"Average" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... last another hundred years, keeps his patriotism fresh by an occasional walk near the meat market under Faneuil Hall, and reads the "Atlantic Monthly." We believe there is less fidgeting in Boston than in any city of the country. We think that the average of human life must be longer there than in most cities. Dyspepsia is a rarity; for when a mutton chop is swallowed of a Bostonian it gives up, knowing that there is no need of fighting ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... to himself personally or to others, but because he cannot help it. This will perhaps be denied, with the assertion that willing, intelligent submission to law, even when unjust, is yielded by most for the general good. One has, however, only to consider the disposition of the average man to evade payment of taxes, to recognize how far force daily enters into the maintenance and execution of law. Nations, on the contrary, since no force exists, or without their volition can exist, to compel them to accept the institution of an authority superior to their own conscience, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... whereas among savages, as a rule, nearly all females are prostitutes (in the moral sense of the word), before they marry. In view of this astounding progress there is no reason to despair regarding man's future. It would be a great triumph of civilization if the average man could be made as pure as the average woman. At the same time, since the consequences of sin are infinitely more serious in women, it is eminently proper that they should be in the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... peril of our souls too, for they would damn us one and all to the ordinary. Every individual should, by nature, have his extraordinary points. But nowadays you may look for them with a microscope, they are so worn-down by the regular machine-friction of our average and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... this thought filled my brain for a time to the exclusion of all others, so strongly is vanity ingrained in us. After all, what did it matter what she thought,—Madame la Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour? I had never shone, and it was rather late to begin. But I possessed, at least, average common sense, and I had given no proof even ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... could not refrain from reminding the Pasha that the professors of religion did not always act in accordance with their profession, and that the principles of the "Prince of Peace," when carried out, even with average sincerity, had an invariable tendency to encourage peace and good-will among men, which was more than could be said ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... was a young man who had never seen Marion. The great generals whom he was accustomed to see, were great of limb, portly, and huge of proportion. Such was Cornwallis, and others of the British army. Such, too, was the case among the Americans. The average weight of these opposing generals, during that war, is stated at more than two hundred pounds. The successes of Marion must naturally have led our young Englishman to look for something in his ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... hit, but they didn't know the greatest marksman in all the world, the Little Giant, was here waiting for 'em, and if I do say it myself, I'm as good with the rifle as anybody in the west, except Tom, and you're 'way above the average too, Will. No, they've had enough of charging, but I wish to heaven I knew what wicked ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... by the way, when the action of this book takes place, there was not, as there is to-day, a policeman at the corner of every street (a benefit which there is no time to discuss here); stray children abounded in Paris. The statistics give an average of two hundred and sixty homeless children picked up annually at that period, by the police patrols, in unenclosed lands, in houses in process of construction, and under the arches of the bridges. One of these nests, which has become famous, produced "the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... mingled with its obvious fact, that it ends with a general pairing off and the prospect of three weddings—which seems, as Lady Bracknell observed in a similar connection, "a number considerably above the average that statistics have laid down for our guidance." But at least it is the amende honorable to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... there and shall be killed. God Almighty, no doubt, knows His mind about me, so I need not trouble on that point. Secondly, I am a poor man. For nearly forty years I have hunted and traded, but I have never made more than a living. Well, gentlemen, I don't know if you are aware that the average life of an elephant hunter from the time he takes to the trade is between four and five years. So you see I have lived through about seven generations of my class, and I should think that my time cannot be far off, anyway. Now, if anything were to happen to me in the ordinary course ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... Kanhaway, with but little delay. Our saline friends are great dealers in "coney." I met twenty-six in one day at the old "Col." He is doing his work clean, without any risk. There are, he tells me, upon an average, five horses sold per week from Sandy among the friends of the trade. I left Charleston; had a tedious journey to this city. Lexington is a humane place, but dangerous to move, unless you do it through some of the old wealthy friends of the trade. I must now say to you that I have done well in ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... will get ahead of him, and then it must have another new skipper. The priest holds his own pretty well; the minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful citizen—no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moral instincts, who, if he knows anything, knows how little he knows. The ministers are good talkers, only the struggle between nature and grace makes some of 'em a little awkward occasionally. The women do their best to spoil 'em, as they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... who apes English ways, comes out to East Africa occasionally to make collections for his ancestral Schloss. That the Crown Prince should have reserved large areas for game preserves speaks for this modern tendency in young Germany. The average German is not keen on exercise in the tropics, he will be carried by sweating natives in a chair or hammock where Englishmen on similar errands will walk and shoot upon the way. This slothful habit leads us to the conviction that very much of the country ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... He was of average height, but well proportioned, slender, and almost delicate-looking, but muscular. He had the brilliant blue eyes of the d'Esgrignons, the finely-moulded aquiline nose, the perfect oval of the face, the auburn hair, the white skin, and the graceful gait ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... all the adventure of Euripides is not quite like that of the average romantic writer. It is shot through by reflection, by reality and by sadness. There is a shadow that broods over the Iphigenia, though it is not the shadow of death. It is exile, homesickness. Iphigenia, Orestes, the Women of the Chorus, are all exiles, ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... reason to fear that any part of this country will be overstocked with bees, for where one hive is now kept, fifty might be kept without running any risk of overstocking the country; for the average number of hives in the various apiaries does not ...
— A Description of the Bar-and-Frame-Hive • W. Augustus Munn
... person, that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." The error of monasticism consists in making poverty a virtue and an essential condition of the highest holiness. It is true that some callings preclude the prospect of fortune. The average clergyman cannot hope to amass wealth. The resident of a social settlement may possess capacities that would win success in business, but he must forego financial prospects if he expects to live and ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... bit below the average height, but she wore shoes, in the centre of whose soles there were—heels, shall we call them?—six inches high. These, together with her Manchu garments, which hang from the shoulders, gave her a tall and stately appearance and made her seem, as she was, every ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... few lawyers who cherish a sentimental fondness for the past. A survey of the Post Office Directory creates an impression that, compared with other neighborhoods, the district north and northeast of Bloomsbury Square still possesses more than an average number of legal residents; but it no longer remains the quarter ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... to 14,000 feet, the snowfall there is not heavy. The air is intensely dry and clear, and the daily and seasonal range of temperature is extreme. Leh, the capital of Ladakh (11,500 feet), has an average rainfall (including snow) of about 3 inches. The mean temperature is 43 deg. Fahr., varying from 19 deg. in January to 64 deg. in July. But these figures give no idea of the rigours of the severe but healthy climate. The daily range is from 25 to 30 degrees, or double what ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... the value of Freedom we are told so much that we have come to regard it as an end in itself instead of only a means, or necessary condition. But Beauty we are half-inclined to connect with the effeminate. Poetry, Music, and Literature are under suspicion with the average English schoolboy, whose love of manliness he will share with nothing else. Yet love of Beauty persists in spite of all discouragement, and will not be suppressed. Natural Beauty, especially, insists on a place in our affections, derived originally from Love, and essentially ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Ivan was about to exercise his dexterity was a man of five or six-and-thirty, red of hair and beard, a little above average height. His Greek origin might be traced in his countenance, which even in its expression of terror had preserved its habitual characteristics ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... overlooking the river and is comparatively dry, even in wet weather. It is quite a summer resort town, has a number of well constructed brick buildings, half a dozen or more schools, a seminary, monastery, saw mill, and in many others respects is far above the average Russian village. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... had his rejoicing, but in the realization that they were memories. As the train carried him buoyantly toward Hometon he recounted the accomplishments he had acquired in four or five weeks. He could add twice as rapidly as any high-school student in the average collegiate; he knew the collection register and diary; he could enter up a savings-bank passbook better than Perry—with a clearer hand and a much clearer comprehension; he could draw a draft, reckon dates of maturity without a calendar; and so on. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... your neighbours, nor found a more intelligent set of opinions on every subject we touched on. He wasn't the only one, either. As a rule I found the people who came here to-night possessed of rather more than the average amount of brains. I should like to try living among ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... eagerness the upward impulse given it. It stood aside and looked on with something like adoration when Mr. Scatters and Mrs. Dunkin met and talked of ineffable things—things far above the ken of the average mortal. ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... send one member into the House of Representatives, it protects slavery by distributing legislative power in a free and in a slave State thus: To a congressional district in South Carolina, containing fifty thousand slaves, claimed as the property of five hundred whites, who hold, on an average, one hundred apiece, it gives one Representative in Congress; to a district in Massachusetts containing a population of thirty thousand five hundred, one Representative is assigned. But inasmuch as a slave is never permitted to vote, the fifty thousand persons in a district ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... prevailed when the moon was full, for the lake, some nine miles in length, was frozen from end to end, with an average thickness of three feet, and to the delight of skaters, was entirely snow free. Of course parties were the order of the day. Such a chance to command a magnificent icefield might not occur again ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... know that he was a record-breaker, but he was certainly much larger and more powerful than the average buck, and he was decidedly good-looking, even for a deer. There were one or two slight blemishes—to be described later—in his physical make-up; but they were not very serious, and except for them he was very handsome and well-formed. I ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... short range, his shots could not possibly miss, and in less than a minute our bows and fore deck showed a very pretty "general average," a 6-pound shell blowing a hole through our plating and wrecking the topgallant forecastle, while several 4-pound projectiles pierced our funnel, blew away our fore topmast, and knocked one corner of the wheelhouse to smithereens. But I did not care; ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... added quickly, noting the smile that crept across my face, "that failure was in itself worth more than the average scientist's greatest achievement! You know, Dale, that heat, if a man is not truly dead, will sometimes resurrect him. In a case of epilepsy, for instance, victims have been pronounced dead only to return ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... he was obliged to stoop as he entered the doorway. Within was an ordinary peasant's kitchen, but cleaner than the average. In spite of the weather the floor boards were freshly scrubbed. The hearth was swept, and by the stove lay a sleek tortoise-shell cat. There was a wooden dresser, a chimney shelf with rows of plates standing on it, and in a doorway just beyond ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Thackeray, for some reason I cannot recall, unless it were a prejudice in our home, I did not read in youth, but since then I have never escaped from the fascination of Vanity Fair and The Newcomes, and another about which I am to speak. What giants there were in the old days, when an average Englishman, tried by some business worry, would say, "Never mind, Thackeray's new book will be out to-morrow." They stand, these three sets, Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens, the very heart of one's library of fiction. Wearied by sex novels, problem novels, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... it, because the two together give so strong an example of the condition of Thackeray's mind in regard to literary products. The "humbug" of everything, the pretence, the falseness of affected sentiment, the remoteness of poetical pathos from the true condition of the average minds of men and women, struck him so strongly, that he sometimes allowed himself almost to feel,—or at any rate, to say,—that poetical expression, as being above nature, must be unnatural. He had declared to himself that all humbug was odious, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... evening Joe had been merely an average American—clean of mind and body, cheerful, hard-working, democratic, willing to live and let live, and striving with all his heart and soul for success. His father had served in the Civil War and came back to New York with his right ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... deemed requisite for maintaining justice between individuals. It has been estimated that we have in this country, at the present time, thirty thousand lawyers, without including pettifoggers. Allowing each of these to cost the country the average sum of one thousand dollars, and we have the annual cost to the country, for lawyers, thirty millions of dollars. Add to this the cost of legislative halls and legislators for making laws; of court-houses, jails, police offices, judges of the different courts, marshals, sheriffs ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... impress neighbouring nations with awe. It amounted to fourteen or fifteen thousand barrels, about a twelfth of the quantity which it is now thought necessary to have in store. The expenditure under the head of ordnance was on an average a little above sixty thousand ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... along near the middle of the river, and even had it floated in-shore no harm would have been done. The fox skins made them a soft bed, and they spread a couple of the large skins over the boat and were perfectly warm and comfortable. Godfrey thought that on an average they did a hundred and twenty miles a day. On the eighth day the river, which had been widening gradually, flowed into another and greater stream, the Yenesei. Hitherto they had been travelling almost due west, but the Yenesei ran north. As they floated down they had had ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... only not new, but was tried, and tried in vain, during two or three centuries in the life of our own ancestors, until an enraged public abolished it, it will destroy any effect that he is likely to make upon the average legislature. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... escaped notice, had not the parents been made very anxious by the earlier experiences. No special treatment was now undertaken, since it appeared that there was nothing more amiss than is observed in average boys of his age; symptoms which in most cases disappear spontaneously, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... Hooker, about forty-one. One of the most striking sentences in Milton's Areopagitica contains ninety-five words, although he crowds over three hundred words into some of his long sentences. The sentences in some of Dryden's pages average only twenty-five words in length. Turning to Macaulay, one of the most finished masters of modern prose, we find that his sentences average twenty-two words. Dryden helped also to free English prose from the inversions, involutions, and parenthetical ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... opera, on an average, used to be from twelve to fifteen thousand livres a night; what it is at this day, is not positively known. Formerly, the produce of the boxes, let by the year, was such, that nine thousand livres were paid, in a manner, before the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... they must have drifted at much higher speed. Two miles in the 24 hours, however, coincides most remarkably with the rate at which the Jeannette drifted during the last months of her voyage, from January 1 to June 12, 1881. In this time she drifted at an average rate of a little over 2 miles in the 24 hours. If, however, the average speed of the whole of the Jeannette's drifting be taken, it will be found to be only 1 ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... see—you will see. Yet I have been idle lately I confess; leaning half out of some turret-window of the castle of Indolence and watching the new sunrise—as why not?—Do I mean to be idle always?—no!—and am I not an industrious worker on the average of days? Indeed yes! Also I have been less idle than you think perhaps, even this last year, though the results seem so like trifling: and I shall set about the prose papers for the New York people, and the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... been getting a bit of his own back today. Lucky the game was only a friendly. Why will you let your angry passions rise, Tony? You've wrecked your analysis by it, though it's improved my average considerably. I don't know if that's any solid ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... their inhabitants, and as he himself was not so tall as his father, and, moreover, suffered from bad digestion, and had a tendency to 'run to head,' he determined to select as his wife a 'daughter of the soil,' to use his own phrase, above the average height, with a vigorous constitution and plenty of common sense. She need not be bookish, 'he could supply all that himself.' Accordingly, he married Sarah Caffyn. His mother and Mrs Caffyn had been early friends. He was not mistaken in Sarah. She was certainly robust; she was a shrewd ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... faith in the distant region of Algiers. His queries were all answered with deep submission and the most subtle of flattery, much of which latter was no doubt a perfectly honest expression of opinion. As to the average Mohammedan of this period the Padishah was a being set apart by Heaven to fulfil the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... minutes, as you are now listening to me. The outside sights and sounds would inevitably carry his attention off. And, for most people in middle life, the sort of intellectual effort required of the average schoolboy in mastering his Greek or Latin lesson, his algebra or physics, would be out of the question. The middle-aged citizen attends exclusively to the routine details of his business; and new truths, especially when they require involved trains of close reasoning, are ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... they rowed steadily, making on an average about two miles an hour. After five hours' rowing they tied up to the bank, had a meal, and rested until tide turned; then they again hoisted their sail and proceeded on their way. Tide carried them just up to the junction of the two rivers, and landing at ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... itself; for, by G—d, if I am not to have any country, I don't want any money.'' It is to be hoped that this oath, bursting forth from a patriotic heart, was, like Uncle Toby's, blotted out by the recording angel. I have quoted it more than once to show how the average American—though apparently a crude materialist— is, at heart, a ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... had all spoken, the master of ceremonies, General Gordon, proposed a toast to "The Democracy of Illinois," and called upon me to respond. I confessed that I was only an average Democrat from Illinois; that way out there we were content to be of the rank and file, and of course to follow the splendid leadership and the gallant Democracy of which we had heard so much. To vote for a ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... And remember all that has been done by crude methods for a relatively small demand. The demand increases as the country grows and methods improve. It would not surprise me if some day thirty or forty millions would constitute an average cut. [*] 'Michigan pine ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... cartoon that I enclose (destroy it without showing it) is typical of, I suppose, five hundred that have appeared here within a month. This represents the feeling and opinion of the average man. They say we wrote brave notes and made courageous demands, to none of which a satisfactory reply has come, but only more outrages and no guarantee for the future. Yet we will not even show our displeasure by sending Bernstorff home. We've simply "gone out," like a snuffed ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... Should we suspect that Athens contained only 21,000 citizens, and Sparta no more than 39,000? See Hume and Wallace on the number of mankind in ancient and modern times. * Note: This number, though too positively stated, is probably not far wrong, as an average estimate. On the subject of Athenian population, see St. Croix, Acad. des Inscrip. xlviii. Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens, i. 47. Eng Trans, Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. p. 381. The latter author estimates the citizens of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... cheese, skim milk is never used. The milk should either be warm from the cow or heated to that temperature over the fire. When the rennet is put in, the heat of the milk should be from 90 to 96 degrees. Three quarts of milk will yield, on an average, about a pound of cheese. In infusing the rennet, allow a quart of lukewarm water, and a table-spoonful of salt to a piece about half the size of your hand. The rennet must soak all night in the water ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... Dick, with the untactful pertinacity of the average man at such moments—"you are ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... read the Prayer-Book Office for the Ordering of Priests without being struck by its contrast to the ordinary conception of Priesthood by the average Englishman. The Bishop's words in the Ordination Service: "Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God," must surely mean more than that a Priest should try to be a good organizer, a good financier, a good preacher, ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... lenses, or refracted or diffracted. They produce photographic action on a sensitive film, but their action is weak as yet, and herein lies the first important field of their development. The professor's exposures were comparatively long—an average of fifteen minutes in easily penetrable media, and half an hour or more in photographing the bones of the hand. Concerning vacuum tubes, he said that he preferred the Hittorf, because it had the most perfect vacuum, the highest degree of air exhaustion being the consummation most desirable. In answer ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... want, say, a dozen of average stuff (Though a couple of bottles were really enough), And I enter his portals, reluctant and slow, Resolved just to give him the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... female is just as important as the male, and the possessor thereof under just as great need of power in the organization and management of society and the government of society as man; and if there be a difference, she, by reason of her average physical inferiority, is really protected, and ought to be protected, by a superior mental and moral fitness to give direction to the course of society and the policy of the state. If, then, there be a distinction between the souls ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... chivalrous bushmen," the Maluka agreed, with the merry twinkle in his eyes; for he perfectly understood the cause of the sudden breakdown. Then he added gravely: "For the average bushman will face fire, and flood, hunger, and even death itself, to help the frail or weak ones who come into his life; although he'll strive to the utmost to keep the Unknown Woman out of his environments particularly when those environments are a hundred ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... was probably destined to become a significant figure. Raw, glittering force, however, compounded of the cruel Machiavellianism of nature, if it be but Machiavellian, seems to exercise a profound attraction for the conventionally rooted. Your cautious citizen of average means, looking out through the eye of his dull world of seeming fact, is often the first to forgive or condone the grim butcheries of theory by which the strong rise. Haguenin, observing Cowperwood, conceived of him as a man perhaps as much sinned against as sinning, a man who would be faithful ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... no order in the tribe. Negansahima, whose iron hand had ruled with power and justice above the average, was dead. The new chief had not yet come into power with fitting ceremony, and thus the old men of the tribe were for the moment authority, and, as too many cooks spoil the broth, so too many ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... we apportion the patient a cell, and consider the case as beyond our immediate relief. We cure, on an average, two-thirds of the cases forwarded to us; and there have been instances of the mind's recovering its tone, after ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... vary greatly in amount according to the extent to which the gases have been purified. London coal-gas, which was formerly purified to the highest degree practically attainable, used to contain on the average only 10 to 12 grains of sulphur per 100 cubic feet, and virtually no other impurity. But now coal-gas, in London and most provincial towns, contains 40 to 50 grains of sulphur per 100 cubic foot. At least 5 grains of ammonia per ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... OF THE TEXT-BOOK.—The plan and the style of this book are so simple that the subject will be readily understood by pupils reading in the "Fourth Reader." Even in our ungraded country schools the average pupil of twelve years is well prepared to begin the study of the text-book in civil government. It is a serious mistake to postpone this much neglected subject until a later age. Let it be introduced early, that the child's ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... this last, that, according to our calculations, we made a knot an hour more than the Crisis could have done under the same circumstances, fast as the ship was known to be. As the Crisis had about thirty-eight hours the start of us, and ran, on an average, about seven knots the hour for all that time, it would require about ten days to overtake her. Of course this could only happen, according to our own calculations, when we were from eighteen hundred ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... them—conspicuously Brown (the more original if less "sound" successor of Dugald Stewart), Playfair, and Leslie—rising to a higher rank. But great Educational Institutions must adapt themselves to the training of average minds by requirements and restrictions against which genius always rebels. Biography more than History repeats itself, and the murmurs of Carlyle are, like those of Milton, Gibbon, Locke, and Wordsworth, the protests or growls of irrepressible individuality kicking against the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... be brought under cultivation for wheat and the average yield raised to twenty bushels to the acre, that will give enough to feed a billion people if they eat six bushels a year as do the English. Whether this maximum is correct or not there is evidently some limit to the area which has suitable soil and climate for growing wheat, so we are ultimately ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... take away the dead, another would over look those that worked, and still another class, though few in numbers, would come out and look around and then return. These had much larger heads than the average. Some few, however, with great heads, would come out once or twice a day. I never learned what their business was, as they did not seem to do much of anything. They very seldom went more than a few inches from the nests. ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... Payne, when he reached the ground, "there seems to be a chain of islands running across that mud. I picked out a string of them. The first one is out there about a hundred yards away, and I believe that's about the average distance between them. If we can dope out some scheme for getting across a hundred yards of that mush at a time I believe we can make it. That mud doesn't run on forever; I'm sure I saw solid ground with timber on it to ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... include any private incomes which they or their wives may possess, as members of the privileged classes of the Empire. I look up their ages in Who's Who, and I find that there is only one below fifty-three; the oldest of them is ninety-one, while the average age of the goodly company is seventy. There have been men in history who have retained their flexibility of mind, their ability to adjust themselves to new circumstances at the age of seventy, but it will always be found that these men were trained in science and practical affairs, never in dead ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... from the impregnation of the eggs to their hatching out varies according to the temperature of the water, a fairly average time is about ninety days. The ova should be watched during this time, and the dead ones removed. For a short time after they are impregnated they are fairly hardy, but from then till shortly ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... all constructed upon the same general plan. They were on an average about eight by ten feet in size, with a slightly sloping roof so low in the rear Bob could ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... on questions of state, as I relates the other day, is when he insists on bein' nootral doorin' the late war. I explains how he talks federal an' thinks reb, an' manages, that a- way, to promote a decent average. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... equal in number to our domesticated productions, and belonging to equally diverse classes and countries, were taken from a state of nature, and could be made to breed for an equal number of generations under domestication, they would vary on an average as largely as the parent species of our existing domesticated ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... mean only the wonderful personage with the clear Saxon features, the fine blue eyes, the noble brow and classic face, but the ordinary person—the person who represents ninety out of every hundred of his own kind—the average Englishman, say, of the middle classes, who is neither very tall nor very short, who wears a moustache which is neither fair nor dark, but which masks his mouth, and a top hat which hides the shape of his head and brow, a man, in fact, who dresses ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... days, lay the other Scot in careless grace, supporting his head upon his hand, quite at his ease and in good fellowship with all his comrades. If MacKay marked a contrast to the characteristic Celt of hot blood and wayward impulses, by his reserve and self-control, John Graham was quite unlike the average Lowlander by the spirit of feudal prejudice and romantic sentiment, of uncalculating devotion and loyalty to dead ideals, which burned within his heart, and were to drive him headlong on his troubled and disastrous career. A kinsman of the great Montrose and born ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... must be searched out by the copy. Big space is cheapest because it doesn't waste a single eye. Publicity must be on the offensive. There are far too many advertisers who keep their lights on top of their bushel—the average citizen hasn't time to overturn ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman
... of the dogs. I do not mean that by acquiring a case of the camp-meeting jerks we will solve the riddle which the Sphinx of Time is propounding to this republic—that we will find the solution of all life's problems in the amen-corner. Not exactly. The average church is about the last place to which we need look for relief. It's too often a lying rainbow painted on the dark mist of ignorance by the devil's own artist. It promises more and performs less than a Republican candidate for Congress. I've noticed that shouting ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... this date, shows signs of a Catholicism in literary taste beyond the average man of his time; but it is an Intellectual Hospitality to all sorts and conditions of minds and men rather than a wide or ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... Jeremiah Moses. "If you stick to that argument you'll be drowned sure. Just look at these facts. The earth weighs six and a half sextillions of tons, and the ocean one and a half quintillions. The average depth of the oceans is two and one-fifth miles. Now—if the level of the oceans were raised only about 1,600 feet, practically all the inhabited parts of the world would be flooded. To cause that increase in the level of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... was typical in more than one sense of his nation and of his class—quite unlike, that is, to the fancy picture which foreigners draw of the average Frenchman. Reserved and cold in manner; proud, with an intense but never openly expressed pride in his name and of what the bearers of it had achieved for their country; obstinate and narrow as are apt to be all human beings whose judgment is never ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... At length, when she could be trusted to carry his wares to Murphy's Camp, and could be checked from entering a shop with the cart attached to her,—a fact of which she always affected perfect disbelief,—her education was considered as complete as that of the average California donkey. It was still unsafe to leave her alone, as she disliked solitude, and always made it a point to join any group of loungers with her unnecessary cart, and even to follow some good-looking miner to his ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... stimulated by the conditions which confronted them on their return to peaceful and agricultural pursuits. The subdivision of farms among the many robust sons of the average New England household had reached its limit, and the young man who would found a home and family of his own, thenceforth must seek for cheaper and broader acres than were to be found already under cultivation. New Hampshire's liberal offer of grants in her western ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... greatest part of the last six weeks I have spent upon an average ten hours every day, dancing attendance on one or another of the Ministers, and when I have returned home I have been so fatigued that I have found it impossible to write, even to my nearest friends. The heat has been suffocating, for the air seems to be filled ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... were appointed by lot. The Athenian idea of a Republic was to substitute the impersonal supremacy of law for the government of men. Mediocrity was a safeguard against the pretensions of superior capacity, for the established order was in danger, not from the average citizens, but from men, like Miltiades, of exceptional renown. The people of Athens venerated their constitution as a gift of the gods, the source and title of their power, a thing too sacred for wanton change. They had demanded a code, that ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... strong intellect. She had some obstinacy, but no firmness. Appeal in the right way to her vanity, and you could make her do the thing she had declared she would not do, the minute after she had made the declaration. As for her mind, it was of the lowest schoolgirl average. She had a certain knack at learning this thing, and remembering that; but she understood nothing fairly, felt nothing deeply. If I had not had my own motive in teaching her, I should have shut the books again, the first ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... agreeably, and he seemed to us the absolute guarantee of a speedy deliverance from our terrible afflictions. We rejoiced too soon, however, for we still had before us the perilous passage through the sand-banks off the English coast, where, as I was assured, nearly four hundred ships are wrecked on an average every year. We were fully twenty-four hours (from the evening of the 10th to the 11th of August) amid these sandbanks, fighting a westerly gale, which hindered our progress so seriously that we only reached the mouth of the Thames on the evening of the 12th of August. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the same note. Cecil, honest lad, had never more than the average amount either of brains or industry, and despised medicines to the full as much as did his sister. Abhorring equally the toil and the degradation, he deemed it a duty to prevent such a fall, and put his hope in his uncle. Nay, if his mother had not assured him that it ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Cardinal Cusanus suggested then that the water-clock should be employed for estimating the pulse frequency. His idea was that the amount of water which flowed while a hundred beats of the pulse were counted, should be weighed, and this weight compared with that of the average weight of water which flowed while a hundred beats of the normal pulse of a number of individuals of the same age ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... printed as a preface signed "Richard Saunders." Franklin began this Almanac in 1732. John Bigelow, Franklin's biographer and editor, says it "attained an astonishing popularity." For twenty-five years it had an average circulation of 10,000 copies. Sometimes it was sent to press as early as October in order to supply remote colonists in time for the new year. Translations of it have been printed ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... still stuck out too much, and his lips were a trifle too thin. It looked no more than his thirty years; but it was a strained face, now—painted with weeks of fatigue, and grayish with fear, sweat-streaked and with nervous tension in every corded tendon of his throat. His somewhat bony, average-height figure shook visibly as he climbed from ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... number of years. His character, never at any time undecided, was by this fortunate circumstance crystallised and rendered immune from the necessity for self-search and spiritual struggle incidental to his neighbours. Since he was a man neither below nor above the average, it did not occur to him to criticise or place himself in opposition to a system which had gone on so long and was about to do him so much good. Like all average men, he was a believer in authority, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... licence, I naturally gave false information regarding Cecily's age; this was an inevitable consequence of the step we had taken. You know my opinions on laws and customs: for the multitude they are necessary, and an infraction of them by the average man is, logically enough, called a sin against society; for Cecily and myself, in relation to such a matter as our becoming man and wife, the law is idle form. Personally, I could have wished to dispense with the absurdity altogether, but, as things are, this involves an injustice to a woman. I ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... very well, so far as the principal is concerned," said he. "Let us speak now of the interest. Sairmeuse, if I remember rightly, yielded an average income of one thousand louis per year. These revenues, well invested, should have amounted to a very considerable ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... the average height, weighing about a hundred and thirty pounds. She was rather compactly built, had a well rounded face, rich dark-brown hair, and bluish-gray eyes. In her bearing she was proud, but handsome and vivacious; she was a good conversationalist, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... fact appears to have been demonstrated that the Medium seemed to have no difficulty in catching the purport of questions of simple construction at a glance, and that a question of more than average length, which he could not perceive the sense of, or which was somewhat misleading in its terms, was ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... that it is only within a single generation that the common people of England have become large consumers of flesh. In former times and when England was laying the foundation of her greatness, her sturdy yeomen ate less meat in a week, than the average Englishman of the present consumes in a single day.... The Persians, the Grecians, and the Romans, became ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... there are twenty-one counties in England and Wales without any asylum whatever, public or private. The expense is one cause. In some cases the cost of construction has been exceedingly great. The asylum most cheaply constructed is that of Wakefield, of which the average cost per head was L111, whilst the highest price was that of Gloucester, which had cost on the first accommodation L357 per head. In many cases the cost of construction had exceeded L200 per head. The cost of the Bedford Asylum, for 180 patients, was L20,500; that of ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... side. I had learned, too, that the first requisite of good writing is to have an earnest and definite purpose, whether aesthetic or moral, and that even good writing, to please long, must have more than an average amount either of imagination or common-sense. The first of these falls to the lot of scarcely one in several generations; the last is within the reach of many in every one that passes; and of this an author may fairly hope to become in part the mouthpiece. If I put on the cap and bells and made ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the annual average addition of churches as five or six, raised the question whether the time had not come for doubling that rate. The Association is glad to recognize this worthy aspiration and itself to avow the ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... an idea of the place that Mme. de Sevigne holds in the opinion of the average Frenchman, we quote the final ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... feet, while traversing a distance of twenty-three hundred miles. From Khartum to the sea the distance through which the waters of the Nile wend their way is about eighteen hundred and forty miles. During the greater part of this course the flow is level, the average descent being about eight inches per mile. If it were not, therefore, for the obstruction met with in the Nubian section, the course of the Nile would be everywhere navigable. Although no perennial affluents enter the main stream lower down than Khartum, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Nothing justifies illegal killing. The justice of even legal killing is still an unsettled question, but one which does not concern us just now. We make no attempt to defend the deed of those men. It is not probable that any average Christian, whether in favour of the Covenanters or against them, would justify the killing of an old man by illegal means, however strongly he might hold the opinion that the old man deserved to die. In order to form an unprejudiced opinion on this ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... washed with tepid water, was decidedly duller when kept for some time in water at a temperature of 160 deg. F., and the same wool, when subjected to boiling water at 212 deg. F., became quite dull and lustreless. When tested for strength, the same fibres which carried on the average 500 grains without breaking before boiling, after boiling would not bear more than 480 grains." Hence this third enemy is a boiling process, especially a long-continued one if only with water itself. If we could use coal-tar colours and dye in only a warm weak acid bath, not boil, we could ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... little girl in a red dress with blond pigtails who used to scrap with him and tattle things about him to her mother. If he were inclined to be credulous, this was second sight I had. But it is a universal. What average boy didn't, at one time or another, know a little girl with blond pigtails? What blond little girl didn't occasionally wear a red dress? What little girl didn't tattle to her mother about the naughty things the boys ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... only son," he told himself; "he will have a little money. He is as good as and better than young men average, and he is charming, a man to attract ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... As a rule this animal does not exceed the height of four feet two inches, though there are stories told of its attaining a far greater size. The height, however, gives a poor idea of the animal's bulk and strength. The body is as large as that of an average man, but the legs are extremely short. Its arms are of great length, and measure over seven feet in spread. The whole body is covered with long red hair. It rarely attacks man, but when provoked is very ferocious, and as ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... disturbed. Willis had read up on the kind of ship the Cerberus was, and on the characteristics of Procyron III as recorded a century before. The Cerberus was a semi-freighter, Candless type. Procyron III was a water-planet with less than ten per cent of land. Which was unfortunate, because its average temperature and orbit made it highly suitable for human occupation. Had the ten per cent of solid ground been in one piece, it would doubtless have been colonized. But the ground was ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... approximately 50 per cent. of the officers and other ranks were Australian born. The other moiety was composed almost wholly of natives of the British Isles. A Russian, a Maltese, a Scandinavian or two, and a few others, were the only exceptions. The average age was in the vicinity of 24 years and only 143 married men could be counted. The recruiting area had been extensive and those enlisted included the professional and business man, the artisan, clerk, shop assistant, and labourer from the metropolis; ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... poetic in which the Hollander's heart shows its love of home and gardens. Those great tulip beds are real and luscious. Family life in the Netherlands is shown in several fine interiors, and the portraits by Dutch artists are more graceful than those of the average modernist. The grand prize in the Netherlands section went to Breitner's snowy "Amsterdam Timber Port" (17). Bauer's "Oriental Equestrian" (7) won the medal of honor. Gold medals were given to seven artists, named in ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... sick and limping Impotence, at last discovered its greatest weapon against the over-encouragement of genius—it discovered, in fact, the antithesis between Talent and Character. It was almost personally flattering to the great masses when they heard it said that good, average people were certainly poor musicians as a rule, but that, on the other hand, fine musicians were not usually good people—that goodness was the important thing in this world and not music. Empty-Head now beat resolutely upon his full Heart, and Sentiment was trumps. I recall ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... population may be expected to continue for a long time after that period as rapidly as before, because our territory will not have become full. I do not state this inconsiderately. At the same ratio of increase which we have maintained, on an average, from our first national census, in 1790, until that of 1860, we should in 1900 have a population of 103,208,415. And why may we not continue that ratio far beyond that period? Our abundant room, our ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... beaver. Prof., Steward, and Cap. climbed to the top of a butte 1050 feet above the river upon which they found a small monument left there by the Major on the former trip. Though this butte was so high the average of the walls was only about five hundred feet. We made seventeen ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... periods in different schools, and the adaptation of the course to individual instruction as well as to class work, also made a division into lessons impracticable. Each teacher will soon discover about how much matter her class, if she uses the class method, can take each day. Probably the average section will require about 2 days to cover; the longest sections, 5 days. The entire course should easily be covered in one year with recitations of about 25 minutes daily. Two 50-minute periods a week give ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... have of Happiness is somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor complaint; only such overplus as there may be do we account ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... genius. On first meeting with him I took him for a clergyman, and told him of it later. He felt rather flattered than otherwise by the mistake, and I have no doubt that his modest nature would at once refer to points on which the average clergyman would probably be his superior. Some artists are lost in admiration of their own works, so that the way to please them is to praise what they have done themselves; but the way to please Leslie was to praise what Constable had ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... same old lament which is everlastingly on the lips of the voters of America! Citizen Drew had again epitomized the average politics of the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the Commonwealth, several notable works were produced, though the annual output of books was much below the average of the seven years preceding. Foremost among the publications of that time must be placed Sir William Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, the first volume of which appeared ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... charter of the East India Company was prolonged for the further term of five years, on conditions similar to those in the last agreement. The company was to continue to pay L400,000 per annum, and to continue to export British goods, at an average of equal value with those sent to India during the last five years. The company, however, was now allowed to increase its dividend to twelve and a half per cent., provided it did not in any one year ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... rote; Stephen by thought. It was the cruellest thing to checkmate him after so much labour, she considered. What was she dishonest enough to do in her compassion? To let him checkmate her. A second game followed; and being herself absolutely indifferent as to the result (her playing was above the average among women, and she knew it), she allowed him to give checkmate again. A final game, in which she adopted the Muzio gambit as her opening, was terminated by Elfride's victory at the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... quite, as large as the former. A specimen of the Californian vulture has been measured, which proved to be four feet eight inches in length, and nine feet eight inches between the tips of the wings! Now, this is actually larger than the average size of the condors; and it is not improbable, therefore, that individuals of the Californian species may yet be found quite equal to the largest ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... really an experiment on the taste of the British public. I wished to ascertain whether a play depending for its interest rather upon character and dialogue than upon plot and sensational situations, would be at first tolerated and afterwards enjoyed by an average audience. Perhaps the experiment was too audaciously conceived, and too carelessly conducted, by both author and management. It was unfortunately vitiated by the presence of a prevalent bacillus, the British bugbear, in ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... thousand shares of the bank stock were held abroad, and seven thousand shares, or a little more than one fourth part of the capital, in the United States. A table of all the dividends made by the bank showed that they had on the average been at the rate of 8-3/8 (precisely 8-13/34) per cent. a year, which proved that the bank had not in any considerable degree used the public deposits for the purpose of extending its discounts. From a general ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... country comparatively. A town of 50,000 here shows less in the way of facilities for diversion than the average town of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... into contact with a society which required study to be understood. His present fate contented him well enough. He liked Rome and was liked there. As his mother was a Roman he had many Italian connections, and he was far more at ease with Romans than with the average London man. His father and mother lived almost perpetually in large hotels. The former, who was enormously rich, was a malade imaginaire. He invariably spoke of his quite normal health as if it were some deadly disease, and always treated himself, and insisted on ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... picturesqueness to the scene. It is worth while to row or sail against the stream until the whole of the meadow is passed by, for then comes Godstow, where Fair Rosamond found refuge, and where she was at last laid to rest. It must in all honesty be confessed that to the average undergraduate the place was reckoned desirable, not so much on account of the historical interest just mentioned, as because, after a long pull up the river on a summer afternoon, it was possible to obtain at the little inn upon the ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... something, however, to reformers by declaring, as his final excuse, that he would not have thus yielded to circumstances if the average life of man were a hundred years instead of twenty; for, given sufficient time, all adverse circumstance may be overcome. "The body dies if it be thwarted. Mind—in other words, intellectual truth—triumphs through opposition. Envy, hatred, and stupidity, are to it as the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... rest in the Heaven World, or Devachan, where the soul reaps the experiences of the past life, and prepares for the next step. The period of rest varies with the degree of attainment gained by the soul, the higher the degree the longer the rest. The average time between incarnations is estimated at about fifteen hundred years. Devachan is thus a kind of temporary Heaven, from whence the soul must again pass in time for a rebirth, according to its merits or demerits. Thus, accordingly, each soul has lived ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... strange intellectual hocus-pocus, grew up the notion that the Caucasian man is the prototypic "Adamic" man, and his country the primitive centre of our kind. Perhaps the most curious thing of all is, that the said Georgian skull, after all, is not a skull of average form, but distinctly ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... has, as a picture of slave life in the Southern States, is as gross a libel as if anyone were to make a collection of all the wife-beatings and assaults of drunken English ruffians, and to publish them as a picture of the average life ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... Brassfield is psychologically incapable of deviating much from the course marked out by the average ethics of his surroundings. This subconscious mind which—as Professor Blatherwick so clearly explained to us—normally operates below the plane of consciousness, happens, in his case, to be abnormally ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... things which pass away, leaving no one better or wiser. It is false modesty to say you are not clever; you would not allow anyone else to make such a statement unchallenged. If you chose to exert yourself to overcome your faults of carelessness and frivolity, you might take a very fair average position ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... To the average Russian such a life was enchanting, and many were so fascinated that they became citizens of Finland. In order to do so, however, they were obliged to go through the formality of changing their nationality and becoming subjects of the Grand Duchy. Doubtless this was distasteful to the Russians, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... have increased the average number of syllables in the line to better adapt it to our super-abundance of ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... dead colouring, the same middle tint? Yet it is on this principle that Sir Joshua would get rid of all variety, character, expression, and picturesque effect in forms, or at least measure the worth or the spuriousness of all these according to their reference to or departure from a given or average standard. Surely, nature is more liberal, art is wider than Sir Joshua's theory. Allow (for the sake of argument) that all forms are in themselves indifferent, and that beauty or the sense of pleasure in forms can therefore only arise from customary association, or from that middle impression ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... he was now in a remote place, which the delightful mail coach roads had not then reached—where the post came in only three days in the week—and where the mail cart either broke down, lost a wheel, had a tired horse, was overturned, or robbed, at an average once a fortnight—our hero had no alternative but patience, and the amusement of calculating dates and chances upon his restless sofa. His taste for reading enabled him to pass agreeably some of the hours of bodily confinement, which men, and young men especially, accustomed to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... strength and their virtues, and he rejoiced in them. He realized their weaknesses and their softnesses and fought them hard. It was all this that made him the thoroughgoing democrat that he was. "The average American," I have heard him say a hundred times to all kinds of audiences, "is a pretty good fellow, and his wife is a still better fellow." He not only enjoyed those years in the West to the full, but he profited by them as well. They broadened and deepened ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... becomes inexcusable; the weather conspires against us; the sportsman wonders why he had brought gun and fishing-rod; even Science grows weary at times in its limited and hampered inspection. For more than five weeks our average progress along the coast was eight miles a day! The ice and the weather were partly responsible for this lagging; but there were other causes, at which I forbear to hint more definitely. Suffice it to say that they were of a kind that one finds it hard to be charmed with; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... brought up at daylight in the excellent narrow harbour in which the hospital stands. The holding ground there is deep mud in four fathoms of water, the best possible for us. Our only trouble was that the heavy tidal current would swing a ship uneasily broadside against an average wind force. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... earned six shillings a week; making together nineteen shillings. John Stevens, thirty-three years a servant on the farm; his own wages fourteen shillings a week; he had brought up ten children, whose average earnings had been twelve shillings weekly, making together twenty-six shillings a week. Robert Carbon, twenty-two years a servant on the farm; wages thirteen shillings a week; having ten children, who earned ten shillings a week; making together twenty-three shillings a week. Thus it appeared ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... head in her arms, she rested it upon her knee, moistening his lips with water that she carried in a flask. She was a strong woman, both physically and mentally, far beyond the average of her sex, and now she would not yield to any emotion. No; she would do what it was necessary to do, and not until then would she even put her finger upon his wrist to find if the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... will in the weak shape of a request, instead of launching it in the crisp language of an order. In those old days, to load a steamboat at St. Louis, take her to New Orleans and back, and discharge cargo, consumed about twenty-five days, on an average. Seven or eight of these days the boat spent at the wharves of St. Louis and New Orleans, and every soul on board was hard at work, except the two pilots; they did nothing but play gentleman up town, and receive the same wages for it as if ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... miserable payment, and that they could do as well as any other if they were well paid. But, ye foolish folks! cannot such artists keep some good work, and then say: this is a costly work and this more moderate and this is average work and show that they can work at ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... seventy-six new books were published in England this last year, which is about the average number of ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... of outdoor sports than of scientific demonstrations, that in a short time we had provided the asteroid with a very large number of little moons, or satellites, of gold, which revolved around it in orbits of various degrees of ellipticity, taking, on the average, about three-quarters of an hour to complete a circuit. Since, on completing a revolution, they must necessarily pass through the point from which they started, they kept us constantly on the qui vive to avoid being ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... titles of Hart's and Frink's books were misleading, although the difference between the mind of the lunatic and the mind of the average man is merely one of degree. Bernard Hart shows that the lunatic has the same faults as we have, only more so. Frink's book is badly named; it is an excellent work on mind mechanisms. Any teacher who reads these ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... the bombardment as one would have supposed. This was invariably the case; indeed, it is surprising to see how much shelling a town can undergo without noticeable effect. It takes a long time to level a town in the way it has been done in northern France. In this region the banks of the river average about one hundred and fifty feet in height, and Tekrit is built at the junction of two ravines. No two streets are on the same level; sometimes the roofs of the houses on a lower level serve as the streets for the houses above. Many of the booths in the bazaar ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... life would be more amenable to control. Schools would become more variable and more experimental, and new selective influences would be exerted upon teachers presumably in the direction of raising the social and intellectual average of the profession. A much larger field would be opened up for all those methods of work in education that may be designated as aesthetic—that is, that contain qualities of ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge |
