chicken for sale in a shop-window, and I had the curiosity to step in and inquire the price (rash man that I was). The price of the goose was ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... surely. But there's no harm in them ones. What the sergeant said to the gentleman Patsy the smith couldn't hear but it was maybe half an hour after when the sergeant went home again and he had a look on him like a man that was middling well satisfied. Patsy the smith saw him for he was in the ditch when he passed, terrible sick, retching the way he thought the whole of his liver would be out on the road before he'd done. Well, there was no more happened last night; but it wasn't more than nine o'clock this ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... which would show themselves some fine morning or other in events, if not in catastrophes. I have been watchful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell as yet. You may laugh at me, and very likely think me foolishly fanciful to trouble myself about what is going on in a middling-class household like ours. Do as you like. But here is that terrible fact to begin with,—a beautiful young girl, with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to Nature's women, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher; he will then find it possible to reconcile small ability with great ambition, superficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with a high reputation for sanctity. Let him shun practical extremes and be ultra only in what is purely theoretic; let him be stringent on predestination, but latitudinarian on fasting; unflinching ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... call me—Silas Grant. Let me take your bag. My son John will be here in a minute, and will help you in with your trunk. Needn't worry, it's all right where it is. Folks are middling honest about here," he added, with a dry laugh, and his hand closed on his guest's—a cold limp, dead-fish sort of ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... belonged, under the name of Mademoiselle, to Madame de Mare, her governess. I sat down and chatted with them; but the impatience of the Duc d'Orleans to learn the news could not be checked. He asked me if I was very satisfied. "Middling," I replied, not to spoil his dinner; but he rose at once and took me into the garden. He was much affected to hear of the ill-success of my negotiation; and returned downcast to table. I took the first opportunity to blame his impatience, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Mr. Swinburne wrote a serious ballade, but the form, I venture to think, is not 'wholly serious,' of its nature, in modern days; and he did not persevere. Nor did the taste for these trifles long endure. A good ballade is almost as rare as a good sonnet, but a middling ballade is almost as easily written as the majority of sonnets. Either form readily becomes mechanical, cheap and facile. I have heard Mr. George Meredith improvise a sonnet, a Petrarchian sonnet, obedient to ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... drove out to the village of Drumalee. The land is middling good as far as the eye can judge. This neighborhood abounds with small lakes. Here for the first time I saw lads going to fish with the primitive fishing rods peculiar to country boys. The country round here is full of people and there is no appearance of extreme ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... unselfish. Our liberty—our real liberty—the liberty both of ourselves and our country—is in our own hands. England cannot crush or kill it, or even seriously injure it. England can only remain in Ireland, indeed, as long as our character is weaker than her guns. Guns are stronger than middling character. Against real character, passionate, determined, and organized, they are less availing than children's catapults. English domination feeds and thrives on weak character. When every Nationalist makes his or her character strong and self-reliant and beautiful, English ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... "She's middling," said Barker, "but my married sister that came to live with us since you was there has had a good deal of sickness in her family. Her husband's laid up with the rheumatism ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... was formed but two were missing! In passing the fox-gloves, where the little China had been hidden, many had shut up never to open again, and she could not be found. A middling-sized Doll, with boots, was missing also! In vain they ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... a middling lover, signore. He lives at Cles, over Val Pejo, in Val di Non, a long way, and courts me twice a year, when he comes over to do carpentering. He cuts very pretty Madonnas. He is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the morning I set out for Bammakoo, at which place I arrived about five o'clock in the afternoon. I had heard Bammakoo much talked of as a great market for salt, and I felt rather disappointed to find it only a middling town, not quite so large as Maraboo; however, the smallness of its size is more than compensated by the riches of its inhabitants; for, when the Moors bring their salt through Kaarta or Bambarra, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the truth and the whole truth. And inasmuch as I have not shrunk from making mention of certain matters which many will deem of small honor to Herdegen, who was, by the favor of Heaven, so far more highly graced in all ways than I, who have never been other than middling gifted, it would ill-become me to shrink from relating matters whereof I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... clogs on when I went to buy the saddle in Kezzick, and they're middling wide in the soles, my clogs are. So when I put my feet into the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... fever. Nobody is ever sick there. They will be better cared for than my children are when they are left to me, and they will be seven hundred miles nearer to us than if they were here. The little ones can go to the Model School, the middling ones to the Academy, and the oldest can go to college. How many ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... as one athirst finds joy who drinks of heavenly dew. The elephant being thus converted, the people around were filled with joy; they all raised a cry of wonder at the miracle, and brought their offerings of every kind. The scarcely-good arrived at middle-virtue, the middling-good passed to a higher grade, the unbelieving now became believers, those who believed were strengthened in their faith. Agatasatru, mighty king, seeing how Buddha conquered the drunken elephant, was moved at heart by thoughts profound; then, filled with joy, he found a twofold growth ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... friend of yours—come to me at the Ostable station and dragged Nellie and me off the train. We rode with that person the rest of the way and—the said person told us what had happened and begged us to help you. Seemed to have made a middling good guess that I COULD help, if ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... seat on the ministerial benches, and vote in and out of parliament for the Bill with which all England rang. Levison Stopford did not make brilliant speeches, but he had a fair share of prominence in county business, was a middling landlord, a respectable head of a family, connected by marriage with a Whig peer, the father of a promising son, and, as the newspapers said, four lovely daughters. All these recommendations to public favour could not secure him against division ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... the preaching had any adaptation whatever to children. As to intellectual training, I believe that, like the other boys, I shirked my work as much as I could. I went to Eton in 1821 after a pretty long spell, in a very middling state of preparation, and wholly without any knowledge or other enthusiasm, unless it were a priggish love of argument which I had begun to develop. I had lived upon a rabbit warren: and what a rabbit warren of a life it is that I ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Wagon on a Hill-side.—In going down a steep hill a middling-sized tree may be felled, and its root tied to the hind axletree, while its branchy top sweeps along the ground, as is seen in the lowermost wagon in the sketch. [Sketch of horses and wagons on hill] ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... flight of steps, and a bed-room prepared for the ladies to uncloak in, and another in which the men can brush their hair and hide their hats. Some such snuggeries very possibly exist in England, among the middling classes; but I believe all over the continent of Europe style is never attempted without more suitable means ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... trencher filled with chopped things, and a man in a blue jerkin came to her side bearing a middling pig, seared to a pale clear pinkness. The boy held the slit stomach carefully apart, and she lined it with slices of bread, dropping into the hollow chives, nutmegs, lumps of salt, the buds of bergamot, ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... they distinguish across that distance which they could not estimate? Long bands across the disc, veritable clouds formed in a very restricted atmospheric medium, from which emerged not only all the mountains, but every relief of middling importance, amphitheatres, yawning craters, such as exist on the visible face. Then immense tracts, no longer arid plains, but veritable seas, oceans which reflected in their liquid mirror all ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... and snow, his belt and the strap of his revolver case keeping together the torn ruins of the blue coat of a Servian artillery officer. As far as the candlelight and his unwashed, unkempt condition make it possible to judge, he is a man of middling stature and undistinguished appearance, with strong neck and shoulders, a roundish, obstinate looking head covered with short crisp bronze curls, clear quick blue eyes and good brows and mouth, a hopelessly prosaic nose like that of a strong-minded baby, trim soldierlike ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... "remember to have ever heard or seen one great genius who had long success in the ministry; and recollecting a great many in my memory and acquaintance, those who had the smoothest time were, at best, men of middling degree in understanding." However true this may be in the main,—and it undoubtedly is true that in ordinary times the speculative and innovating temper of an original mind is less safe than the patience ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... earnestness as they pray for anything else. The congregation doesn't startle us. It is known, I fancy, that the heads of the Church are to be absent to-day, and the attendance is slim. There are no ravishingly beautiful women present, and no positively ugly ones. The men are fair to middling. They will never be slain in cold blood for their beauty, nor shut up in jail ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... certain to reply, 'I'm thinking we'd better take it to the bank and get the money,' for she always felt surer of money than of cheques; so to the bank we went ('Two tens, and the rest in gold'), and thence straightway (by cab) to the place where you buy sealskin coats for middling old ladies. But ere the laugh was done the park would come through the map ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... opposed terms of the literary vocabulary, however, such as 'wise-foolish,' 'old-young,' 'sweet-bitter,' are rarely true contradictories: wise and foolish, indeed, cannot be predicated of the same man in the same relation; but there are many middling men, of whom neither can be predicated on the whole. For the comparison of quantities, again, we have three correlative terms, 'greater—equal—less,' and none of these is the contradictory of either of the others. In fact, the contradictory of any term is one that denotes the sum of ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... like the rest. All the true philosophers are gone, and the middling true are going. I made up my mind like the truest that ever was as soon as I heard the general ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... plants brought from the Egyptian Nile. The Jenan El Afia, and the Jenan Erdoua, contain oranges, citrons, 82 vines, figs, pomegranates, water and musk melons, all of exquisite flavour. The orange and fig trees are here as large as a middling sized English oak. Roses are so abundant at Marocco that they grow every where, and have a most powerful perfume, insomuch that one rose scents a large room; all other flowers are in abundance, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... consider the quality of his grass-land, and buy cattle adapted for it. It would be very bad policy to buy fine cattle for poor or middling lands. You must always keep in view how the cattle have been kept. If they have been kept improperly for your purpose, their size, whether large or small, will not save you from loss. If the cattle are kept on cake, corn, potatoes, or brewers' ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... above their school learning they've been taught to swim, ride, dance, use tools, play on the piano, and speak fair to middling French. Yet, as you say, Fred, the most difficult part is to come, just as we fancied that we were through. And the terrible reflection is that we're not so sure now what we ought to do for them as we were when ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... carry the inconveniencies of the frigid zone far into the temperate. The Samoiede and the Laplander, however, have their counterpart, though on a lower latitude, on the shores of America: the Canadian and the Iroquois bear a resemblance to the ancient inhabitants of the middling climates of Europe. The Mexican, like the Asiatic of India, being addicted to pleasure, was sunk in effeminacy; and in the neighbourhood of the wild and the free, had suffered to be raised on his weakness a domineering superstition, and a permanent ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... middling easy, Madam," answered Charity. "Th' upholder were bidden to put th' house to rights all through, and send the bill to Mistress Joyce. She gave me lodging fro' Setterday to Monday, and bade me see to 't that yo' had all things comfortable. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... orders about the horse, soon joined them, and from him she directly received the amends which were her due; for while he slightly and carelessly touched the hand of Isabella, on her he bestowed a whole scrape and half a short bow. He was a stout young man, of middling height, who, with a plain face and ungraceful form, seemed fearful of being too handsome unless he wore the dress of a groom, and too much like a gentleman unless he were easy where he ought to be civil, and impudent where he might be allowed to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... jacket, the arnica bloom glowing like sunrise on the back! Those new trousers, of "middling" sacks, "Brand No. 1" proudly distinct upon the ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Hyjauje, "thou art of an unnatural and adulterous race, whose youths are catamites, and whose old men are obstinate as asses." "But I am from Yemen," said the boy. "If so," answered the tyrant, "thou belongest to a comfortless region, where the most honourable profession is robbery, where the middling ranks tan hides, and where a wretched poor spin wool and weave coarse mantles." "But I am from Mecca," said the boy. "Then," replied Hyjauje, "thou comest from a mine of perverseness, stupidity, ignorance, and slothfulness; for from among its people God raised up his prophet, whom they ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... are of middling size and deep black color; broad-shouldered, but neither brave nor warlike. They keep aloof from other tribes, and by a Fullah law, are protected from foreign violence in consequence of their occupation as salt-makers, which is regarded by the interior ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... I remember, not exactly tall, but you wouldn't call him short. Complexion—well, don't you know?—that kind of middling complexion. Colour of his eyes—does anybody ever notice a thing like that? You needn't take my word for it, but I should say they were a kind of average ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... bordering the river, handsome, green, and different from ours, having fruits and flowers each one according to its nature. There are many birds, which sing very sweetly. There are a great number of palm trees of a different kind from those in Guinea and from ours, of a middling height, the trunks without that covering, and the leaves very large, with which they thatch their houses. The country is very level." The Admiral jumped into his boat and went on shore. He came to two houses, which he believed to belong to fishermen who had fled from fear. ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... beads No. 4, is worked in middling-size purse silk over fine silk cord of the same colour as the silk. Before beginning to work this pattern, thread the beads which take the place of purl stitches, and which are slipped in between two double stitches. When the row of stitches is of the length required, ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... the man of good character and industrious habits might be able to find sureties to enable him to discharge his debt to the State under the surveillance of the authorities, without being surrounded by prison walls. The man of middling character might only have a limited amount of liberty, such as the responsible authorities might grant him. Whilst the man of bad character would have to discharge his debt inside prison walls, ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... "Middling. He's rather lumpy to ride. I shall get mother to swop him for a horse, if she can. I say, doctor, what ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed |
