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More "First-rate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will hereafter make some figure in this history, being the Achates of our AEneas, or rather the Hephaestion of our Alexander, was Fireblood. He had every qualification to make second-rate GREAT MAN; or, in other words, he was completely equipped for the tool of a real or first-rate GREAT MAN. We shall therefore (which is the properest way of dealing with this kind of GREATNESS) describe him negatively, and content ourselves with telling our reader what qualities he had not; in which number were humanity, modesty, and fear, not ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... That's a first-rate idea," agreed Kit the irrepressible. "Next trip we'll start looking for streams that were and are not; we're in the bed of one now ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... aware,—are you not?—that there are often said to be as many forms of laws as there are of governments, and of the latter we have already mentioned all those which are commonly recognized. Now you must regard this as a matter of first-rate importance. For what is to be the standard of just and unjust, is once more the point at issue. Men say that the law ought not to regard either military virtue, or virtue in general, but only the interests and power and preservation of the established ...
— Laws • Plato
... idea, Jim; a first-rate idea if it could be worked out. It would want a lot of scheming, but I don't see why it should not be done. If I could once get her on board, I could cruise about with her for any ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... 11.30 a.m. for that place; camped in the sand hills one hour after dark. Here we found some pig-faces* which the horses eat freely. (* These pig-faces belong to the Mesembryaceae, of which the common ice-plant of our gardens is an example.) There is a great deal of moisture in them, and they are a first-rate thing for thirsty horses; besides, they have a powerful diuretic effect. I was unable to fix Beda Hill, all my time being taken up in looking for water, but I hope to get its position at Pernatta. The country ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... infatuation. To him Adle was a paragon of all the virtues, and he would have done battle on her behalf against the entire aristocracy of France, in a vain endeavour to justify his own exalted opinion of one of the most dissolute women of the epoch. He was a first-rate swordsman too, and his friends had already learned that it was best to avoid all allusions to ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... signify? What we enjoy or what we suffer depends upon the humour. The acting is not first-rate, but I have listened and laughed and cried, because I ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... ago, a farmer in Pennsylvania wrote me that he wanted "to raise a first-rate crop of potatoes." I answered him as follows ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... of the arguments on the Erie case before the Assembly Committee on Railroads, Mr. BURT is said to have stated his belief that Mr. CROUCH is a contributor to PUNCHINELLO. Our best thanks are due to Mr. BURT for his "first-rate notice," though, at the same time, we wish to inform him that no contributor of the name of CROUCH has hitherto made his appearance in these columns. To speak plainly, PUNCHINELLO never Crouches. As he has no "slouch" about him, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... anything fevery about me," said Mrs. Jake, with an air of patient self-denial; and though both her companions were most compassionate at the thought of her real sufferings, they could not resist the least bit of a smile. "I declare you've done one first-rate thing, if you're never going to do any more," said Mrs. Jake, presently. "'Liza here's been talking for some time past, about your straightening up the little boy's back,—the one that lives down where Mis' Meeker used to live you know,—but I didn't seem to take it in till he come ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... English horses, and back English Trade, Should welcome the annual "Cart-Horse Parade." No function of Fashion on Racecourse or Row Should "fetch" our equestrian enthusiast so. First-rate English horses in holiday guise! A sight that to please a true Britisher's eyes. And then the Society—surely that will be Supported by Britons. Ask good WALTER GILBEY (Cambridge House, Regent's Park). He will tell you no doubt What the C.-H.P.S. have, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... Y. Herald: "She draws human nature, delights in the opposition of character, and has, in fact, written a first-rate modern novel." ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... and then old Diamond would whisk it out of his hands, and once he sent the comb flying out of the stable door, to the great amusement of the men. But Jack fetched it again, and Diamond began once more, and did not leave off until he had done the whole business fairly well, if not in a first-rate, experienced fashion. All the time the old horse went on eating his hay, and, but with an occasional whisk of his tail when Diamond tickled or scratched him, took no notice of the proceeding. But that was all a pretence, for ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... a man," said Ted, when he had disposed the last bit of drapery according to an ingenious colour-scheme, in which Audrey's hair sounded a brilliant staccato note—"a first-rate artist—who was asked to decorate a lady's room. What do you think he did? He made her take all the pictures off the walls, and he covered them over with little halfpenny Japanese fans, and stuck little halves and quarters of fans in the corners and under the ceiling. Then he put a large ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... stairs; here was heard the jingling and rattling of drinking glasses and jovial hunting choruses, there the footsteps of those dancing to the sound of the shrill music,—everywhere loud mirth and jollity; so that for four or five weeks together the castle was more like a first-rate hostelry situated on a main highroad than the abode of a country gentleman. This time Freiherr Roderick devoted, as well as he was able, to serious business, for, withdrawing from the revelry of his guests, he discharged the ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... industry, varied only by expeditions to Arabia, India, Ceylon, and different parts of Europe in the prosecution of his scientific theories; he was the first among German scientists to embrace and apply the evolutionary theories of Darwin, and along these lines he has produced several works of first-rate importance in biology; his great works on calcareous sponges, on jelly-fishes, and corals are enriched by elaborate plates of outstanding value; he made important contributions to the Challenger reports, and was among the first to outline ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Colonel Zane. Yes, first-rate trip," replied young Bennet. "Say, I've a word for you. Come aside," and drawing Colonel Zane out of earshot of the others, he continued, "I heard this by accident, not that I didn't spy a bit when ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... without any effect upon the resumption of mining. The method of action upon which I had determined in the last resort was to get the Governor of Pennsylvania to ask me to keep order. Then I would put in the army under the command of some first-rate general. I would instruct this general to keep absolute order, taking any steps whatever that was necessary to prevent interference by the strikers or their sympathizers with men who wanted to work. I would also instruct him to dispossess the operators and run the mines as ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... irony ran away with him. He seemed to have said to himself, "I can write witty dialogue and I have a shrewd eye for foibles, and if you are not satisfied with that you can take it or leave it." I for one took it, but always with a feeling that he was offering me a sparkling wine of a quality not first-rate, whereas with a little more trouble and expense he could have offered me an unimpeachable brand. Now that Cairo (CONSTABLE) has provided me with what I have been waiting for, I am more than delighted to present ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... the Crimean War. He was a charming fellow, slight and smart-looking, very carefully dressed, as resolute in command as he was formal as to politeness, a consummate seaman, managing his ship in first-rate style. I sailed a great deal with him, and learned much from him, and from the very first I felt a personal affection for him, which was never belied, and which he reciprocated. An extra bond ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Moreover, if Germany's fleet is a luxury, as Mr. Winston Churchill says it is, she deserves and can afford it. As a nation she has prospered and grown great, not by a policy of war and conquest, but by hard work, thrift, self-denial, fidelity to international engagements, well-planned instruction, and first-rate organization. Why should she not, if she thinks it advisable and is willing to spend the money on it, supply herself with an arm of defence in proportion to her size, her prosperity, and her desert? It may be that, as ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... for his profession. He was aware that ladies who are no better than they should be are often very clever,—so clever, as to make it necessary that the Bozzles who shall at last confound them should be first-rate Bozzles, Bozzles quite at the top of their profession,—and, therefore, he went about his work with great industry and much caution. Colonel Osborne was at the present moment in Scotland. Bozzle was sure of that. He was ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... sport aboard this blame little packet than the rest of the Fleet together. Clear'd the Channel, be God, we ave!—prowlin up and down, snow and blow, fog and shine, like a rampin champin lion. Why, sir, we've fought a first-rate from Portland Bill to Dead Man's Bay—this blame little boat you could sail in a babby's bath! Took her too! and towed her into Falmouth Roads, all standin, like a kid leadin its mother by the and. Talk o Cochrane and the Speedy!—Gor ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Preston, Lancashire, twenty-one years before his great rival and contemporary, Samuel Crompton. His parents could not possibly afford to give him any schooling, he being the youngest of thirteen. Apprenticed to the trade of barber, he became in time a first-rate man in that business. In 1760, when twenty-eight years of age, he left Preston and settled down in Bolton in Lancashire, setting up the business of barber and peruke-maker. The youthful Samuel Crompton would no doubt pay him many visits when in Churchgate, ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... they had traveled hundreds of miles almost without food. Literally, they were nothing but skin and bone. But after a week's feeding on impoop, as they called the mealie-meal porridge which was their staple food at the mines, they began to pick up. At the end of a month they would be sleek and in first-rate fettle. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... a letter to Lord Haddington dated the 22nd of May, 1843, "that all our old vessels of war, save the class of eighty-gun ships and a few first-rate and large frigates, are almost worthless; whilst our steam department is deficient in most of the properties which constitute effective vessels. No blockades worthy of the name can now be maintained by fleets ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... and good wishes. He did not want Geoff to emigrate, but he sympathized in his love for the country. For two or three years Geoff was sent to a first-rate school, where he got on well, and then to an agricultural college, where he also did so well that before he was twenty he was able to be the squire's right hand in the management of his large property, ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... York, because I never wuz no hand ter meddle in other folkses affairs, but ye look to be a likely lad, and a strong un, and ez my sister's husband, what lives two miles down the pike, needs a boy to drive a plough fer a week, I b'lieve ye'll suit 'im first-rate. So ez soon ez ye have finished yer vittles, I'll walk down there with ye, and we'll see the ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... Stevenson is always directly or indirectly preaching a sermon—enforcing a moral—as though he could not help it. "He would rise from the dead to preach a sermon." He wrote some first-rate fables, and might indeed have figured to effect as a moralist-fabulist, as truly he was from beginning to end. There was a bit of Bunyan in him as well as of AEsop and Rousseau and Thoreau—the mixture that ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... like 'em first-rate," she said, speaking low so as not to wake the baby. "Mamie, Ellen, Jamie, Fred, George—say thank you, ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... too. I established with myself, on these occasions, the reputation of a first-rate man of business,—prompt, decisive, energetic, clear, cool-headed. When I had got all my responsibilities down upon my list, I compared each with the bill, and ticked it off. My self-approval when I ticked an entry was quite a luxurious sensation. When I had no more ticks to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... pay you all back; for he was a prime book-keeper before he lost his eyesight. He's a good scholar, too, and got a first-rate salary." ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... whispered, at the same time gratefully squeezing her hand, "you're a first-rate divinity—a tip-top goddess—divil a thing else. Miss Joolia, may I presoome for to have the plisure and polite gallantry to help you off the car; 'pon honor it'll be quite grateful and prejudicial to my feelings—it will, I ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of shark's meat would taste first-rate. You didn't happen to be so thoughtful as to ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... Italy is the best thing in the world for you. A strong Italy is the surest of all barriers against France." There may be some truth in the assertion if Italy could spring at once—Minerva fashion—all armed and ready for combat, and stand out as a first-rate power in Europe; but to do this requires years of preparation, long years too; and it is precisely in these years of interval that France can become all-dominant in Italy—the master, and the not very merciful master, of her destinies in ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... representative appeared to take much interest in it. He had an establishment at Newmarket, and his horses were entered for all the great races of the kingdom. He appeared also at Melton, and conducted the campaign in a style becoming such a hero. His hunters and his cooks were both first-rate. Although he affected to take little interest in politics, the events of the time forced him to consider them and to act. Lord Grey wanted to carry his Reform Bill, and the sacrifice of Lord Montfort's numerous boroughs was a necessary ingredient ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... Your Highness. They have daughters. I have first-rate testimonials from the Archdeacon and ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... little manners and a little sense. All that's ever restrained me, sir, was lack of sand. The few bad things I've kept out of, I kept out of simply because I knew if I went into 'em I'd bog down. It's not a half hour since I'd have liked first-rate to be worse than I am, but I didn't have the sand for that, either. Why, sir, I'm worse to-day than I ever was, only it's deeper hid. If men went to convict camps for what they are, instead of what they do, I'd be in ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... passenger, God wot!) Whether my vessel be first-rate or not? The ship itself may make a better figure, But I that sail am neither less nor bigger. I neither strut with every favouring breath, 300 Nor strive with all the tempest in my teeth. In power, wit, figure, virtue, fortune, placed Behind the foremost, ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... knowledge of men and things! what a faultless accent! what indescribable grace of manner! what a generous and yet ladylike humor! what a merry, musical laugh! what quickness of apprehension! what acuteness of perception! what— words fail. Imagine every thing that is delightful in a first-rate conversationalist, and every thing that is fascinating in a lady, and even then you will fail to have a correct idea of Miss O'Halloran. To have such an idea it would ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... combine, when it is formed, is another necessary condition.[112] The process only goes on in a slightly alkaline solution. The substance which acts as this salifiable base is lime. The presence of a sufficient quantity of carbonate of lime in the soil will thus be seen to be of first-rate importance. This furnishes an explanation of one of the many benefits conferred by lime on soils. The activity of nitrification in many soils may be hindered by the absence of a sufficiency of lime salts, and in such cases ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... "All's going first-rate," responded Jondrette, "but my feet are beastly cold. Good! You have dressed up. You have done well! ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the opinion of the first-rate connoisseurs, this statue might serve as a companion to the Apollo of Belvedere, is sufficient to convey an idea of its perfection; and, in fact, it is reckoned the finest representation of Diana ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... policeman, permitted himself to look surprised. He was, in fact, rather annoyed. Bates's story had prepared him for a first-rate detective mystery. It was irritating to have one of its leading ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... year ago last summer," he said, "and it was first-rate: open-air dancing, summer theatre, rope-walking, fireworks, and supper out under the trees. You'll enjoy yourself, Bella, right enough when ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... purest embodiment of the true Greek spirit, in its faultless form, and its austere restraint and rejection of the unessential. It was, moreover, the order par excellence of the Greek temple of the mainland. The Erechtheum was the only Ionic temple of first-rate importance in Greece, and the employment of the Ionic order in Greece was confined to interiors and minor buildings. As for the Corinthian order, the favourite order of the Romans, it was scarcely recognized by the Greeks. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... you marry her? A sickly, fractious thing! I saw enough of her in the old days. There! be quiet! I have done. If it hadn't been for her, I'd have asked you to come here to your old home; you and I should jog along together first-rate. But Sibylla bars it. She may be a model of a wife; I don't insinuate to the contrary, take you note, Mr. Verner; but she's not exactly a model of temper, and Verner's Pride wouldn't be big enough to hold her and me. Would you have taken ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... true as before God.... Here's the Cross for you, I set off almost before it was light. How could I be here in time if the Lord.... The Mother of God... is wroth, and has sent such a snowstorm? Kindly look for yourself.... Even a first-rate horse could not do it, while mine—you can see for yourself—is not a horse but a disgrace.' And Pavel Ivanitch will frown and shout: 'We know you! You always find some excuse! Especially you, Grishka; I know you of old! I'll be bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!' And I ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... seriousness. The tragically uttered, "O God!" at the end of the Second Act ruined an otherwise excellent curtain. But I must not end on a note of censure. I was much too thoroughly entertained for that. Here's a quite first-rate piece of fooling, with dialogue of humorous rather than smart sayings. And humour's a much rarer and less cheap ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... all the hares and rabbits. Hares are almost formed on purpose to be good sport, and make a jolly good dish, a pleasant addition to the ceaseless round of mutton and beef to which the dead level of civilisation reduces us. Coursing is capital, the harriers first-rate. Now every man who walks about the fields is more or less at heart a sportsman, and the farmer having got the right of the gun he is not unlikely to become to some extent a game preserver. When they could not get it they wanted to destroy it, now ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... so that I never really lost sight of him; and when my husband bought this piece of land and we were married, it happened, also, that Andrew bought property, and wished to be settled. He had lost his parents, and was quite by himself, and a first-rate workman. He wanted the little house with the neat, pretty garden down there half-way to the church; but was not able to purchase it, because the owner wished for full payment at once, and Andrew could only pay in instalments, as ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... worked at Hendricks'—old Paul didn't mind his combining the job with his labors of aspiration. Ramos, the night-mechanic, Tiflin, the car-washer, and Two-and-Two Baines, the part-time bricklayer, didn't have it so easy. Eileen, a first-rate legal typist employed for several hours a day by a partnership of lawyers, could usually work from notes, at the ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... a good nap, mother dear, I feel first-rate, and Frank can see to me if I want anything. Do, now," he added, with a persuasive nod toward the couch, and a boyish relish in stirring up his ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... devote more space than I can here spare to a review of this little book, so perfectly does it corroborate every word which I have said already as to the moral and intellectual value of such studies. Richard Shield, making himself a first-rate "lepidopterist," while working with his hands for a pound a week, is the antitype of Mr. Peach, the coast-guardsman, among his Cornish tide-rocks. But more than this, there is about Shield's book a tone ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... left last Saturday. Ain't had anybody sence. Wants you to send her a first-rate one, right off. Has Care'line been here ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... professional robber. On the other hand, in former times, men were transported for very trivial offences: poaching, with its consequences, formed the leading crimes of the English counties; yet many poachers were otherwise first-rate men, both in disposition and physical development. The modern convicts are, more generally, criminals in the popular sense. The abolition of capital punishments, and the erection of penitentiaries at home, left ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... and we are reminded of it when we step up to the "eight-foot" engine which is to carry us from King's Cross Station to York. To pull the fastest train in Great Britain, or indeed in the world, for one hundred and eighty-eight miles, at more than forty-eight miles an hour, is first-rate running. "Scotchmen" run also from the Midland Station at St. Pancras, and from Euston, but the quickest one is that on the Great Northern, and it is also ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... if you want me to. Once the Lord felt so uncomfortable cos folks was bad that he was sorry he ever made anybody, or any world or anything. But Noah wasn't bad—the Lord liked him first-rate, so he told Noah to build a big ark, and then the Lord would make it rain so everybody should be drownded but Noah an' his little boys an' girls, an' doggies an' pussies an' mama-cows an' little-boy-cows an' little-girl-cows an' hosses an' everything—they'd go ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... look first-rate, dressed like that, Ors' Anton'," said the old servant, "and the smartest pinsuto[*] in Bocognano or Bastelica is ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... it for information afterwards; the lavished garlandry of woven brown hair amazed me—I feared it was not all my own, and it required several convincing pulls to give assurance to the contrary. I then acknowledged in the coiffeur a first-rate artist—one who certainly made the most of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... not assign him that rank, because posterity will not hear that matchless voice, will not see those large gestures, those striking attitudes, that grand manner, which gave to second-rate composition first-rate effect. He could not have been a great statesman, if he had been ever so greatly endowed. While slavery existed no statesmanship was possible, except that which was temporary and temporizing. The thorn, we repeat, was in the flesh; and the doctors ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... continued, "we like to hear about cats well enough, and that ant battle was first-rate—I'd like to have seen it, I know; but Roy, he says the girls might be writin' notes askin' you to tell more cat ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... the inspector with a smile, "two of them were Turks in costume, whilst three were Christians in appearance. That is the best I can say for the Christians, as they were Frenchmen, though certainly the cook was a first-rate chef. Of course, we all got our meals here whilst ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... by which this little island, which produces nothing, has risen into first-rate importance among our colonies are, that Victoria, with its magnificent harbor, is a factory for our Chinese commerce and offers unrivaled facilities for the military and naval forces which are necessary for the protection not only of ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Everything went first-rate, and they were so happy over their transportation prospects that they scarcely slept during the whole night. In the morning they were up bright and early, one making the coffee and the other oiling the iron axle-trees and ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... be a first-rate type of an Americanized Irishman. His wife was a Scotch woman. They had a family of five or six children, two of them grown-up daughters,—modest, comely young women as you would find anywhere. The elder of the two had spent a winter in New York with her aunt, which made her a ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... run a muck Can't do better than join with Puck. They'll find him bon diable—spite of his phiz— And, in fact, his great ambition is, While playing old Puck in first-rate style, To be thought Robin ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... swing. It was a first-rate one, with a broad, comfortable seat, and thick new ropes. The seat hung just the right distance from the floor. Alexander was a capital hand at putting up swings, and the wood-shed the nicest possible spot ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... rated in quality as first, or second, or third. If it rates first, it may be called a first-rate article. The word is properly used as an adjective, but should not be employed as an adverb, as in the sentence, ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... of swindlers, who called themselves first-rate weavers, made their appearance in the imperial town of——. They pretended that they were able to weave the richest stuffs, in which not only the colours and the pattern were extremely beautiful, but that the clothes made of such stuffs possessed the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... less tenacious of their chimeras, than their rude progenitors. These systems, so ruinous in their principles, have been variously modified by the human mind, of which it is the essence, to labour incessantly on unknown objects; it always, commences by attaching to these, a very first-rate importance, which it afterwards never dares ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... 'You're a first-rate little companion, sonny. I shall miss you very much; but I must think of your good first. There don't seem to be any nice schools near here, nor do I know of anyone who would come and teach you for an hour or two. And I can't afford to live ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... variety of causes, the preparations for the trip had been inadequate. He had only five men to help him; Sewall and Dow and Rowe and two others. Of these, only one was a cowpuncher of experience. Roosevelt placed him in charge. It was not long, however, before he discovered that this man, who was a first-rate cowhand, was wholly incapable of acting as head. Cattle and cowpunchers, chuck-wagon and saddle-band, in some fashion which nobody could explain became so snarled up with each other that, after disentangling the situation, he was forced to relegate his expert to ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... first-rate story, with more legitimate thrills than any novel we have read in a long ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... "It was first-rate, 'm. Leastways orl went well until arter dinner, when we begins chippin' each other and ends in 'avin' a few words. My sailor-brother started it by chaffin' Polly about 'er red 'air an' arskin' why she didn't cut it orf, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... Bussy invaded Orissa, seized the English factories, and made himself master of much of the coast regions between Madras and Calcutta; while a French squadron of nine ships, most of which, however, belonged to the East India Company and were not first-rate men-of-war, was on its way to Pondicherry with twelve hundred regular troops,—an enormous European army for Indian operations of that day. The English naval force on the coast, though fewer in numbers, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... result—for our carelessness might have cost us very dearly—I was about to turn away when I saw that Maignan had mounted and was preparing to follow. I stayed accordingly to see the end, and from my elevated position enjoyed a first-rate view of the race which ensued. Both were heavy weights, and at first Maignan gained no ground. But when a couple of hundred yards had been covered Fresnoy had the ill-luck to blunder into some heavy ground, and this enabling ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... nature. Hazards, banks, roads, etc., requiring skilled play. Greens in first-rate order. Beautiful scenery. Handsome pavilion, with every ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... blacksmith, tailor, shoemaker, and tanner, are the best. If there were in nature (which is doubtful) such a being as a sober blacksmith, he might make a fortune. One exception there is, however, in the case of mechanics. First-rate London workmen will not receive such high wages either positively or relatively, as they would at home,—for this reason, that there are few on this continent who either require or can afford work of the very first order, and those that do, send to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... sea, the wind had nearly died away, and the next day found us employed gathering wild pomegranates on the desolate shores near Antiversi, in Albania. Again a beautiful tramontana sprang up, and in a vessel of first-rate sailing powers, would almost have brought us in. All day we went gallantly along. The heads of Ducazzo—Dyrrichium of old—began to appear, and soon we passed it in a foam. All night we held on, and in the morning were beside the "infames scopulos ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... than that thrice-famous "Double-Marriage" of Prussia with England; which once had such a sound in the ear of Rumor, and still bulks so big in the archives of the Eighteenth Century; which worked such woe to all parties concerned in it; and is, in fact, a first-rate nuisance in the History of that poor Century, as written hitherto. Nuisance demanding urgently to be abated;—were that well possible at present. Which, alas, it is not, to any great degree; there being an important ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the Saumur vintage, with which you think to delight yourself, unless it be also your intention to dilute that juice of Bacchus, more than a fifth part, with the freer cup of the Muses. But to such a course, even if I were silent, you have a first-rate adviser; by listening to whom you will indeed consult best for your own good, and cause great joy to your most excellent mother, and a daily growth of her love for you. Which that you may accomplish you ought every day to petition Almighty God, Farewell; and see that ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... world's circumstances, would have been what is called public life: some secretarial, diplomatic or other official training, to issue if possible in Parliament as the true field for him. And here, beyond question, had the gross material conditions been allowed, his spiritual capabilities were first-rate. In any arena where eloquence and argument was the point, this man was calculated to have borne the bell from all competitors. In lucid ingenious talk and logic, in all manner of brilliant utterance ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... it," said the mock doctor. "Webber is a man of first-rate capacity; and were he only to apply, I am not certain to what eminence his abilities might raise him. Come, Collisson, any three angles of a triangle are equal to—are equal to—what are they equal to?" Here he yawned as though ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... you do. Ben's getting along first-rate. He has a college degree and father isn't poor. I know several girls who would jump at a chance for him. Of course, we would all rather have you. Then at Avis Manning's party you gave him the sweetest of your smiles, and ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... many respects it is not. It cannot be more than one; it cannot be limited either in space or time; it cannot be other than at least as self-consistent as its manifestations in nature are invariable. Now, from the latter deduction there arises a point of first-rate importance in the present connexion. For if the so-called First Cause be intelligent, and therefore all secondary causes but the expression of a supreme Will, in as far as such a Will is self-consistent, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... establishment in the way. It is built entirely in the Italian style of architecture: is exceedingly spacious: has a fine organ, and is numerously attended. The pictures I saw in it, although by no means of first-rate merit, quite convince me that it is in churches of Roman, and not of Gothic architecture, that paintings produce the most harmonious effect. This college and church form a noble establishment, situated in one of the most commanding eminences of the town. From some parts ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that family reside, or might be heard of, in the vicinity of Leicester Square. The 'Punch' that I copied my figures from for the 'History of Punch and Judy' was an old Italian long since deceased. His performance and figures were first-rate—far superior to anything of the present day, and it is quite evident that poor Leech and others copied my Punch, for Punch and other works, from the Punch that I ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... a pipe for him, and turning to Taylor, he said: "I'm getting stronger now every day; good appetite, sleep first-rate. And I'll be able to walk about pretty soon. Oh, they had me dead, you know, but I knew ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... these things are much less cumbrously contrived than with us. The other hotel, I have the somewhat unauthorized fancy, is rather more addicted to very elect dinner-parties and suppers. Below these two are an endless variety of first-rate and second-rate houses, both in the newer quarter of the city, where the villa paths have been turned into streets, and in the old town on all the pleasant squares and avenues. There is a tradition of unhealth ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... you fellows have kind of excited me a little when telling about that thrilling sound you heard," he admitted candidly. "I'd like first-rate to do some prowling around up there to satisfy myself that it wasn't a peacock that screamed, or even a ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... Frank passed the glasses across the counter, "if you don't call that first-rate, you're no judge." And he handed one of them to the farmer, who tasted the agreeable draught, and praised its flavor. As before, I noticed that Hammond drank eagerly, like one athirst—emptying his glass without once taking it ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... The World's Food Resources (Holt), is a larger and more detailed discussion than most of those recommended above, but contains a number of general facts and comment of first-rate importance. ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... "Do you know the meaning and derivation of the term 'bric-...-brac?'" "Do you believe in ghosts?" "What do you think of a ladies' club?" "Do you believe in chance?" "Is there more talent displayed in learning the violin than in playing a first-rate game of chess?" etc. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Melville; but I did not expect such an admission from such a quarter. I see you are not strong-minded My aunt, Mrs. Rutherford, and her daughters, have rather been boring me with their theory of the equality of the sexes: this is a first-rate argument. Will you take it very much amiss if I borrow your idea, or rather your sister's, without acknowledgement? I have felt so very small, because they were always bringing up some instance or other out of books which I had ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... afternoon with good company is indispensable. So, consider this a holiday, and think no more of bags, boxes, cash-book, or ledger. I bought a splendid trotter yesterday, and am going to try his speed. You are a first-rate judge of horse-flesh, and I want your opinion. So, consider yourself engaged for a flying ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... enough; there was nothing to hurt her: the wolves would not know the 'fix' she was in, neyther the 'bars' nor 'painters.' We should be sure to come up with her before the next night, an would find her first-rate; a little tired and hungry, no doubt, but nothing to hurt. We should relieve her, and rest would ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... real skill may be, feel ashamed to have it thought that he did not know how to observe for, and compute the time at sea; though, but a short while before these voyages were set on foot, such a thing was scarcely ever heard of amongst seamen; and even first-rate astronomers doubted the possibility of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... the windows, Norbert saw a man, stout, robust, bald and red-faced, wearing a mustache and slight beard. His clothes were evidently made by a first-rate tailor, but his ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... with the result that to-night all the matchboarding is completed. The floor linoleum is the only thing that remains to be put down; outside, the roof and ends have to be finished. Then there are several days of odd jobs for the carpenter, and all will be finished. It is a first-rate building in an extraordinarily sheltered spot; whilst the wind was raging at the ship this morning we enjoyed comparative peace. Campbell says there was an extraordinary change ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... skin; "they will be wanting you bery much, I'm thinking;" and little Tim, dying of his broken bones, whispered as "Our Sister" kissed him, "I am wishing you could die first, Sister, and then it would be first-rate, seeing you along with the gentry at the Gate;" for, to Tim's ignorant mind, the gentry of heaven were somewhat formidable. "And what must I say to them, plase your honor? when they come up and says 'Good-morning, Tim;' but if Sister were along ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... permitted. I kept continually wishing that they had more time in which to study the absorbingly interesting life-histories of the beautiful and wonderful beasts and birds we were all the time seeing. Every first-rate museum must still employ competent collectors; but I think that a museum could now confer most lasting benefit, and could do work of most permanent good, by sending out into the immense wildernesses, where wild nature is at her best, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... to the carriage—it savoured of 'airs'; when she used it she used it as she might use a tramcar. It was her custom, every day except Saturday, to walk to the shop about eleven o'clock, after her house had been set in order. She had been thoroughly trained in the business, and had spent a year at a first-rate shop in High Street, Kensington. Millinery was her speciality, and she still watched over that department with a particular attention; but for some time past she had risen beyond the limitations of departments, and assisted her father in the general ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... "First-rate, mother," he replied; though he was not exactly pleased to find that she regarded the trip to Rock Island in the ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... assured him with thanks that I was "first-rate," when, pointing toward the village, he asked, "Is General Lee up there?" and I replied: "There is his army down in that valley, and he himself is over in that house (designating McLean's house) waiting to surrender to you." The General then said, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... know stories of first-rate works of art having been offered at ridiculously low prices to English galleries and museums and refused by them on the ground that there was no money even for the purchase of what was very good and very cheap, we are surprised and even excited when we hear that a big price (some ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... not first-rate, I agree," said John, "but, such as it is, we had better go through with it. Should the company doubt its genuineness, I can go around afterwards and show the brand on the cork." Here he tapped the leg, which he had been careful to ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... science and economy shown in Belgium. The cultivation and produce vary, in part, according as the soil is sand or clay; but the same kind of soil, in different parts of the country, produces different results. Cattle are largely raised and are of first-rate quality; Friesland produces the best, but there are also excellent stocks in North Holland and South Holland. In Drenthe, owing to the extensive pasturage, great numbers of sheep are raised. But perhaps the most important industry of Holland is the fisheries, both those ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... for the newspapers, and had been a contributor to the Northern Star. He was well brought up and was intended for the University, but he did not stick to his Latin and Greek, and as he showed some talent for drawing he was permitted to follow his bent. His work, however, was not of first-rate quality, and consequently orders were not abundant. This was the reason why he had turned to literature. When he had any books to illustrate he lived upon what they brought him, and when there were no books he renewed his acquaintance with politics. If books and newspapers both failed, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... madam, in spite of your prejudices, are a very superior nation to us. Their skill and knowledge are both infinitely higher. Every man in France is a first-rate cook—in fact, they are a nation of cooks; and one of our late travellers assures us that they have discovered three hundred methods of dressing eggs, for ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... with him first-rate, a-feedin' of him the goat's milk, which he goes for with avidity; tharby nettin' Jack that fifty from Dave Tutt. Boggs builds a fire so Jack keeps the milk warm. Jack turns loose that earnest he don't even go for ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... treat them to a fresh coat of paint. Marcus whitewashed one or two of the rooms in the intervals of his work, and Olivia put up clean curtains and purchased a plant or two. As far as scrupulous cleanliness could avail, the little house was in first-rate order. Nevertheless Marcus gave vent to an impatient sigh now and then as he looked round the small, low room. The side windows had been blocked up in the days of the window-tax, and the one small window lighted ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... powers. That of Woolwich, at least, very strongly imprinted this idea on my mind; for there was now on the stocks there the Royal Anne, supposed to be the largest ship ever built, and which contains ten carriage-guns more than had ever yet equipped a first-rate. ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... actual mountain on earth can command; but, in other poets, we at this moment remember no good one. They seem always looking up to, not down from, mountains. Wordsworth has given us, for example, no description of the view from Skiddaw; and there does not exist, in any Scottish poetical author, a first-rate picture of the view either from Ben Lomond, Schehallion, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... claim a little this side of the Forks. Ryan had warned them to keep out of the way of the part-owner, Scoville Austin, a surly person naturally, so exasperated at the tax, and so enraged at the rumour of Government spies masquerading as workmen, checking his reports, that he was "a first-rate man to avoid." But Seymour, the Superintendent, was, in the words of the soothing motto of the whole American people, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... publishers been sufficient to put an edition on the market at a cheap price. Other omissions include the works of Caxton and Wyclif, and such books as Camden's *Britannia*, Ascham's *Schoolmaster*, and Fuller's *Worthies*, whose lack of first-rate value as literature is not adequately compensated by their historical interest. As to the Bible, in the first place it is a translation, and in the second I assume that you already possess ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... the fact that the dramatized versions of his novels were often very poor, but Hazlitt wished that he would "not leave it to others to mar what he has sketched so admirably as a ground-work," for he saw no good reason why the author of Waverley could not write "a first-rate tragedy as well, as so many ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... the captain for Hay. It never did Hay a ha'porth of service, but I thought it might do the old gentleman's business for him, and stood up. "Yorana!" says I. "Yorana!" says he. "Look here," I said, "I've got some first-rate stuff in a bottle; it'll fix your cough, savvy? Harry my and I'll measure you a tablespoonful in the palm of my hand, for all our plate is at the bankers." So I thought the old party came up, and the nearer he came, the ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Preface without expressing my thanks to Messrs. ADLARD for the first-rate style in which this volume has been printed; particularly for the successful manner in which the impressions of the engravings have been produced, superior, in general, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... San Francisco, where there were already very many people, I sold the cargo at an enormous profit, and hired the ship as a warehouse at enormous prices. I then organized a mining company, and put a first-rate man at the head of it. They found a place on the Sacramento River where the gold really seems inexhaustible. I worked it for some months, and forwarded two millions sterling to London. Then I left, and ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... something dramatic in the notion of the ghostly influence making itself felt by the relations in succession, as they one after another enter the fatal room—until the one chosen relative comes who will see the Unearthly Creature, and know the terrible truth. Material for a play, Countess—first-rate ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... for some of us you devoted yourself to high art, Gandish,' Mr. Smee says, and sips the wine and puts it down again, making a face. It was not first-rate tipple, you see. ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wrote a book, entitled the "School of Infancy." In England this book is scarcely known at all: in Bohemia it is a household treasure. Comenius regarded it as a work of first-rate importance. What use, he asked, were schemes of education if a good foundation were not first laid by the mother? For the first six years of his life, said Comenius, the child must be taught by his mother. If she did her work properly she could teach him many marvellous things. He would ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... heroes who win them, something of what I felt for mine; I kissed his bloody face, refusing to let him wipe it. John Thresher said to me at night, 'Ay, now you've got a notion of boxing; and will you believe it, Master Harry, there's people fools enough to want to tread that ther' first-rate pastime under foot? I speak truth, and my word for 't, they'd better go in petticoats. Let clergymen preach as in duty bound; you and I'll uphold a manful sport, we will, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said Burke. "Your brain can't stand that sort of badger. I'd hate to go ashore with you at Marseilles with your pocket full and your skull empty. As for me, I can stand it first-rate. I have already built two houses on Cape Cod,—in my head, of course,—and I'll be hanged if I know which one I am going to live in and which one I am going to ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... that's a first-rate fit-out for hunters; and with the jolly basket of lunch Mrs. Mullin gave us, we can get on tip-top for two or three days," said Tommy, eager ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... fishermen on the east coast of Great Britain are of partly Danish descent; and no one served more faithfully through the Great War than these men did against the submarines and mines. King George V, whose mother is a Dane, and who is himself a first-rate seaman, must have felt a thrill of ancestral pride in pinning V.C.'s over their undaunted hearts. Fifty years before the Norman conquest Canute the Dane became sole king of England. He had been chosen King of Denmark by the Danish Fleet. But he was true to England as well; and ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... his learning; and therefore we find the most learned men abroad are in the Universities[43]. It is not so with us. Our Universities are impoverished of learning, by the penury of their provisions. I wish there were many places of a thousand a-year at Oxford, to keep first-rate men of learning from quitting the University.' Undoubtedly if this were the case, Literature would have a still greater dignity and splendour at Oxford, and there would be grander living sources ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... brother—than he does of his brothers, for he has two whom he seems to care nothing about. His wife and children are just as devoted to the cripple as Nimbus, and 'Liab, on his part, seems to think as much of them as if they were his own. They get along first-rate, and are prospering finely, but I am afraid ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... a man came to Garotte, who had a widespread reputation. His name was Bill Hitchcock. A marvellous shot, a first-rate poker- player, a good rider—these virtues were outweighed by his desperate temper. Though not more than five-and-twenty years of age his courage and ferocity had made him a marked man. He was said to have killed half- a-dozen men; and it was ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... nine digits in perpendicular columns, as under nought (0) are placed s, z, and c^soft; under nine are placed b and p; under six are placed sh, j, ch, and g^soft, &c. Only those who possess first-rate natural memories can learn the equivalents of the sounded consonants in figures from this table. But when learned in this way, the pupil requires much practice in translating words into figures and figures into words. Even this ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... without once stopping, until I reached the house of his beloved Louise. Of her, for the present, it will be sufficient to say, that she was a young, lovely, and intelligent Frenchwoman, whose sister I had known in Paris, and to whose patronage, from her position as a first-rate modiste in St Petersburg, I was much indebted. Between this truly amiable woman and the Count had for some years existed an attachment, not hallowed, indeed, by the church, but so long and deeply-rooted in the hearts of both, and so dignified by their mutual constancy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... handsome—what a baby elephant had, as died. What'll you take? He's soft, ain't he? Them giants mostly is—but I never see—no, never! What'll you take? Down on the nail. We'll treat him like a king, and give him first-rate grub and a doss fit for a bloomin' dook. He must be dotty or he wouldn't need you kids to cart him about. ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... was a first-rate seaman, but a poor navigator, for he was almost destitute of education; indeed he was as rough-looking in appearance and manners as any of the men before the mast. How Captain Aggett had consented to his ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... disappeared, unable to withstand such a broadside, and its owner subsequently proved to be a first-rate seaman, and was ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... pea-coat lay around. Poor Hendric! I knew the fragments of that old coat, and had often marked them hanging in the dense covers where the elephant had charged after my unfortunate after-rider. Hendric was by far the best man I had about my wagons, of a most cheerful disposition, a first-rate wagon-driver, fearless in the field, ever active, willing, and obliging: his loss to us all was very serious. I felt confounded and utterly sick in my heart; I could not remain at the wagons, so I resolved to go after elephants to divert my mind. I had that morning ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... of Noah, was an adept in the art, and thought it highly probable that the words chemistry and alchymy were both derived from his name." Others say, the art was derived from the Egyptians, amongst whom it was first founded by Hermes Trismegistus. Moses, who is looked upon as a first-rate alchymist, gained his knowledge in Egypt; but he kept it all to himself, and would not instruct the children of Israel in its mysteries. All the writers upon alchymy triumphantly cite the story of the golden calf, in the 32nd chapter of Exodus, to prove that this great lawgiver was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... mass of ascetic merit. And the king saw that the asylum was like unto the region of Brahman. Here were bees sweetly humming and there were winged warblers of various species pouring forth their melodies. At particular places that tiger among men heard the chanting of Rik hymns by first-rate Brahmanas according to the just rules of intonation. Other places again were graced with Brahmanas acquainted with ordinances of sacrifice, of the Angas and of the hymns of the Yajurveda. Other places again were filled with the harmonious ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... partially explains the difficulties an outsider has in studying Russian drama. But this chapter, like the other parts of his book, is marred by exaggeration. He says, "Chekhov's plays are as interesting to read as the work of any first-rate novelist." And a few sentences farther in the same paragraph, he adds, "Chekhov's plays are a thousand times more interesting to see on the stage than they are to read." Any one who believes Mr. Baring's statement, and starts to read Chekhov's dramas with the faith ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... will only meet Touaricks, and these are our friends. You have only to pay a small trifle of toll in different parts of the route and you are quite safe. Sometimes you don't pay this." Essnousee will reach Ghat in twelve, whilst a quick caravan requires from eighteen to twenty days. With first-rate camels the journey could be performed in eight or ten days. Strange infatuation! I felt an almost irrepressible desire to accompany Essnousee as I was, and to plunge anew into all the hardships and dangers of The Desert. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the appearance of Christal, followed by one of the young Fludyer boys, with whom she had become a first-rate favourite. Her fearless frankness, her exuberant spirits, tempered only by her anxiety to appear always "the grand lady," made her a welcome guest at Farnwood Hall. Indeed, she was rarely at home, save when appearing, as now, on a hasty visit, which quite disturbed ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty; but it ain't the only one around that's first-rate. For instance, they make olive-oil out of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can't ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... affairs. Speeches to allay their fears were made by Count Nigra, Dr. Zorn, Holls, and Leon Bourgeois. Zorn spoke in German with excellent effect, as did Holls in English; Nigra was really impressive; and Bourgeois, from the chair, gave us a specimen of first-rate French oratory. He made a most earnest appeal to the delegates of the Balkan states, showing them that by such a system of arbitration as is now proposed the lesser powers would be the very first to profit, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... for my mother every night, and a pot of chocolate for myself. I shall always have my breakfast early in the saloon. I'm a first-rate sailor." ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... week in London—not the London Gladys remembered as in a shadowy dream. The luxurious life of a first-rate hotel had nothing in it to remind her of the poor, shabby lodging on the Surrey side of the river, which was her early and only recollection of the great city. At the end of a week they crossed from Dover to Ostend, and in the warm, golden light of a lovely autumn evening arrived in quaint, old-world, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the right brain to work upon, and I doubt if there is any brain to which it is so congenial and from which it brings so much as that of a first-rate London old lady. I came away from the great city with the feeling that this most complex product of civilization was nowhere else developed to such perfection. The octogenarian Londoness has been ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... what there is to laugh at," broke in Will, huffily. "Why shouldn't she and the stuffy old woman, as you call her, know the Pelhams? She's a nice-looking girl, a first-rate looking girl. ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... stated by Professor Renwick and other scientific men that Elias Howe "carried the invention of the sewing-machine further on toward its complete and final utility than any other inventor has ever brought a first-rate invention at the first trial." Those who doubt this assertion should examine the curious machine at the corner of Broadway and Fourth Street, and their doubts will be dispelled; for they will find in it all the essentials of the best sewing-machine ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... something like comfort. He proved liberal, but not (as is frequently the case in such instances) lavish. The only piece of extravagance of which he was ever accused—and it was the village stone-mason who blamed him for that—being the procuring an elegant marble monument from Italy, the work of a first-rate sculptor, to place over the grave of his beloved brother. The figures on it were—an admirable likeness of Ernest, taken from the somnambulist's picture, and two angelic beings in the act of presenting the risen spirit with the palms and crown of victory gained over ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... school-like, the dialogues being illustrative of scenes in common life, including some first-rate conversations pertinent to school-room duties and trials. The speeches are brief and energetic. It will meet with favor.—R. ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott
... up, Hugh; for it was, and indeed is, a first-rate farm. Including sedges and salt-meadows, you will remember that there are quite five hundred acres of ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... 1830, Paganini saved the Musical Festival, which would have failed but for his individual attraction, although supported by an army of talent in every department. All was done in first-rate style, not to be surpassed. There were Braham, Madame Stockhausen, H. Phillips, De Begnis, &c. &c., Sir G. Smart for conductor, Cramer, Mori, and T. Cooke for leaders, Lindley, Nicholson, Anfossi, Lidel Hermann, Pigott, and above ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... is an entr'acte, shorter than those at Covent Garden, by the way. M. MAUREL first-rate as the Don, both in acting and singing, even better in former than latter; but the dear old serenade, which never can be vulgarised, in spite of its popularity, was encored, and the encore was gracefully accepted, Signor BEVIGNANI being in the chair, and willing to tap ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... newspapers, and had been a contributor to the Northern Star. He was well brought up and was intended for the University, but he did not stick to his Latin and Greek, and as he showed some talent for drawing he was permitted to follow his bent. His work, however, was not of first-rate quality, and consequently orders were not abundant. This was the reason why he had turned to literature. When he had any books to illustrate he lived upon what they brought him, and when there were no books he renewed his acquaintance with politics. ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... Winston Churchill says it is, she deserves and can afford it. As a nation she has prospered and grown great, not by a policy of war and conquest, but by hard work, thrift, self-denial, fidelity to international engagements, well-planned instruction, and first-rate organization. Why should she not, if she thinks it advisable and is willing to spend the money on it, supply herself with an arm of defence in proportion to her size, her prosperity, and her desert? It may be that, as Mr. Norman Angell holds, the entire policy of great armaments is based on ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... is covered with turf which, as he removes, he banks up to form a little shelter from the wind for the vegetables, if ever there are any. Flax shelters the bed on the other side. The digging is rather laborious, as there are large stones which have to be extracted with a crowbar. The soil is first-rate, and so far no mildew has been met with. One of the greatest enemies to the seeds will be the fowls, and because of them probably we shall have to sow first in boxes. Graham has made a needle and mesh so that we can make nets. Repetto has shown ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... whether the vision be sublime or repulsive. It may be a little of both; but at any rate it is undeniably fascinating. That, I take it, is because the imagery which he creates may still be a symbol of thoughts and emotions which are as interesting now as they were six hundred years ago. This man of first-rate power shows us, therefore, what was the real charm of the accepted beliefs for him, and less consciously for others. He had no doubt that their truth could be proved by syllogising: but they really laid so powerful a grasp upon him because they could be made to express the ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... who had been the first tutor of Philadelphus, was in elegy second only to Callimachus; but Quintilian (while advising us about books, to read much but not many) does not rank him among the few first-rate poets by whom the student should form his taste; and his works are now lost. He was small and thin in person, and it was jokingly said of him that he wore leaden soles to his shoes lest he should be blown away by the wind. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the first years of our existence we are in the way of making first-rate discoveries every day. No wonder that we find it so hard to keep still and to listen respectfully to people whose knowledge is merely reminiscent. Above all, it is difficult for us to keep our attention ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... his nose in the air, and trusting all round to his officers. First officer, no good—never any use since they poured the coal on him. Purser, ought to be on a Chinese junk. Second, third, fourth officers, first-rate chaps, but so-so sailors. Doctor, frivolling with a lovely filly, pedigree not known. Why, confound it! nobody takes this business seriously except the captain, and he sits on a golden throne. He doesn't ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sailor, "I ain't. I thought I war; but I war wrong, as you be now, Snowy. You see the flag-spear ain't straight into the back o' the anymal. It's to one side, though it now stand nearly on top; because the body o' the whale be canted over a bit. A first-rate 'heads-man' o' a whale-boat could easily a' throwed it that way from the bottom o' his boat, and that's the way ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... this Preface without expressing my thanks to Messrs. ADLARD for the first-rate style in which this volume has been printed; particularly for the successful manner in which the impressions of the engravings have been produced, superior, in general, to ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... in summer, while our family had the means to wear green dresses in the winter as well. But then the woodcutter came, like a great revolution, and our family was broken up. The head of the family got an appointment as mainmast in a first-rate ship, which could sail round the world if necessary; the other branches went to other places, and now we have the office of kindling a light for the vulgar herd. That's how we grand people came to be in ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... was already lined with people, and several were gathering on the opposite bank. Two or three shots struck the water close to him, and he knew that he was visible to his pursuers. Taking a long breath, he again went under water. He was a first-rate swimmer and diver, having bathed regularly, summer and winter, in the ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... very natural that Rome should wish for works of the masters of the new Venetian School, but the first-rate men were fully employed at home. All the efforts made to secure Titian failed till nearly the end of his career. On the other hand, Venice was full of less famous masters following in Giorgione's steps. When Sebastian Luciani was a young man, Giorgione was paramount there, and no one could have ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... was also in front of the house. More ugliness (of first-rate quality) in the paper and the carpet. Another heavy mahogany bedstead; but, this time, a bedstead with a canopy attached to the head of it—supporting its own curtains. Anticipating Anne's inquiry, ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... Mongolian nation appears ever to have erected buildings of first-rate importance. It cannot be denied, however, that the Chinese are possessed of considerable decorative skill and mechanical ingenuity; and these qualities are the most prominent elements in their buildings. Great ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... fully ascertained from officers home on furlough, that these passages are never read in India, nor is the student ever examined in them. They can interest only such little minds as are of the most contemptibly frivolous description. A man may be a first-rate English or French scholar, yea, an accomplished statesman, without being conversant with the infinite variety of dishes, &c., set down on the carte ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... a little, writes long letters that are full of the daily boy-life at Ashfield:—how "the chestnutting has been first-rate this year," and he has a bushel of prime ones seasoning in the garret;—how Sam Throop, the stout son of the old postmaster, has had a regular tussle with the master in school, "hot and heavy, over the benches, and all about, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... several days, having splendid sport, and first-rate appetites to do justice upon our prey. We were pleased to find how friendly the villagers were inclined to be, and that there was no evidence of their having ventured to meddle with ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... had ever observed. I was glad of such an Opportunity of seeing the Behaviour of a Coquet in low Life, and how she received the extraordinary Notice that was taken of her; which I found had affected every Muscle of her Face in the same manner as it does the Feature of a first-rate Toast at a Play, or in an Assembly. This Hint of mine made the Discourse turn upon the Sense of Pleasure; which ended in a general Resolution, that the Milk-Maid enjoys her Vanity as exquisitely as the Woman of Quality. I think it would not be an improper Subject for you to examine this Frailty, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... he's a first-rate engineer. I'm amazed. He was with us ten years before you entered the employ—worked up from oiler; in fact, I must have an explanation of your ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of that particular species, which does honour to our atmosphere; and I should have made no scruple of ranking him amongst one of the first-rate productions of it, had not there appeared too many strong lines in it of a family-likeness, which shewed that he derived the singularity of his temper more from blood, than either wind or water, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... emaciation, I have found (18) genuine arrow-root [Footnote: Genuine arrow-root, of first-rate quality, and at a reasonable price, may be obtained of H. M. Plumbe, arrow-root merchant, 8 Alie Place. Great Alie Street. Aldgate, London, E.] a very valuable article of food for an infant, as ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... to define the differentia of a really first-rate book of travel. Sympathy is important; but not indispensable, or Smollett would be ruled out of court at once. Scientific knowledge, keen observation, or intuitive power of discrimination go far. To ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... gets as Hunterian Professor 300 pounds sterling a year! which is less than the salary of many a bank clerk. My friend Forbes, who is a highly distinguished and a very able man, gets the same from his office of Paleontologist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Now, these are first-rate men—men who have been at work for years laboriously toiling upward—men whose abilities, had they turned them into the many channels of money-making, must have made large fortunes. But the beauty of Nature and the pursuit of Truth ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... help for it, and unwillingly enough, I returned to a khan, and crossed over early the following morning. At his offices, close to the river, I found M.M., le Directeur de la Quarantine, and general manager of all the other departments. He accompanied me to the hotel, which, though not exactly first-rate, appeared luxurious after my three months of khans and tents. I was somewhat taken aback at finding that the steamer to Belgrade was not due for two days, and moreover that the fogs had been so dense that it had not yet passed up on its voyage to Sissek; whence ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... you that I was skilful in all games of mingled skill and chance? It requires an arithmetical head for that: a first-rate card-player is a financier spoilt. I am certain that you never could find a man fortunate on the turf or at the gaining-table who had not an excellent head for figures. Well, this French is good enough, apparently; ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 'em foul. We been digging here for too long. We ain't no prairie dogs to go delving into the bosom of the earth. We thought you must be plumb deceased anyhow: we couldn't get a peep out of you. I was in favour of leavin' you lay myself. This yere butte seemed like a first-rate imposing tomb; and I was willing myself to carve a few choice sentiments on some selected rock. Sure I can carve! But Jed here allowed that you owed him ten dollars and maybe had some money ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... said the lad, flinging it away, plate and all. "It would have been first-rate but for the dirthy pot, and the blackguard cinders, and its burning to the bottom of the pot. That owld hag, Mrs. R—-, bewitched it with ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... are aware,—are you not?—that there are often said to be as many forms of laws as there are of governments, and of the latter we have already mentioned all those which are commonly recognized. Now you must regard this as a matter of first-rate importance. For what is to be the standard of just and unjust, is once more the point at issue. Men say that the law ought not to regard either military virtue, or virtue in general, but only the interests and power and preservation of the established ...
— Laws • Plato
... so glad to get the hamper, and it has done me much good, all the fellows were pleased with the cake, and the sardines were first-rate, and the potted stuffs were awfully good. I am sorry you forgot the bottles of acidulated drops, but you can send them in the next hamper as soon as you like. There are only sixty-two days to the holidays—1688 hours including ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... year, I could acquire a thorough familiarity with French. I could improve greatly in Italian, and even get a dash of German, i.e., providing my health continued as good as it is now. Mary is now staying at Brussels, at a first-rate establishment there. I should not think of going to the Chateau de Kokleberg, where she is resident, as the terms are much too high; but if I wrote to her, she, with the assistance of Mrs. Jenkins, the wife of the British Chaplain, would be able to secure me a cheap, decent residence ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... for Francis Bacon, known as Lord Bacon (1561-1626), to point out all the shortcomings of the ancient method and to propose a practicable supplement. A famous lawyer, lord chancellor of England under James I, a born scientist, a brilliant essayist, he wrote several philosophical works of first-rate importance, of which the Advancement of Learning (1604) and the Novum Organum (1620) are the most famous. It is in these works that he summed up the faults which the widening of knowledge in his own day was disclosing in ancient and medieval thought ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... took their places as directed; Mr. Sartoris gave the word "Go!" and away they dashed. Miss Bloxam, sailing away on King Cole in the wake of Sylla Chipchase, scans that young lady's performance with a critical eye. A first-rate horsewoman herself, she was by no means favourably impressed with it. Sylla rides well enough, but her seat is not such as would have been held in high repute in the shires. She also displays a most ladylike tendency on the present occasion to what is technically called ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... thought. Ha! ha! you would make a first-rate beggar, with that pale sad face of yours. But, no, madam, you shall not beg. Poor as I am, I will find means to support both you and the child. But, mark me—it must ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... shirtsleeves were enjoying a chat and the evening air in the doorway, when I entered. But the jailer said, "Come, boys, it is time to lock up"; and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer as "a first-rate fellow and clever man." When the door was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and how he managed matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably neatest apartment in town. He naturally ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... was standing at the door, saying good-by to a first-rate customer, when Hiram came up with his cart, and directed his two reams of paper ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of talking with him about you, and about the great trouble I had helped to bring upon you; and what he said was first-rate, though I cannot tell it again. I felt ever so much better about my own doing wrong, and I could not help wishing you could hear what ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... disperse my store; Another, not to heed to treasure more! Glad, like a boy, to snatch the first good day, And pleased, if sordid want be far away. What is't to me (a passenger, God wot) Whether my vessel be first-rate or not? The ship itself may make a better figure, But I that sail, am neither less nor bigger, I neither strut with every favouring breath, Nor strive with all the tempest in my teeth. In power, wit, figure, virtue, fortune, placed Behind the foremost and before the last. "But why all this ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... stocked with sundry good things appropriated from the larder for his own especial diet. He had received permission from Mistress Cecil to accompany some of his neighbours to see the grand company from London visit a first-rate man-of-war that had just arrived off Sheerness, bringing in a train of prizes which the veteran Blake had taken and sent home, himself proceeding to Vera Cruz, and which it was rumoured the Lord Oliver was about to inspect ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... life over again, I'd settle down ashore and have a snug little house and farm it. But I guess I shall do better at fishing. Give me a trig-built topsail schooner painted up nice, with a stripe on her, and clean sails, and a fresh wind with the sun a-shining, and I feel first-rate." ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... remained at Edinburgh for about two years, during which he had the advantage of taking part in first-rate work and maintaining himself comfortably, while he devoted much of his spare time to drawing, in its application to architecture. He took the opportunity of visiting and carefully studying the fine specimens of ancient work at Holyrood House and Chapel, the Castle, Heriot's Hospital, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... yet, Darsie, you'll see. The tenants like me. I'll settle down and make a first-rate squire when my time comes. And I'll make up to you then for all this worry and bother." For a moment his voice was significantly tender, then the recollection of his present difficulty swept over him once more, and he added hastily: "You'll— you'll ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... its range. Such a weapon and such a missile, in their perfection, could never have come into existence except in answer to the demand of a nation of hunters to whom a shade of greater accuracy is the means of subsistence. No man who is not a first-rate shot can judge justly of the value of a rifle; and one of our backwoodsmen would never use any rifle but the Kentucky of American manufacture, if it were given him. An Adirondack hunter would not thank the best English rifle-maker for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... could find just the person that pleased him, he was ready to advance capital and credit to an amount somewhere within the neighbourhood of twenty thousand dollars. For some months he had been thinking of Jacob, who was a first-rate salesman, had a good address, and was believed by him to possess business habits eminently conducive to success. The fact that he had once failed was something of a drawback in his mind, but he had asked Jacob the reason of his ill-success, which was so plausibly explained, ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... to look surprised. He was, in fact, rather annoyed. Bates's story had prepared him for a first-rate detective mystery. It was irritating to have one of its leading features ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... went away, and Farmer Rodel called his sister and his wife into the little back room. After exacting a promise of secrecy, he imparted to them that a suitor for Rose was coming the next day, a prince of a man, who had a first-rate farm—in fact, it was none other than John, the son of Farmer Landfried of Zumarshofen. He then gave the further directions which Crappy Zachy had recommended, and enjoined the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... metals, formerly used for the purposes of luxury, greatly diminished after the decline of the Roman empire, and in the middle ages they were sparingly employed except for coinage; ornamental work in gold and silver, mostly executed by first-rate artists, being confined to men of rank, till the opening of new mines added to the supply; which was afterwards increased by the abundant treasures of America; and the quantity applied to ornamental purposes then began to vie ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Camden and Guilford were blotted out by his surrender at Yorktown, had seen service in the Seven Years' War and had undoubted talents which he afterward displayed with great credit to himself in India. Though none of them, perhaps, were men of first-rate ability, they all had training and ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... stories, and I like wiping dishes, too, sometimes—and I can do them first-rate, if I'm not but nine years old, and never let one drop, neither! So Polly gave me a towel, and we both wiped with all our might and main, and 'most as quick as you can say Jack Robinson, we had them piled in shining rows on the kitchen dresser. Then I did ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... that boy first-rate, and I guess he likes me, though I didn't know where Nantucket ought to go. He wants me to teach him to ride when he's on his pins again, and Miss Celia says I may. She knows how to make folks feel good, don't she?" and Ben gratefully surveyed the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... at least a few Filipinos of independent character. Otherwise how shall we account for the fact that some declare their disbelief in the possibility of independence? How else shall we explain what is far more significant, the silence under this head of the really first-rate men of the Archipelago? Is it not worthy of note that Rizal himself, the posthumous apostle of the Philippines, never advocated or contemplated independence? In yet other cases, the belief held finds expression ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... one of the windows, Norbert saw a man, stout, robust, bald and red-faced, wearing a mustache and slight beard. His clothes were evidently made by a first-rate tailor, but his appearance ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... town his new Saintship's renown As a first-rate physician kept daily increasing, Till, as Alderman Curtis told Alderman Brown, It seem'd as if ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... exclaimed the young ladies, while their partners pronounced it "tip-top" and "first-rate," by which they probably meant very ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... all are fond of him, in short, the Boxes with the Gods; That he's a first-rate fellow we would gladly lay the odds. But no!—himself would veto that. We must not wound our pet Precise Attorney-General who ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... "Mother's first-rate and longing to see you when you can get up to town. Everyone's all right," said Fanny comfortably. "Lu's been in mischief again, though. She and some of the girls from her school played truant t'other day and ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... potatoes, which he had purchased from one of the Navy or looted from some unsuspecting person who had them in charge. So far as can be remembered, not one single issue of potatoes was made to the Battalion during the whole of its stay on the Peninsula. Onions, however, were plentiful and of first-rate quality. Other substitutes were preserved or desiccated vegetables, which were found quite unpalatable and quickly refused by ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... grace of manner! what a generous and yet ladylike humor! what a merry, musical laugh! what quickness of apprehension! what acuteness of perception! what— words fail. Imagine every thing that is delightful in a first-rate conversationalist, and every thing that is fascinating in a lady, and even then you will fail to have a correct idea of Miss O'Halloran. To have such an idea it would be necessary to ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... their complexion, respectively. I had an old great-aunt, who was a tip-top eccentric. I had never seen anything just like her in books. So I said, I will have you, old lady, in one of my stories; and, sure enough, I fitted her out with a first-rate odd-sounding name, which I got from the directory, and sent her forth to the world, disguised, as I supposed, beyond the possibility of recognition. The book sold well, and the eccentric personage was voted a novelty. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... men abroad are in the Universities[43]. It is not so with us. Our Universities are impoverished of learning, by the penury of their provisions. I wish there were many places of a thousand a-year at Oxford, to keep first-rate men of learning from quitting the University.' Undoubtedly if this were the case, Literature would have a still greater dignity and splendour at Oxford, and there would be grander living ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... wait for a second invitation. She took up the plainest of the guns, but it was a first-rate Manton ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... 'em. I've seen 'em flying round when they come over from the Point, sometimes in their boats and sometimes on horseback. If you like boats and horses, you'll enjoy yourself first-rate." ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... floor, we made him understand as well as we could, but it must have been very imperfectly at the best. He then went down again, and we soon following him, found an excellent breakfast ready, of which we made a first-rate meal, and after they had left us, for they had finished long before us, my comrade and I agreed that we had fallen on luck now, ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... representations, and consented to accompany them. They, without difficulty, obtained leave from the first lieutenant, promising to be back before dark with the canoe loaded with birds. Mr Large, who considered himself a first-rate shot, was the happy possessor of a fowling-piece, which he boasted was superior to the best owned by any officer in Her Majesty's Service. The midshipmen contented themselves with two ship's muskets, which, as they carried a large amount of shot, would, they conceived, kill no ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Indian. Bonny it was, in one sense at least, for a lovelier farm there is not on the whole of the wide surface of the Empire State. What does not always happen in this wicked, world, it was as good as it was handsome. It consisted of three hundred and seventy-two acres of first-rate land, either arable, or of rich river bottom in meadows, and of more than a hundred of rocky mountain side, that was very tolerably covered with wood. The first of our family who owned the place had built a substantial one-story stone house, that ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... an education. They teach him how to be a good burglar and not get caught. Patiently the State boards him, and educates him to be a first-rate criminal. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the German comedian, and was a first-rate actor in his line. His jollity proved an offset to the gloom ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... dulness of Jamaica life was found in a bar of first-rate talent. There was so much wealth passing from hand to hand, and so many disputed titles in the continual mutations of ownership among the estates under the reckless system of conducting them prevalent, that the disciples of the law found a rich harvest, and it was worth while for ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... at the door silenced him and immediately Mr. John Blunt, Captain of Cavalry in the Army of Legitimity, first-rate cook (as to one dish at least), and generous host, entered clutching the necks of four more bottles between the fingers of ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... a word, and maybe a few of the captains and lieutenants, because Lieutenant Lansdown told me he understood every word the preacher said, and further informed me that it was none of your one-horse, old-fashioned country prayers that privates knew anything about, but was bang-up, first-rate, orthodox. ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... anything for money, and selling our souls and bodies by the pound and the inch after wasting half the day haggling over the price. Decidedly, whether you think Jesus was God or not, you must admit that he was a first-rate political economist. ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... danger of his life. He ended his story by making me admire his boots, which he said he still wore, patched though they were, and all their excellent quality lost by patching, because they were of such a first-rate make for long pedestrian excursions. 'Though, indeed,' he wound up by saying, 'the new fashion of railroads would seem to supersede the necessity for this ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Frank, on returning with his gun, found the others ready to make a start. Just as he had said the arrangement pleased him first-rate, for he really did want to get out of town until a late hour that night. It was not at all to the liking of the football captain to be carried around on show, just as if he were a hero on exhibition; especially when he avowed that he deserved not ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... to me a foretaste of celestial bliss. With a first-rate horse, a crack pack of hounds, a 'good scent,' and a fine morning, a man is tempted to wish life could last forever. And you are only going to ride to the meet, then, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... most stunning place, immeasurably the best we have come to. There is a quantity of first-rate architecture, and very little or ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... and of firing, without starting, tired them out by long rides the evening before every review, and bit his lips to prevent himself from laughing when people declared that General Daumont de Croisailles was a first-rate rider, who was really ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... music-halls. It should surely be a sufficient rebuke for those who continue to sneer at the Simian League and such devoted pioneers as Miss Greeley and Lady Wayne that the Monkey has been honourably admitted and has done first-rate work in a profession which His late Gracious Majesty and His late Majesty's late revered mother, Queen Victoria, have seen fit to honour by the bestowal of knighthoods, and in one case (where the recipient was ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... to report that he went at it with determination, self-discipline, and system, following instructions to the letter and emerging a first-rate typist. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... is, or I would not trust my family to his care. While we were up the St. Johns, he put the Islander in first-rate condition. He has had her boiler and machinery overhauled, and declares she has the best engine he ever saw in a steamer. I went down to see her as soon as we arrived. He has engaged a steward, waiters, and others, and I think we shall be ready to sail as soon as you are," continued ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... answered. 'Took his B.A. at Oxford, first-rate man across country, excellent shot. Would have had his commission this week if his father hadn't turned out a rascal. Throws up everything like a lad of honour as he is, and takes ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... bad or good, they exerted such and such an influence;' in a word, they must form a link in the great chain of a nation's authors, which may be afterwards forgotten by the superficial, but without which the chain would be incomplete. And thus, if not first-rate for all time, they have been first-rate in their own day. But Castruccio is only the echo of others—he can neither found a school nor ruin one. Yet this" (again added De Montaigne after a pause)—"this melancholy ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... academic prelections we shall work in more and more stuffing, more and more rubbish, more and more irrelevant, useless detail which the student will get rid of just as soon as he leaves us. Then the next thing will be a new organization, with an examining board of first-rate practical men, who will ask the candidate questions that mean business,—who will make him operate if he is to be a surgeon, and try him at the bedside if he is to be a physician,—and not puzzle him with scientific conundrums which not more than one ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... yesterday. Her father had been ill for some time, but the worst had been kept from her. She said yesterday that a poor person let her know quite accidentally that he was not only ill but dying. She went alone that morning to consult a doctor, one of those first-rate doctors whose word is law. Mr. Harman, it seemed, unknown to her, was one of this man's patients. He told her that he was hopelessly ill; that he could only live for a few months, and that any shock might end his days in a moment. She then ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... probably a natural inclination towards a liberal or eccentric morality, but he was no thinker, and he gave way to a middle-class phraseology—with exceptions, as when he gives it as the opinion of his old master, the Norwich solicitor, that "all first-rate thieves were sober, and of well-regulated morals, their bodily passions being kept in abeyance by their love of gain." Sometimes Borrow allows these two sides of him, his private and his social sides, to appear together dramatically. For example, he more than half ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... more space than I can here spare to a review of this little book, so perfectly does it corroborate every word which I have said already as to the moral and intellectual value of such studies. Richard Shield, making himself a first-rate "lepidopterist," while working with his hands for a pound a week, is the antitype of Mr. Peach, the coast-guardsman, among his Cornish tide-rocks. But more than this, there is about Shield's book a tone ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... is rather nice. It's our latest thing, and we find it takes with customers first-rate. Look here!" he said, taking down one of the jars, and pointing to the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... millions nine hundred thousand skewers annually, were wasted in the kennels and dustholes of London; which, if collected and warehoused, would in ten years' time afford a mass of timber more than sufficient for the construction of a first-rate vessel of war for the use of her Majesty's navy, to be called "The Royal Skewer," and to become under that name the terror of all the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... should at once check such imperfect work and put the man who does it at other work. The foreman in charge of gang of spikers should be experienced in this branch of the work, and by weeding out imperfect workers, can soon get together a first-rate gang of spikers. But no trouble will be experienced from carelessly driven spikes, if the tie has the spike holes bored into it, before laying. This is considered good practice, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... His rhetoric, though deformed by every imaginable fault of taste, from bombast down to buffoonery, was not wholly without force and vivacity. He had also one quality which, in active life, often gives fourth-rate men an advantage over first-rate men. Whatever he could do he could do without effort, at any moment, in any abundance, and on any side of any question. There was, indeed, a perfect harmony between his moral character and his intellectual character. His temper was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I don't know exactly what wagon to give you. I have two first-rate new pea-pods; but they are both out. However, I can let you have a nice easy Johnny-jump-up, if ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... be a thing discovered by men who have lived amidst a variety of political events, or one discussed amidst their opportunities of literary tranquillity, is remembered to be, as indeed it is, a thing by no means to be despised, being one which causes in first-rate minds, as we not unfrequently see, an incredible and almost divine virtue. And when to these high faculties of soul, received from nature and expanded by social institutions, a politician adds learning and extensive information ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and flooded rivers, added to many a brush with the enemy. These trusty friends were only too anxious to come to our assistance, but a river rolled between—a river composed of deep fortified trenches, of modern artillery, and of first-rate marksmen with many Mausers. One day Colonel Plumer sent in an intrepid scout to consult with Colonel Baden-Powell. This gentleman had a supreme contempt for bullets, and certainly did not know the meaning of the word "fear," but the bursting shells produced a disagreeable impression on him. "Does ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... bread, flour, or corn-meal per man each day, and the small rations of coffee, sugar and salt. [Footnote: Id., p. 272.] Vegetables and forage were to some extent gathered from the country. The coffee was always issued roasted, but in the whole berry, and was uniformly first-rate in quality. The soldiers carried at the belt a tin quart-pail, in which the coffee was crushed as well as boiled. The pail was set upon a flat stone like a cobbler's lapstone, and the coffee berries were broken by using ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... warned them to keep out of the way of the part-owner, Scoville Austin, a surly person naturally, so exasperated at the tax, and so enraged at the rumour of Government spies masquerading as workmen, checking his reports, that he was "a first-rate man to avoid." But Seymour, the Superintendent, was, in the words of the soothing motto of the ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... in the eyes of a true worshipper of Flora, if compared with Pope's retreat at Twickenham. The ancients had a taste for the rural, not for the gardenesque, nor perhaps even for the picturesque. The English have a taste for all three. Hence they have good landscape-gardeners and first-rate landscape-painters. The old Romans had neither. But though, some of our Spitalfields weavers have shown a deeper love, and perhaps even a finer taste, for flowers, than were exhibited by the citizens of Rome, abundant evidence is furnished to us by the poets in ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... without the extreme science and economy shown in Belgium. The cultivation and produce vary, in part, according as the soil is sand or clay; but the same kind of soil, in different parts of the country, produces different results. Cattle are largely raised and are of first-rate quality; Friesland produces the best, but there are also excellent stocks in North Holland and South Holland. In Drenthe, owing to the extensive pasturage, great numbers of sheep are raised. But perhaps the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... time-limit, but sat feverishly silent in different corners of the room, writing as hard as we could. When it was agreed that we had all written enough, the manuscripts were given to our umpire, who read them out loud. Votes were then taken as to the authorship, which led to first-rate general conversation on books, people and manner of writing. We have many interesting umpires, beginning with Bret Harte and Laurence Oliphant and going on to Arthur Balfour, George Curzon, George Wyndham, Lionel Tennyson, [Footnote: Brother of the present Lord Tennyson.] Harry Cust ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... Mexican pony to carry our food and traps. If everything goes right and we find a bonanza, we can load them up on the way back. Twenty dollars will buy a pony here. Then you will want a critter each to ride. We are not going to get first-rate ones, for if the Indians come on us it is fighting that we shall have to do, not riding. Among those mountains no shod horse of the plains has a chance with those Indian ponies, which can climb like goats and go at a gallop along ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... his art support him. But let the business man bear in mind that if he had the power to enforce such a condition, he would be practically annihilating the art. For it is literally true that, if plays were excluded, it would take not even a five-foot shelf to contain all the first-rate poetry which was ever written by poets in a state of poetic self-support. "Could a man live by it," the author of "The Deserted Village" once wrote to Henry Goldsmith, "it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet." Alas, the fatal condition! ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Bedford, or the Duke of Northumberland, has to his estates, are now paid into the public exchequer. All this, upon the present occasion, I am not going to insist upon. What I now say is this: that there is no sovereignty of any first-rate State which costs so little to the people as the sovereignty of England. I will not compare our civil list with those of European empires, because it is known that in amount they treble and quadruple it; but I will compare it ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... horses, plenty of forage, and an open country, they are happy. This is a larger class than most men suppose, and they are the most dangerous set of men that this war has turned loose upon the world. They are splendid riders, first-rate shots, and utterly reckless. Stewart, John Morgan, Forrest, and Jackson, are the types and leaders of this class. These men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace. They have no property or future, and therefore cannot ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... wet, because, unlike the mountains in other parts of the country, the substratum is a stiff retentive clay. At that time there was not a spot of mountain or bog upon Lord Hertfort's estate that was not let by the acre. About one-third of the land is of first-rate quality; there are 15,000 or 16,000 acres of mountain, and about the same quantity of ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Bridge. It was sought for when the building was really about to take place, and the assistance which young Mr. Rennie gave to render it useful raised his character so high, that his brother and he are now in first-rate practice as ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... was as I had hoped, and he made no more difficulties for us. How could he? There he was, almost every afternoon, driving on the sands in all the pride of peacock feathers. Not merely that, but he aired his sister Topera, a woman of first-rate abilities, and of wide influence ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... age. But all this talk is for the purpose of telling you the use of the notched log. Our pioneer ancestors used them to ascend to the loft over their cabins where they slept (Fig. 170). It is also a good ladder to use for tree-houses and a first-rate one for our underground hogans when we have an entrance through the top instead of one at the side shown by Fig. 156. Since you have learned how to use the axe you may make one of these primitive ladders to reach ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... would wish to pass for Englishmen. It is certain, more words would have been uttered in this little lugger in one hour, had her crew been indulged to the top of their bent, than would have been uttered in an English first-rate in two; but the danger of using their own language, and the English peculiarity of grumness, had been so thoroughly taught them, that her people rather caricatured, than otherwise, ce grand talent pour le silence that was ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... What might he not hope to be and do now, Susan says, if he had but the knowledge that every man may be said to have the right to be possessed of? Yet, the good fellow has raised his family to a point of comfort. A gentleman who heard of his merits, as a first-rate laborer, wrote to the same parish officers, to inquire if there were any brothers. There was Tom; and Tom is now in a happy situation, highly esteemed by his employer, and earning 14s. a week. The employer, finding that Tom sadly missed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... land from wishing them all dead; and every person who possesses a gun is glad to help in their massacre. For the bird is a pest and he who shoots it is doing something for England; furthermore, shooting it is first-rate sport, not like slaughtering wretched little sparrows or innocent young rooks just out of their windy cradles. And when shot it is a good table-bird, with as much tasty flesh on it as a woodcock ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... tide of flood. Russel and the ships nearest him immediately slipped their cables and chased. The Rising Sun having lost her masts, ran ashore near Cherbourg, where she was burned by sir Ralph Delaval, together with the Admirable, another first-rate, and the Conquerant of eighty guns. Eighteen other ships of their fleet ran into La Hogue, where they were attacked by sir George Rooke, who destroyed them and a great number of transports laden with ammunition, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... climate was mild; the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble; more pasture land than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines once, but long since worked out; figs fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down, was, that that olive tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it excited a religious veneration; and that it took so kindly to the light soil, as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb up and fringe ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... down; but by-and-by it seemed as though I was goin' to get the bitter of it. I'd kept company pretty steady with Russell. I hadn't give much thought to it, neither; I liked his ways, and he seemed to give in to mine very natural, so't we got along together first-rate. It didn't seem as though we'd ever been strangers, and I wasn't one to make believe at stiffness when I didn't feel it. I told Russell pretty much all I had to tell, and he was allers doin' for me and runnin' after me jest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... stable, and saddled the pony and the donkey, and led them out to the play-ground, where Napoleon treated them in turn to a very fine dance on his hind-legs, and Old Pudding-head, not to be behindhand in politeness, gave all the little boys a somersault over his nose. They had a first-rate frolic, and did not think once ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... a program of musical works is, how long shall it be? The answer is, "It depends upon the quality of the audience." An audience composed largely of trained concert-goers, many of whom are themselves musicians, can listen to a program composed of interesting works and presented by a first-rate artist even though it extends through a period of two and a half hours, although on general principles a two-hour program is probably long enough. But one made up mostly of people who have had very little musical training, who read little except the daily newspaper and the lightest sort ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... used heliometers. Dr. Elkin had charge of the fine instrument then recently erected in Yale College Observatory; Sir David Gill employed one of seven inches, just constructed under his directions, in first-rate style, by the Repsolds of Hamburg. Dr. Elkin completed in 1888 his share of the more immediate joint programme, which consisted in the determination, by direct measurement, of the average parallax of stars of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Astronomical Society has just finished constructing a new radio telescope. It's a first-rate instrument from which we expect great things. Your father and I were in at its birth, so to speak. We consulted on the initial designs during a meeting of ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... are all serene." They weren't, by any means, and were at that moment proclaiming the fact, but he did not mean she should know. "They're first-rate.... Well, ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... unless from a young cow; and the Indians make little difference in drying it for winter use, as they have good teeth and always a first-rate appetite. The skins are dried and tanned by the squaws, who lay them on the grass; and I saw an old gray-haired squaw toiling away with a sharp instrument, made of the end of a gun-barrel, something like a ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... Mr. Babbage while he was making his Calculating-machines. He had a transcendant intellect, unconquerable perseverance, and extensive knowledge on many subjects, besides being a first-rate mathematician. I always found him most amiable and patient in explaining the structure and use of the engines. The first he made could only perform arithmetical operations. Not satisfied with that, Mr. Babbage constructed an analytical engine, which could be so arranged ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... disadvantage in rising to address the House after having listened for upwards of five hours to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. But the question is one, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, of first-rate importance; and as I happen from a variety of circumstances to have paid some attention to it, and to have formed some strong opinions in regard to it, I am unwilling even that the Bill should be brought in, or that this opportunity should pass, without saying something, which will be partly in ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... Charles. Charles sent his own painter to copy the rest. He kept agents all over Europe to buy for him, and spent thousands of pounds in salaries and presents to the artists at his Court. As in the time of Henry VIII., there were still no first-rate English painters. James I. had employed a Fleming, and an inferior Dutchman, whom Charles retained in his service for a time. Then he experimented with a second-rate Italian artist, who painted some ceilings which still exist at Hampton Court. Rubens was too much in demand at other ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... he's a trump, old fellow," quoth Tom, with ardor. "He's as brave as steel, a first-rate officer, a thorough gentleman, generous, kind, and as jolly as a lark! Give me Fitz Lee to fight with, or march with, or hear laugh! He was shot in the Valley, and I have been with him in Richmond. In spite of his wound, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... nearly four now. We've shut the house for the night. You're in a first-rate house, my dear, and if you behave yourself, you'll make money—a lot more than you ever could at a dive like Zeist's. If you don't behave well, we'll teach you how. This building belongs to one of the big men in politics, and he looks after my interests—and he ought to, considering the rent ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... had been the first tutor of Philadelphus, was in elegy second only to Callimachus; but Quintilian (while advising us about books, to read much but not many) does not rank him among the few first-rate poets by whom the student should form his taste; and his works are now lost. He was small and thin in person, and it was jokingly said of him that he wore leaden soles to his shoes lest he should be blown away by the wind. But in losing his ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... which he afterwards applied to engraving. He was patronised both by the vain Godfrey Kneller and by the intellectual Lord Somers: yet his works have more fidelity than elegance, and betray in every line the antiquary rather than the genius. Vertue was known to be a first-rate authority as to the history of a painter; he was admitted and welcomed into every great country house in England; he lived in an atmosphere of vertu; every line a dilettante collector wrote, every word he ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... far superior to anything yet known as to supersede all others; and indeed we have little doubt that such would already have been the case, but for the fact that comparatively few of our most ingenious mechanics are also expert riflemen, and none but a first-rate shot can thoroughly appreciate all the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... was right in this respect was very certain. Rochford, who was a first-rate rider, without stopping the horse, seated himself in the saddle, and galloped on alongside Captain Norton. I made up to them, eager ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... BELLA has been out so much this week, that she doesn't care to dance except with a really first-rate partner. She is not so easily pleased as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... of a harper to Clovis, or, as Cassiodorus calls him, Luduin, King of the Franks. In the earlier letter Boethius is directed to procure such a harper (citharoedus), and to see that he is a first-rate performer. In the later, Theodoric congratulates his royal brother-in-law on his victory over the Alamanni, adjures him not to pursue the panic-stricken fugitives who have taken refuge within the Ostrogothic territory, and sends ambassadors ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Thesiger was a first-rate advocate, and, I need not say, was at all times scrupulously fair. He had a high sense of honour, and was replete with a quiet, subtle humour, which seemed to come upon you unawares, and, like ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... of vessels of every class, from the humble gondola to the bulky East Indianian and the first-rate ship of war, gaily bannered with the Orange colours and thronged from deck to topmast by enthusiastic multitudes, was waiting to receive their beloved stadholder. A deafening cannonade saluted him on his approach. The Prince was escorted to the Square or Dam, where on a high ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the captain and looked at Pierre for some seconds with laughing eyes. "These Germans are first-rate fools, don't you think so, Monsieur ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... such a keen sense of appropriate time and place as made it quite sure that none of the three should ever know what was said of them. The caution of an old fox is rash temerity compared with the circumspection of a first-rate gossip; and when the gossips were tired of discussing Folco Corbario and his wife and her son, they talked about other matters, but they had a vague suspicion that they had been cheated out of something. ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... each other, with profound admiration of their young mistress's extraordinary knowledge, that Mistress Margery can write. Dame Lovell cannot do either; but Sir Geoffrey, who is a literary man, and possesses a library, has determined that his daughter shall receive a first-rate education. Sir Geoffrey's library is a very large one, for it consists of no less than forty-two volumes, five of which are costly illuminated manuscripts, and consist of the Quest of the Sangraal [see Note 1], the Travels of Sir John Maundeville, the Chronicle of ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... as an orator something will be said in the next section. His miscellaneous writings, though none of them are historical, may be noticed here. Quintilian [27] attests the many-sidedness of his genius: "M. Cato was at once a first-rate general, a philosopher, an orator, the founder of history, the most thorough master of law and agriculture." The work on agriculture we have the good fortune to possess; or rather a redaction of it, slightly modernized and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... of Trees, No. 2.; II. Study of Trees, No. 5. Old Pollard Oak; III. Study of Trees, Peasants collecting Leaves; IV. Old Church Porch, Morlaas, Monogram of the Eleventh Century. MR. LYTE, who is a first-rate chemist, has shown himself by these specimens to be also a first-rate practical photographer. From him, therefore, the art may look ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... volunteer an offer of the Consulship of Italy, by a deputation to him at Paris, I happened to be there. Many Italians, besides the deputies, went on the occasion, and, among them, we had the good fortune to meet the Abbe Fortis, the celebrated naturalist, a gentleman of first-rate abilities, who had travelled three-fourths of the globe in mineralogical research. The Abbe chanced one day to be in company with my husband, who was an old acquaintance of his, where many of the chopfallen ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... from the fact that her Christian name was Dorothy, held high favor among the girls. She was brisk and jolly, decidedly athletic, and a first-rate leader of outdoor expeditions. She had called at the gamekeeper's cottage en route and shown the letter of permission from the owner of the property, so that the party was able to explore the wood with a clear conscience, despite the trespass notice nailed on to the gate. And what a delightful ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... Sheridan?" I assured him with thanks that I was "first-rate," when, pointing toward the village, he asked, "Is General Lee up there?" and I replied: "There is his army down in that valley, and he himself is over in that house (designating McLean's house) waiting to surrender to you." The ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... less cumbrously contrived than with us. The other hotel, I have the somewhat unauthorized fancy, is rather more addicted to very elect dinner-parties and suppers. Below these two are an endless variety of first-rate and second-rate houses, both in the newer quarter of the city, where the villa paths have been turned into streets, and in the old town on all the pleasant squares and avenues. There is a tradition of unhealth concerning ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... stories—sometimes obscene, sometimes profane, but always so full of life, drollery, and mimicry that a more steady head than Fred's was needed to withstand the contagion. Dick had been to the theatre—knew it all like a book, and would take Fred there as soon as they got out; then he had a first-rate pack of cards, and he could teach Fred to play; and the gay tempters were soon spread out on their bed, and Fred and his instructor sat hour after hour absorbed in what to him was a new world of interest. He soon learned, could play for small stakes, and ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at murder is duly and fully proven. As for the second,—the one made on the river,—we are not quite so far advanced. Still I have hopes. I have found out, for instance, that Crochard is a first-rate swimmer. Only about three months ago he made a bet with one of the waiters at the hotel where he is engaged, that he would swim across the Dong-Nai twice, at a place where the current is strongest; and he ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the liberty of talking with him about you, and about the great trouble I had helped to bring upon you; and what he said was first-rate, though I cannot tell it again. I felt ever so much better about my own doing wrong, and I could not help wishing you could hear ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... Sais has always been the royal residence, and the other palaces have in consequence become somewhat neglected. My dwelling was really splendidly situated, and beautifully furnished; it would have been first-rate, if, from the first moment of my entrance, a fearful annoyance had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... my arrival soon spread among those who had been expecting it, though I neither saw nor had any direct communication with any of those who were to be my passengers. I had some difficulty in disposing of my wood, which was not a very first-rate article, but finally sold it, taking in payment the purchaser's note on sixty days, which I changed off for half cash and half provisions. As the trader to whom I passed the note had no hard bread, Sayres and myself went in the steamer to ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... neighbourhood of New Zealand, also, we ought not to forget to add, are much frequented by whales, which, besides the value of their blubber, are greatly prized by the natives for the sake of their flesh, which they consider a first-rate delicacy. ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... literary reputation is so difficult to establish as that of first-rate poetic excellence. During the last fifty years, many meritorious competitors for bardic renown have successively aspired to public favour, and have each in their turns exhibited their fancy-woven bouquets, as containing a more beautiful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... are much used chiefly because they are good emulsifiers or good solvents (dissolve things well). Soap is a first-rate emulsifier; water is the best solvent in the world; but it will not dissolve oil and gummy things sufficiently to be of use when we want them dissolved. Turpentine, alcohol, and gasoline find one of their chief uses as solvents for gums and oils. Almost ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... he is not my protege, you know; only I knew an uncle of his who sent me a letter about him. However, I think he is likely to be first-rate—has studied in Paris, knew Broussais; has ideas, you know—wants ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... down their individualism and to form groups of these men: but the majority of these groups had immediately resolved themselves into literary clubs, or split up into absurd factions. The best of them were mutually destructive. There were among them some first-rate men of force and faith, men well fitted to rally and guide those of weaker will. But each man had his following, and would not consent to merging it with that of other men. So they were split up into a number of reviews, unions, associations, which ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Why am I doing it? There's little profit in this game. Falk wouldn't look at it. I do it for the sake of a lot of young white fellows here that hadn't a place where they could get a decent meal and eat it decently in good company. There's first-rate company always ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... that he affected the fine gentleman. Hardly a day had passed during which he had not been at some large breakfast or wine-party, or formed one of a select little body of supping aristocrats. He did very little work, and pretended to do none, (for Bruce was a first-rate specimen of the never-open-a-book genus), although at unexpected hours he took care to get up the lecture-room subjects sufficiently well to make a display when he was put on. Even in this he was unsuccessful, for scholarship cannot be acquired per saltum, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... hairdresser's; that is to say, people of a coarse and vulgar turn of mind might have called it a barber's; for they not only cut and curled ladies elegantly, and children carefully, but shaved gentlemen easily. Still, it was a highly genteel establishment—quite first-rate in fact—and there were displayed in the window, besides other elegancies, waxen busts of a light lady and a dark gentleman which were the admiration of the whole neighbourhood. Indeed, some ladies had gone so far as to assert, that the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... "It's a first-rate plan," said Joanna. "Now I like that. The men won't forget it. Where are you going to have the table set, ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... ought to tell you, ma'am—it is hardly a fit story for a young lady; but this Ruth Hilton was an apprentice to my sister-in-law, who had a first-rate business in Fordham, which brought her a good deal of patronage from the county families; and this young creature was very artful and bold, and thought sadly too much of her beauty; and, somehow, she beguiled a young gentleman, who took ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... is familiar to you all. As the inventor of murder, and the father of the art, Cain must have been a man of first-rate genius. All the Cains were men of genius. Tubal Cain invented tubes, I think, or some such thing. But, whatever were the originality and genius of the artist, every art was then in its infancy, and the works must ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... a cracksman, and a first-rate one, too; he brought me up to the business, beginning when I was very small. I don't remember havin' any mother, so I'll leave her out. My old man was very particular; he liked to see things done right. One day I was with him, and we saw a tinner nailing a new leader ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... it fits. . . . We have only to renew the paint and it will be first-rate. . . . Come, why are you standing still? Make the lectern. Or—er—go and get logs to make the cross ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... WILLIAM LYON PHELPS, of Yale: "The plays are admirable; the conversations have the true style of human speech, and show first-rate economy of words, every syllable advancing the plot. The little dramas are full of cerebration, and I shall recommend them in my ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... to Chicago to work somewhere there. He kept it pretty dark from us, but when he went off on the late train last night, Joe Evans saw him, and he said he'd had the offer of a first-rate job and was going to it. How you stare, Sue! Your eyes look as if they'd ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... mind, given almost from a child to abstract and indeed abstruse thought.[31] He had been a student of S.T. Coleridge, whom the Oriel men disliked as a misty thinker. He used to discuss Coleridge with a man little known then, but who gained a high reputation on the Continent as a first-rate Greek scholar, and became afterwards Professor of Greek in the University of Sydney, Charles Badham. Marriott also appreciated Hampden as a philosopher, whom the Oriel men thoroughly distrusted as a theologian. He might easily ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... I'm well used to the sea. That is—off and on, you know, off and on. I was mate on a coasting schooner, saw a good deal that way, you know; like the sea first-rate, but my wife, she won't hear to my going off nowadays, and there's the farm to 'tend to, stock and hay, var'ous things, var'ous things; all about it, my sea-going days are over, yes, yes! Pleasant place, though, pleasant place, though the strength going out of my legs makes it troublesome ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... Chicot was not a man to slumber on a circumstance which, in his opinion, seemed to be important, without having handled and dissected it, with the patience of a first-rate anatomist; in spite of all he could do (and it was a privilege or defect of his organization), every material impression that his mind received presented itself for analysis, by its most prominent features, in such a manner that poor Chicot's ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... Although a first-rate player, Eunice often had streaks of bad luck, and, too, inexpert partners were a dangerous factor. But, though she sometimes said that winnings and losings came out about even in the long run, she had found by keeping careful account, her skill made it probable ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... racehorses. The chaps about him all covered with chains and rings and brooches, were in the duffing line—sold brimstoned sparrows for canary-birds, Norwich shawls for real Cashmere, and dried cabbage-leaves for cigars. Now each has a first-rate house, horses and carriages, and a play-actress among them. Yon chap, with the extravagantly big mouth, is a cabinet-maker at Cambridge. He'll bet you a thousand pounds as soon as ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... as the nearest; and yet further, there was the same absence of the colouring which is caused in natural objects by light and heat, and in mental pictures by the fire of imaginative passion. The result is a product which is to Fielding or Scott what a portrait by a first-rate photographer is to one by Vandyke or Reynolds, though, perhaps, the peculiar qualifications which go to make a De Foe are almost as rare as those which form ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... frontier of France was broken. It was to an almost forlorn hope that the British Army was committed when it took its place on the left of the French northern armies at Mons to encounter for the first time since Waterloo the shock of a first-rate European force. But for its valour and the distraction caused by the Russian invasion of East Prussia, Paris and possibly the French armies might ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... to know if there were fleas in the bed, or what was the cause of our lying on the floor, we made him understand as well as we could, but it must have been very imperfectly at the best. He then went down again, and we soon following him, found an excellent breakfast ready, of which we made a first-rate meal, and after they had left us, for they had finished long before us, my comrade and I agreed that we had fallen on luck now, and ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... of turnip will be found too strong. In flavouring soups with these vegetables, the first care should be to see that they are thoroughly cleansed. In using celery, too much of the green part should be avoided if you wish to make first-rate soup. In using the onions, if they are old and strong, the core can be removed. In using carrot, if you are going to have any soup where vegetables will be cut up and served in the soup, you should ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... familiar with the wisdom of the ancients by a collection of 1451 adages selected from their works. His Colloquies, the most popular book of his age, sold in 24,000 copies. At first he was more a scholar than a divine; and though he learnt Greek late, and was never a first-rate Hellenist, published editions of the classics. In later life the affairs of religion absorbed him, and he lived for the idea that reform of the Church depended on a better knowledge of early Christianity, in other words, on better self-knowledge, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... d—n me, I'll have nothing more to do with you; you have been upon the stage, or I'm d—nably mistaken." And indeed we may forgive this his suspicion; for such was the agility and strength of our heroe, that he was, perhaps, a match for one of the first-rate boxers, and could, with great ease, have beaten all the muffled[*] ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the traveller ought to notice carefully that of Pietro Bernardo, a first-rate example of Renaissance work; nothing can be more detestable or mindless in general design, or more beautiful in execution. Examine especially the griffins, fixed in admiration of bouquets, at the bottom. The fruit and flowers which arrest the attention of the griffins ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... No. 310. First-rate portrait of a Railway Director looking directly at the spectator, and saying, "Of course, I'm the right man in the right place, i.e., on the line." Congratulations ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... of his property—I remembered to have heard this worthy, with whom I occasionally held discourse, philosophic and profound, when he and I chanced to be alone together in the office, say that all first-rate thieves were sober, and of well-regulated morals, their bodily passions being kept in abeyance by their love of gain; but this axiom could scarcely hold good with respect to these women—however thievish they might be, they did care for something besides gain: they cared for their husbands. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... on the quay here, and asked me to take him with me to sea, I did not much like doing so; for I saw at once, by his speech, that he was Cornish; but I did not like to turn him away, for he said that he was willing, and accustomed to the sea. So I gave him a trial, and he has turned out a first-rate sailor. He is chary of speech, and not given to jest or laughter; but he is always quick, and willing to obey orders; taking whatever comes in good part, and bearing himself just the same, in storm, as ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... he had covered the whole with pine branches to make it close. And he had put beans and peas in his garden, which he had begged the cook to give him; and now he meant to plant potatoes there as well. Had anybody told him how to do it? No, nobody. The first-rate cook and the housemaid were both from a town, what did they know about ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... take a good nap, mother dear, I feel first-rate, and Frank can see to me if I want anything. Do, now," he added, with a persuasive nod toward the couch, and a boyish relish in stirring ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... what greater proof can there be of a bad and disgraceful state of education than this, that not only artisans and the meaner sort of people need the skill of first-rate physicians and judges, but also those who would profess to have had a liberal education? Is it not disgraceful, and a great sign of want of good-breeding, that a man should have to go abroad for his law and physic because he has none of his own at home, and must therefore ...
— The Republic • Plato
... aware of the—I would say, desolate—position of our young friend, offers to place her at a first-rate establishment where her education shall be completed, where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge her duty in that station of life unto which ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Mr Grattan's narrative, whilst respected by all as a first-rate battle regiment, was, when the stirring and serious events of that busy time left a moment for trifling, a fertile source of amusement to the whole third division. This is not wonderful. Many of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... maintained, and would be maintained by its French critics, that our English poetry has been too apt to dispense with those prose qualities, which, though not the indispensable qualities of poetry, go, nevertheless, to the making of all first-rate poetry—the qualities, namely, of orderly structure, and such qualities generally as depend upon second thoughts. A collection of specimens of English poetry, for the purpose of exhibiting the achievement of prose excellences by it (in their ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... straight through, the proficient business man with his powers of concentration, the first-rate organiser, the scientist, the inventor—all these men are contemplatives who do not drive to God, but to the world or to ambition. Taking God as their goal, they could ascend to great heights of happiness; though ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... Ha! ha! you would make a first-rate beggar, with that pale sad face of yours. But, no, madam, you shall not beg. Poor as I am, I will find means to support both you and the child. But, mark me—it must ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... practised in the County Court, purchased their situations for large sums, and afterwards sold them. "It was not a bad nursery for a young barrister, as he had an opportunity of addressing a jury. There were only four counsel who had a right to practise in this court, and if you took a first-rate advocate in there specially, you were obliged to give briefs to two of the privileged four. On the tombstone of one of the compensated Marshalsea attorneys is cut the bitterly ironical epitaph, "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... have been; yet even in it there was a use and meaning. But they are past like a dream, those 10,000 stalwart men, who looked far and wide over the Damnonian moors from a station which would be, even in these days, a first-rate military position. Gone, too, are the old Saxon Franklins who succeeded. Old Wrengils, or some such name, whoever he was, at last found some one's bill too hard for his brain-pan; and there he lies on the hill above, in his 'barrow' of ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... by this post an attack in the "Gardeners' Chronicle", by Harvey (a first-rate Botanist, as you probably know). It seems to me rather strange; he assumes the permanence of monsters, whereas, monsters are generally sterile, and not often inheritable. But grant his case, it comes that I have been too cautious in not admitting great and sudden variations. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... and Prussian Plymleys. But the English are brave: so were all these nations. You might get together a hundred thousand men individually brave; but without generals capable of commanding such a machine, it would be as useless as a first-rate man-of-war manned by Oxford clergymen or Parisian shopkeepers. I do not say this to the disparagement of English officers: they have had no means of acquiring experience; but I do say it to create alarm; for we do not appear to me to be half alarmed enough, or to entertain that sense of our danger ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... to me (a passenger, God wot!) Whether my vessel be first-rate or not? The ship itself may make a better figure, But I that sail am neither less nor bigger. I neither strut with every favouring breath, 300 Nor strive with all the tempest in my teeth. In power, wit, figure, virtue, fortune, placed Behind the ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... were ordered for T. and myself. But Mr. B. was subsequently persuaded that with four horses he could have a carriage dragged through the desert to the forest, which would be more comfortable for the ladies; and he made that arrangement in his own and their behalf. Freddy B. is a first-rate horseman, and an Arab steed was ordered for him. Mr. Buckle was determined to go in a thing called a mazetta, a sort of huge bedstead with curtains, borne on the back of a camel, big enough to carry a small ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... is, first-rate. Have you seen it? "Our Camp in Tirah." Natives cooking in the foreground, fellows standing about smoking, and a whole pile of tinned stores dumped down in one corner, exactly as they would be, don't you know! Oh, I think the Committee ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... now give you a notion of the talents of HANS BURGMAIR—a painter, as well as engraver, of first-rate abilities. I will begin with what I consider to be the most elaborate specimen of his pencil in this most curious gallery of pictures. The subject is serious, but miscellaneous: and of the date of 1501. It consists of Patriarchs, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... good-day, Mirandy 'n' Jane. You've got a lively little girl there. I guess she'll be a first-rate ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in Pennsylvania wrote me that he wanted "to raise a first-rate crop of potatoes." I answered him as follows through the ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... . . . that was a real peasant woman. You have a temperament and a voice and those are two first-rate endowments!" said Glogowski, and tip-toed back to ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... animated and vivacious, that we forget we are reading and not listening, and we are as little disposed to be exacting in respect to form as though we were listeners in actual fact. Sterne's manner, in short, may be that of a bad and careless writer, but it is the manner of a first-rate talker; and this, of course, enhances rather than detracts from the unwearying charm of his ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... lady Whose conduct is shady Or smacking of doubtful propriety; When Virtue would quash her I take and whitewash her And launch her in first-rate society. I recommend acres Of clumsy dressmakers - Their fit and their finishing touches; A sum in addition They pay for permission To say that they make ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Marvell's interest; "he was educated for an undertaker, and built up a first-class business; but he was always a beautiful speaker, and after a while he sorter drifted into the ministry. Of course it didn't pay him anything like as well, so finally he opened a drug-store, and he did first-rate at that too, though his heart was always in the pulpit. But after he made such a success with his hair-waver he got speculating in land out at Apex, and somehow everything went—though Mr. Spragg did all he COULD—." ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... were speaking in earnest, and that they really had confidence in Rupert's skill, than any asseveration on their part could have done, but he was still astounded at the news that this boy friend of his, who had never even mentioned that he could fence, could by any possibility be not only a first-rate swordsman, but actually a fair match for ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... more. I could live at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, I expect, for that price, but you see the catch is that Lord and Lady Dauntrey can introduce their guests to swell people. I wouldn't meet the right kind if I lived in a hotel, even with a first-rate chaperon. I know, for I came to Monte Carlo with an Australian friend, for a few days on my way to England. It's no use being at a resort if you don't get into the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... man," said Ted, when he had disposed the last bit of drapery according to an ingenious colour-scheme, in which Audrey's hair sounded a brilliant staccato note—"a first-rate artist—who was asked to decorate a lady's room. What do you think he did? He made her take all the pictures off the walls, and he covered them over with little halfpenny Japanese fans, and stuck little halves and ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... her father. "I think she only lives for this boy, and the time when she can go to her husband and beg his forgiveness. He'll give it, too—poor old Jim. He could never bear malice in his life, and I'm certain death couldn't change his nature. The lad seems a good chap; he's had a first-rate education. But his mother never gave him any profession; I don't know why. Women aren't made for business. ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... for the pretender to fashion to go swelling into the atelier of a first-rate coat architect, with his ready money in his hand, to order such a coat! Order such a coat, forsooth! order a Raphael, a Michael Angelo, an epic poem. Such a coat—we say it with the generous indignation of a free Briton—is one of the exclusive privileges ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... Mission, all things have gone well The brother who, throughout my absence, acted As overseer, assures me that the crops Never were better. I have lost one negro, A first-rate hand, but obstinate and sullen. He ran away some time last spring, and hid In the river timber. There my Indian converts Found him, and treed and shot him. For the rest, The heathens round about begin to feel The influence of our pious ministrations And works of love; and some of them ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Brest, something like 170 miles, mostly open sea, and with Ushant at the end of it—a beastly place, generally foggy and always with bad currents. We intended to wait in the Dart for good weather, and we wired the Meteorological Office for forecasts. It happened that on Tuesday night there was a first-rate forecast, so on Wednesday we decided to risk it. We slipped out past the old castle at Dartmouth at 5 a.m., had a topping run, and were in Brest at seven that evening. There we filled up again, and next day, Thursday, we made St. Nazaire, at the mouth of the Loire. We had ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... has consented to take him. I have not seen the man yet, he was called away suddenly on some important business and could not let me know in time to stop rife coming here to see him. I am told it's a first-rate farm and the man is well off, which is security against Henry suddenly being discharged owing to impecuniosity on the farmer's part, a thing which seems to be of pretty frequent occurrence about here, or, in fact, ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... indescribable grace of manner! what a generous and yet ladylike humor! what a merry, musical laugh! what quickness of apprehension! what acuteness of perception! what— words fail. Imagine every thing that is delightful in a first-rate conversationalist, and every thing that is fascinating in a lady, and even then you will fail to have a correct idea of Miss O'Halloran. To have such an idea it would be necessary to ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... bring order out of the chaos of rehearsals for private theatricals, as no other man has ever been known to do. Carlyle, who was one of the keenest observers of men our time has produced, said: "Dickens's essential faculty, I often say, is that of a first-rate play-actor." Macready also gave it as his opinion that Dickens was the only amateur with any pretensions to talent that ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... Hall is well known for its popular concerts, which bring first-rate music within the reach of all. In St. James's Hall the first public dinner was held on June 2, 1858, and was given under the presidency of Mr. R. Stephenson, M.P., to Sir F. P. Smith in recognition of his services in introducing the screw propeller in our steam fleet. ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... steady and conscientious, besides being too much accustomed to first-rate society, to stoop to anything ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... awfully jolly of you to be the first," whispered Dick; "and how nice you look, Nan! You always do, you know, but to-day you are first-rate. Is this a new gown?" casting an approving look over Nan's costume, which was certainly very ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... smiled and nodded. "Your year won't have been wasted, Henry. And when it's over, if you want to get out of the picture business, you'll find that you can get a dozen first-rate jobs from men who wouldn't have taken you in as their office-boy a season ago.... Give my love to your wife, Henry, and tell her for me that I'm ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... most charming, and utterly sincere. He's got the entree everywhere here. He is a first-rate scientist, by the way. But, Monsignor, I'd sooner not talk about ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... and more plentiful here than anything else, and the old dame at the yadoya of a fishing village cooks me a big skate for supper, which makes first-rate eating, in spite of the black, malodorous sauce she uses ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... of weeds instead of a green-sward of fine grasses and white clover. Trench the ground to an even depth, tread it firm, and have light, finely-sifted soil uppermost. Sow thickly early in April, cover lightly, and protect from birds. If the soil is good, and the seed first-rate, your sward will be green the ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... similar to the one in the great temple of Syria, that is called in the Phoenician language, Bethilanni. Between the doors I placed 8 double lions whose weight is 1 ner 6 soss, 50 talents[46] of first-rate copper, made in honor of Mylitta ...[47] and their four kubur in materials from Mount Amanus; I placed them on nirgalli.[8] Over them I sculptured artistically a crown of beast of the fields, a bird in stone of the mountains. Toward the four celestial regions, I turned their front. The lintels ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... there had been an epoch-making fight. Both lads came out of it in a more or less unrecognizable condition, but Martin reestablished his reputation and presently entered Yale free from the suspicion of being anything but a first-rate sportsman ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... also recognisable in the walls of S. Nicolo. There are several ruined churches which appear to be of the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. Some of them have been altered at a later period, but they contain nothing of first-rate interest. Nona had sixteen in the Middle Ages. We walked out to S. Nicolo, an early church, which crowns a hillock thickly sown with asphodels in blossom, some little distance from the road and a mile or so from Nona. It is cruciform in plan, with apsidal terminations ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... you make him out. He's lazy, and he likes to spoon, and he puts up with a good deal of petting from the girls,—who wouldn't, if he could get it?—but he is jolly and big-hearted, and don't put on any airs,—with us, at least,—and the mess like him first-rate. 'Tain't his fault that he's handsome and a regular lady-killer. You must admit that he had a pretty tough four years of it up there at that cussed old Indian graveyard, and it's only natural he should enjoy getting ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... dialogue and I have a shrewd eye for foibles, and if you are not satisfied with that you can take it or leave it." I for one took it, but always with a feeling that he was offering me a sparkling wine of a quality not first-rate, whereas with a little more trouble and expense he could have offered me an unimpeachable brand. Now that Cairo (CONSTABLE) has provided me with what I have been waiting for, I am more than delighted to present ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... reeled aside and fell. He had fainted from loss of blood caused by a wound he had managed to conceal. There was no holding the men now. They gave him a cordial, after which he bound up his leg, for he was a first-rate surgeon, and repeated his orders as before. But there were a good many wounded; and, with Drake no longer able to lead, the rest all begged to go back. So back to their boats they went, and over to the Bastimentos or Victualling Islands, which contained ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... Leonardesque or golden faculty there,—you are only oppressing and destroying it. And the artistical gift in average men is not joined with others: your born painter, if you don't make a painter of him, won't be a first-rate merchant, or lawyer; at all events, whatever he turns out, his own special gift is unemployed by you; and in no wise helps him in that other business. So here you have a certain quantity of a particular sort of intelligence, produced for you annually by providential ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Lord Harry, woman, I should as soon think of calling the Boadishey a clumsy frigate. What the devil would you have? Arnt her eyes as bright as the morning and evening stars? and isnt her hair as black and glistening as rigging that has just had a lick of tar? doesnt she move as stately as a first-rate in smooth water, on a bowline? Why, woman, the figure-head of the Boadishey was a fool to her, and that, as Ive often heard the captain say, was an image of a great queen; and arnt queens always comely, woman? for who do ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... her, take her up on the platform, and have it out there; the public would like that, first-rate!" Mr. Filer said to Ransom, as if ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... A first-rate detective story—one that will keep you thrilled to the very end. The New York Tribune's verdict on the book is this—"We need only commend it as a puzzling and readable addition ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... king,(5) who was a sincere believer in the Law of Buddha and wished to build a new vihara for the monks, first convoked a great assembly. After giving the monks a meal of rice, and presenting his offerings (on the occasion), he selected a pair of first-rate oxen, the horns of which were grandly decorated with gold, silver, and the precious substances. A golden plough had been provided, and the king himself turned up a furrow on the four sides of the ground within which the building was supposed to be. He ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... preacher Schubart was at first very popular; he imitated Cramer; but at the same time manifested first-rate pulpit talents of his own. These, however, he entirely neglected to improve: presuming on his gifts and their acceptance, he began to 'play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,' as made his audience sink to yawning, or explode in downright ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... "He's a first-rate swimmer," declared Ed, looking anxiously at the little rippling motion that marked Walter's progress. "He can easily go ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... average, while in America there was Whistler. No one, I suppose, would claim for any of these, save, perhaps, Whistler, a place even in the second rank of artists. From which it follows clearly that something more than delicacy of reaction and touch is needed to make a man first-rate. What is needed is, of course, constructive power. An artist must be able to convert his inspiration into significant form; for in art it is not from a word to a blow, but from a tremulous, excited vision to an orderly mental ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... Harry!" cried the squire, as he stood with his wife in the park, on a visit of inspection to some first-rate Southdowns just added to his stock,—"by the Lord, if that is not Randal Leslie trying to get into the park at the back gate! Hollo, Randal! you must come round by the lodge, my boy," said he. "You see this gate is locked to keep ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mr. Unknown, I am a first-rate boxer. But easy, man, easy! For I should be the last person in the world to say an offensive word about Francis. Now, since you know her, you ought to be aware that she would never refuse to assist a person in distress out of a sense ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... and one jib. She is sometimes quite open, sometimes half-decked, and sometimes fully decked, according to her size. She carries generally from ten to thirty tons of cargo, and is much used in the coasting trade, all the way from Civita Vecchia to the Diamante. The model of a first-rate felucca is very like that of a Viking's ship which was discovered not many years since in a mound ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand. ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... with one foot in the grave, weak in his best days, and far inferior to the able associate by him." Randolph then gives an outline of his progress through the earlier and somewhat tentative stages of his speech, comparing his movement to the exercise "of a first-rate, four-mile race-horse, sometimes displaying his whole power and speed for a few leaps, and then taking up again." "At last," according to Randolph, the orator "got up to full speed; and took a rapid view of what England had done, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... in a more subdued tone, holding up a great red apple, "See what the man, where we buy our things, sent you, mother. He called me to him, and said, 'Give that to your mother, and tell her it will be first-rate roasted.'" ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... little compairateevely what a man lives upo'," said Cupples sententiously, "sae it be first-rate o' 'ts ain kin'. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... criticism robs us of the pleasure of being keenly moved by very fine things' (iii. 327). 'It seems to me,' she writes (ii. 412), 'much better to read a man's own writings than to read what others say about him, especially when the man is first-rate and the others third-rate. As Goethe said long ago about Spinoza, "I always preferred to learn from the man himself what he thought, rather than to hear from some one else what he ought to have thought."' As if the scholar will not always ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... "I should like all these things first-rate; but I have no expectation that such a thing will ever happen. Such a change ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... skilful leader, and if his advice had been taken at the outset there might have been a disaster for England. Pedro de Valdes, the admiral of Andalusia, had sailed the northern seas, and Medina-Sidonia was told he might rely on his local knowledge. Moncada, the admiral of the galleasses, was a "first-rate fighting-man," and De Leyva, the general of the troops embarked, who had taken command of the "Rata Coronada," a great galleon of 800 tons in the Levant armada, showed that he was sailor as ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... from a real sense of the duty I owed to my future employers, whomsoever they might be, in making myself a first-rate hand in the cutting, shaping, and sewing line, I would not have found courage in my breast to have helped me out through such a long and dreary time. The change from our own town, where every face was ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... declared that these rumors were entirely unfounded, for the reason that "at the present time all our Government departments are weighed down with problems of first-rate national importance which brook no delay, [1] and they could scarcely find time to busy themselves with such matters as the Jewish question, which requires mature consideration and slow progress ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... century, 20% of the island's population emigrated, mostly to Canada and the US. Limited home rule from Denmark was granted in 1874 and complete independence attained in 1944. Literacy, longevity, income, and social cohesion are first-rate by world standards. ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... broken with the axiom that in a case of doubt one should hold off, for this applied to choice, and he had not at present the slightest pretension to choosing. He knew he was lifted along, that what he was doing was not first-rate, that nothing was settled by it and that if there was a hard knot in his life it would only grow harder with keeping. Doing one's sum to-morrow instead of to-day doesn't make the sum easier, but at least makes ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Like Dr. Thomson, the celebrated Master, he is felt to be a characteristic and a real personage, even by those little familiar with his work or writings. He was, moreover, an ardent Pickwickian and thoroughly saturated with the spirit of the immortal book, to appreciate which a first-rate memory, which he possessed, is essential; for the details, allusions, names, suggestions, are so immense that they require to be present together in the mind, and jostle each other out of recollection. In the 'fifties, there were at Cambridge a number ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... friend some first-rate wine, which he tasted and drank, making no remark upon it. The owner, disgusted at his guest's want of appreciation, next offered some strong but inferior wine, which the guest had no sooner tasted than he exclaimed that it ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... poetry by a young man, and that where we should least expect it, namely, in a prize-poem. These productions have often been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have felt about it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its author, though the measure in which ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... said Dr. Upround, holding council with himself; "evidently a good clerk, and perhaps a first-rate scholar. One of the very best Greek scholars of the age does all his manuscript in printing hand, when he wishes it to be legible. And a capital plan it is—without meaning any pun. I can read this like a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... after a moment, "then Hosy and you ought to get along first-rate together. He's down on hypocrites and make-believe piety as bad as you are. The only time he and Mr. Partridge, our minister in Bayport, ever quarreled—'twasn't a real quarrel, but more of a disagreement—was over what sort of a place Heaven was. Mr. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... He's a first-rate hand with a comb and a pair of scissors. You let him do your head, sir and you ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... had begun with the death of the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read too carefully; difficulties lurk behind every word. I confess—I hope it will not be held against me—that it is precisely for this reason that they offer first-rate joy to a psychologist—as the opposite of all merely naive corruption, as refinement par excellence, as an artistic triumph in psychological corruption. The gospels, in fact, stand alone. The Bible as a whole is not to be compared to ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... strong Italy is the best thing in the world for you. A strong Italy is the surest of all barriers against France." There may be some truth in the assertion if Italy could spring at once—Minerva fashion—all armed and ready for combat, and stand out as a first-rate power in Europe; but to do this requires years of preparation, long years too; and it is precisely in these years of interval that France can become all-dominant in Italy—the master, and the not very ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... day on December 23rd, 1732, in Preston, Lancashire, twenty-one years before his great rival and contemporary, Samuel Crompton. His parents could not possibly afford to give him any schooling, he being the youngest of thirteen. Apprenticed to the trade of barber, he became in time a first-rate man in that business. In 1760, when twenty-eight years of age, he left Preston and settled down in Bolton in Lancashire, setting up the business of barber and peruke-maker. The youthful Samuel Crompton would no doubt pay him many visits when in Churchgate, ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... them, and called them by their first names, and felt in their pockets for cigars. He was just bubbling over with mirth, and laughed all the time, being so offensively joyous, in fact, that when he went into a car, he attracted general attention, which suited him first-rate. He regarded himself as a universal ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... vexed that he had not examined it more closely before it was cooked; it was not so easy now to make out what it really was. It had tasted first-rate, however, and ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... call her Smith, the governess. Well, Mr. Frank's father, being as proud as Lucifer, said "No," as to marrying the governess, when Mr. Frank wanted him to say "Yes." He was a man of business, was old Gatliffe, and he took the proper business course. He sent the governess away with a first-rate character and a spanking present, and then he, looked about him to get something for Mr. Frank to do. While he was looking about, Mr. Frank bolted to London after the governess, who had nobody alive belonging to her to go to but ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... doorway, when I entered. But the jailer said, "Come, boys, it is time to lock up"; and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer as "a first-rate fellow and clever man." When the door was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and how he managed matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably neatest apartment ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... first principles of political economy among European gentlemen of otherwise first-rate education and abilities in India is quite lamentable, for there are really few public officers, even in the army, who are not occasionally liable to be placed in the situations where they may, by false measures, arising out of such ignorance, aggravate the evils of dearth among great bodies of their ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and to have stretched every part to its utmost distention. My aunt with her great cunt had a power of pressure that seemed almost to nip off your prick, Miss Frankland, too, was great in that way. But this was more like a very well made first-rate kid glove, two sizes too small for your fingers, yet giving way without bursting, and fitting every irregularity of the nail or finger; just so her little cunt fitted my prick exactly like a glove, and it was truly most ecstatic. A gentle withdrawing, and then ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... man this morning, while I was prowling around the settlement," said Charlie, "who said that there was plenty of vacant land, of first-rate quality, up around Manhattan. Where's that, father—do you know? He didn't, but some other man, one of the New England Society fellows, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... general were then, and had for many years been furnished. So far, however, from these proving, as Defoe anticipates, a warning to future generations, the general appearance of shops has experienced a vast improvement since those days; and the third-rate class are now probably as fine as the first-rate were at no distant period. At the same time, as in the reign of the first George, we have now also a few shops fitted up in a style of extraordinary and startling elegance, and thus forming that contrast with the general ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... square, and ornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour minus the inexpressibles, which were then of a pale nankeen. He wore a very precise shirt-frill, and carried a pair of first-rate spectacles on his forehead, and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than doubt which precious possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy against it on part of all the clocks and watches ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... believe the Delhi will run away from us, Louis," said the captain as the millionaire joined him, curious to know what he was doing. "She isn't loaded for her best sailing, but she is doing first-rate ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... in, just as Sarawak is the most wonderful little independent state—well managed, complete in itself, with its small army, still smaller navy, and miniature government. Labuan has not possessed a Governor since Sir Charles Lees (then Mr. Lees) left, but it boasts capital public offices, a first-rate Government House, Secretary's residence, church, parsonage, and other amenities of advanced civilisation. Only there is nobody to govern, and hardly anything for the officials to do. At present the colony of Labuan seems a farce, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... such a first-rate work, and is so likely to obtain a good reception from the public, that I again recommend the performance of it at the next Tonkunstler- Versammlung. Draseke will presumably also agree to it ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... imagine that as a starting gun this would make a first-rate yacht race," said Bert, after they had been ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... seems first-rate," said Van der Roet; "and I suppose, if we are good little boys and girls, and learn our lessons properly, we may be allowed to taste some ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... much of his time and money to doing good to his country. Among the many praiseworthy institutions founded and entirely supported by him was the college for orphans, the Dabetsane Daneshe, and the Eftetahie School. The colleges occupy beautiful premises, and first-rate teachers are provided who instruct their pupils in sensible, useful matters. The boys are well fed and clothed and are made quite happy ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the principle of trying to do our best with any material. Our skippers are not first-rate pulpit orators, but we have been obliged to let them preach. Both their preaching and their surgery have done an incredible amount of good, ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... answered without thinking, thus assenting to propositions and accepting responsibilities the onus of which dismayed him when he came to realise it. For instance Elias earnestly desired to know if Iskender could have included the services of a first-rate cook in his estimate for the expedition. The best of cooks, he vowed, was necessary for the honour and contentment of their dearest lord. How was it ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... a year ago last summer," he said, "and it was first-rate: open-air dancing, summer theatre, rope-walking, fireworks, and supper out under the trees. You'll enjoy yourself, Bella, right enough ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... the greatest number of the larger works of the old masters, yet England undoubtedly possesses the greatest portion of their first-rate productions, which is accounted for by the great painters exerting all their talents on such pictures as were not too large to be actually painted by their own hands, while in their larger works they resorted to inferior assistance. Pictures, therefore, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the best construction. The amount thus saved in the short streets of the village, where the principal traffic is over rough country roads, would not be very great, but it would enable the road authorities of the township to realize the advantage of first-rate roads and the degree to which the narrowing of the roadway cheapens construction. As a result, there would soon be an extension of the improvement over the more important highways into the country; ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... for the conduct of the men placed under him, and for the state of the engines, which must at all times be kept in first-rate order; he also makes himself well acquainted with the talent and general character of each ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... have noticed his laziness! Now it will really be your duty to make him a first-rate fighter for our cause. The Radicals will begin to attack our very existence presently, and we must all come up ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... with metaphysics and general vagueness. The rumour went abroad that Lord Salisbury's promising nephew was busy with matters which lay quite remote from politics, and was even following the path of perilous speculation. It is a first-rate instance of our national inclination to talk about books without reading them that, when Mr. Balfour published A Defence of Philosophic Doubt, everyone rushed to the conclusion that he was championing agnosticism. His friends went about looking very solemn, and those who disliked ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... said Bob Dimsted, as he sat handling the sculls very fairly, and, as the stream was with them, sending the boat easily along. "I think we managed that first-rate." ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... "it is rather nice. It's our latest thing, and we find it takes with customers first-rate. Look here!" he said, taking down one of the jars, and pointing to the first ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Mr. PODBURY, so you've come along here? That's right! And how do you like Milan? I like the place first-rate—it's a live city, Sir. And I like this old cathedral, too; it's well constructed—they've laid out money on it. I call it real ornamental, all these little figgers they've stuck around—and not two of 'em a pair either. Now, they might have had 'em all alike, and no one any the wiser up so high ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... pursue it. Of course we have no right to claim our happiness at the expense of others. But your father is safe for the present. No matter what your talent, you will not know enough, nor have had sufficient bare practice with your pen, to write even a short story of first-rate merit for ten years to come. You may count it a blessing that various causes are preventing you from rushing into print. At the end of that period your father will be ten years older. He will probably be much softened and will look at things differently; or he may be dead. Or ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... "She's a first-rate boat; but she ain't much side of yours," replied Bobtail, whose impressions in regard to the owner of the Penobscot were undergoing a rapid change. "She'll sail some, and ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... firing-line. Damn 'em. But I'll kick 'em right enough. Then there's Major Tixall—major, by gad—a slinking cut-throat, with a face the colour of pigs' liver. What he's majoring it for, Brocton and the devil alone know. The only good thing is we've got a first-rate drill sergeant. He's Brocton's toady, and for that I don't like him, but he does know his business, I ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... looks particularly cool and pretty in this climate. The Count de P—-r was there and his brother; the latter a gentlemanly and intelligent man, with a great taste for music, and whose daughter is a first-rate singer and a charming person. After dinner we rose, according to custom, and went into an adjoining room while they arranged the dessert, consisting of every imaginable and unimaginable sweetmeat, with fruit, ices, etc. The fruits I have not yet learned ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... wheels, the fore pair traversing by a primitive pin under the body, the hind pair attached to the vehicle itself. A pole, or, as it is called, a tongue, projects from the front, and can be easily detached; et voila tout! The expense is sixteen pounds currency, or about twelve sterling for a first-rate article, with swingle bars, or, as they are always called here, "whipple-trees," to attach the traces to. A set of double harness is six pounds, and two very good horses may be obtained for thirty more, making in all fifty-two pounds Canada money, or a little more than forty sterling, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... and would divert the genius of the nation from trade and industry. It would hold out a dangerous lure to decoy the unwary to their ruin, by making them part with the earnings of their labor for a prospect of imaginary wealth. The great principle of the project was an evil of first-rate magnitude; it was to raise artificially the value of the stock by exciting and keeping up a general infatuation, and by promising dividends out of funds which could never be adequate ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... notwithstanding its somewhat open grain, it polishes well, and is prettily marked. There is a variety of shades in different logs varying from straw colour to blood-red, the former being more common; all are, however, equally esteemed. It is a first-rate wood for general purposes. In the London market it is classed with the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... I left my master, Doctor Irving, the purifier of waters, and lodged in Coventry-court, Haymarket, where I was continually oppressed and much concerned about the salvation of my soul, and was determined (in my own strength) to be a first-rate Christian. I used every means for this purpose; and, not being able to find any person amongst my acquaintance that agreed with me in point of religion, or, in scripture language, 'that would shew me any good;' I was much dejected, and knew not where to seek ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... any lady Whose conduct is shady Or smacking of doubtful propriety; When Virtue would quash her I take and whitewash her And launch her in first-rate society. I recommend acres Of clumsy dressmakers - Their fit and their finishing touches; A sum in addition They pay for permission To say that ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... poor boys were her steps, not good old Lamb's; whereas Felix always made a point of noticing them. Gus was nine years old that last time he was there, while I was ill, and he left such an impression as to make him the hero model.-Aye, Gus is first-rate." ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... contribute no more than zero to either side of the equation—or of the inequality. From the time she left the hands of the designers, a unit of maximum value, throughout the period of her gradual declension, many years will elapse during which a ship once first-rate will be an object of consideration to friend and foe. She will wear out like a garment, but she does not necessarily become obsolete till worn out. It may be added that the indications now are that radical changes of design are not to be ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... house of Prince Auguste d'Ahremberg, to see his collection. This is one of the best private galleries in Europe, though not particularly large. It is rich in the works of Teniers,[19] Woovermans, Both, Cuyp, Potter, Rembrandt, and the other masters of the country. Among others is a first-rate Gerard Douw (another ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... favor, so that the competition in the ranks of the actors and singers, at least, is very keen. At the same time, there is room for a certain class of persons—viz., those with good health, excellent physique, first-rate ability, self-control, sound moral principles, perseverance, industry, musical feeling, and artistic insight, with vocal organs trained like the muscles of the athlete, and, in the case of singers, sound musical knowledge and ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... at it again. Then he went toward the dock and looked down into its turbid waters, and returned again with a face of hopeless perplexity. "This is Lucas Wharf, and no mistake," he said. "I know the place first-rate, now. But what I can't make out is, What's got ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... room in her petticoat. But he did not notice it, nor did he notice that her shoulders were bare. For him there was but one woman in all the world. He spoke to the girl as a father would to his daughter. He told her to go to the restaurant and order breakfast, at once, a first-rate breakfast. Porter and Burgundy! The manager knew his taste. She was to give him ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... of him! why he is the most useful animal in the world:—an excellent saddle-horse; a first-rate jumper. He was not in my possession three weeks when I won the five pounds he cost me. My neighbour, Sir Edward, rode over here one morning on his famous horse Thunderbolt, and he thought proper to call my new purchase 'Beelzebub.' This ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... when I came home unusual late, Too hungry and too tired to feel first-rate, Her supper struck me wrong (though I'll allow She hadn't much to strike with, anyhow); And when I went to milk the cows, and found They'd wandered from their usual feeding ground, And maybe'd left a few long miles behind 'em, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... gun drill very fairly. This is so far satisfactory, and I think, if the whole country was not corrupt, they might go on well and quickly, but really it is most irritating to see the jealousies of the mandarins of one another. The people are first-rate, hard-working, and fairly honest; but it seems as soon as they rise in office they become corrupt. There is lots of vitality in the country, and there are some good men; but these are kept down by the leaden apathy of their equals, who hate to see ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... outspread horse-cloth; all about are whole stacks of fresh-cut hay, oppressively fragrant. The sagacious husbandmen have flung the hay about before the huts; let it get a bit drier in the baking sunshine; and then into the barn with it. It will be first-rate sleeping on it. ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the flaming rhetoric of the Hebrew prophets until we think of them chiefly as indicters of a social order. They were not chiefly this but something quite different and more valuable, namely, religious geniuses. First-rate preaching would deal with Amos as the pioneer in ethical monotheism, with Hosea as the first poet of the divine grace, with Jeremiah as the herald of the possibility of each man's separate and personal communion with the living ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... was not a single house in St. Helen's,—not even a tent, and not one of the trees that you see here had been planted. Now we have three railroads meeting at our depot, a population of nearly seven thousand, electric lights, telephones, a good opera-house, a system of works which brings first-rate spring water into the town from six miles away,—in short, pretty ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... aforesaid—a bashful Teucer, over whom Professor Tyndall has, like a second Ajax Telamon, extended, with chivalrous haste, the shelter of his shield—does 'not hesitate to propose that one single ward or hospital under the care of first-rate physicians or surgeons, containing a number of patients afflicted with those diseases which have been best studied, and of which the mortality rates are best known, should be, during a period of not less than three to five ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... were living in a dream, out of which I was aroused by the announcement of my encounter with Tischer. Though he was a first-rate and vigorous fighter, he had been chosen by our chiefs for my first passage of arms because he was fairly short. In spite of being unable to feel any great confidence in my hastily acquired and little practised skill in ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... but, look ye, there's Follet, a fine man, a first-rate man, once worth half a million, but now not worth a guinea-pig. The man that sold him good wine in his better days sells him poor whiskey now; and the confounded dealer in fancy poisons has taken the houses of Mr. Follet, brick by brick, and piled them up in his ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... entered the boiler should have given 19,429,696 foot-pounds; so that the 2 millions given by the engine represent about 10 per cent. of the heat which has left the boiler. The foregoing figures refer to large stationary or marine engines, with first-rate boilers. When, however, we come to high-pressure engines of the best type, the consumption of coal is twice as much; and for those of any ordinary type it is usual to calculate 1 cubic foot, or 621/2 lb., ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... I should think he did. Why Mr. Leslie says if Jack had only the means of getting himself some good books, he would be a first-rate ornithologist, which means a man learned in birds, John," ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... what you mean, Mr Troubridge," answered the boatswain. "But, Lor' bless yer, sir, I don't think nothin' at all of a little spree like this here. Discipline's a first-rate thing, I admit; but a man can have too much of it, and it does him good to chuck it overboard now and again. Them chaps for'ard won't be none the worse for this here little outbreak of theirs, you'll see. We all enj'ys a bit o' ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... present-day evils as the socialists, are unwilling to accept the collectivist remedy. G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc speak of the "magic of property" as the real obstacle to socialism. Now obviously this is a question of first-rate importance. If socialism will destroy initiative then only a doctrinaire would desire it. But how is the question to be solved? You cannot reason it out. Economics, as we know it to-day, is quite incapable of answering such a problem, for it is a matter that depends upon ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the greatest possible degree of ugliness and bad taste at the least possible expense, and certainly never included any notion of ornament in the details. Now, large sums are expended on places of worship, without reference to creed. First-rate architects are employed. Fine Gothic structures are produced. The rebuilding of the Greyfriars' Church, the restoration of South Leith Church and of Glasgow Cathedral, the very bold experiment of adopting a style little known amongst us, the pure Lombard, in a church for Dr. W.L. Alexander, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... last year. The crops come in first-rate, and Josiah had five or six heads of cattle to turn off at a big price. He felt well, and he proposed to me that I should have a sewin' machine. That man,—though he don't coo at me so frequent as he probable ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... out. He is a first-rate man, and he has the whole thing down cold. Ballymolloy and his twenty votes will carry the election, and if Vancouver cares he can buy Mr. Ballymolloy as he has done before. He does care, if he is going to take the trouble to write articles ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... fence, acted as umpire to his heart's content. Ben was a promising pupil and made rapid progress, for eye, foot, and hand had been so well trained that they did him good service now, and Brown was considered a first-rate "catcher." ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... to drive a handsome team of four horses, and, of course, attracted a good deal of attention whenever he made his appearance in the streets. On one occasion the late Lord Sefton, who was through life a first-rate whip, drove up to Heywood's bank in his usual dashing style. Dr. Solomon was tooling along behind his lordship, and desirous of emulating his mode of handling the reins and whip, gave the latter such a flourish as to get the lash so firmly fixed round his neck as to require his groom's aid to release ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... best," he spoke slowly, with considering phlegm. "He's a first-rate boy as far as ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... broken bridges and such like. We crept past the Amira Kadal, or first bridge, about two o'clock, and tied up for lunch, revelling in the most perfect pears, peaches, and walnuts. As a rule the Kashmir fruit is disappointing; abundant and cheap certainly, but not by any means of first-rate quality. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... for Greats, my girl, and done first-rate. But the strain's been a bit too much for you, and you've had another collapse of memory. You had one in the end of November. You've been uncommonly well ever since, and worked like a Trojan, but you've not been quite your usual self, and I'm glad you've ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... genius than any that followed it," and that "nothing but fragments of a single song[106] remain to us" from this first period—fragments, it may be added, which, though interesting enough, can, in no possible judgment that can be called judgment, rank as in any way first-rate poetry. So, too, the habit of comparing the Nibelungenlied to the Iliad and Kudrun to the Odyssey (parallels not far removed from the Thucydides-and-Tennyson order) may excite resentment. But the Middle High German verse of the twelfth and thirteenth ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... stomach for it; they delight in symbols and correspondences, in seeing a story told as if it were another and a very different story. I frankly confess that I have as a general thing but little enjoyment of it and that it has never seemed to me to be, as it were, a first-rate literary form. It has produced assuredly some first-rate works; and Hawthorne in his younger years had been a great reader and devotee of Bunyan and Spenser, the great masters of allegory. But it is apt to spoil two good things—a ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... this time, too, a great joy awaited her. Eugene had passed his examination, and promised them a visit to show them his epaulettes. His mother had his room newly fitted up, and his father placed some first-rate guns and a new hunting-dress in it as a present for him. On the day of his arrival he rode out to meet him, and it was a pleasant sight to see the two noble-looking men embrace, and then ride ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... snug little house and farm it. But I guess I shall do better at fishing. Give me a trig-built topsail schooner painted up nice, with a stripe on her, and clean sails, and a fresh wind with the sun a-shining, and I feel first-rate." ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... to go delving into the bosom of the earth. We thought you must be plumb deceased anyhow: we couldn't get a peep out of you. I was in favour of leavin' you lay myself. This yere butte seemed like a first-rate imposing tomb; and I was willing myself to carve a few choice sentiments on some selected rock. Sure I can carve! But Jed here allowed that you owed him ten dollars and maybe had some ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... York, Pennsylvania, has considerable interest in the branch of the Baltimore Railroad, from Lancaster. In 1849, he had a warehouse in York, and owned ten first-rate merchandise cars on the Road, doing a fine business. His son, Glenalvon G. Goodrich, a young man of good education, is a good artist, and proprietor of ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... a mate," giggled Johnson, "and you don't catch me shipping noways else. But I'll tell you what, I believe I can get you Arty Nares: you seen Arty; first-rate navigator and a son of a gun for style." And he proceeded to explain to me that Mr. Nares, who had the promise of a fine barque in six months, after things had quieted down, was in the meantime living ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... each other or of any German of first-rate importance, the Electors went to the second-class magnates again, and this time their choice fell on Henry, Count of Luxemburg. Carlyle derives this name of Luxemburg via Luzzenburg from Luetzelburg, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... mean by a man of family?—O, I'll give you a general idea of what I mean. Let us give him a first-rate fit out; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... replied Madame Desvarennes. "You have made enemies. Without speaking of projects which I had formed, I may say that my daughter has had offers from the best folks in Paris; from first-rate firms! ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... very bright," said Edward, "but only look here, what I have found! a beautiful razor! oh my! how sharp it is! Uncle James shaves with it every morning. I'll tell you a first-rate play, Horace. I will be a barber, and you shall come to me to be shaved. You know I will only make believe; ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... justice to the coffee and cigarettes. Both were excellent in their way, and Gregory was, in his way, an excellent husband. Jocantha rather suspected herself of making him a very charming wife, and more than suspected herself of having a first-rate dressmaker. ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... exceptional speed, it is true, but in doing so he has contracted an abnormal sort of movement for which it is impossible to find a name. It is something between a trot and a racking pace, and with it a first-rate trotter can make four kilometres (two miles and a half) in seven minutes and a half, and not much less, whatever may be said to the contrary. I know that certain time-keepers have marked this distance as having been done in seven minutes, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... heap surprised. Chuck is a good fellow, I'll admit; but I've been dreaming of your marrying a prince or an ambassador, and Henderson comes like a jolt. Besides, Chuck will never be anything but a first-rate politician. You'll have to get used to cheap cigars and four-ply whisky. When ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... very little concern. Altogether I felt very strongly disposed to close with Brown's offer, the only really serious obstacle in the way being the fact that I felt I had a duty to perform to the three seamen who had formed part of our little company in the gig. First-rate fellows they were, all three of them, knowing their vocation to its smallest detail, and thoroughly at home aboard a ship in blue water, though ashore they were as guileless and helpless as babes, ready to fall an easy prey to the first land shark that ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... appeared in 1804, was better than St. Clair, but such success as it enjoyed must have been due to the prevailing scarcity of first-rate, or even second-rate novelists, rather than to its own intrinsic merits. The public taste in fiction was not fastidious, and could swallow long-winded discussions and sentimental rhodomontade with an appetite that now seems almost incredible. The Novice is ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... lord of all the other men about that place, that he lived in the house which looked over the sea, and that the boy and girl who put me in with the yellow-toothed rabbit were his children. He was what the farmers called "a first-rate all-round sportsman," which means, my ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... M. Gillenormand, his consideration was of absolutely first-rate quality. He had, in spite of his levity, and without its interfering in any way with his dignity, a certain manner about him which was imposing, dignified, honest, and lofty, in a bourgeois fashion; and his great age added to it. One ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... been very successful literary speculations, because Renan is a first-rate artist. Mackay would have been a better artist in literature if he had not been so much overpowered by the immense ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Rosemary Russet; it has the distinctive russet-bronze colouring, always indicative of flavour, with a rosy flush on the sunny side, and Dr. Hogg describes it further as, "flesh yellow, crisp, tender, very juicy, sugary and highly aromatic—a first-rate dessert apple, in use from December to February." In my opinion it comes next, though longo intervallo, to Cox's Orange Pippin, but it wants good land to make the best of it. It may with confidence be produced as a rarity across the walnuts and ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... "Well the hay's first-rate!" said Earl, taking off his hat and sitting down in the nearest chair;—"I've been feedin' it out, now, for a good spell, and I know what to think about it. We've been feedin' it out ever since some time this side o' the middle o' November;—I never see nothin' sweeter, and ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... thought that was quite a little party at the time, but I suppose it will seem small potatoes when we get over there. I'm figuring on seeing some first-rate scrapping. How long have you been ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... years, Iceland was subsequently ruled by Norway and Denmark. Limited home rule was granted in 1874 and complete independence attained in 1944. Literacy, longevity, income, and social cohesion are first-rate by ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... brilliant and highly cultivated people, had seen everything, been everywhere, known everyone, looked into all the books that had been talked about, cast at least a glance at all the pictures which had made any stir. And she gathered impressions swiftly, and, moreover, had a natural flair for all that was first-rate, original, or strange. As she was quite independent in mind, and always took her own line, she had become an arbiter, a leader of taste. What she liked soon became liked in London and Paris throughout ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... better for him, ma'am," said the old doctor, promptly; "he'll make a first-rate sailor, and if Crayshaw's is all the schooling he's ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... and economy shown in Belgium. The cultivation and produce vary, in part, according as the soil is sand or clay; but the same kind of soil, in different parts of the country, produces different results. Cattle are largely raised and are of first-rate quality; Friesland produces the best, but there are also excellent stocks in North Holland and South Holland. In Drenthe, owing to the extensive pasturage, great numbers of sheep are raised. But perhaps the most important industry ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... for them. Politically, also, Constantinople is a very important place to most of the powers, who choose their representatives for the post from among the cleverest men they can find; and I will venture to say that there is scarcely a court in the world where so many first-rate diplomatists are gathered together as are to be met with among the missions to the Sublime Porte. Diplomacy in Constantinople has preserved something of the character it had all over the world fifty years ago. Personal influence is of far greater importance when negotiations are to ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... shore, the whole being covered at high-water renders it dangerous. On the opposite shore also appeared very high breakers; but there is nevertheless plenty of room and certainly a safe channel for a first-rate man ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... hundred and fifty miles from Independence. Our route at first was rough, and through a timbered country, which appeared to be fertile. After striking the prairie, we found a first-rate road, and the only difficulty we have had, has been in crossing the creeks. In that, however, ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... until their third year. At the fifth year they reach maturity, and then continue in their prime for as long as ten or fifteen years. Those grown upon the higher, and therefore cooler, ranges will sometimes remain in first-rate condition for even a ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... of you to be the first," whispered Dick; "and how nice you look, Nan! You always do, you know, but to-day you are first-rate. Is this a new gown?" casting an approving look over Nan's costume, which was certainly very fresh ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... presented his hospitable entertainers with a box at the play. No doubt it was a great delight to Chrissy; for it was in the days when actors were respectable artists and play-going was still universal. Chrissy in her freshness enjoyed the provincials as well as if they had been first-rate—took the good and left the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... "This is the second time within a few hours your rifle has done good service. You'll become a first-rate hunter if you go on as you've begun. How that leopard came here it's difficult to say, unless it was driven from the hills, and has been wandering over the desert in search of prey; those creatures generally inhabit ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... my head, kissed my cheek, and told me I had done first-rate, and after hearing several others speak I calmed down ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... quite as dirty as that major. I had already learned something. I was determined not to report myself to any one until I had washed, slept, and eaten. It was snowing heavily when we arrived. With the help of a military policeman whom we met we found an hotel. He told us that it was a first-rate place; but he was no judge of hotels. It was very far from being good. We had, however, every reason to be thankful to that policeman. We secured two beds. While we were smoking our final pipes, two young officers turned up. They ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... And how distressed that author man who dwells too far aloof. His favourite words he always finds his friends misunderstand, With oaths, he reads his articles, moist brow and clenched hand. Impromtoo. The last line first-rate. When may I hope to see the Deacon? I pine for the Deacon, for proofs of the Pavilion—O and for a categorical confession from you that the second edition of the Donkey was a false alarm, which I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a word against Stanor! Who could say a word against such an elegant creature? He's been a good friend to me, and he's going to make a first-rate man when he gets to work, and has something to think about besides his beautiful self. America'll knock the nonsense out of him. At the end of two years, it will be another man who comes home, a man instead of a boy, just as you will probably be a ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... come to the shop. Gad, it would be half the fun of my fortune! How they would envy me, to be sure! How one should enjoy it! I wouldn't think of marrying till—and yet I won't say either; if I got among some of them out-and-outers—those first-rate articles—that lady, for instance, the other day in the Park—I should like to see her cut me as she did, with ten thousand a-year in my pocket! Why, she'd be running after me!—or there's no truth in novels, which I'm sure there's often a great deal in. Oh, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... mustn't take him seriously. Mr. Gueldmar," he said; "he's never serious himself, I'll give you his character in a few words. He belongs to no religious party, it's true,—but he's a first-rate fellow,—the best ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... wives. I hear lately that he has sold his property for 25,000 dollars to Brigham Young, and gone to England to make converts. How impressive he may be as an expounder of the Mormon gospel, I don't know. His beefsteaks and chicken-pies, however, were first-rate. James and I talk about Maine, and cordially agree that so far as pine boards and horse-mackerel are concerned, it is equalled by few and excelled by none. There is no place like home, as Clara, the Maid of Milan, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... of In Memoriam may be, indeed is, regarded by robust, first-rate, and far from sensitive minds, as a "damned vacillating state." The poet is not so imbued with the spirit of popular science as to be sure that he knows everything: knows that there is nothing but atoms and ether, with no room for God or a soul. He is far from that happy cock-certainty, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... harbours and railroads: but you are not employing their Leonardesque or golden faculty there,—you are only oppressing and destroying it. And the artistical gift in average men is not joined with others: your born painter, if you don't make a painter of him, won't be a first-rate merchant, or lawyer; at all events, whatever he turns out, his own special gift is unemployed by you; and in no wise helps him in that other business. So here you have a certain quantity of a particular sort of intelligence, ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... immoral. Laptev was, anyway, a Moscow man, had taken his degree at the university, spoke French. He lived in the capital, where there were lots of clever, noble, remarkable people; where there was noise and bustle, splendid theatres, musical evenings, first-rate dressmakers, confectioners. . . . In the Bible it was written that a wife must love her husband, and great importance was given to love in novels, but wasn't there exaggeration in it? Was it out of the question to enter upon married life without ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... case of an action brought for the non-fulfillment of a contract on a large scale for shoes, the question mainly was, whether or not they were well and soundly made, and with the best materials. A number of witnesses were called, one of them, a first-rate character in the gentle craft, being closely questioned, returned contradictory answers, when the Chief Justice observed, pointing to his own shoes, which were regularly bestridden by the broad silver buckle of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the early part of February, 1839, and although we found the climate of England exceedingly cold and unpleasant after the brilliant sunshine and warmth of South Africa, we managed to enjoy ourselves thoroughly during the ensuing two months. Then, with Nell's cordial approval, I put her to a first-rate school at Bath, where she remained until her eighteenth birthday, emerging therefrom a very beautiful, accomplished, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... who was a sincere believer in the Law of Buddha and wished to build a new vihara for the monks, first convoked a great assembly. After giving the monks a meal of rice, and presenting his offerings (on the occasion), he selected a pair of first-rate oxen, the horns of which were grandly decorated with gold, silver, and the precious substances. A golden plough had been provided, and the king himself turned up a furrow on the four sides of the ground within which the building was supposed to be. He then endowed the ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... that perhaps it was "the pride of opinion." But when Adams got to his diary, which was the safety-valve of his ill-temper, he set a black mark against Mr. Gallatin's name in these words: "Gallatin is a man of first-rate talents, conscious and vain of them, and mortified in his ambition, checked as it has been, after attaining the last step to the summit; timid in great perils, tortuous in his paths; born in Europe, disguising and yet betraying a superstitious prejudice ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... pretty good hand with the file and drill, he got Bill to teach him how to caulk. He shaped first-rate, so one day we thought we'd leave him to it while we went off for a jaunt. Bill had bought an old shot-gun from a farmer, and we'd seen a lot of ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... Barker is rather short of apprentices, and he has no objection to taking you in place of one if you will make yourself useful. He is a first-rate seaman. You will imbibe a vast deal of useful knowledge and gain a free passage, and when we reach the Indies I shall be able, I doubt not, by means of my connections, to assist you in the first steps of what, I trust, will ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... commanding their voluble propensities if they would wish to pass for Englishmen. It is certain, more words would have been uttered in this little lugger in one hour, had her crew been indulged to the top of their bent, than would have been uttered in an English first-rate in two; but the danger of using their own language, and the English peculiarity of grumness, had been so thoroughly taught them, that her people rather caricatured, than otherwise, ce grand talent pour le ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was delicately sounded, the big man explained that he himself had but recently made the acquaintance of his young kinsman; Jelnik was a first-rate chap, declared the doctor; immensely clever, as befitted his father's son; altogether likeable, but a bit of a ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... dislike her. Oh! she is wild! She knows absolutely nothing of the world. She can do everything we can't—or don't dare to try.—Men would like her. Papa's beginning to doat. He says she would have made a first-rate soldier. She fears blood as little as her morning cup of milk. One of the orderlies fell rather badly from a frightened horse close by our carriage. She was out in a moment and had his head on her lap, calling to papa to keep the carriage fast and block the way of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... draws human nature, delights in the opposition of character, and has, in fact, written a first-rate modern novel." ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... Foreign Office, "A strong Italy is the best thing in the world for you. A strong Italy is the surest of all barriers against France." There may be some truth in the assertion if Italy could spring at once—Minerva fashion—all armed and ready for combat, and stand out as a first-rate power in Europe; but to do this requires years of preparation, long years too; and it is precisely in these years of interval that France can become all-dominant in Italy—the master, and the not very merciful master, of her destinies in everything. ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... be kept secret; but the place of his birth was not far from Honaunau, where the bones of Keawe the Great lie hidden in a cave. This man was poor, brave, and active; he could read and write like a schoolmaster; he was a first-rate mariner besides, sailed for some time in the island steamers, and steered a whaleboat on the Hamakua coast. At length it came in Keawe’s mind to have a sight of the great world and foreign cities, and he shipped on a vessel bound ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Karl," he said to Kallem, "is at school here. I wish you would let him come, now and then, to your house. He is only nineteen years old, but he promises to be a first-rate composer. Your wife plays the piano beautifully. They ought to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... causes were at work a special misfortune had befallen the house of Girdlestone. Finding that their fleet of old sailing vessels was too slow and clumsy to compete with more modern ships, they had bought in two first-rate steamers. One was the Providence, a fine screw vessel of twelve hundred tons, and the other was the Evening Star, somewhat smaller in size, but both classed A1 at Lloyd's. The former cost twenty-two thousand ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of hours once a-week, and note down the number of the cabs and carts which jolt and jingle to the Broomielaw; or, if you like that better, to ascertain the quality of the soil three feet beneath your own wine-cellar; and you are booked for a month's residence in London, free quarters in a first-rate hotel, five guineas a-day, and all expenses paid. I confess that this regimen seems to me both profitable and pleasant. I have been here for six weeks feeding on the fat of the land, drinking claret which even a Leith man would scarcely venture to anathematize, white-baiting at Blackwall, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... he's first-rate blood, and a genuine sprig of the chivalry. He's a devil of a secessionist, sir. If ye were to hear that fellow make a stump speech on States' rights, you'd think him a Samson on Government. His father is the head of a good mercantile ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... whether I ought to regard it as a fortunate or unfortunate circumstance, that the first captain that I sailed with was a "ripper" for swearing and drinking. He was a professed infidel, a first-rate seaman, an excellent scholar, and took more care of the morals of his crew than many of those who have prayers twice a day; and ten thousand times more of their health, for he would not permit a man to expose himself for ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... fellow! Glorious! By Jove, first-rate!" shouted Bob in an ecstasy of delight. "There's a distillery there, you know, and a fishing village at the foot; at least there used to be six years ago, when I was living with the exciseman. There may be some bother about the population, though. The last ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... watched his son's progress in administration, saying nothing, waiting for the head clerk to endorse his opinion that there were the makings of a first-rate man in Joseph. He was careful not to ask any leading questions, but he could not refrain from letting the conversation drop, so that the clerk might have an opportunity of expressing his opinion of Master Joseph's business capacities. But the clerk made no remark: it might as well have been ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... M. de Guersaint, who had just ordered a cup of coffee; "it is surprising that one doesn't see more sick people here. All these folks seem to me to have first-rate appetites." ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... have some magnificent skating. There is not a particle of snow on the ice, and when it set there was a perfect calm, so that it is as smooth—as smooth—what shall I say?—as ice can be. Oh, we shall have some first-rate skating, and hockey, perhaps, and sleighing also, such as people have in Canada. John has had a sleigh built, such as he saw when he went over there in the last long vacation. He proposes to drive young Hotspur in it. We shall fly over the ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... soon as she could round the island on the larboard tack, so that the attempt to escape was not altogether so hopeless as might at first have appeared, had not the Venus gone round to intercept her. Zappa, of course, recognised the Ypsilante, and, knowing that her gunnery was not first-rate, he probably hoped that, as she could not venture into the shoal water, where the mistico was, she would not knock away any of his spars, and that he might manage to escape clear of her. The wind, however, as the two vessels approached each other, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... shop of Mimer, Siegfried was nowise in his proper element, ever quarrelling with his fellow-apprentices, nay, as some say, breaking the hardest anvils into shivers by his too stout hammering; so that Mimer, otherwise a first-rate smith, could by no means do with him there. He sends him, accordingly, to the neighboring forest to fetch charcoal, well aware that a monstrous dragon, one Regin, the smith's own brother, would meet him, and devour him. But far otherwise it ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... something very terrible, between that hour and yesterday. Her father had been ill for some time, but the worst had been kept from her. She said yesterday that a poor person let her know quite accidentally that he was not only ill but dying. She went alone that morning to consult a doctor, one of those first-rate doctors whose word is law. Mr. Harman, it seemed, unknown to her, was one of this man's patients. He told her that he was hopelessly ill; that he could only live for a few months, and that any shock might end his days in a moment. She then told this doctor in confidence ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... places them under the earth, so that for pure cloud and dust they are unable to see the good noble gifts of actual life—I would the devil had it! The direction which Henrik is now taking grieves me seriously. I had rejoiced myself so in the thought of his being a first-rate miner; in his being instrumental in turning to good account our mines, our woods and streams, those noblest foundations of Sweden's wealth, and to which it was worth while devoting a good head; and now, instead of that, he hangs his on one side; sits with a pen in ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... rather ignoble to demolish a hope on which others build because it does not appear to us to be quite satisfactory, though we have nothing to offer in its stead? It is like plucking down a savage's wattled cabin. 'First-rate stone houses, if you please, or none at all,'—and, on being questioned as to where the materials are to come from, point for answer to the ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... In this first-rate romance, which is a sequel to "The Three Musketeers," and was published in 1845, we have D'Artagnan and the three musketeers in the prime of middle life. Their efforts on behalf of Charles I. are amazing, worthy of anything done when they were twenty years younger. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the Achates of our AEneas, or rather the Hephaestion of our Alexander, was Fireblood. He had every qualification to make second-rate GREAT MAN; or, in other words, he was completely equipped for the tool of a real or first-rate GREAT MAN. We shall therefore (which is the properest way of dealing with this kind of GREATNESS) describe him negatively, and content ourselves with telling our reader what qualities he had not; in which number were humanity, modesty, and ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... Jacobs it was that put it in my mind to come here and tell you about Isaac. For the way Isaac died was like this. He and I were born in Spitalfields; he wasn't one of your greeners—he was a reg'lar good worker, first-rate general coat-hand, same as me. But he got with a hard master. And last winter season but one there came a rush. And Isaac must be working six days a week—and he must be working fourteen hours a day—and, more'n that, he must be doing his bastes overtime, two hours one time, and an hour or so, perhaps, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have had a couple of rooms "parterre"—as the Germans call the rez-de-chaussee—and could have been as comfortable as he pleased. But no one ever attempted to account for Dr. Claudius at all. He was a credit to the University, where first-rate men are scarce,—for Heidelberg is not a seat of very great learning; and no one troubled to inquire why he did not return to his native country when he had obtained his "Phil.D." Only, if he meant ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... right away. But I don't know exactly what wagon to give you. I have two first-rate new pea-pods; but they are both out. However, I can let you have a nice easy Johnny-jump-up, ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... thought.[31] He had been a student of S.T. Coleridge, whom the Oriel men disliked as a misty thinker. He used to discuss Coleridge with a man little known then, but who gained a high reputation on the Continent as a first-rate Greek scholar, and became afterwards Professor of Greek in the University of Sydney, Charles Badham. Marriott also appreciated Hampden as a philosopher, whom the Oriel men thoroughly distrusted as a theologian. He might easily under different ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... give a good dinner, and do not know in what manner to set about it, you will do wisely to order it from Birch, Kuehn, or any other first-rate restaurateur. By these means you ensure the best cookery and ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... looks when he called himself well. On these good days he was always at Timber End, where his services were much needed. Lord Keith liked and esteemed him as a sensible prudent young man, and his qualities as a first-rate nurse were of great assistance to the Colonel. Lord Keith's illness was tedious and painful, the necessity of a dangerous operation became increasingly manifest, but the progress towards such a crisis was slow and the pain and discomfort great; the patient never moved beyond his dressing-room, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to first-rate, but could you take me home first? I have to let mother know where I am ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... "She's well; first-rate, thank ye. Come right in and we'll hunt her up," he said, leading the way. "I suppose she's puttering ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... hygiene is rapidly approaching, when the exhibition of drugs will be the exception instead of the rule in medical treatment. For this reason, the effect of climate on disease is rising into a subject of first-rate importance, and, no longer a prejudice or a tradition, submits to the investigations of science. The chief recent writers on what we already presume to call climatology, are Sir James Clark in England, Schouw in Sweden, and Carriere in France; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... am now going to give you my opinion of your works. I have read them all many times, and call them first-rate. Please go ahead. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Cato as an orator something will be said in the next section. His miscellaneous writings, though none of them are historical, may be noticed here. Quintilian [27] attests the many-sidedness of his genius: "M. Cato was at once a first-rate general, a philosopher, an orator, the founder of history, the most thorough master of law and agriculture." The work on agriculture we have the good fortune to possess; or rather a redaction of it, slightly modernized and incomplete, but nevertheless containing a large amount of really ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... "Yes; a first-rate meal. And I think she will be a good mother. She seems to have any amount of milk—more than is comfortable for her, poor ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... an ax first-rate, and indeed, Thad could equal many an experienced woodsman in the accuracy of his strokes; while Maurice was ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... present moment were brighter than usual, and wore the peculiar expression of pleasure and self-confidence which is seen in the eyes of athletes, for they had been playing tennis, and they were both first-rate at the game. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... so," Hsiang-lien proceeded, "it isn't convenient in here, so sit down and wait a bit. I'll go ahead, but come out of this yourself by and bye, and follow me to my place, where we can drink the whole night long. I've also got there two first-rate young fellows who never go out of doors. But don't bring so much as a single follower with you, as you'll find, when you get there, plenty of people ready at hand ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... one, first-rate. I'd leave college now and go in the Navy if there was another boy to follow out father's plans. But I can't bear to disappoint him. It's hard to go against your father when you are all he has. So I suppose I will go on and study law, and some day you will hear of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... worry to the Government, whom they consider bound to give them something light and easy, with 7s. 6d. or 8s. a day, and give rise abroad to the utterly false impression that there am times when it is hard for an industrious man to get work in Australia. Of course many of our immigrants have become first-rate workmen, but such men soon rise in the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... week! Isn't that splendid? Only fancy, Mr. George Weston, Junior Clerk to Mr. Compton, at half-a-guinea a week! My fortune is made; and, depend upon it, mother, we shall get on in the world now, first-rate. Why, I shall only want—say, half-a-crown a week for myself, and then there will be all the rest for you. Now don't you think blind-eyed Fortune must have dropped her bandage this morning, and ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... start-off conceived a liking for these English fellows, to whom, for his father's sake, he played the part of genial host. With a lordly recognition of his superior years he pronounced them "first-rate youngsters, with lots of snap in them." And as the acquaintance progressed, Neal Farrar, with his erect figure, broad chest, musical voice, and wide-apart gray eyes,—so clear and honest that their glance was a beam,—proved a personage ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... much like doing so; for I saw at once, by his speech, that he was Cornish; but I did not like to turn him away, for he said that he was willing, and accustomed to the sea. So I gave him a trial, and he has turned out a first-rate sailor. He is chary of speech, and not given to jest or laughter; but he is always quick, and willing to obey orders; taking whatever comes in good part, and bearing himself just the same, in ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... works, uncut, unthumbed, were preserved free from all pollution in the family archives, where they may still be for anything that I know. This piece of good luck promises to be hereditary; for all "my" compositions have the same amiable home-staying propensity. The truth is, my Father was not a first-rate genius; he was, however, a first-rate Christian, which is much better. I need not detain you with his character. In learning, goodheartedness, absentness of mind, and excessive ignorance of the world, he ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... panelled triforium a very keen eye may possibly detect in the lowest range of ornament a tendency—it is nothing more—to Renaissance ideas. Or it may only be fancy suggested by the stages further east. Certainly the nave, if not quite of first-rate merit, has a really striking effect, and is far better than most panel work of the time. The transepts are of the same style. They are finished north and south with apses, which are really graceful, though we miss the rose-windows which we should otherwise ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... a notion of the talents of HANS BURGMAIR—a painter, as well as engraver, of first-rate abilities. I will begin with what I consider to be the most elaborate specimen of his pencil in this most curious gallery of pictures. The subject is serious, but miscellaneous: and of the date of 1501. It consists of Patriarchs, Evangelists, Martyrs, male and female, and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... her? A sickly, fractious thing! I saw enough of her in the old days. There! be quiet! I have done. If it hadn't been for her, I'd have asked you to come here to your old home; you and I should jog along together first-rate. But Sibylla bars it. She may be a model of a wife; I don't insinuate to the contrary, take you note, Mr. Verner; but she's not exactly a model of temper, and Verner's Pride wouldn't be big enough to hold her and me. Would ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... I heard a first-rate story, which, although it did not occur in this division, is too good to lose. A private soldier, named Cupp, who is a German, belonging to the 1st Missouri Cavalry, and now one of the body-guard of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... western species and one of the most richly apparelled birds of the Rockies. It nests in all sorts of niches and crannies about the houses, often sits calmly on a telegraph wire and preens its iridescent plumes, and sometimes utters a weak and squeaky little trill, which, no doubt, passes for first-rate music in swallowdom, whatever we human critics might think of it. Before man came and settled in those valleys, the violet-greens found the crevices of rocks well enough adapted to their needs for nesting sites, but now they prefer cosey niches and crannies in human dwellings, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... light of the prominence which in all his school stories he properly gave to out-of-door sports and athletic exercises, to have it, on the authority of his old school-fellow, that he excelled in all manly exercises. He was a first-rate football- player, and a good all-round cricketer; he was an excellent oar, and a fairly good swimmer; and until the last few months of his life no man could enjoy with more zest a game of quoits, or tennis, or a day devoted to the royal game of golf. In the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... slipped across in gallant style, and confessedly in first-rate order and trim. Even the "Yanks" conceded this, with a rider, of course, to the effect that they "guess'd" the "Alert"—did'nt they mean the "Palos," I wonder—"would knock saucepans out of the whole bilin'." On account of the great number of men-of-war already at anchor ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Mrs. Pollard have spent a day here, and brought with them Miss Napier. My father is charmed with her beauty, her voice, and her manners. We talked over Waverley with her. I am more delighted with it than I can tell you: it is a work of first-rate genius. ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... American architect. Soon they were on excellent terms with one another—indeed, it was with Gerald Burton that he found he had most to do. The young man naturally accompanied him to all those places where the presence of a first-rate interpreter was likely to be useful, and Gerald Burton also pursued a number of independent enquiries on his ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... earth, so that for pure cloud and dust they are unable to see the good noble gifts of actual life—I would the devil had it! The direction which Henrik is now taking grieves me seriously. I had rejoiced myself so in the thought of his being a first-rate miner; in his being instrumental in turning to good account our mines, our woods and streams, those noblest foundations of Sweden's wealth, and to which it was worth while devoting a good head; and now, instead of that, he hangs his on one side; sits with a pen in his hand, and rhymes ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... stopped at the door of my late inn, I felt much perplexed, and not at all disposed to enter so wretched an abode. I called for my things, and received them with an air of contempt, threw down a few gold-pieces, and desired to be conducted to a first-rate hotel. This house had a northern aspect, so that I had nothing to fear from the sun. I dismissed the coachman with gold, asked to be conducted to the best apartment, and locked myself up in it as ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... movement of the helm, grappled the San Nicolas. Incredible as it may appear, the crew of this one British seventy-four carried, sword in hand, both the enemy's ships, though of far superior force. "Extravagant as the story may seem," wrote Nelson, "on the quarter-deck of a Spanish first-rate I received the swords of the vanquished Spaniards, which, as I received, I gave to William Fearney, one of my bargemen, who placed them with the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... clothes all right," he explained to the customer. "He is a first-rate cutter and fitter; he knows ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... him! why he is the most useful animal in the world:—an excellent saddle-horse; a first-rate jumper. He was not in my possession three weeks when I won the five pounds he cost me. My neighbour, Sir Edward, rode over here one morning on his famous horse Thunderbolt, and he thought proper to call my new ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... its entirety. The Japanese are far in advance of the Chinese in their scenery and properties, and their pieces are sometimes capitally got up: a revolving stage enables them to shift from one scene to another with great rapidity. First-rate actors receive as much as a thousand riyos (about L300) as their yearly salary. This, however, is a high rate of pay, and many a man has to strut before the public for little more than his daily rice; to a clever young actor it is almost enough reward to be allowed to enter a company in which ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Emperor is not a good poet. The majority of men are poets, only they happen to be bad poets. The German Emperor fails ridiculously, if that is all that is in question, in almost every one of the artistic occupations to which he addresses himself: he is neither a first-rate critic, nor a first-rate musician, nor a first-rate painter, nor a first-rate poet. He is a twelfth-rate poet, but because he is a poet at all he knocks to pieces all the first-rate politicians ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... that was quite a little party at the time, but I suppose it will seem small potatoes when we get over there. I'm figuring on seeing some first-rate scrapping. How long have you been in ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... health, were there for economy, grew shy of so excellent a player; and though Gawtrey always swore solemnly that he played with the most scrupulous honour (an asseveration which Morton, at least, implicitly believed), and no proof to the contrary was ever detected, yet a first-rate card-player is always a suspicious character, unless the losing parties know exactly who he is. The market fell off, and Gawtrey at length thought it prudent to extend ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... words in this place about "Old Gray." Why he was always called "Old Gray" is more than I know. His colour could not have suggested the name, for he was a bright roan, almost a bay. He was by no means a pretty animal, being raw-boned, and never seeming to be in first-rate condition; but he was endowed with remarkable sagacity and great endurance, and was, moreover, a fleet trotter. When my father began the work for himself he was a part of his chattels, and survived his master several years. Father drove him ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... brought him in something, so that he might have had a couple of rooms "parterre"—as the Germans call the rez-de-chaussee—and could have been as comfortable as he pleased. But no one ever attempted to account for Dr. Claudius at all. He was a credit to the University, where first-rate men are scarce,—for Heidelberg is not a seat of very great learning; and no one troubled to inquire why he did not return to his native country when he had obtained his "Phil.D." Only, if he meant to ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... cabin of an old vessel that came ashore here in a southerly gale years ago. Uncle Tom jacked it up a foot, put in a good floor, and made it into a first-rate camp. It's got bunks for half a dozen, and at a pinch could hold more. The roof's a bit leaky, but we'll soon fix that. There's a good stove, and always plenty of driftwood on the beach. It's a mighty snug place ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... accounts of the latter, which from time to time came home. Tom's schoolfellows knew almost as much about Jack's adventures as those who, in subsequent years, read them in print, and they all agreed that he must be a first-rate chap. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... twentieth century for you. Indeed all the social and very much of the political history of England may be reconstructed from her architecture alone; and so I make no apology for calling Thomas Paycocke's house first-rate historical evidence. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... year at the very least—and then there are the splendid dinners, the two boys at Eton, the prize governess and masters for the girls, the trip abroad, or to Eastbourne or Worthing, in the autumn, the annual ball with a supper from Gunter's (who, by the way, supplies most of the first-rate dinners which J. gives, as I know very well, having been invited to one of them to fill a vacant place, when I saw at once that these repasts are very superior to the common run of entertainments for which the humbler sort of J.'s acquaintances get cards)—who, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... out of all this while you are young," he said. "There's nothing to compare with stopping a charging lion at twenty yards. I've done it, my boy. You can come back for all this pow-wow afterwards." He gave the diplomatic service as a second choice. "There you are," he said, "first-rate social position, nothing to do, theatres, operas, pretty women, colour, life. The best of good times. Barring Washington, that is. But Washington, they say, isn't as bad as it used to be—since ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... experience as a lawyer he had to be content with fees that seem absurdly small; once, he rode from Springfield to Bloomington to argue a case, and got but five dollars for his services. But he was a first-rate man of business, and soon had a good income from ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... the first principles of political economy among European gentlemen of otherwise first-rate education and abilities in India is quite lamentable, for there are really few public officers, even in the army, who are not occasionally liable to be placed in the situations where they may, by false measures, arising out of such ignorance, aggravate the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... closed book to me. Following my revival-meeting experiences came a few days spent in a sort of moral exaltation during which I eschewed all my habits of which conventional morality disapproved, save masturbation, and felt no small satisfaction with my moral conditions. I became a first-rate Pharisee. Toward the women who had figured in my day dreams I suddenly conceived the chastest affection, resolutely smothering every sensual thought and fancy when thinking of them, and putting in place of these elements ideal love, self-sacrifice, knightly devotion—Sunday-school ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... There are many first-rate sportsmen in Ceylon who could furnish anecdotes of individual risks and hairbreadth escapes (the certain accompaniments to elephant-shooting) that would fill volumes; but enough will be found, in the few scenes which I have selected ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... man came to Garotte, who had a widespread reputation. His name was Bill Hitchcock. A marvellous shot, a first-rate poker- player, a good rider—these virtues were outweighed by his desperate temper. Though not more than five-and-twenty years of age his courage and ferocity had made him a marked man. He was said to have killed half- a-dozen men; and it was known that he ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... first administered, there are such girls as Sally Martin and Polly Horton; but they not being every man's girls, as Bob Lovelace tells us, and our adventurer, perhaps, not having money, address, or patience, to come to the ultimatum with those first-rate ladies of pleasure, he very sagely concludes, that one woman is as good as another, especially as the same Bob Lovelace, so experienced in the ways of women, informs him, that that prime gift differs only in its external customary visibles, and that ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... will do for baby; I've thought of a first-rate plan; I'll borrow a stocking of grandma— The longest ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... denied that men of undoubted talents, and even poets of true, though not of first-rate, genius, have from a mistaken theory deluded both themselves and others in the opposite extreme. I once read to a company of sensible and well-educated women the introductory period of Cowley's preface to his Pindaric Odes, written in imitation of the style and manner of the odes of Pindar. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... had endured must have been even still more insupportable to him than to any of us. In the regiment, S. was considered preeminently the Society officer. He went to all the receptions, all the afternoon teas, all the bridge parties, all the dinners. He was an adept at tennis and golf and a first-rate shot. His elegance was proverbial, and the beautiful cut of his tunics, breeches, jackets, and coats was universally admired. The way his harness was kept and the shape of his high boots were a ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... forecastle), and showing a few yellow fangs in a shrewd smile, explained craftily that he "had seen some of their pants." The backsides of them—he had observed—were thinner than paper from constant sitting down in offices, yet otherwise they looked first-rate and would last for years. It was all appearance. "It was," he said, "bloomin' easy to be a gentleman when you had a clean job for life." They disputed endlessly, obstinate and childish; they repeated in shouts and with inflamed faces their amazing arguments; ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Hindity-mengro to sell all his buttons at the rate of three-halfpence a-piece, in order to have wherewithal to make himself thoroughly royal. Each of these Hindity-mengre has his blow- pipe, and some of them can execute their work in a style little inferior to that of a first-rate working goldsmith. The rings, after being made, are rubbed with a certain stuff out of a phial, which gives them all the appearance of gold. This appearance, however, does not long endure, for after having been ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... modern discoveries have been commented on and illustrated by Prof. Maspero in his great history. But the discoveries that have been made since this publication have been very important,—those at Abusir, indeed, of first-rate importance, though not so momentous as those of the tombs of the Ist and IId Dynasties at Abydos, already described. At Abu Roash and at Giza, at the northern end of the Memphite necropolis, several expeditions have had considerable ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... forget that day! I arrived home late at night, or rather early in the morning, worn out with the evening's entertainment. I had been much praised for the way I had performed my part, and some of the company had declared I should make a first-rate actress, and I thought to myself that they little knew how soon I was to become one. As I drove home, I felt in a perfect whirl of excitement. The day had come at last. Was I glad? I hardly knew—I tried to think I was; but somehow I felt sick at heart; I could not ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... ever ceases. They are about thirty-five miles away. The whole country is quite peaceful, and the crops coming on splendidly. The farm produces delicious brown eggs—and you should see—and taste—the omelets the farmer's wife makes! Coffee too—first-rate! How these French women work! Our men are always helping them, and the children hang ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... heard of this climate, and he wanted to try trapping. He got on first-rate until the illness came so bad on him, and Pete's done well ever ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... rocking foot slipped from the footboard it struck on the floor with the sound of a sprung wooden shoe. Pelle jumped up—"she bumped so," he said, bewildered. "What? No, you certainly dreamed that!" Kalle looked, smiling, under the rockers. "Bumped!" said Lasse. "That ought to suit you first-rate! At one time, when you were little, you couldn't sleep if the cradle didn't bump, so we had to make the rockers all uneven. It was almost impossible to rock it. Bengta cracked many a good wooden shoe in trying ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... up, was just dead, and Mr. Kenge came to tell me that Mr. Jarndyce proposed, knowing my desolate position, that I should go to a first-rate school, where my education should be completed and my comfort secured. What did I say to this? What could I say ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... lunched and dined with great contentment, voting Jacotot a first-rate chef, which he undoubtedly was. He was, however, a better cook than ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... through to be appreciated. They come and work very well for the first week. They slash down acre after acre, and stick to it almost day and night. In consequence the farmer puts on every man who applies for work, everything goes on first-rate, and there is a prospect of getting the crop in speedily. At the end of the week the mowers draw their money, quite a lump for them, and away they go to the ale-house. Saturday night sees them as drunk ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... for a canter over Gum Plain, and beyond the first span of the mountain, where the way is over sand, shaded on both sides by the dark thicket of the gum tree and the forest scrub. She had brought her habit with her, and as she had been taught to be a first-rate horsewoman up at her father's cattle station, I resigned the saddle, and the horse, feeling such a light weight and such a dainty hand, was off like a bird. It was good to watch her as we drove far ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... England seems a not less incongruous act than to set about renovating the adjoining crags themselves," and well might he sigh over the destruction of the grand old tower of Endelstow Church and the erection of what the vicar called "a splendid tower, designed by a first-rate London man—in the newest style of Gothic art and full ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... 'em first-rate," she said, speaking low so as not to wake the baby. "Mamie, Ellen, Jamie, Fred, George—say thank you, and ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... nary home, and nary friend; only my mother"—Bert hesitated, and grew serious; then suddenly changed his tone—"and Hop Houghton. I told him to meet me here, and we'd have a first-rate Thanksgiving dinner together; for it's no fun to be eatin' alone Thanksgiving Day! It sets a feller thinking of everything, if he ever had a home and then hain't got ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... like the late Mr. Gough, such a collection as may be found from p. 217 to 239 of the catalogue, would be considered a very first-rate acquisition. I am aware that the Gothic wainscot and stained glass windows of Enfield Study enshrined a still more exquisite topographical collection! But we are improved since the days of Mr. West; ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... please, sir," said Jack, "we captured that ship with the cutter the night after we went away—I'm not a first-rate navigator, and I was blown to the Zaffarine Islands, where I remained two months for want of hands: as soon as I procured them I made sail again—I have lost three men by sharks, and I have two wounded in ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... there any difference? The transitoriness is the same, and the eternal consequences are eternal alike in both; and yet there is a very solemn sense in which the one man's life has utterly perished, and the other's abides. Suppose a man, educated to be a first-rate man of business, dies. Which of his trained faculties will he have scope for in that new order of things? Or a student, or ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... of dying by starvation at home." For his worshippers too a most questionable thing! If doing Hero-worship well or badly be the test of vital wellbeing or illbeing to a generation, can we say that these generations are very first-rate?—And yet our heroic Men of Letters do teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you like to call them; intrinsically there is no preventing it by any means whatever. The world has to obey him who thinks and sees in the world. The world can alter the manner of that; can either ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... reputation is so difficult to establish as that of first-rate poetic excellence. During the last fifty years, many meritorious competitors for bardic renown have successively aspired to public favour, and have each in their turns exhibited their fancy-woven bouquets, as containing a more beautiful assemblage of "flowers of all hue," as Milton divinely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... there are decanters of wine, and all that sort of thing set out as grand as if Kit and his friends were first-rate company; and there is little Jacob walking, as the popular phrase is, into a home-made plum cake at a most surprising rate, and keeping his eye on the figs and oranges ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... encouraged to proceed, after making his salutations, he said, in a more subdued tone, holding up a great red apple, "See what the man, where we buy our things, sent you, mother. He called me to him, and said, 'Give that to your mother, and tell her it will be first-rate roasted.'" ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... the boasted literary and religious people of Edinburgh have bought and read Father Coleridge's delightful book. A hundred? Ten? Five? I doubt it. Or how many have so much as borrowed from the circulating library Mrs. Cunninghame Graham's first-rate book? Of Teresa's Letters, that greatest living authority on Teresa says—'That long series of epistolary correspondence, so enchanting in the original. It is in her letters that Teresa is at her best. They reveal all her shrewdness about business and money matters; her ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... keep cool." Molly Welch was rather excited herself, and she was chewing gum at a high speed as she stood beside him, looking up at the floating silver cone. "Now watch," she exclaimed suddenly. "She's coming down on the bar. I advised her to cut that out, but you see she does it first-rate. And she got rid of the skirt, too. Those black tights show off her legs very well. She keeps her feet together like I told her, and makes a good line along the back. See the light on those silver slippers,—that was a good idea I had. Come ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... considerable disadvantage in rising to address the House after having listened for upwards of five hours to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. But the question is one, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, of first-rate importance; and as I happen from a variety of circumstances to have paid some attention to it, and to have formed some strong opinions in regard to it, I am unwilling even that the Bill should be brought in, or that this opportunity should pass, without saying ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... mite if he was our deliverer," went on Mrs. Forbes. "I saw it in Mrs. Evringham's eye that he suited her, the first night that she met him here at dinner. I like him first-rate, and I don't mean him any harm; but he's one of these young doctors with plenty of money at his back, bound to have a fashionable practice and succeed. His face is in his favor, and I guess he knows as much as any of 'em, and ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... the second mate take one of the berths in the cabin?" suggested the new mate. "He is a first-rate fellow, and I reckon he's a better sailor than I am, for he's been to sea about all ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... with you first-rate," replied Noddy. "I want to do something, and earn some money for myself. I ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... bereavement (too heavy a sob) parental grief mad son MADISON Maderia frustrating first-rate wine (defeating) feet toe the line row MONROE row boat steamer side-splitting (divert) annoy harassing HARRISON Old Harry the tempter (the fraud) painted clay baked clay tiles TYLER Wat Tyler poll tax compulsory (free will) free offering burnt ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... better born than you or me, colonel. A lad of excellent parts and first-rate education. Bring him on, and he will do you and ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... sincere believer in the Law of Buddha and wished to build a new vihara for the monks, first convoked a great assembly. After giving the monks a meal of rice, and presenting his offerings (on the occasion), he selected a pair of first-rate oxen, the horns of which were grandly decorated with gold, silver, and the precious substances. A golden plough had been provided, and the king himself turned up a furrow on the four sides of the ground within ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... good looks. I have written a descriptive account of her to Dr. Mackenzie, and he will prepare his patient for her arrival. She is to go up the day after to-morrow. We are lucky to get her, for she is quite first-rate, and she has only just finished with a long consumptive case, now on the mend and ordered abroad. So you see, Jeanette, all is shaping well.—And now, my dear girl, you have a story of your own to tell me, and my whole ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... of mine a few days ago showed me his new house with much pride. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him I liked it first-rate. Then I went home and wept all night. It was my ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... mora, so that, being free to go everywhere and anywhere, he was of course completely happy. From his pen emanate four ballads on the times of the four seasons, which, although they could not be looked upon as first-rate, afford anyhow a correct idea of his sentiments, and a true account of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... starting a subject with a question like this: "Do you know the meaning and derivation of the term 'bric-...-brac?'" "Do you believe in ghosts?" "What do you think of a ladies' club?" "Do you believe in chance?" "Is there more talent displayed in learning the violin than in playing a first-rate game of chess?" etc. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... seized the English factories, and made himself master of much of the coast regions between Madras and Calcutta; while a French squadron of nine ships, most of which, however, belonged to the East India Company and were not first-rate men-of-war, was on its way to Pondicherry with twelve hundred regular troops,—an enormous European army for Indian operations of that day. The English naval force on the coast, though fewer in numbers, may be considered about equal to the approaching French squadron. It is scarcely ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... write books! Well, they said I wasn't to tell anybody, and I ain't told anybody but you, and I thought as you was a writer, and pretty busy, I guessed you wouldn't want to waste your time over his book. They say, folks do, that it's first-rate, as far as it goes; but you see it don't never get any farther, and it never will. I thought I'd better tell you about it," said Wilson, his plebeian, kindly face crimson with a delicate pity that would have done honor to an aristocrat, and still working assiduously at the little ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... volume we have already availed ourselves. Some of the engravings are in a vigorous and first-rate style of excellence; the binding, too, is somewhat gay for so grave a title—being crimson silk. Our favourites are a Voyage Round the World, by Montgomery, one of the best poems of the year; Faustus, with a Visit to Goethe; Angel Visits, by Mrs. Hemans; The Departed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... way. So indifferent, or perhaps hopeless, are Englishmen in regard to cookery that they drink a strong champagne throughout dinner, content to drown the insipid taste of the food in the fine flavour of a drink upon which they can rely. An Englishman dining at a first-rate restaurant will usually spend twice as much for wine as for food, whilst a Frenchman will reverse the proportions. Another difference is one for which women are responsible. In Paris a party of French men and women at a table in a good restaurant enjoy their food, laugh and talk with one another, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... climate of England exceedingly cold and unpleasant after the brilliant sunshine and warmth of South Africa, we managed to enjoy ourselves thoroughly during the ensuing two months. Then, with Nell's cordial approval, I put her to a first-rate school at Bath, where she remained until her eighteenth birthday, emerging therefrom a very beautiful, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Deserve it! What have I ever done wrong! Wasn't my fault the firm went bankrupt and I couldn't get another job. I've a first-rate character—I'm respectable—what's the use? I want to ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... practice plagiary, having so large a fund of wit of his own, that he needed not to borrow from others. Were a foreigner to form a notion of the merit of the English poets from reading Langbaine, they would be in raptures with Randolph and Durfey, and others of their class, while Dryden, and the first-rate wits, would be quite neglected; Langbaine is so far generous, that he does all he can to draw obscure men into light, but then he cannot be acquitted of envy, for endeavouring to shade the lustre of those whose genius has broke through obscurity without his means, and he does ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... the space of a month hung gloomily over the civilized world, black with far worse evils than those of simple war, has passed from over our heads without bursting. The fear has not been realized, that the only two first-rate Powers who are also free nations would take to tearing each other in pieces, both the one and the other in a bad and odious cause. For while, on the American side, the war would have been one of reckless persistency in wrong, on ours it would have been a war in alliance with, ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... roared and the waves broke in thunder on the beach, Wolfe was standing up in the stern-sheets, scanning every inch of the ground to see if there was no place where a few men could get a footing and keep it till the rest had landed. He had first-rate soldiers with him: grenadiers, Highlanders, ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... arranged and Frank, on returning with his gun, found the others ready to make a start. Just as he had said the arrangement pleased him first-rate, for he really did want to get out of town until a late hour that night. It was not at all to the liking of the football captain to be carried around on show, just as if he were a hero on exhibition; especially when he avowed that he deserved not ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... at the start, so as not to offend his adversary; he would not cut it short, but would pass him at the finish; and he was so pleasant—he would soothe his adversary, praising his horse. He kept tumbler-pigeons of a first-rate kind. He would come out into the court, sit down in an arm-chair, and order them to let loose the pigeons; and his men would stand all round on the roofs with guns to keep off the hawks. A large silver basin of water used to be placed at the count's feet, and he ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... "She is first-rate," he said. "You can always get money from her. She is as rich as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles at a time and she is not above taking a pledge for a rouble. Lots of our fellows have had dealings with her. But she is ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... middle-English lyrics. Finally, the German minnesingers knew and appreciated troubadour lyrics, and imitations or even translations of Provencal poems may be found in Heinrich von Morungen, Friedrich von Hausen, and many others. Hence the poetry of the troubadours is a subject of first-rate importance to the ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... caused widespread famine. Over the next quarter century, 20% of the island's population emigrated, mostly to Canada and the US. Limited home rule from Denmark was granted in 1874 and complete independence attained in 1944. Literacy, longevity, income, and social cohesion are first-rate by ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the number by chance, he said, was to lose himself in millions of combinations, which would absorb the life of a first-rate calculator. But if he could in no respect reckon on chance, was it impossible to proceed by reasoning? Decidedly not! And so it was "to reason till he became unreasoning" that Judge Jarriquez gave himself up after vainly seeking repose in a few hours ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... I bought a first-rate Target revolver—a Colt—with which I knew I could make accurate shooting. I would not trust my life to one of those unscientific productions which are just as likely to shoot a friend as an enemy, and are more in the nature of pop-guns than defensive ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... decisive rejection of this theory and unshaken adherence to the date from Rome. He remarks that the oldest Church tradition is all for Rome; that the Epistle itself evidently refers to its place of origin as to a place of first-rate importance and extent, in which any advance of the Gospel was a memorable and pregnant event; and that the allusion to "Caesar's household" (though it is not so quite decisive as it might at first sight appear to be) "cannot without much straining of language and facts be made ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... displayed in each part of the establishment, and especially in the management of the springs, so that a single drop of water may not be lost: indeed the whole island may be compared to a huge ship kept in first-rate order. I could not help, when admiring the active industry, which had created such effects out of such means, at the same time regretting that it had been wasted on so poor and trifling an end. M. Lesson has remarked with justice, that the English ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... nation not eminent for the gifts on which they depend, will more or less suffer by this shortcoming. In poetry, however, they are after all secondary, and energy is the first thing; but in prose they are of first-rate importance. In its prose literature, therefore, and in the routine of intellectual work generally, a nation with no particular gifts for these will not be so successful. These are what, as I have said, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... all there were the jewellers' shops, with all the treasures of the earth displayed therein, and such large silver watches hanging up in every pane of glass, that if they were anything but first-rate goers it certainly was not because the works could decently complain of want of room. In good sooth they were big enough, and perhaps, as the saying is, ugly enough, to be the most correct of all mechanical performers; in Mr Pinch's eyes, however they were smaller than Geneva ware; and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... "There, sir, that's a first-rate fit-out for hunters; and with the jolly basket of lunch Mrs. Mullin gave us, we can get on tip-top for two or three days," said Tommy, eager ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... that. Why, sir, he has drilled him so well that now he needs hardly speak at all. I have seen that little wrinkled ape made to take the ship out of Pangu Bay on a blowy morning and on all through the islands; take her out first-rate, sir, dodging under the old man's elbow, and in such quiet style that you could not have told for the life of you which of the two was doing the work up there. That's where our poor friend would be still of ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... the incumbent, is a member of the choir, and if all the other individuals in it had her musical knowledge, an improvement would soon follow. The organ is a very good one. It was given by the late T. Miller, Esq., and H. Miller, Esq., and placed in the church in 1844. Recently it has been put in first-rate condition, for organs, like the players of them, get worse for wear, by T. H. and W. P. Miller, Esqrs. The organist knows his work, and is able to perform it ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... a great humorist and a great sportsman and a great preacher, William Guthrie was a great writer. A great writer is not a man who fills our dusty shelves with his forgotten volumes. It is not given to any man to fill a whole library with first-rate work. Our greatest authors have all written little books. Job is a small book, so is the Psalms, so is Isaiah, so is the Gospel of John, so is the Epistle to the Romans, so is the Confessions, so is the Comedy, so is the Imitation, so are the Pilgrim ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... individualism and to form groups of these men: but the majority of these groups had immediately resolved themselves into literary clubs, or split up into absurd factions. The best of them were mutually destructive. There were among them some first-rate men of force and faith, men well fitted to rally and guide those of weaker will. But each man had his following, and would not consent to merging it with that of other men. So they were split up into a number of reviews, unions, associations, which had all the moral virtues, save ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... of telling me your fancies. I like to hear them, though, I dare say, I spoke as if I was annoyed. But we will ask Mrs. Thornton if she can tell us of a good doctor. We won't throw away our money on any but some one first-rate. Stay, we turn up this street.' The street did not look as if it could contain any house large enough for Mrs. Thornton's habitation. Her son's presence never gave any impression as to the kind of house he lived in; but, unconsciously, Margaret had imagined that tall, massive, handsomely dressed ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... men are first-rate. It is impossible to pay too high a tribute to the manner in which they settled down to this job of submarine hunting, and to the intelligence, resource, and courage which they have exhibited. They came on the scene at the opportune moment. ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... evening closed in upon us; at which time, entering the Narrows, the satin-vested youth felt himself quite nonplused, despite his taking off his beaver, and trying to scratch for knowledge; in short, had it not been for Captain Harrison, who is a first-rate seaman and navigator, as all who ever sail with him are ready to testify, we might have remained out all night: fortunately, his superior skill got us safe in, and no easy task I assure you is it, either to find the channel, or to thread your way through ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Felipe put our engine in first-rate condition while we were going up and down the Nile; and both of them say the Maud ought to make half a knot better time than before," continued the captain. "I am confident we are fully the equal ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... Praxinoe! That first-rate singer, the Argive woman's daughter, is going to sing the Adonis hymn. She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge last year. We are sure to have something first rate from her. She is going through her airs ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... they check the play a little, to be more decorous in passing by the stranger. He stops to look at them with a pleased expression of countenance, and then says, addressing the driver, with a face of much seriousness, "That's a first-rate horse of yours. Would you like to sell him? He seems to be very spirited." The horse immediately begins to prance and caper. "You must have paid a high price for him. You must take good care of him. Give him plenty of oats, and don't drive him ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... is also a first-rate weapon in a skilful hand for procuring small birds. I must confess I cannot use it as well as some young friends of mine, who knock over nearly every sitting bird they aim at, and even now and then are successful with ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... in the Church of England. A lawyer does not sin in seeking to be a judge, or in compassing his wishes by all honest means. A young diplomat entertains a fair ambition when he looks forward to be the lord of a first-rate embassy; and a poor novelist when he attempts to rival Dickens or rise above Fitzjames, commits no fault, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... in style with Johnie Faa makes it possible that they are as old as the middle of the seventeenth century. None of the pastoral ballads, indeed, can show any credentials which would suggest an earlier date than the second half of the sixteenth century, nor can any of them lay claim to first-rate poetic merit.[74] ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... novelist first, therefore, with scrupulous fidelity and with minute regard for the possible significance of every observable detail, fill his notebooks, amass his materials, master his subject. After Flaubert, a first-rate sociological investigator is three-fourths of a novelist. The rest of the task is to arrange and set forth these facts so that they shall tell the truth about life impressively, in scene and dramatic spectacle, the ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... writes, "that the deer are very lively, and if you want to show your foreign friends some first-rate British Sport, you can't do better ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... thrice-famous "Double-Marriage" of Prussia with England; which once had such a sound in the ear of Rumor, and still bulks so big in the archives of the Eighteenth Century; which worked such woe to all parties concerned in it; and is, in fact, a first-rate nuisance in the History of that poor Century, as written hitherto. Nuisance demanding urgently to be abated;—were that well possible at present. Which, alas, it is not, to any great degree; there being an important young Friedrich inextricably wrapt up in it, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... prevent them from speaking; but the lieutenant telling them to say what they wished, they at once begged that they might be allowed to join the frigate. They were both fine active-looking lads, and seemed cut out to make first-rate seamen. The ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... exclusively officered by Indians. The effect upon the whole Native Army of some such measure as I have indicated would be excellent; and though we could never hope to retain India merely by the sword against the combined hostility of its various peoples, the Native Army must always be a factor of first-rate importance, both for the prevention and the repression of any spasmodic outbreak of revolt. It is no secret that reiterated attempts have been made to shake its loyalty, and in some isolated cases not altogether ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... feller has taken himself off for good," he observed, after listening to the doctor's brief statement. "That's first-rate, couldn't be ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... we should get along without Dr. Holtum—we young ones, I mean," he remarked. "He enters so much into all our fun, and then he is so very clever too, a first-rate scientist. They have a 'menagerie,' as large and interesting as your own, at Collaster. And the twins—they are a little older than your lovely little niece, but she would find them companionable, for she is older than her years, I think. ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... such works, though the greatest yet produced, should approach abstract perfection; that there is certainly something left for us to carry farther, or complete; that any given generation has just the same chance of producing some individual mind of first-rate calibre, as any of its predecessors; and that if such a mind should arise, the chances are, that with the assistance of experience and example, it would, in its particular and chosen path, do greater things than had ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... heart can thus wall out the ultimate irrationality which the head ascertains, the erection of its procedure into a systematized method would be a philosophic achievement of first-rate importance. But as used by mystics hitherto it has lacked universality, being available for few persons and at few times, and {75} even in these being apt to be followed by fits of reaction and dryness; and if men should agree ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... up a name or two if you want 'em," muttered Wealthy. Then, seeing that Mrs. Bright looked troubled, she was sorry she had spoken, and made haste to add, "However, the medicine may be first-rate medicine, and if it does you good, Mrs. Bright, we'll crack it up ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... countries, France, England, and the United States, we find, as we have just said, those of the last country to be the most numerous, while some of the French papers have the largest subscription; and the whole establishment of a first-rate London paper is the most complete. Its activity is immense. When Canning sent British troops to Portugal, in 1826, we know that some papers sent reporters with the army. The zeal of the New York papers also deserves ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... enormous girth, it spreads abroad its huge flat branches hither and thither, covering a vast space of ground with its "shadowing shroud,"[226] and presenting a most majestic and magnificent appearance. Its timber may not be of first-rate quality, and there is some question whether it was really used for the masts of their ships by the Phoenicians,[227] but as building material it was beyond a doubt most highly prized, answering sufficiently for all the purposes required by architectural art, and at the same time delighting ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... little surprised myself at the length to which this examination of one small piece of Sir Walter's first-rate work has carried us, but here I must end for this time, trusting, if the Editor of the Nineteenth Century permit me, yet to trespass, perhaps more than once, on his readers' patience; but, at all events, to examine in ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... line, they all sang its praise. "First-rate! excellent!" they cried, "the natural talents of your second son, dear friend, are lofty; his mental capacity is astute; he is unlike ourselves, who have read books but ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the pack-outfit we bought at an auction sale in rather a peculiar manner. About sixty head of Arizona horses of the C. A. Bar outfit were being sold. Toward the close of the afternoon they brought out a well-built stocky buckskin of first-rate appearance except that his left flank was ornamented with five different brands. The ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... not dry now. It was dry to us that winter because we did not want to know any thing about it. Any book will be dry when we don't care to read it. I have found that no study is dry which I really want to know about. I like grammar first-rate now." ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... first three miles slipped away first-rate; Then bronc began fer to lose his gait. But I warn't oneasy an' didn't mind With tenderfoot more'n a mile behind. So I jogged along with a cowboy song Till all of a sudden I heard that gong A-ringin' a warnin' in my ear— Ting, ting, ting, ting,—too infernal near; An' ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... is the best?' said Arthur, squeezing hard both her hands, as he used to do in fond, teasing schoolboy days. 'I shall not say one without the other. Such a pair is not to be found in a hurry. You only wanted breaking-in to be first-rate, and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... private galleries in Europe, though not particularly large. It is rich in the works of Teniers,[19] Woovermans, Both, Cuyp, Potter, Rembrandt, and the other masters of the country. Among others is a first-rate Gerard Douw (another New ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... used to drive a handsome team of four horses, and, of course, attracted a good deal of attention whenever he made his appearance in the streets. On one occasion the late Lord Sefton, who was through life a first-rate whip, drove up to Heywood's bank in his usual dashing style. Dr. Solomon was tooling along behind his lordship, and desirous of emulating his mode of handling the reins and whip, gave the latter such a flourish as to get the lash so firmly fixed round ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... that! I meant nothing, dearie; only I'm a heap surprised. Chuck is a good fellow, I'll admit; but I've been dreaming of your marrying a prince or an ambassador, and Henderson comes like a jolt. Besides, Chuck will never be anything but a first-rate politician. You'll have to get used to cheap cigars and four-ply whisky. When is ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... was not a man to slumber on a circumstance which, in his opinion, seemed to be important, without having handled and dissected it, with the patience of a first-rate anatomist; in spite of all he could do (and it was a privilege or defect of his organization), every material impression that his mind received presented itself for analysis, by its most prominent features, in such a manner that poor Chicot's brain suffered considerably on account of such peculiarity, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... Pritchard, can't you shut down at once on that vaudeville business and set her to studying under a first-rate teacher?" he demanded. "She ought not to lose a minute. Of course she is rather small—too bad she isn't taller—but for all that I believe such a voice will carry her anywhere. I shouldn't wonder if she should turn out a star ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... safely up last week, and will start again the day after tomorrow. She carries a crew of eight hands; and I have made inquiries about the captain, and hear a very good report of him, and he seemed to me a first-rate fellow. When I mentioned the name of the Henriette he said that he knew her well, and was acquainted both with the present captain and with your Jean. He had heard, from Lefaux, that her former owner had been denounced, ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... respectable S—-, who had the management of his property—I remembered to have heard this worthy, with whom I occasionally held discourse, philosophic and profound, when he and I chanced to be alone together in the office, say that all first-rate thieves were sober, and of well-regulated morals, their bodily passions being kept in abeyance by their love of gain; but this axiom could scarcely hold good with respect to these women—however thievish they might be, they did care for something besides gain: they cared for their ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... colour and light play such a predominant part is bound to produce valuable landscapes. In this new form, the love of country expressed itself far more sincerely than in the earlier historical compositions. Under the influence of Henri Boulanger, Belgium produced, in later years, a number of first-rate landscape painters such as Verwee, Courtens, Gilsoul, Baertsoen and Emile Claus. Flemish landscapes exert a far greater attraction than the Walloon hills, and, generally speaking, the Flemish element ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... me every game. I had no idea that he was so good. He says he does not intend to play for the racket, but if he did he would have a first-rate chance. I was in the last ties last year and I ought to have a good chance this, but either I am altogether out of practice or he is wonderfully good. I was asking him, and he said in his lazy way that they had got a decent racket-court at his place, and that he had been knocking the ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... welcome it. And there are others, like the reviewer, who 'have time and an interest in nomads,' who were certain to consult it. But in addition to these special classes the book did good service in some cases, by deepening the impression already made by other first-rate delineations of missionary enterprise and endurance, and in others by creating respect for missions and missionaries in minds hitherto strange to that feeling. In various editions very many thousands of the book have been sold during the nine years ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... a real sense of the duty I owed to my future employers, whomsoever they might be, in making myself a first-rate hand in the cutting, shaping, and sewing line, I would not have found courage in my breast to have helped me out through such a long and dreary time. The change from our own town, where every face was friendly, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... be fashionable, had got a new stove placed in the fire-place of "'tother room," which means, what in Scotland is termed "ben" the house, and in England "the parlour." This was the first evening of its being put in operation. I observed the old gentleman (a first-rate specimen of a blue nose) looked very uncomfortable and fidgetty. For a time he sat twirling his thumbs in silence, when suddenly a thought seemed to strike him: he left the room, and shortly after the draught-hole of the stove grew dark, ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... thinking of a girl, exactly," said Bartley, with a little sadness. "I mean that, if you're not in first-rate spiritual condition, you're apt to get floored if you ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... he said in a letter to Lord Haddington dated the 22nd of May, 1843, "that all our old vessels of war, save the class of eighty-gun ships and a few first-rate and large frigates, are almost worthless; whilst our steam department is deficient in most of the properties which constitute effective vessels. No blockades worthy of the name can now be maintained by fleets of sailing ships; nor can accompanying steamships ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... added respectfully a pupil of the great painter, "I have seen some cholera patients whose convulsions were rather fine, and their dying looks first-rate!" ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... qualities, by the world at large for the serious loss which society sustains, and the disappointment of the expectations of what he one day might have been. He occupied as large a space in society as his talents (which were by no means first-rate) permitted; but he was clever, lively, agreeable, good-tempered, good-natured, hospitable, liberal and rich, a zealous friend, an eager political partisan, full of activity and vivacity, enjoying ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Sndfjord, married in 1831 a sister of Welhaven, and in 1839 was transferred to Manger, near Bergen. Both the places mentioned were very convenient for zological study, which Sars resumed at once and continued unbrokenly. His earliest published work appeared in 1829; it was of first-rate importance, and his reputation was soon established everywhere in the world of learning. In 1853 he sought retirement from the Church, and in 1854 was professor of zology in the University, where he continued ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... course," said Mr. Browne, who seemed pleased by her admission. To do him justice, he would not undermine a classmate, although he had other rules of conduct which might eventually require a little straightening out. "Worthy's a first-rate fellow, a little quick-tempered, perhaps, and inclined to go his own way. He's got a good mind, and he's taken to using it lately. He has come pretty near being suspended once ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... gratitude. Perhaps a residence abroad would be best for Lady Glencora at this particular period of her life. If so, abroad she should certainly live. Before resolving, however, on anything permanently on this head, he thought that he might judiciously consult those six first-rate London physicians, whom, in the first moment of his excitement, he had been desirous of ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... other colleagues made the task of the prime minister one of unusual difficulty, a fact which was recognized by contemporaries. Charles Greville in his Memoirs says, "In the present cabinet are five or six first-rate men of equal, or nearly equal, pretensions, none of them likely to acknowledge the superiority or defer to the opinions of any other, and every one of these five or six considering himself abler and more important than their ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... year was first-rate," he continued, "but somehow Hallin damps you down, at least he did me last year; what you want just now is fight—and, my word! Mr. Wharton ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... found too strong. In flavouring soups with these vegetables, the first care should be to see that they are thoroughly cleansed. In using celery, too much of the green part should be avoided if you wish to make first-rate soup. In using the onions, if they are old and strong, the core can be removed. In using carrot, if you are going to have any soup where vegetables will be cut up and served in the soup, you should always peel off the outside ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... boys who had become acquainted with him; but there are those every-where who seem, by some strange fatality, to choose the most unworthy of their acquaintances for their associates; and there were several boys in Lawrence who looked upon Charles as a first-rate fellow and a ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... went away, the landlord came behind his chair, kissed his hand, and said he hoped to live to be a lord and to see his wife a lady; at which Charles laughed. They had had a good supper by this time, and plenty of smoking and drinking, at which the King was a first-rate hand; so, the captain assured him that he would stand by him, and he did. It was agreed that the captain should pretend to sail to Deal, and that Charles should address the sailors and say he was a gentleman in debt who was running away from his creditors, and that ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... assured her that for one beauty in France, hundreds might be counted in England, where gentlemen were, therefore, not so easily satisfied; and that a woman regarded by them only as an ordinary person would pass for a first-rate beauty among French beaux, on account of the great scarcity ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... circle by way of reasoning on a circle. But {123} what I have chiefly to do with is the force of instance which he has lent to my assertion that men who have not had real training in pure logic are unsafe reasoners in matter which is not familiar. It is hard to get first-rate examples of this, because there are few who find the way to the printer until practice and reflection have given security against the grossest slips. I cannot but think that his case will lead many to take ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... in a pair—Nos. 7 and 8. They had their heads together over a mark, and were debating what it meant, if it did mean anything. It was a long shot, but Chippy did not hesitate. He took a ball in each hand and hung for a second on his aim. He was a first-rate thrower. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... better that a girl should return from school a first-rate reader, than a first-rate performer on the pianoforte. The accomplishment, in its perfection, would give more pleasure. The voice of song is not sweeter than the voice of eloquence; and there may be eloquent readers, as well as eloquent speakers. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... teacher, advocate, or official. Here, however, after leaving the intermediate school, it was necessary for him to take a conscientious valuation of his mental capacity; and he arrived at the conclusion that it would be better to become a first-rate factory-overseer than a mediocre teacher or official. And he could carry out this—perhaps too severe—resolve without socially degrading himself, for in Freeland manual labour does not degrade as it does in Europe ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... first put our proposed venture into my head. When I told him of my idea he at once agreed to accompanying me, saying that he should be content with any wages I could afford to give him. Though a first-rate seaman, he cannot be much of a navigator, so that had you, Ned, not come out I should have been obliged to get another mate; and now that you have come, we ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
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