"Calibre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Granville and Grantham entered the piazza, leading to the officers' rooms, several of which were completely pierced with twenty-four pound shot, known at once as coming from the centre battery, which alone mounted guns of that calibre. After surveying the interior a few moments, they passed into a small passage communicating with the room in question. On opening the door, all were painfully struck by the sight which presented itself. Numerous shot holes were visible every where throughout, while the walls at the ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... resolutely bent on redeeming them from what seemed a horrid profanation. In accordance with one of his characteristics, the more difficult the project seemed, the more obstinately fixed became his purpose to discover whether she had a mind of sufficient calibre to transform her into what she might be, in contrast with what she was. The more he saw of her the more his interest as an artist, and, indirectly, as a student of character, was deepened. If she had no mind worth naming he would give the problem up to the solution of time, which, however, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... might be made about the Venetian Bonifazio. It is remarkable that the "Adoration of the Magi" was always a favourite subject with painters of this calibre. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... double-barrelled shot-gun and a heavy forty-five-calibre repeating rifle, and I a light forty-four-calibre repeating rifle, and a big revolver of the same calibre (though using a slightly shorter cartridge), with a belt and holster. This revolver we stored in the tool-box, chiefly for use in case we were boarded ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... open and frank. Marcy never trained himself to be a public speaker, and did not shine in the hand-to-hand conflicts of a body that was lustrous with forensic talents. A man's status in the United States Senate is determined by the calibre and skill of the opponents who are selected to cross weapons with him in the forum. Wright was unostentatious, studious, thoughtful, grave. Whenever he delivered an elaborate speech the Whigs set Clay, Webster, Ewing, or some other of their ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... himself to the governing powers, and the Radical who stood aloof. Mr. Kennedy barely said a word now and then, and Phineas was almost as silent as Mr. Kennedy. He had come there to hear some such discussion, and was quite willing to listen while guns of such great calibre were being ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... heard many a time scoffingly to say that only would he bring home a wife when he had found a woman possessed of gold sufficient to fill a chest so large that ten of his men might not be able to carry it into his castle. Brides of this calibre did not then grow in profusion on either side of the Border, and had he continued to live uninterruptedly in his own country, no doubt Bryan de Blenkinsopp might have remained to the end unmarried. But: "When I said I would die ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... Mut, he thought they would not only be discouraged but frightened. They had run away from us, in the temple; and despite the proverb concerning those who fight and run, to fight another day, it was probable that men of their calibre would see the wisdom of abandoning the chase. They had shown themselves cowards, Anthony thought, whatever their object had been in attacking Miss O'Brien and Miss Gilder: and though we must be on the watch during ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... a man of pure life and just purposes have fewer friends or more enemies.... If he could ever have gathered even a small personal following, his character and abilities would have insured him a brilliant and prolonged success; but for a man of his calibre and influence, we see him as one of the most lonely and desolate of the great men ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... at once; while many who have been used to the slap-dash double cannot do anything for some time with a rifle. More than one African explorer has found his single-barrel smooth-bore the most useful of all the pieces in his battery; though, of course, of much larger calibre than ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... is an author of a very different calibre, the venerable Beda; concerning whom we must remember that he stands in contrast to Gildas from being Anglo-Saxon rather than British. Now, his history is Ecclesiastical and not Civil; so that ethnological questions make no part of his inquiries, and, as far as they are ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... town. The streets are gaily decorated, and a certain cannon, which had been captured in Montecristo by the Spaniards, is wheeled on a cart through the streets, followed by a procession of soldiers and a band of music. This cannon—which is a heavy-looking, unserviceable weapon of the old-fashioned calibre—is made much of by everybody, and finally a niche is built in a wall of the cathedral, and the 'canon de Montecristo,' as it is henceforth derisively termed by the Cubans, is deposited in this niche with a railing before ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... comparatively poor, had refused him, saying that one "must draw the line somewhere, and he was the limit." Madeleine d'Ambre would not be fastidious. The brief revelation, like something seen in the flare of a match that quickly dies out, struck Vanno with pity and disgust. But a youth of this calibre was sure sooner or later to drift to Monte Carlo; and perhaps the Frenchwoman's leading strings would be better ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... during the days of reconstruction had among its membership, perhaps, one-third colored members. These men were not of the same calibre as the colored members of the legislature. They were picked up in the different wards by their friends. They were chosen for their popularity rather than for fitness for the work ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Lang asks some similar questions in his Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. ii. p. 349, but in a tone of impatient contempt which, as applied to a man of Mr. Morgan's calibre, is hardly becoming.] ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... find them partly in its essential military inferiority to the kingdom that had recently grown up upon its borders, partly in the accidental circumstance that its ruler at the time of the Persian attack was a man of no great capacity. Had Nebuchadnezzar himself, or a prince of his mental calibre, been the contemporary of Cyrus, the issue of the contest might have been doubtful. Babylonia possessed naturally vast powers of resistance—powers which, had they been made use of to the utmost, might have tired out the patience of the Persians. That lively, active, but not over-persevering people ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... without a sign of a living blade of flower, though a few little songbirds did their best bravely to make it up to us. Already we are being driven almost crazy with the mosquitoes and black flies, songsters of no mean calibre, especially at night. In desperation our little ones yesterday succeeded in killing an unusually large specimen, and after burying it with great solemnity were heard singing around the grave in no uncheerful tones, "Nearer, my God, ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... man as well as a noble and distinguished ruler, and his second son, Ludwig, had qualities of greatness that gave every promise for the country if it should ever come under his direction. But the other children of the Landgrave, the princes named Conrad and Heinrich, were of different calibre from their brother Ludwig, and so was the girl, Agnes, who was about Elizabeth's own age. Herman, the eldest son, soon died, and Elizabeth was then betrothed ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... large number of younger members had come forward, none of them of quite the same calibre as the Essayists, but many of them contributing much to the sum total of the Society's influence. Of these perhaps the most active was Henry W. Macrosty,[33] who sat on the Executive from 1895 till 1907, when he retired on account of the pressure of official duties. During and indeed before his period ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... reached in the thirteenth century, perished in the vain endeavor to emulate pictorial excellence, bad drawing being substituted, in books, for lovely writing, and opaque precision, in glass, for transparent power; nor in any single department of exertion did artists arise of such calibre or class as any of the great Italians; and yet all the while, in literature, we were gradually and steadily advancing in power up to the time of Shakespere; the Italians, on the contrary, not advancing ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... with erecting a great cross of red wood, close to which they constructed a casa fuerte, or block-house, the walls of which were formed of large beams resting horizontally upon each other. This house had two stories; in the upper story two cannon of small calibre were placed; and two soldiers lived on the ground-floor, and were served by an Indian family. Those of the natives with whom they were at peace cultivated spots of land round the casa fuerte. The soldiers ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... dumps and guns of big calibre, camouflaged and concealed amongst trees and bushes, so that often the muzzle alone was visible. Shell-holes were dotted everywhere. Many of the trees were scarred ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... here give some of the customs of the school at this period, as samples of a state of things which is now past and gone. The morality of some of them might be questioned in these days of advanced ideas on civilization, but, under the guidance of a man of Dr. Smith's mental calibre, their effect was the rearing of a generation of manly youths, capable of much intellectual, as well ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... than it warranted, I turned to the dresser. The only detail here worth a passing notice was a small pasteboard box containing a number of .38 calibre cartridges. Originally there had been fifty in the box. I counted them. Six were missing; just the number required to charge the cylinder of most revolvers of the same calibre. However, there was no revolver; nor did my entire examination of the apartment ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Mannering's shoulder. This is the one which killed the poor fellow near Towcester. If Mannering's bullet is identical with this, I should have nothing more to say; but," he continued meaningly, "both your revolver and mine are of a different calibre to the weapon which fired this. If the bullet which hit Mannering should prove to fit either of our weapons, there would be no need to seek for further evidence. I must ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... seemed to Stanhope that he must dare everything and take her. After all, she was intelligent: she could be educated. She was beautiful, youthful; and what a love she poured out at his feet!—different in calibre, in nature, different, from its root up, from any love he could hope to find again—a love that asked absolutely nothing for itself, not even the right to live, and yet would give its all unquestioningly, unsparingly. It is not a toy to be thrown ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... of the troops about Washington was good, but it was manifest they were far from being soldiers. Their uniforms were as various as the States and cities from which they came; their arms were also of every pattern and calibre; and they were so loaded down with overcoats, haversacks, knapsacks, tents, and baggage, that it took from twenty-five to fifty wagons to move the camp of a regiment from one place to another, and some of ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... was not of particularly fine calibre. For some months, whenever he faced the truth, he had realized that he would never marry Belle. He was fond of her to the extent possible in a nature such as his and he was keenly alive to the financial advantage of becoming Boyd's son-in-law. ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... demiculverin. This I emptied, and loaded it again with a good charge of fine powder mixed with the coarser sort; then I aimed it exactly at the man in red, elevating prodigiously, because a piece of that calibre could hardly be expected to carry true at such a distance. I fired, and hit my man exactly in the middle. He had trussed his sword in front, [2] for swagger, after a way those Spaniards have; and my ball, when it struck him, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... and politely intimating our inability to carry Mr. Dunkelsbaum any further. But his reception of such an open declaration of war was certain to be unsuitable for Adele's eyes and ears, and the subsequent action which a man of his calibre would undoubtedly take might ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... battle off Santiago de Cuba demonstrated that we should abandon the heavy calibres of guns. Serious injury to an enemy's thickly-armored battleships can be inflicted only by large-calibre guns. ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... holes, ready to bark forth their loud defiance to the Hun. The 4.5 howitzers were visible in batches at various places. Further back, but still closely packed were the 6-inch howitzers, the 60-pounders, and the heavier calibre guns. The huge, ever popular 15-inch and large naval guns lay beyond Ypres, and were not for the eyes of the ordinary infantryman, but evidences of their sound work would be found when the advance continued. It required very little imagination to picture the German ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... particular I learned from Freeth, namely, how to encounter the occasional breaker of exceptional size that rolled in. Such breakers were really ferocious, and it was unsafe to meet them on top of the board. But Freeth showed me, so that whenever I saw one of that calibre rolling down on me, I slid off the rear end of the board and dropped down beneath the surface, my arms over my head and holding the board. Thus, if the wave ripped the board out of my hands and tried to strike ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... women of large calibre are so busy doing God's work in the world that they have no time and no inclination to be attracted by anything that does not claim their intellectual as well as their moral assent. The Church must speak ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... of advanced civilization, the people escaped the dangers of its vitiating tendencies, thus preserving a healthy mental calibre as well as robust physical health. In addition may be mentioned a very notable fecundal power, which accounts for the phenomenally rapid increase of the people. All those conditions have continued to be maintained with the successive generations ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... rejected address—which poor Charles was restless to have used. I fitted him with an Epilogue of the same calibre with his Prologue, but I thought it would be going a little too far to publish mine. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... noting, except S * * and another general of the Gauls, once or twice at dinners out of doors. S * * is a fine, foreign, villanous-looking, intelligent, and very agreeable man; his compatriot is more of the petit-maitre, and younger, but I should think not at all of the same intellectual calibre with the Corsican—which S * *, you know, is, and a cousin ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Edwin proud to be with a celebrity of the calibre of Big James, and Big James calmly satisfied to show himself thus formally with his master's son. It appeared almost incredible that those two immortals, so diverse, had issued from the womb practically alike; that a few brief years on the earth had given Big James such a tremendous physical ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the subject of jurisprudence to scientific treatment has never been entirely lost sight of in modern times, and the essays which the consciousness of this necessity has produced have proceeded from minds of very various calibre, but there is not much presumption, I think, in asserting that what has hitherto stood in the place of a science has for the most part been a set of guesses, those very guesses of the Roman lawyers which were ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... enjoy your co-operation, inspector," he said. "I prefer to know that a man of your calibre is of my camp! You are evidently aware that Harley has secured an elaborate series of snapshots of persons known to Miss Oppner and to my niece. Of the several hundreds of persons photographed, only one negative proved to be interesting. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... "We have here a deck plan showing the disposition of guns, and a section plan showing arrangement of armour, of one of the big new ships which has been completed for the Grand Fleet. Below we have the number and calibre of the guns, the thickness and extent of the armour, the length, breadth, and depth of the vessel, her tonnage, her horse power, and her estimated speed. Everything is correct except the speed, which I happen to know is considerably greater than ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... customary for traders upon these seas to go so thoroughly armed, Captain Ratlin?" asked the daughter, one day, after she had been shown about the decks, at her own request, where she had marked the heavy calibre of the gun amidship, its well as the neat and serviceable array of small arms within ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... the two 24-pounders, we were reduced to firing back on the city the shot of the same calibre hurled against us, and a reward of half a rupee per shot was paid by the commissariat to any camp-follower bringing in ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... sagacity. We learn by experience, Sey—and I've learned a thing or two. One of them is this: It's not enough to suspect everybody; you must have no preconceptions. Divest yourself entirely of every fixed idea if you wish to cope with a rascal of this calibre. Don't jump at conclusions. We should disbelieve everything, as well as distrust everybody. That's the road to success; and I mean to ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... commission, which you will oblige me much by executing. It is to send him three Pistoia barrels for guns: two of them, of two feet and a half in the barrel in length; the smallest of the inclosed buttons to be the size of the bore, hole, or calibre, of the two guns. The third barrel to be three feet and an inch in length; the largest of these buttons to be the bore of it; these feet are English measure. You will be so good to let me know the price ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... somewhere, "What nature expressly designed me for, I have never been able to conjecture; I seem to myself so universally disqualified for the common and customary occupations and amusements of mankind." Perhaps poetry—at least poetry of the calibre of "Yardley Oak," and "The Castaway," of "Boadicea" and the "Royal George" in one division; of "John Gilpin" in the other, may not be quite properly classed among the "common and customary occupations ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... had come, and there was a decent showing of modern arms. Billy Maydew's hunting-knife and spear would be changed on the morrow for a musket, though in Billy's case the musket would certainly be the old smoothbore, calibre sixty-nine. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... 9.2's, the big howitzers farther to the rear—guns of every kind and calibre blended in one infernal concert, which extended for more than eighty miles, from ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... hours of Rasputin's conversation with the Tsar, the Church of Russia had been swept clean of all its loyal adherents, and in their places—even in the bishoprics of Kazan, Tver and Odessa—were appointed alcoholic rascals of the same calibre as Rasputin himself. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... had devised a new plan of attack. Summoning all the lighter frigates, he placed on board a number of men, and supplied each also with several guns of larger calibre than they were wont to carry. Going himself on board one of them, the Fox, with Robert Blake, Lancelot and I, he led the way towards a narrow channel between the open sea and the ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... the pile of rocks at the entrance to the Holy Smoke shaft. Across his knees lay the thirty-calibre rifle. His face was very white and set. Perhaps he was thinking of his return to New York in disgrace, of his interview with Bishop, of his inevitable meeting with a multitude of friends, who would read in the daily papers the accounts of his incompetence—criminal incompetence, they ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... complicated difficulty for the practical architect; without technical education, but gifted with supreme genius, bringing the imperious instincts of a sublime creative amateur into every task appointed him. We need not wonder if a man of his calibre left the powerful impress of his personality upon an art in chaos, luring lesser craftsmen into the Barocco mannerism, while he provoked reaction in the stronger, who felt more scientifically what was needed to ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... At the back of the platform Mr. Rabling rose to it. He had once a tenor voice of moderate calibre which he was used to exert publicly in the days of Penny Readings. And the word "Tyrolean" now suggested to him a national song which had long reposed in his musical cabinet at home. He leaned forward, screened his mouth with one ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... operate against mental development, progress and happiness. In the human species among individuals of equal mental calibre, the sanguine individual is due to rise higher and go farther than his nervous or lymphatic rivals. A characteristic temperament may embrace the majority of a whole species, or be limited to a few individuals. Many species are permanently characterized by the temperament ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the only man in German public life who would not remain an official of the Government and bring about a break with America. Zimmermann, however, was a different type of official. Zimmermann, like the Chancellor, is ambitious, bigoted, cold-blooded and an intriguer of the first calibre. As long as he was Under Secretary of State he fought von Jagow and tried repeatedly to oust him. So it was not surprising to Americans when they heard that Zimmermann ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... the desk and opened it. The caligraphy was typically Latin and the handwriting was vile. "Here is a letter from an Italian," he said, "which to the gross mind may perhaps represent wearisome business details. To a mind of my calibre, it is clothed in rich possibilities." He leaned across the table; his eyes lighted up with enthusiasm. "There may be an enormous fortune in this," and he tapped the letter slowly. "Here is a man who desires the great English newspaper, of which he has heard (though Heaven only knows how he can ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... had no disagreements on their life interests. They were both poets, though of a different calibre. What they really did not see eye to eye upon was something which the human race is still much divided about. This great point of difference was with regard to spiritualism. Browning did not dislike spiritualism; ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... contain. It stopped, however, at the door before his purpose could be fully explained. A moment after Mr. Pleydell called out, 'Here's our Liddesdale friend, I protest, with a strapping young fellow of the same calibre.' His voice arrested Dinmont, who recognised him with equal surprise and pleasure. 'Od, if it's your honour we'll a' be as right and tight as thack ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... will write in the coolest manner, 'Now, sir, I may assume that every reader of your columns, possessing average information and intelligence, knows as well as I do that'—say that the draught from the touch-hole of a cannon of such a calibre bears such a proportion in the nicest fractions to the draught from the muzzle; or some equally familiar little fact. But whatever it is, be certain that it always tends to the exaltation of Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his enforced ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Rector Boirac, head of the Dijon University. He is one of the most distinguished of the Esperantists, and is the leading spirit at the congresses and on the Lingva Komitato. He has done much for Esperanto in the schools of his district, and under the guidance of men of his calibre Esperanto is making serious progress in France. (For lists of university professors favourable to an international language, see p. ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... unusually strong dose of that Latin PIETAS, that reverence which consists in leaving things as they are, particularly when they have been described for the benefit of posterity, with the most engaging candour, by a man of Perrelli's calibre. Now an insinuation like this could not be slurred over. It was a downright challenge! The matter must be thrashed out. For four months he poured over books on surgery and anatomy. Then, having acquired a knowledge of the subject—adequate, though ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... free-thinker makes use of his freedom mainly to vent nonsense. We should he the better for a vigorous and watchful enemy to hammer us into cohesion and discipline; and I, for one, lament that the bench of Bishops cannot show a man of the calibre of Butler of the "Analogy," who, if he were alive, would make short work of much of the current a ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... interminable song. It arises in unexpected places, and is a fairly sure item in the gathering of the younger folk, both in towns and villages, in the cool of the evening. Concerts and theatres are fairly patronised by the more moneyed classes, but the performances are not, as a rule, of a very high calibre. There is a subsidised theatre at Lisbon, but it does little to ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... on the morning of the 10th ult. against the entrance to the R.E. Dump at A.21, C.2.4. It would appear that during the absence of the riders a hostile shell of large calibre fell on the six said bicycles, completely demolishing them, for when the riders returned after the day's work merely a few fragments remained scattered round ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... your mistake in judging him,' resumed Buckland, with emphasis, 'is that you have undervalued his intellect. I told you long ago that a man of Peak's calibre could not possibly be a supporter of dogmas and churches. No amount of plausible evidence would have made me believe in his sincerity. Let me beg you to appreciate the simple fact, that no young man of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... antiquated weapon, withdrew to a short distance, and examined it closely. He knew it belonged to the guide, but was rarely used by him since he had purchased the 44-calibre Winchester rifle, with which he could do ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... painter" might be suggested by some weak and injudicious member of about the calibre of that novelist who made use of the same expression in his report of his reception in the Colonies. This, however, would be negatived immediately, as it would be entirely in opposition to what ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... various elements to subjection—Urartians, Scythians, Cimmerians, Chaldae, and the industrious tribes of the Chalybes and the White Syrians—and, always victorious, appeared at last on the right hank of the Halys; but having reached it, he found himself face to face with foes of quite a different calibre from those with whom he had hitherto to deal. Lydia had increased both in wealth and in vigour since the days when her king Ardys informed his ally Assur-bani-pal that he had avenged the death of his father and driven the Cimmerians from the valley ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... are a dead man," shouted Tom, as he flourished his pistol so that his assailant could obtain a fair view of its calibre, and in the hope that the fellow would be willing to adopt a politician's expedient, and compromise the matter by ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... "The male of the species, when he is a man of Robert's attainments and calibre, can be swerved from pursuit of the female he covets, by nothing ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and support the Italians. To have deliberately joined Napoleon in what after all was an unprovoked attack on a friendly prince of the same nation, was an act which could have been undertaken only by a man of the calibre of Frederick the Great. After all, Austria was German; the Austrian provinces in Italy had been assigned to the Emperor by the same authority as the Polish provinces to Prussia. We can imagine ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... proper stimulating and inciting influences in play, or under circumstances, conducing, generally, to mental strength and vigor, to note; and which we may employ as a reliable basis for judgment; and it would be manifestly unfair to argue weak mental calibre, or to presage small mental capacity in the Indian, from his present deplorable state of inertness, a condition which has been sadly impressed and confirmed by repressive legislation, and of which that legislation, by practically denying him occupation of improving fields of thought, and, indeed, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... said of "The Lives of Mahomet and his Successors," published two years subsequently. Here, as elsewhere, Irving has correctly discriminated the biographer's province from the historian's, and leaving the philosophical investigation of cause and effect to writers of Gibbon's calibre, has applied himself to represent the picturesque features of the age as embodied in the actions and utterances of its most characteristic representatives. His last days were devoted to a biography of Washington, undertaken in an enthusiastic spirit, but which the author found ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... and to relieve me of all the details of this most difficult work. General Foster then concluded to go on to Port Royal, to send back to us six hundred thousand rations, and all the rifled guns of heavy calibre, and ammunition on hand, with which I thought we could reach the city of Savannah, from the positions already secured. Admiral Dahlgren then returned with me in the Harvest Moon to Fort McAllister. This consumed all of the 14th of December; and by the 15th I had again reached ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the important battery on Day Point, at the extreme south-east. Here five thirty-two pounders—and, three hundred yards away to the west, in the great Windlass Battery, no fewer than eleven guns of the same calibre—had grinned defiance at the ships of France. To-day the grass grew on their empty platforms, the nettles sprouted from their angles ... and the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of minimum strength, but it may, on the other hand, be of much more than average calibre. The Third Hand has yet to be heard from, and if, as is possible, he have considerable strength in the suit that the Second Hand thinks of declaring, such a bid will offer an ideal opportunity for a profitable double. The Second Hand, therefore, ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... when trodden on. Its worm-likeness is significant in another sense also, in that it is this very diminutiveness in size—the coils into which it is thrown, the spongy thickness of its walls, and the readiness with which its calibre or its circulation is blocked—that is the fundamental cause of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... something of the calibre of old Ross's, the sexton, burst into horse-merriment. "Why's he sittin' so still, think 'ee? Ho! Ho! See un lickin' his chops—ha! ha!"—and he roared afresh. While from afar you could hear the distant rumbling ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... a time when I was capable of that—there was a time when I could teach, and teach with pleasure.' He paused. Rose could have scourged herself for the tremor she felt creeping over her. Why should it be to her so new and strange a thing that a man, especially a man of these years and this calibre, should confide in her, should speak to her intimately of himself? After all, she said to herself angrily, with a terrified sense of importance, she was a child no longer, though her mother and sisters would treat her as one. 'When we were chatting the other night,' ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... remorse, for he had, as he admitted, unjustly put his other son Demetrius to death on the calumnies of one far worse than he was. Perseus, the survivor, inherited his father's hatred of the Romans with his kingdom, but was not of a calibre to carry out his designs, as his small and degraded mind was chiefly possessed by avarice. He is said not even to have been legitimate, but that Philip's wife obtained him when a baby from his real mother, a midwife of Argos, named Gnathaina, and palmed ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Another class is made for under-secretaries and subordinates, sharp, and ingenious men, the real business-men of the House. Another class, perfectly distinct, is that of the matter-of-fact men, largely recruited from among opulent merchants, bankers sent from country constituencies, and others of that calibre, who are formidable on every question of figures, are terrible on tariffs, and evidently think, that there is no book of wisdom on earth but a ledger. Then come the country gentlemen, generally an excellent and honest race, but to whom a life ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the following day at ten o'clock A. M., and early in the afternoon we captured the "Quaker Guns" at Centreville. The enemy had actually placed in the earthworks or forts which commanded the road, large trunks of trees, resembling cannon of heavy calibre, which frowned down upon us from the heights. Had it not been for the information we had received from contrabands on the march, that the enemy had evacuated, a report confirmed by the curling smoke which rose from ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... as La Fosseuse's life," answered Genestas, "I should still be glad to know about it; I should like to know the untoward events that could bring a man of your calibre into ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... of his poems attributes to Fergusson 'glorious pairts.' He was certainly a youth of remarkable powers, although 'pairts' rather than high genius seems to express his calibre, he can hardly be said to sing, and he never soars. His best poems, such as 'The Farmer's Ingle,' are just lively daguerreotypes of the life he saw around him—there is nothing ideal or lofty in any of them. His 'ingle-bleeze' burns ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of the Belgians is often heard of. We hear of him at the head of his army, consulting his staff, reviewing his weary and decimated troops. We know his calibre now, both as man and soldier. He stands out as one of the truly heroic figures of ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the big fires—"amazing old chap—real old chieftain," said Jim, "with his little fierce eyes—a pair of immense flintlock pistols on his knees. Magnificent things, ebony, silver-mounted, with beautiful locks and a calibre like an old blunderbuss. A present from Stein, it seems—in exchange for that ring, you know. Used to belong to good old McNeil. God only knows how he came by them. There he sat, moving neither hand nor foot, a flame of dry brushwood ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... object whom he had helped to drive back into the cabin a foe of a calibre suited to his size, and one whom he could tackle, Bob Howlett shouted to his men—"Cut 'em down if they resist," and then to Mark. "Now you slave-catching dog, surrender, or this goes through ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... feet high, with a round embattled tower at each corner. On the east face is a fine large gateway for the entrance, with a curtain as high as the wall itself. Inside the gate is a piece of ordnance painted red, with the largest calibre I ever saw.[8] This is fired once a year, at the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... well to call love a madness. Any departure from rationality is madness, and for a man of Charles J. Johnson's calibre, suicide is an extremely irrational act. But he also killed Louisa Naveret, wherein he was as selfish as he was mad. Convinced that he was not to possess her, he was determined that no other ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... delicious instrumental nocturne. The action of the piece is breathless and vivid, and the music scarcely pretends to do more than furnish a suitable accompaniment to it. Of late years Massenet has confined himself principally to works of slight calibre, which have been on the whole more successful than many of his earlier and more ambitious efforts. 'Sapho' (1897), an operatic version of Daudet's famous novel, and 'Cendrillon' (1899), a charming fantasia on ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... resplendency of plumes, epaulettes, and gold lace. As soon as Lunalilo reached the California, the yards of the three ships were manned, and amidst cheering which rent the air, and the deafening thunder of a royal salute from sixty-three guns of heavy calibre, the popular descendant of seventy generations of sceptred savages stepped on board the flag-ship's deck. No higher honours could have been paid to the Emperor "of all the Russias." I have seen few sights more curious than that of the representative of the American Republic ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... this left-handed compliment, but he did not venture to resent the impeachment. Plutarch handled the gun with the confident facility of an expert, poised it to ascertain the weight, noticed the calibre and the maker's name, admired the beauty of the stock, and tested the action of the trigger, lightly lifting the maple breech to his shoulder. The spectators marvelled at the delicate touch of his ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Charleston, three-storied and faced with verandas: such are the features of the Battery. Lately four large iron guns, mounted like field-pieces, form an additional attraction to boys and soldierly-minded men. Nobody knew their calibre; the policemen who watched them could not say; the idlers who gathered about them disputed upon it: they were eighteen pounders; they were twenty-fours; they were thirty-sixes. Nobody could tell what they were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... the sliding-doors, which go into the sleeping-apartment, is a lady's small writing-desk, with a drawer on the right-hand side, in which is a pearl-handled 32-calibre revolver. The front of the desk is open at rise. On top of the desk is a desk lamp and a large box of candy; inside the desk is writing material, &c. In pigeon-hole left there is a small photo and frame, which ANNIE places on the ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... answer for the execution of so responsible an office, made, as it certainly will be, one of the great objects of attack on the part of Opposition. This will make it necessary to send him up to the House of Lords, for which he has neither fortune nor calibre sufficient. It has been a question with Pitt and myself, whether it would be possible for me to accept of it. At one time, he appeared much disposed to this; but I must confess that my mind has never gone to it at all. The situation would unquestionably ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... the Main Base. Alterations in the personnel of the third party were also made, by which the Main Base would be increased in strength for scientific work, and the other party under the leadership of Wild would be composed of men of specially good sledging calibre, besides being representative of the leading branches of ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... stomach on level earth. Another silhouette, that of an infantryman running, was peppered with white points in arms and legs and parts of the body that were not vital, to show in how many places a man may be hit with a small-calibre bullet and ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... country were to stand in a city street before the window of a shop, gazing into it with open mouth, he would do more in five or six minutes to measure the power and calibre of the passing men and women than almost any device that could be arranged. Ninety-five out of a hundred of them, probably, would smile a superior smile at him and hurry on. Out of the remaining five, four would look again and pity him. ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... me leave to stick to facts; then I know where I am." The fallacy of this reasoning is obvious to us, because it happens to deal with facts about which we have long made up our minds. But let an argument of precisely the same calibre be applied to matters which are still under debate, and it may be questioned whether a British audience would not applaud it as sound, and esteem the speaker who used it a safe man—not brilliant or showy, perhaps, but thoroughly sensible and hard-headed. If such reasonings could pass ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... three of his men laughed gruffly at these remarks, and threw leer-eyed looks at me. I asked one who seemed bad, what calibre his gun was. 'Forty-five ha'r trigger,' he answered. I nosed around over their plunder purpose. They had things drying around like Bannock ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... the highest calibre have been frequent visitors here, at the Festivals and at the Theatres, though the native-born sons of song who have attained high rank in the profession number but few. Under "Musical Festivals" appear the names of all the leading ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... the qualities of a well-read student of philosophy, a clear and accurate thinker, a thorough master of the principles which in his recent work he undertakes to explain and to extend, and a writer gifted in a remarkable degree with the power of lucid exposition. Such being the intellectual calibre of the man who elaborates this new system of scientific theology, I confess that, on first seeing his work, I experienced a faint hope that, in the higher departments of the Philosophy of Evolution as conceived by Mr. Spencer and elaborated ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... the only man in France of sufficient calibre to invent and carry out a scheme of ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... reached the zenith of his power, the adulation he received was somewhat of a parody on the flattery of courtiers. True, he had his bards from Grub Street who sang his praises, and he had letters to show from Sarah of Marlborough and others of that calibre, but his chief worshippers were cooks, musicians, and even imprisoned highwaymen—one of whom disclosed the secrets of the craft to him—who wrote him dedications, letters, poems, and what not. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... such poems are unaware that the most learned of men and the gravest and purest livers have regularly done the same thing. But I feel sure that I shall easily obtain permission from those who know the character and calibre of the authors in whose footsteps I am treading, to stray in company with men whom it is an honour to follow, not only in their serious but in their lightest moods. I will not mention the names of those still ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... it all. The knitters round her ware talking loudly. Even Charlotte was almost forgotten whilst Deroulede talked. He had a fine voice, of strong calibre, which echoed powerfully ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the artery which seemed to form the plexus, which was, if I rightly recollect, in this instance an intercostal artery, and dissecting it under water, I found, to my surprise, that the artery, so long as I followed it, never gave off any branches, but continued of the same calibre throughout, making innumerable flexuosities or turnings. Thus, on a plexiform mass of this kind being cut across, the first impression is, that a great number of arterial branches or arteries have been divided, whilst in fact the entire plexus seems to be ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... Ralston's wretchedness increased in proportion. He brooded miserably over the scene he had witnessed; troubled, aside from his own interest in Dora, that she should be misled by a man of Smith's moral calibre. While he had delighted in her unworldly, childlike belief in people and things, in this ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... be the one best suited for the opening chapters of a revelation vouchsafed for the accomplishment of moral, not scientific purposes, and at once destined to be contemporary with every stage of civilization, and to address itself to minds of every various calibre, and every different degree ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... we were outward bound for Halifax. She carried twelve nine-pounder carronades and two long nines, beside a big fellow on a traverse; and we had the guns you see—eight nine-pounders and one chaser of the same calibre—post-office guns, we call them. But we beat her off after two ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice in Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole, in Chatham, and in William Pitt. In oratory as everyone knows, the eighteenth century was surpassingly great, and never before or since has the country produced a political philosopher of the calibre of Burke. What England reaped in literature during the period of which Pope has been selected as the most striking figure, it will be my endeavour to show in the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... watching him through partially closed eyes. "You are not telling the truth. You are a busy man, with definite work, but that is no affair of mine. I recognize in you a different calibre from that of these rich young idlers in Howard's class. I am going to take you into my confidence, for you understand the need for secrecy, and will surely help in every way—noblesse oblige. This man Cronin, the detective, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... started for Ullerton, and I examined all the evidence I could get on that subject. I made myself familiar with the Rev. Alexander Keith of Mayfair, who helped to bring clandestine marriages into vogue amongst the swells, and with Dr. Gaynham—agreeably nicknamed Bishop of Hell—and more of the same calibre; and the result of my investigations convinced me that in those days a hare-brained young reprobate must have found it rather more difficult to avoid matrimony than to achieve it. He might be married when he was tipsy; he might be married ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... In August it neither liked nor had the habit of using the spade. Today those who see our trenches are astounded. They are veritable improvised fortresses, proof against the 77-millimeter gun and often against artillery of higher calibre. During the last five months not a single encounter can be cited in which our infantry did not have the advantage over the German infantry. All the enemy's attacks have been repulsed, except to the north of Soissons, where their success was ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... remained mystified, but at this juncture there proceeded from a bundle of rugs in the neighbourhood of the girl's lower ribs, a sharp yapping sound, of such a calibre as to be plainly audible over the confused noise of Mamies who were telling Sadies to be sure and write, of Bills who were instructing Dicks to look up old Joe in Paris and give him their best, and of all the fruit-boys, candy-boys, magazine-boys, American-flag-boys, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and calibre is seldom obscure. The great popular writers of the nineteenth century—Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Tolstoy—wrote so that all could understand. A really big artist has something important to say, something vast to show, ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... becoming his own. An ambitious timeserver like Lomenie, or a contented adherent of use and wont like Morellet, might well regard such considerations as the products of a weak and eccentric scrupulosity. Turgot was of other calibre, holding it to be only a degree less unprincipled than the avowed selfishness of the adventurer, to contract so serious an engagement on the strength of common hearsay and current usage, without ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... Colonel Bomford, of very large calibre, used for throwing shot or shells. A ten-inch columbiad weighs 15,400 pounds, and is ten and ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... at all times, simply to destroy these terrible reptiles. There never was a better rifle than "the Dutchman," made by Holland, of Bond Street. This little weapon was a double-barrelled breechloader, and carried the Boxer bullet of government calibre, with a charge of three drachms of powder. The accuracy of both barrels was extraordinary; it was only sighted up to 250 yards, but by taking the head very full, it carried with great precision up to 300. I could generally make certain of crocodiles if basking on a sandbank within a hundred yards, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker |
