"Average" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meant here. This introduction to the second edition remains unchanged in the subsequent ones. The text of the second edition was substantially an exact reproduction of the first, but Bode allowed himself frequent minor changes of word or phrase, an alteration occurring on an average once in about three pages. Bode's changes are in general the result of a polishing or filing process, in the interest of elegance of discourse, or accuracy of translation. Bode acknowledges that some of the corrections were those suggested by a reviewer,[31] ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... from the sea of about 500 miles, measured in the manner above mentioned. A similar process of measurement gives a length of 1700 miles to the whole course of the Quorra, the sources of which, according to Major Laing, are about 1600 feet above the sea; the stream, therefore, has an average fall of something less than a foot in a mile in lines of 100 geographical miles. This would give to the confluence of the river of Soccatoo with the Quorra, a height of less than 500 feet above the sea, but as that confluence occurs ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... any such affair; but if he knows that the living of himself and family that day depends upon his activity and intelligence, uneasy lies his head. There is something so restful and easy about public business! It is so simple! Take the average Congressman. The Secretary of the Treasury sends in an elaborate report—a budget, in fact—involving a complete and harmonious scheme of revenue and expenditure. Must the Congressman read it? No; it is ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dear and difficult now to obtain. A recent traveller says it is the most aristocratic settlement in the province, and contains, within ten miles round, scions of the best English and Irish families; and that the society is quite as good as that of an average country neighbourhood at home. The price of land he quotes at L4 sterling an acre for cleared, and from L1 to L1 10s. for wild land. A friend of his gave L480 for sixty cleared and one hundred uncleared acres, with a ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... atrocities of the brutal Saxon—so the key-note of Ennis is the memorial to the Manchester Martyrs, erected outside the town to commemorate the people who erected it. That is how it strikes the average observer. For while the patriotic murderers of the Manchester policemen, to wit, O'Brien, Allen, and Larkin, have only one tablet to the three heroes, the members of the committee who were responsible for this Nationalist or ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... women never pass more than two or three days at the most beyond the forty weeks conceded to pregnancy—that is two hundred and eighty days or ten lunar months, or nine calendar months and a week. About two hundred and eighty days will represent the average duration of pregnancy, counting from the last day of the last period. Now it must be borne in mind, that there are many disturbing elements which might cause the young married woman to miss a time. During the ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... To the average Londoner, Paris is very far off. There are, of course, very many people who run across the Channel as easily as a Melbourne man may week-end in Gippsland or Bendigo, but the suburban section of London is not fond ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... that a new country has a limited potential monopoly in certain kinds of products and that a tariff may make it effective. The rapid opening up of America with its rich natural resources greatly benefited the average consumer in Western Europe, altho it caused a loss to a special class of landowners.[10] Whether the citizens of the older or of the newer country shall reap the greater benefit in the trade depends on the reciprocal demand for the two classes of goods, as was seen in discussing the equation ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... had to deal with the Oriental peoples, and particularly those who know them as intimately as the British rulers of India, the importance of power—and publicly demonstrated power—is fully understood. To the average British Indian or Egyptian subject, Britain has been an unconquerable country, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... occasionally, by the antics of some of the horses that did not want to go down the steep narrow gangway. It was the devil's own job to get them aboard in the first place and equally difficult to persuade them to go ashore. Such perversity, I have noticed, is not confined to horses: the average soldier can give exhibitions of it that would ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... than they average down here. But as I was telling you, Mrs. Poland was a New England woman, and to humor her her husband employed such white servants as could be got in the city, and poor trash they were most of the time. When the fever appeared they left instantly. Poland ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... the typed and signed statement to the effect that Carl Gwinnett agreed to pay the sum of fifteen thousand dollars for the Lane Fleming pistol-collection, in its entirety, within thirty days of date. That was an average of six dollars a pistol. There had been a time, not too long ago, when a pistol-collection with an average value of six dollars, particularly one as large as the Fleming collection, had been something unusual. For one thing, arms values had increased sharply in the ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... with the softness and the speed of a cat. Next he dressed in a dark-gray suit, knowing that this is the color hardest to see at night. His old felt hat he had discarded long before in favor of the prevailing style of the average New Yorker. For this night expedition he put on a cap which drew easily over his ears and had a long visor, shadowing the upper part of his face. Since it might be necessary to remain as invisible as possible, he obscured the ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... of a council. Each required the work of two hundred officials, and no more, in its central administration offices, where Rabourdin proposed that they should live, as in former days under the monarchy. Taking the sum of twelve thousand francs a year for each official as an average, he estimated seven millions as the cost of the whole body of such officials, which actually stood at ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... he raked in! I used to figure it up, just for the joy of envyin' him, I reckon. An average twenty-wagon outfit, first and last, would bring him in somewheres about fifty dollars—and besides he had forty-rod at four bits a glass. And outfits at that ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... evolutions of his themes. Bunyan, with much less faculty for any subtle discrimination of characters, also fails to give his persons individuality, though they stand very distinctly for a variety of traits: it is with Bunyan as if he had taken an average human being, and, separating his impulses, good and evil, had tried to make a new man or woman out of each; so that there is hardly life-blood enough to go round among them. Milton's creatures are in a certain way more vital, though less ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... from all these troubles to an extent which the average Bailee can only fancy by looking with his mind's eye through "patent double million magnifiers." A man so eminent as the Laureate is the butt of all the miserable minor poets, all the enthusiastic school- girls, all the autograph-hunters, all the begging-letter writers, all the ambitious ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... coal-trains ran at from four to six miles an hour. On the Stockton and Darlington line the speed was increased to about ten miles an hour; and on the Liverpool and Manchester line the first passenger-trains were run at the average speed of seventeen miles an hour, which at that time was considered very fast. But this was not enough. When the London and Birmingham line was opened, the mail-trains were run at twenty-three miles ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... no idea of natural objects but 'such as he could measure with a two-fool rule, or tell upon ten fingers': he judged of human nature in the same way, by mood and figure: he saw only the definite, the positive, and the practical, the average forms of things, not their striking differences—their classes, not their degrees. He was a man of strong common sense and practical wisdom, rather than of genius or feeling. He retained the regular, habitual impressions ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... thing that stands in your way," James told him impatiently. "People never know when you're laughing at them. There is no reason why you shouldn't succeed. Your abilities are up to the average, but you fritter ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... problem. When he came down to the office Friday morning he was confronted with the usual program for the Sunday morning edition. The NEWS was one one of the few evening papers in Raymond to issue a Sunday edition, and it had always been remarkably successful financially. There was an average of one page of literary and religious items to thirty or forty pages of sport, theatre, gossip, fashion, society and political material. This made a very interesting magazine of all sorts of reading ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... be justified in saying, "Better kill a hundred men than ruin a castle with hundreds of years of memories, bad or good." You can never replace it, while the hundred men will, at the very moment they are killed, be replaced, just as good on the average, by the ordinary operations of nature. Besides, by partially ruining the castle, you give an opening to the sin of the restorer, for which there is, we know, no ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Alicia, what do you think the attainment of the stars will mean to the Average American housewife in the immediate ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Strickland, and Miss Yonge. Upon Damaris, however, perambulation of those paths palled too soon. Her intellect and heart alike demanded wider fields of drama, of religion and of science, above all wider and less conventional converse with average human nature, than this triumvirate of Victorian sibyls was willing or capable to supply. It is undeniable that, although words and phrases, whole episodes indeed, were obscure even unintelligible to her, she found the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini and Saint ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the island is principally in sugar, of which the average annual crop is 15,000 hogsheads. Antigua is one of the oldest of the British West India colonies, and ranks high in importance and influence. Owing to the proportion of proprietors resident in the Island, there is an accumulation of talent, intelligence ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... steward. The handbag is on the table, in plain sight; it isn't locked—a blind man can see that; and the slit in its side has been made by a razor. I add up the bandbox and the razor and multiply the sum by the fact that the average woman will smuggle as quick as the average man will take a drink; ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... learned that the earth is a slightly flattened sphere, having an average diameter of about eight thousand miles, the average section at the equator being about twenty-six miles greater than that from pole to pole. In a body of such large proportions this difference in measurement appears not important; it is, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... of the human world to-day is the tremendous commercial machine which is grinding out at a marvellous acceleration the smaller and meaner sort of man, the middle class, the average man, "the damned, compact, liberal majority," to use the words of Ibsen, and the world daily becomes "more Chinese". The rocks are fraying one another down to desert sand, and mankind ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... isn't there. Now, as I have decided that Glendale is to be the scene of this bloodless revolution of mine—it would be awful to carry out such an undertaking anywhere but under the protection of ancestral traditions—I have operated Richard Hall out of my inmost being with the utmost cruelty, on an average of every two hours, for this week Jane and I have been in New York; and I have still got ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of the observations which we have in this field were made by the average mother, who knows less about the human body than she does about the moon or the wild flowers, or by the average father, who sees his child for an hour a day, when the boy is dressed up, and who ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... check the evil, who can say that we shall not become as bad as the inhabitants of Cuba, where, according to Rev. Mr. Ingersoll, "not only men, but women and children smoke, and some at a large expense." And according to Rev. Dr. Abbot, "it was the common estimate that in Havana, there was an average consumption of ten thousand dollars worth of cigars ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... income only lasted forty weeks in the year. Then he did odd jobs for the neighbors, and picked up perhaps as much more. Mrs. Larkin had some skill as a dressmaker, but Groveton was a small village, and there was another in the same line, so that her income from this source probably did not average more than three dollars a week. This was absolutely all that they had to live on, though there was no rent to pay; and the reader will not be surprised to learn that Luke had no money to spend ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... of a crowd are receiving attention at the hands of a French philosopher. M. Gustave Le Bon tells us that the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual of average brains. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... climate houses are almost unnecessary. The minimum range of the thermometer is about 63 deg., the maximum 85 deg., giving an average of 74 deg.. Their sheds or houses consist generally of a thatched roof raised on posts, the eaves reaching to within three or four feet of the ground; the floor is covered with soft hay, over which are laid mats, so that the whole is one cushion, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... the rack and noted the steamer's average speed from the entries. He signaled to the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... fundamental error in her comparison. Instead of comparing together the average man and the average woman, she sets herself to establish that there is no defect in woman which cannot be discovered also in man; and that there is no virtue or power in the ordinary man which cannot be discovered also in woman. Which having been established to her satisfaction, she is led inevitably ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... with the banalities and squalors of life, and weaves into the mesh of its story no character but would make you yawn if you passed ten minutes with him in a railway-carriage, might well take a lesson from this man, if it had the brains. Picture to yourself (it is not hard) an average suburb of London. The long rows of identical bilious brick houses, with the inevitable lace curtains, a symbol merely of the will and power to wash; the awful nondescript object, generally under glass, in the front window—the shrine of the unknown god of art; the sombre invariable citizen, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... learned, and thus he continued to learn, in nervous fear one moment, in perfect calm the next. And though his hours of life were few indeed, he nevertheless revealed an intelligence far above the average of his kind. He learned to avoid the mare's whisking tail, to shun or remove molesting flies, to keep away from the mare when she was at the feed-box. All of which told of his uncommon strain, as did the rapidity with which he gained strength, which last told of his tremendous vitality, and which ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... occasional halts in consequence of rains, the travellers pressed on, through the month of May and to the middle of June. Their route was generally in a northeastern direction. Their path led them through a rugged country of forests, ravines, and rivers. The average territory of each Indian tribe was about twenty miles square. Friendly Indians were always found to guide them, as it were, from post to ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... boys noticed Baldy scratching his head on a spot where there was still a little hair, and he said, "Hey, Baldy, chase him out into the open; you'll have a better chance to catch him there." Now, I realize that this bunch of boys may sound very commonplace to the average reader, but we went through more than one hell together and I found them white clear through, and heroes every one of them. They included farmers, firemen, business men, university men, hoboes, and socialists. Some mixture!—but it was out of ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... long as he remains a member. This is a direct violation of the inexorable law of nature which says, that as a man grows older the risk of dying, or in other words the cost of insurance, increases. It is all nonsense to urge that the average age and the average cost will be kept down by the influx of new members. The contract is made with the individual, and unless each person pays enough to compensate the company for the indemnity or insurance furnished to him, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... grand operas; yet even now I wonder that Don Giovanni's scene with the statue and the conspiracy in the Huguenots stirred me, when a boy of nine or ten, so deeply, and that, though possessing barely the average amount of musical talent, Orpheus's yearning cry, "Eurydice!" rang in my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... IN WORSHIP.—We see how the angels behave when in God's house. "Covered his face." Contrast this with the way the average church-goer acts. To look at the listless faces, the slovenly way in which men and women pray, the want of reverence, often in choirs, and sometimes in pulpits, makes us think there must be either a want of intellect or a lack of faith. If these people ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... natives had come across from Waljeers. The country opened more and more as we proceeded, and the basin of reeds was more extensive. The bergs on the opposite side (on which I had fixed several points) were distant on an average about eight miles, which was the breadth therefore of that low margin of reeds. The winding borders of this plain terminated on our side in rich grassy flats, some of which extended back farther than ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... more conclusive? What is true of one, must be so of all! What are all, but a collection of individuals? You might as well tell me that every Frenchman could suddenly grow an inch taller, without the average height of Frenchmen ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... at a pace which gave me full opportunity of observing him. A little black cap covered his scalp; his round bullet-head, which bristled with short, thick-set hairs, joined on, by a neck of considerably more than the average girth, to shoulders of Atlantean dimensions. His body was enveloped in a coarse brown mantle, which descended to his calves, and was gathered round his middle with a slender white cord. His naked feet were thrust into sandals. The features ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... seemed to him doubtful. Another series of 961 experiments gives 72 cases, for which he offers an explanation other than mediate association. On the other hand, Aschaffenburg admits them to the extent of four per cent.; the association-time is longer than for average associations (Psychologische Arbeiten, I and II). Consult especially Scripture, The New Psychology, chapter xiii, with experiments ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... having known thee I had grown faithful and pure as thee, Had turned at the touch of thy grace and glory From the average pathways trodden by me. Hadst thou been kinder or I been stronger It may be even these things had been— But one thing is clear to my soul for ever, I owe my owning of thee ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... sermon, with text-tes and singing and all that. Seems like I jes' want to talk along rambling like, and tell you how happy you are all, for I don't reckon you're much wickeder than you are friendly on the average. I keep a-hearing about murdering and stealing and whiskey boating and such things. They're signs of the world's sinfulness. We talk a heap about such things; they're real, of course, and we cayn't escape them. At the ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... central attraction behind the gleaming shop-window, had plumed himself on his expensiveness. He had been in no hurry to be bought. It had seemed to him a good thing to stand there motionless, majestic, day after day, far beyond the reach of average purses, and having in his mien something of the frigid nobility of the horses on the Parthenon frieze, with nothing at all of their unreality. A coat of real chestnut hair, glossy, glorious! From end to end of the Parthenon ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... Fahr. (in the shade). It was inspected by the foreman of the tunnel-work as he daily walked over the line; besides the occasional driving of a few wedges and putting on a band or two, it gave no trouble from leakage, which probably for its entire length did not amount to more than an average of 3 or 4 cubic feet a minute; from time to time, a little sawdust was put into the pen-stock. Three stop-gates were placed on the main, and a separate stop-gate at each shaft, operated by a fine-threaded screw, so that the water could be cut off ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... the average adult person might well consist of taking simple exercises in his room, and to get out of doors once a day and walk rapidly for at least half an hour. In addition, it is desirable for any one up to fifty years of age to take ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... name and wide estates gave greater opportunities for taking a large share in public affairs than when the fifth Earl attained his majority. It was natural, therefore, that a young man who was recognised by his friends as above the average should be regarded as a person of ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... indifferently. "It alters with the season, but I believe the general average is about the same. You know most of them." She mentioned a number of names, counting them off on her finger-tips. "Then, of course, there are the old standbys, Mr. Macklin, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... knowledge of economics. "Sister to the Ox", by A. W. Ashby, is an excellent short story whose strength is rather in its moral than in its plot. The editorials are certainly not lacking in force, and seem well calculated to stir the average amateur from his ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... walked three hundred and sixty-five miles in fifty-eight hours, an average of over ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... army at Akasha. In ordinary circumstances this would not have been a serious commissariat problem. The frontier reserves of food were calculated to meet such an emergency. But in 1895 the crops in Egypt had been much below the average. At the beginning of 1896 there was a great scarcity of grain. When the order for the advance was issued, the frontier grain stores were nearly exhausted. The new crops could not be garnered until the end ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... it is known that there is an ample supply of munitions plays an important part in the "morale" of the troops. The average Poilu has no sympathy with the man who grumbles at the number of hours he may have to spend in the factory. We heard the tale of a munition worker who was complaining in a cafe at having to work so hard. A Poilu who was en permission, ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... not look English himself. He wore his black hair rather longer than is usual in this country, and there was a curiously vivid look, a suggestion of fire about him, which is conspicuously lacking in the average Briton, whose ambition it is to look as cool as possible. His face was thin and his eyes were deep set, like those of Julius Caesar—in fact, the girl was strongly reminded of the emperor's bust in the British Museum. He looked ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... him. Constantly abroad, he was ever the subject of conflicting rumours. Parfitts themselves, his London agents, knew naught of him but his handwriting—on the backs of cheques in four figures. They sold an average of five large and five small pictures for him every year. These pictures arrived out of the unknown and the cheques went ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... screen stood between my sofa and the door, so that it was impossible to see who entered. I saw the shadow of a woman on the wall, and supposed it to be a maid come to see after the fire. Next, the figure of an old woman emerged from behind the screen; she was of average height, and stout; she wore a woollen cap, and her dress was that of a superior servant indoors. Supposing her to be some servant's visitor come to have a look at the drawing-room while the party were at dinner, I moved to attract her attention, with no result. She walked a few steps towards ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... far kept up an average speed of seven and a half knots an hour, and Captain Holding thinks we shall make even better sailing when the hands are more accustomed to their work. I spend my time mostly with the Concanens—who readily, by the way, undertook the care of my tin box—and ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... very heavy disadvantage in competition with that of the joint-stock company, inasmuch as the latter almost always attracts by far the greater amount of intelligence. The capitalist, even the largest, is on the average no cleverer than other men—that is, generally speaking, he is not particularly clever. It may, perhaps, be objected that he would scarcely have attained to great wealth had he not possessed superior abilities; but apart from the fact that it has ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... in mind we will not feel restricted to any part of the premises merely because it is out of sight behind the barn or garage. In the average moderate-sized place there will not be much choice as to land. It will be necessary to take what is to be had and then do the very best that can be done with it. But there will probably be a good deal of choice as to, first, exposure, and second, convenience. Other things being equal, ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... acted on the theory that the worst peace was better than the best war, and therefore she has suffered all the evils of the worst war and the worst peace. The average Chinaman took the view that China was too proud to fight and in practice made evident his hearty approval of the sentiments of that abject pacifist song: "I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier," a song which should have as a companion piece one entitled: "I Didn't Raise my Girl to be a Mother," ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... contains from sixty to a hundred pages, and the size of the page lithographed is rather less than the average, the amount of the whole seems very great, if we remember that it was all written in about fifteen months. So much for the quantity; the quality strikes me as of singular merit for a girl of thirteen or fourteen. Both as a specimen of her prose style at this ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... comment. Presently he went on again. "You see, I don't know much about all this," he declared. "So I've had rather an observant eye on—on these young ladies you've had here from time to time this summer, and I confess I'm filled with curiosity. Would you mind telling me what you think the average girl of good family, and well brought up, has in her mind's eye as a desirable future—I mean for the next few years after school?—I don't know that I make myself clear. What I want to get at is—You see, the great thing a young chap thinks about is what he is going to make ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... faculties, and above all stimulate that natural genius which is characteristic of every typical American boy. To this end the story contains descriptions of a large collection of articles which can be made by any boy of average intelligence, not only in the camp but ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... stories, based on the actual doings of grammar school boys, comes near to the heart of the average American boy. ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... order, the first of the great difficulties of this most difficult enterprise. How boys who could scarcely be got to behave quietly under the strictest schoolmasters could ever be brought to obey the rebuke of their equal and schoolfellow: how a heterogeneous pack of average schoolboys could organise themselves into a self-governing republic, these were problems of real and stupendous difficulty. The fines of a penny and of twopence, which were instituted at the first meeting, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... observation; and that the same tranquil, yet insatiable curiosity is everywhere present. Man, as conceived by Montaigne, is of all creatures the most variable, unstable, inconstant. The species includes the saint and the brute, the hero and the craven, while between the extremes lies the average man, who may be anything that nature, custom, or circumstances make him. And as the species varies indefinitely, so each individual varies endlessly from himself: his conscience controls his temperament; his temperament ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... with him, bringing forward all the unanswerable arguments built by the long average experience of the world—arguments which Orde could not refute, but whose falsity to the situation he felt most keenly. He could not specify without betraying Gerald's confidence. Raging inwardly, he ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... took six small boats, turning my men into sailors, and going as we liked. The river still continued beautiful; but after paddling three hours we found it bend considerably, and narrow to two hundred yards, the average depth being from two to three fathoms. At the fourth hour, imagining our cattle to be far behind, we pulled in, and walked up a well-cultivated hill to Yaragonjo's, the governor of these parts. The guide, however, on first sighting his ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... hereditary states, and those long accustomed to the family of their prince, than new ones; for it is sufficient only not to transgress the customs of his ancestors, and to deal prudently with circumstances as they arise, for a prince of average powers to maintain himself in his state, unless he be deprived of it by some extraordinary and excessive force; and if he should be so deprived of it, whenever anything sinister happens to the usurper, he ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... tabular data on many annuals grown at Ithaca, N.Y. Seeds of most of the kinds were sown in the open, rather late. "The soil varied somewhat, but it was light and well tilled, and only moderately rich." Ordinary good care was given the plants. The average height of the plants of each kind at full growth, as they stood on the ground, is given in these lists. Of course, these heights might be less or more with different soils, different treatments, and different climates; but the figures are fairly ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... are that Rhogeessa from the Tres Marias Islands average smaller than Rhogeessa of the adjoining mainland of western Mexico but not enough smaller to warrant subspecific separation of the two. Specimens from places geographically intermediate between ...
— Taxonomic Notes on Mexican Bats of the Genus Rhogeessa • E. Raymond Hall
... a surface fish, his average depth seldom below four fathoms. He breaks water when he feeds, when he plays, when he runs in schools. The purse seiner watches the signs. When the salmon rise in numbers he makes a set. To shoot the gear and purse the seine is a matter of minutes. A thousand salmon at ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the appearance of the "Adonis" and his death were filled with a series of masterpieces. Nothing is more characteristic of his genius than its incessant activity. Through the five years which followed the publication of his early poem he seems to have produced on an average two dramas a year. When we attempt however to trace the growth and progress of the poet's mind in the order of his plays we are met in the case of many of them by an absence of certain information as to the dates of their appearance. The facts on which enquiry has to build ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... 16 degrees 30 minutes south to the north coast, there would be no difficulty whatever, as there is an abundance of timber everywhere. I am promised information, through the kindness of Mr. Todd, of the Telegraph department, as to the average cost of establishing the lines through the outer districts of this colony, and it is my intention to make a calculation of the cost of a line on my route, by which the comparative merits and expense will be tested, and I am of opinion I shall be able ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... something fascinating to the average youth in the very idea of buried treasure. A vision arises before his eyes of swarthy Portuguese and Spanish rascals, with black beards and gleaming eyes. There were many famous sea rovers, but none more celebrated than Capt. Kidd. Paul Jones Garry inherits a document which locates a ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... modern seat of government of Siam, has (according to the best authorities) two hundred thousand floating dwellings and shops,—to each house an average of five souls,—making the population of the city about one million; of which number more than eighty thousand are Chinese, twenty thousand Birmese, fifteen thousand Arabs and Indians, and the remainder Siamese. These figures are from the latest ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... allowed admiration to show in their eyes. Toward the end of the dinner several officers came in, and the Americans took particular pains to study them. They were cleanly-built fellows, about medium height, wiry and active. As a class, the men appeared to average five feet seven inches in height, some a little taller, some a little shorter. The two strangers were over six feet tall, broad-shouldered and athletic. They looked like giants among these ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... is the average attendance at school. Scholars happy and bright and very eager to learn Nearly every one has bought a new spelling book. The prayer meetings are well attended; Sabbath evenings there are fifty present, Wednesdays, thirty. They conduct ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... and the distance to which his business that morning will take him, and that, when he found no one would bid up to his reserve, he remained firm and came away. Perhaps I seem hard on the dog-boy, but my experience has not been a happy one. My first seemed to be an average specimen, moderately clean and well-behaved; but he was not satisfied with his wages. He assured me that they did not suffice to fill his stomach. I told him that I thought it would be his father's duty for some years ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... simple course, you can learn the secrets of this science easily and quickly at home in your spare time. Any man with common school education and average ability can become a Finger Print ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... that war has given beauty to faces that were interesting, humorous, acute, malicious, a hundred vivid and expressive things, but last and least of all beautiful. Almost all the faces about these crowded tables—young or old, plain or handsome, distinguished or average—have the same look of quiet authority: it is as though all "nervosity," fussiness, little personal oddities, meannesses and vulgarities, had been burnt away in a great flame of self-dedication. It is a wonderful example of the rapidity with which purpose models the human countenance. More ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... should cease on the sixth of April next, after peace was ratified, and that on the result of the whole measure there would not be any new taxes imposed for the first three years from this time. All that was necessary would be new taxes, of less than L300, 000, on an average of seven years from 1810 to 1816, inclusive. This, he continued, would procure for the country the full benefit of the plan proposed, which plan would be continued for twenty years, during the last ten of which no additional taxes would be required. This plan after repeated discussions was agreed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a certain breed of goat, a Swiss milk goat, and only animals of a certain youth. My goats cost me about $75 each on an average, and that is one reason why it would be impossible to conduct this work as a free surgical clinic might be conducted, unless the undertaking were specially endowed with funds to meet ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... the woman's material in the leading newspapers, and the reason is not difficult to find. The average editor has, as a rule, no time to study the changing conditions of women's interests; his time is and must be engrossed by the news and editorial pages. He usually delegates the Sunday "specials" to some editor who, again, has little time to study the everchanging ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... say that I think Bisley has a more business-like look than Wimbledon ever had, though perhaps this is scarcely to the taste of the average feminine visitor, who used to enjoy pic-nicing to the accompaniment of whizzing bullets, and does not appreciate the latter without the former. The shooting was very uncertain in the first stage of the Queen's, as the wind was in a variable mood—(is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... old Naples where he well knew the houses of his friends who would hide him. The man who is known to have committed that crime—Francesco Paoli—escaped to New York. We are looking for him to-day. He is a clever man, far above the average—son of a doctor in a town a few miles from Naples, went to the university, was expelled for some mad prank—in short, he was the black sheep of the family. Of course over here he is too high-born to work with his hands on a railroad or in a trench, and not educated enough to work at anything else. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the Hunter was but an average type of the Indian character; of a fiery, ardent nature, and unschooled affections, he never forgot a wrong done him in early youth by a white man. His sweetheart was taken from him, cruelly, heartlessly, mercilessly, during his absence, without note or sign or warning, while he was working ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... and revolvers strung to their belts, and each of them strove to keep up cowboy traditions by unloading his weapon on the slightest provocation. The gamblers also sustained the conventions of their profession by killing one another now and again, and the average citizen regarded these activities with a certain approval, for they all denoted ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... further plucking. So he forces himself to chaffer, tries to conceal his abhorrence of the practice and his inexperience, and ends, generally, by being cheated and considered a grass-green idiot into the bargain, which is not soothing to the spirit of the average man. When I mention it in this connection I do not mean to be understood as confining my remarks exclusively to Russia; the opportunities for being shorn to the quick are unsurpassed all over the continent, and "one price" America's house is too vitreous to permit of her throwing ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... southern-going portion did not deem the collier lads "classy" enough to permit of them forming close comradeship. A condescending speaking-acquaintance was the limit of their connection. There was nothing to justify this snobbery, for in point of comparison the average collier lad in seamanship and physical capacity was the equal, and in intelligence by no means inferior to the young gentlemen who regarded the class of vessel they served aboard of as a stamp of their own superiority. They were indeed a species of that terrible ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... at this moment eleven alive, and they bring in, on an average, counting good and bad years, from five to six thousand francs a year. One, alone, is not placed, the one she was unwilling to show us. But she will not keep it long, for she is known to all the showmen in the world, who come from time to time ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... population. For while there are just 252,000 members of the professional and commercial classes, there are 4,137,000 who are in agricultural, industrial and indefinite classes[2]—most of the farmers are held to be laborers because outside the great estates, holdings average at thirty acres and are worked by the ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... same, I'll be chief mourner if Jack takes up novel writing. Critics don't like novels, because any one can write an average story; but it takes a genius to turn out first-class magazine copy. Anyhow, art becomes less and less particular every day. The only thing that never gains or loses is this London Times. Someday I'm going to match the Congressional Record and the Times for the heavyweight ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Paget, between the parts, began to praise Louis' extraordinary musical talents (as she was pleased to call them), and to relate how much he pleased the company at her house, Dr. Wilkinson coolly replied, that he considered he had been well taught, but doubted his having more than an average good taste and general ability; and as his eye turned upon Louis, who was moving rather affectedly and conceitedly from rank to rank on his way to the refreshment-room, his forehead wrinkled ominously, and his lips became more tightly compressed. He was observed to watch ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... could afford to import it, used about 21/4 pounds a week before the war. Germany's consumption was slightly lower. France, Denmark, Switzerland, with fewer animals or less wealth, are small meat-eaters, the average amount being about 11/2 pounds a week—about half ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... must often have felt the need of some work dealing with the history and antiquities of the city itself, and the architecture and associations of the cathedral, more portable than the elaborate monographs which have been devoted to some of them, more scholarly and satisfying than the average local guide-book, and more copious than the section devoted to them in the general guide-book of the city, a need the Cathedral Series now being issued by Messrs George Bell & Sons, under the editorship of Mr ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... finished bottle, replacing it with a new blank drawn from the mold on the first platform. This operation necessitates only three men—a gatherer, a handler, and a carrier-off. It is also much faster than the old method—an average of about forty bottles per ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... much in money. As you saw, there were but four rix dollars a head, and that is the result of a month's work. Still, that is not bad for men who might otherwise starve. Sometimes we do worse and sometimes better, but that is about the average. Still, the life is a pleasant one, and unless we disbanded soldiers took to it, what would there be for us to do? If government would keep us on regular pay, there would soon be no brigands left, except the men who have escaped from justice. But the treasury is ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... popular. Meetings were held almost every night at that time with an average attendance of not less than five hundred. Meetings as a rule were confined to wonderful song services and brief, snappy talks. At first there were very few conversions, but there have been more since the great drives in which the Americans have taken so large a share. The Masons, the Moose ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... have held for a year if the car was run at average speed," said Jimsy slowly, "but the minute it was raced beyond its normal rate the weak ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... were in Europe when Shakespeare wrote has already been noted; indeed, the annual importation from India, then the only source, can hardly have exceeded $100,000 on an average, while at the present day the value of the diamonds from the great African mines imported into Europe and America amounts to from ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... government lands of our country were remote from the centers of capital and difficult to examine; the French national real estate was near these centers—even in them—and easy to examine. Our national real estate was unimproved and unproductive; theirs was improved and productive—its average productiveness in market in ordinary times being from four to five per ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... their locations could not be indicated on the accompanying map (plate XI). These constitute a peculiar type, not found elsewhere in the experience of the writer, and present some points of interest. They vary in size from one room to considerable settlements, but the average size is two or three rooms. They are always located with reference to some area, generally a small one, of tillable land which they overlook, and all the data now available support the inference that they mark the sites of small farming or temporary ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... but I am tough. I insist upon doing every thing as well as I did it forty years ago. Mary, you ought not to speak to me like that. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty brilliants, worth twenty pounds apiece upon an average, I do believe. Four hundred pounds. That ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... this get by you. You know that I know that a salesman would have as much chance to sell you a gold brick as to sell old John D. Rockefeller a gallon of oil." Mrs. Brandeis eyed his samples coldly. "But it looks so unattractive. And the average person has no imagination. A bolt of white braid and a handful of buttons—they wouldn't get a mental picture of the completed ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... till he has gone to his reward, if even then. It is an admirable quality in him, always, not to mind being shot at. But when the British public has really made up its mind that a man is a great man, and that however low they rate him at market value he is sure to be above the average, they sing a psalm of thanksgiving, and they cry, "Where is his coffin? Let us drive nails into the coffin of this great man! Let us show our magnanimity, our respect for the higher life, our reverence for the lofty ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... convention of the route to regard it as a perilous and exciting adventure. Perhaps it is partly this flavour of a not-too-dangerous danger, this shivering charm of a hazard to be taken without too much risk, that attracts the average tourist, prudently romantic, to make the journey to the lowest inhabited town in ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... catch the minute animals floating in the water on which it feeds. Each side of bone consists of upwards of three hundred laminae, the interior edges of which are covered with a fringe of hair. Ten or twelve feet is the average size. In young whales, called "suckers," it is only a few inches long. When it is above six feet, the whale is said to be of size, a ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the national peril has passed, into the depths of administrative incompetency which our Republic, and all its parts, occupied for so many years. The need for an efficient and highly complex State has been driven home to the consciousness of the average citizen. And this foretokens the permanent enlistment of talent in the public service to the end that democracy may provide that effective nationalism imposed by the ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... them were a mixture of sympathetic and average qualities: a modicum of philosophy, moderate desires, fond attachment to the family, the earth, moral custom; discretion, dread of intruding, of being a nuisance to other people: modesty of feeling, unbending reserve. All these amiable and charming qualities could, in certain cases, be ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... of silence, formed the only language. From each side of the mouth, spread foam tinged with black and burnt blood. Blue streaks mingled with the yellow all over the frame. All remedies were useless. This was the yellow fever. The disorder spread alarm and confusion throughout the city. On an average more than four hundred died daily. In the midst of disorder and confusion, death heaped victims on victims. Friend followed friend in quick succession. The sick were avoided from the fear of contagion, and for the same reason ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... two hundred. That's about average. And what about Tom? He was jumping around after the test last night, telling how you'd cured him, how he'd seen the dead bugs; but he never had the jumping headache, and you never gave him the plasma! He's got dead bugs, though. ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... years of the monarchy of July were in reality a period of liberty, but the official direction given to things of the mind was often superficial and no better than would be expected of the average shopkeeper. With regard to the second empire, if the ten last years of its duration in some measure repaired the mischief done in the first eight, it must never be forgotten how strong this government ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan |
