"Composing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of her pen-handle between her teeth, her eyes fixed absently upon the green park beyond the open window, composing a gorgeous costume in her mind. Before she could even decide whether to advise a ball-dress with CREPE DE CHINE, or a tea-gown with Oriental cashmere, one of the noiseless library doors swung back, and ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... said that these blocks contained not only pictures but text, one very important block book consisting of text alone. What determined the form of the letters composing this text? ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... turned pale, bit his lips, and cast a glance of malignant hate at Pierre de l'Hospital; then, composing his countenance, he spoke with an ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... prepossessing. "He led me out into his garden, and showed me the gravel walk in which thousands of his lines were composed. He had just returned from Staffa, and within three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's Cave, and was composing a fourth when he was called in to see me. He said, 'If you are interested in my verses, perhaps you will like to hear these lines.' I gladly assented, and he recollected himself for a few moments, and then stood forth and repeated, one after ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... in the university. Nor was the youth's proficiency in classical learning less remarkable. In one respect, indeed, he appeared to disadvantage when compared with even second-rate and third-rate men from public schools. He had never, while under Wilson's care, been in the habit of composing in the ancient languages: and he therefore never acquired that knack of versification which is sometimes possessed by clever boys whose knowledge of the language and literature of Greece and Rome is very superficial. It would have been utterly out of his power to produce such charming ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and Mr. Stewart would arrive a few days before, each on a month's leave. As Happy was one of the moving spirits of the show, he was up to his eyes in business. Clever in everything he undertook, he was especially talented in music, playing well and composing in no mediocre manner. He had written practically all the score of the musical comedy to be given by the Masqueraders, and among ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... clock in the steeple struck nine, a vast concourse of the beauty and the chivalry of our splendid city, composing wealth beyond the dreams of the kings of India and forming a galaxy only excelled in splendour by the knightly company at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, assembled to witness the marriage of Miss May ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... heard them of old. Here, where only a muffled murmur comes from the work-a-day world, a man in the last century might have dreamed away his life, lonely as Peter Wilkins on the island. One can imagine the amiable recluse composing his homely romance amid such surroundings. Perhaps it was the one labour of his life. He may have come to the Inn originally with the aspiration of making fame and money; and then the spirit of cloistered calm turned him from such vulgar paths, and instead of losing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... time, some of them violent; but, to my surprise and satisfaction, when my articles were finally brought together in book form, the opposition seemed to have exhausted itself. There were even indications of approval in some quarters where the articles composing it had previously been attacked; and I received letters thoroughly in sympathy with the work from a number of eminent Christian men, including several doctors of divinity, and among these two bishops, one of the Anglican and one ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... student of the career of Joseph Smith, Jr., and of his family and his associates, up to the year 1827, will fail to find any ground for the belief that he alone, or simply with their assistance, was capable of composing the Book of Mormon, crude in every sense as that work is. We must therefore accept, as do the Mormons, the statement that the text was divinely revealed to Smith, or must look for some directing hand behind the scene, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... this volume consists in this, that all the stories composing it belong not only to the same period but have been written one after another in the order in which they ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... Mrs Quilp at home, and she, little expecting the return of her lord, was just composing herself for a refreshing slumber when the sound of his footsteps roused her. She had barely time to seem to be occupied in some needle-work, when he entered, accompanied by the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... is writing this, he is recommending Chapman's "Homer" to Coleridge; is refusing to admit Coleridge's bona fide debt to himself of fifteen pounds; is composing Latin letters; and in other respects deporting himself like a "gentleman who lives at home at ease;" not like a poor clerk, obliged to husband his small means, and to deny himself the cheap luxury of books that he had long coveted. "Do you remember" (his sister says to him, in ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... broached the subject, he reviewed all that is known to the white race concerning the buried cities of Central America and of the descendants of that mighty race of people whose once high state of civilization cannot be questioned. When he concluded Jake indulged in but one remark before composing himself for slumber: ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... thing as it happened. I shall write it fully, because I must get it off my mind. I find that I am always composing it, and that my lips move when I walk along the street or even when I am sitting in church. How terrible if I should some day speak it aloud. My great-grandmother was a Catholic. She was a Bullard. Perhaps it is from her that I have this overwhelming impulse to confession. ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the cavities and interstices of those bodies composing strata, must be in a stagnating state; consequently, it can only act upon the surfaces of those cavities which are to be filled up. But with what are they to be filled? Not with water; they are full of that already: Not with the ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Sunday morning, without the expected word, the vigil was taken up in other directions. The composing, telegraph, and editorial rooms joined in keeping guard. The wire began to tick off its code messages of riots in Berlin, further spreading of the "Red" revolt in the army and navy, the flight of the dethroned Kaiser to Holland, and the other numerous signs all pointing to positive assurance that ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... world was formed from atoms, ascribed their combinations to certain immutable properties received from the hand of the Creator, such as general gravitation, chemical affinity, or animal appetency, instead of ascribing them to a blind chance; the doctrine of atoms, as constituting or composing the material world by the variety of their combinations, so far from leading the mind to atheism, would strengthen the demonstration of the existence of a Deity, as the first cause of all things; because the analogy resulting from our perpetual experience of cause and effect ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... been in actual danger of being seized on by the grasp of the pursuing enemy. Nor was it till I had almost reached the well-known burial-place, in which it was Peter Pattison's hap to meet the far-famed personage called Old Mortality, that I made a halt for the purpose of composing my perturbed spirits, and considering what was to be done; for as yet my mind was agitated by a chaos of passions, of which anger was predominant; and for what reason, or against whom, I entertained such tumultuous displeasure, it was not easy ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... power had never been so great as it now was, exhibited the utmost anxiety to avert, if possible, any further effusion of blood. Under his auspices a petition was drawn up in the name of the Queen of Navarre, and the Princes, Seigneurs, Chevaliers, and gentlemen composing the Protestant army. A messenger was sent to the Duke of Anjou to request a passport for the deputies who were to carry it to the court. But the duke was unwilling to terminate a war in which he had ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... in their own dominions, and forced their subjects to work for them as they pleased without giving them any payment. By some means we can't understand these mighty blocks of sandstone composing this temple and many others were brought from a place farther up the river. It is supposed that they were put on great rafts and floated down at flood-time, but the handling of them is still a mystery. The men who dealt with them had no steel tools, no driving force of steam or electricity at ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... in the place, but it did contain a makeshift sort of a printing-office, and towards this Billy Brackett directed his steps, after learning at what hour the next down-river boat was expected. Here he spent some time in composing a small circular, of which he ordered five hundred copies to be struck off, and distributed broadcast. His boat came along and he had to leave before this was ready for press; but he had engaged the services of his new acquaintance the night-watchman, who promised to place the bills wherever they ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... who played the violin limped down the corridor into the ward. She was greeted with silence, that truest tribute, and with the instant composing of the restless ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... assembly, that it was just and proper to proceed judicially against the president, and those captains and others who adhered to him and abetted him in these proceedings, and that they ought to be proceeded against in a formal manner, by legal process. The persons composing this assembly of men of learning, dared not to contradict Gonzalo on this occasion or to oppose his will in any respect: A process was accordingly instituted in due form, informations taken and recorded, and judgment pronounced in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... reported, or perhaps invented, his dying choice of the best beloved and most deserving of his nephews, and conjured Justin to prevent the disorders of the multitude, if they should perceive, with the return of light, that they were left without a master. After composing his countenance to surprise, sorrow, and decent modesty, Justin, by the advice of his wife Sophia, submitted to the authority of the senate. He was conducted with speed and silence to the palace; the guards saluted their new sovereign; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... condition of affairs, by no means infrequent, the photoplaywright may find a strong reason for being familiar with the people composing a certain company, for the actual structure of the play as well as the title will influence its acceptance in some instances. It is well to ask: Are men or women featured in their pictures; or do they put out stories with a male and a female "lead" of ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... the same trip, I saw it gouge out a circular groove around portions of a similar bluff, and leave them standing as isolated columns, with heavy base and capital, presently to be solidified into just such rock pillars as throng the cemeteries or aid in composing the strange architectural piles mentioned above. Surveyor-General Pierce of Colorado, (a man whose fine scientific genius and culture have already done yeoman's service in the study of that most interesting Territory,) on a certain occasion, saw one of these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... with that—and it's bothered me a good deal—not knowing it, I mean. I couldn't arrange so well about the making. Because making white satin's one thing, and muslin's another,—and lace is different from 'em both—and indeed from most other things except spider's webs." All which pleasant and composing sentiments were uttered while Miss Bezac was clearing a chair for Faith, and putting her in it, and laying her various pieces of ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... and venerable ex-slave as an artless exponent of freedom, freedom of conduct as well as of speech, the author of this trivial volume is perhaps not composing an individual so truly as individualizing a composite, ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... the letter again, then consulted a time-table; she could change at Exeter and catch a train that would enable her to reach home that evening. She could make up a story to her stepmother to account for her sudden appearance. Blanche began composing in her mind what she would say to her. She would pretend not to have had the letter; even her gentle, garrulous little stepmother's good opinion was dear to her. She would seal it up again and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... an ardent nature like Romola's. Such an expression is not the stamp of insincerity; it is the stamp simply of a shallow soul, which will often be found sincerely striving to fill a high vocation, sincerely composing its countenance to the utterance of sublime formulas, but finding the muscles twitch or relax in spite of belief, as prose insists on coming instead of poetry to the man who has not the divine frenzy. Fra ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Rob had anticipated, there was a series of explosions, and they could even hear the patter of bullets striking the piled-up stones composing ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... Thomas moved his headquarters from Gallatin to Nashville, and there concentrated the divisions of Rousseau and Negley, and Walker's brigade of Fry's division. Of the five divisions composing the Centre, that of J. J. Reynolds was guarding the Louisville and Nashville railroad; and on the same duty were the remaining two brigades of Fry's division. R. B. Mitchell was assigned to the command of Nashville with his division as the garrison. This left, under the immediate command of ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... little state which had given him—an exile and a Catholic—so generous a welcome in 1819. The ideas of 1830 were shaking the fabric and disturbing the equilibrium of the Swiss Confederation as a whole, and of many of the cantons composing it. Geneva was still apparently tranquil while her neighbors were disturbed, but no one looking back on the history of the republic, and able to measure the strength of the Radical force in Europe after the fall of Charles X., could have felt much doubt but that a few more years would bring ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by Freycinet in composing his crew chiefly of sailors who were also skilled in some trade; so that out of the 120 men who manned the corvette Uranie, no less than fifty could serve on occasion as carpenters, ropemakers, sailmakers, blacksmiths, or ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... heaven-sweet harmonies. Of his beautiful life-work, Roumanille has written: "As organist of the church of St. Pierre, Saboly soon won a great and beautiful renown as a musician; but his fame and his glory have come to him because of the blessed thought that he had of composing his marvellous noels. Yet it was not until the year 1658, when he himself was fifty-four years old, that he decided to tie together and to publish his first sheaf of them. From that time onward, every year until his end, a fresh ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... assertion—coupled with whorling periods of vituperation—have ever been considered by the accusers all that was necessary to establish the accusations. It has never, for instance, been considered necessary to cite the names of the cardinals composing that regiment of victims. That, of course, would be to challenge easy refutation of the wholesale charge; and refutation is not desired by those who prefer ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... view of results, although individual compositors are sometimes wonderfully expert. But it is only when a great many men labor actively during more hours than ought to be spent in toil, that any considerable work is accomplished by this method. The composing-room of a large daily paper, for instance, presents, day and night, a spectacle of the almost ceaseless industry of jaded operatives. The need of relief in this respect was long ago recognized. The attempt at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... exhausting labours. He was employed at all seasons, and often in the night time, and in the most inclement weather, preaching the gospel in the fields, visiting families, and conversing with the people individually and in groups, attending stated general meetings—taking part in their deliberations, composing differences, confronting gainsayers and opponents, and writing the papers and manifestoes of the persecuted party. His services were in constant and increasing demand, in various places widely scattered. After he had been engaged ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... Clinton, who, however, a year later, resigned the senatorship to become mayor of New York. The inherent strength of the United States Senate rested, then as now, upon its constitutional endowment, but the small body of men composing it, having comparatively little to do and doing that little by general assent, with no record of their debates, evidently did not appreciate that it was the most powerful single chamber in any legislative body in the world. It is doubtful if the framers of the Constitution recognised ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... it appeared at Rome in 1593, and a Hebrew version at Naples in 1491. Of the Latin version there were about thirty editions, founded on the original translation by Gerard of Cremona. The 15th century has the honour of composing the great commentary on the text of the Canon, grouping around it all that theory had imagined, and all that practice had observed. Other medical works translated into Latin are the Medicamenta Cordialia, Canticum de Medicina, Tractatus ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... creditor had lost patience. One morning in January, five years after my second meeting with Phyllis, I sat at my desk in the office. It was raining; a cold thin rain. The window was blurred. The water in the steam-pipes went banging away. I was composing an editorial which treated the diplomatic relations between this country and England. The roar of Park Row distracted me. Now and then I would go to the window and peer down on the living stream below. A dense cloud of steam hung ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... small degree in which we admit it, a loss of the sureness which means so much in the preaching of the word of truth? The question is a large one, and to answer it fully much more than all the paper composing this book would be required. It may be that the spirit of the age is not a spirit favourable to belief. In some periods faith is glorified; in others, doubt. In these days, it might be thought from much we hear, a little ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... papal system of religion. But, the press being closely watched in the French capital, it was thought best to have the placard printed in Switzerland, where, indeed, the most competent and experienced hands might be found for composing such a paper. The messenger employed was a young man named Feret, an apprentice of the king's apothecary;[332] and the printing seems to have been done in the humble but famous establishment of Pierre Van Wingle, in the retired ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the roof has been made, the thatcher begins at the bottom, and ties a row of bundles of straw, side by side, on to the framework. Then he begins a second row, allowing the ends of the bundles composing it to overlap the heads of ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... beautiful youth with the tragic, exceptional fate. This caused him a solemn excitement. But he also knew that he owed himself a significant experience. Of course Billy was a part of it, that was settled, and now he was devising plans, busily composing the destiny of the beautiful, beloved youth. Occasionally he would stand still at the end of the avenue and look up at the house, up at the balcony on which the white figures of the two girls sat motionless, their shining faces turned toward ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... to his lodgings by his maimed limb, he beguiled the time and eased the pain by composing the Clarinda epistles, writing songs for Johnson, and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Craigmiles of Aberdeen were composing themselves to the hopeful view that Ellen's discovery of the date had given them, Larry Kildene and Amalia were seated in a car, luxurious for that day, speeding eastward over the desert across which Amalia and her father and mother had fled ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... Majors and Adjutants, holding a stumpy pencil in one hand and a burning brow in the other, are composing Operation Orders which shall effect ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... said Candace, before composing herself to sleep, "I can't feel it in my bones dat dis yer weddin's gwine to come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... indeed, I am aware that the Corinthians were remarkably attentive to provide for the maintenance and good condition of their cavalry by taxes levied on the inheritance of widows and orphans. To the first equestrian orders Lucius also added new ones, composing a body of three hundred knights. And this number he doubled, after having conquered the AEquicoli, a large and ferocious people, and dangerous enemies of the Roman State. Having likewise repulsed ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... were located the business office of the Call, was sixteen stories high and very narrow. The editorial rooms, composing room and pressroom were in a small three-story building immediately in the rear of ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... doubt, respecters of tonality also in Emanuel Bach's day, to whom such free measures must have seemed foolhardy. While composing this sonata Bach was, apparently, in daring mood. The slow middle movement in D minor opens with an inversion of the dominant ninth, and the Finale in ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... the globe to be evenly covered with sea, to a depth say of a thousand fathoms—then, whatever might be the mineral matter composing the sea-bottom, little or no deposit would be formed upon it, the abrading and denuding action of water, at such a depth, ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... close reasoning, the art of condensing a phrase or a paragraph, an aptitude for attending to the daily business of a worldly, civil life, especially the faculty of carrying on a discussion, of writing a good letter, even the talent for composing a good report or memorial.[6220] A young man with these skills, some scraps of natural philosophy, and with still briefer notions of geography and history, has all the general, preliminary culture he needs, all the information he requires for aspiring to one of the careers ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... yet received their "perfect consummation and bliss"; that they wait for this till the coming of our Lord and the Resurrection, when it shall be "both in body and soul," "in eternal and everlasting glory." We speak of them, therefore, as composing ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... bones! Do you think you're having a day in the country?" asked Coupeau, in a rage. "You're like Monsieur Beranger, composing verses, perhaps! Will you give me those irons! Did any one ever see such a thing! Strolling about on the house-tops! Why not bring your sweetheart at once, and tell her of your love? Will you give me those ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... took notice of me, invited me to his library, and very kindly lent me such books as I chose to read. I now took a fancy to poetry, and made some little pieces; my brother, thinking it might turn to account, encouraged me, and put me on composing occasional ballads. One was called The Lighthouse Tragedy, and contained an account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with his two daughters: the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the Grub-street-ballad style;[17] ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... some very loose notions on the subject of discipline, L'Isle mounted his hobby, and said that he had pretty much come into the mechanical theory on military matters. "An army is a machine; the men composing it, parts of that machine; and the more their personal and individual characters are obliterated, by assimilating them to the nature of precise and definite parts of one complicated organization, the better will they serve their purpose. Now, a machine ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... help of the editor, who was above all things an enterprising citizen and a patriot, the "official notice" was drafted, doctored and approved in the dingy composing-room of the Tinkletown Banner. The lone compositor, with a bucket of paste, sallied forth and, under the critical eye of the town marshal, "stuck up" the poster in places where no one could ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... illustrious senator of the Jackson era, was then, as he had been for twenty-four years, the political autocrat of Missouri. He had long been convinced of the latent treason of the Calhoun school of politicians. He was able to combat the schemes of the Southern oligarchy composing and controlling the Cabinet of President Polk; unsuccessfully, it is true, yet with but slight diminution of his popularity at home. Nevertheless, the seeds of disunion had been borne to his State; they had taken root; and, like all evil in life, they proved self-perpetuating and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Tales for Fifteen" was apparently written in 1821, when Cooper became afflicted with writer's block while composing his first best-selling novel, "The Spy". Cooper had envisaged a series of five stories, to be called "American Tales," and which were to deal respectively with "Imagination", "Heart", "Matter", "Manner", and "Matter and Manner". Only "Imagination" was completed; ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... word, that which we call an abbe, is an unknown species in England. Here all priests are reserved, and nearly all are pedants. When they are told that in France young men known for their debauched lives and raised to the prelacy by the intrigues of women make love publicly, amuse themselves by composing amorous songs, give long and dainty suppers every night, and go thence to ask the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, and boldly call themselves successors of the apostles, they thank God that they are Protestants;—but ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Davis. I knew the North to be strong, and believed that the people would fight for the flag that they pretended to venerate so highly. The Republican party had just emerged from a heated campaign, flushed with victory, and I could not think that the hosts composing the party would quietly yield all they had gained in the Presidential canvass. A show of war from the South, I felt, would lead to actual war in the North; and with the two sections bitterly arrayed against each other, I preferred to ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... you'll take my word when I say he deserved it. The one thing that hurts is that he had the triumph of being the first to sever diplomatic relations. In the language of Shorty McCabe and my fellow countrymen, he threw me down! Twenty minutes later, after composing my soul and powdering my nose, I was telephoning all over the city trying to find Duncan. I got him at last, and he came to the Ritz on the run. Then we picked up a residuary old horse-hansom on Fifth Avenue and went rattling off through Central Park. There I—who once boasted of seven proposals ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... this poem is a zi-sei, or lyric made at the point of death. Naga-Haru committed suicide after an unsuccessful defence of the strong castle Mi-Ki against Hashiba Hideyoshi in 1580. His wife followed his example, composing this ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... which still prevails in Italy and Sicily, did certainly leave the judgment to the body of spectators, who determined the victor by show of hands. But this custom has been the destruction of the poets; for they are now in the habit of composing with a view to please the bad taste of their judges, and the result is that the spectators instruct themselves;—and also it has been the ruin of the theatre; they ought to be having characters put before them better than their own, and so receiving a higher pleasure, ...
— Laws • Plato
... overflows from the north. All the modern countries of Western Europe are descended from the states created by these northern invaders. When first created they would be called "new" or "young" states in the sense that part or all of the people composing them were descended from races that hitherto had not been civilized, and that therefore, for the first time, entered on the career of civilized communities. In the southern part of Western Europe the new states thus formed consisted ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... in uniform style and form a handsome collection. The survey of this state, which forms a part of it, is a fine work. I trust that the delay which has ocurred may leave no unfavorable impression in the minds of the gentlemen composing the council of the ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... poet. One likes to fancy Chaucer in his declining days living at Woodstock, with his books about him, and where he could watch the daisies opening themselves at sunrise, shutting themselves at sunset, and composing his wonderful stories, in which the fourteenth century lives,—riding to battle in iron gear, hawking in embroidered jerkin and waving plume, sitting in rich and solemn feast, the monarch ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... while playing with little Isabel, and it is said she will be confined to bed for several weeks. I am very sorry for her." And, composing her face, she ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Administration Mr. Balfour was, of course, included, but his sphere of work was the shady seclusion of the Local Government Board, and, for anything that the public knew of his doings, he might have been composing a second treatise on philosophic doubt or unphilosophic cocksureness. The General Election of 1885 marked a stage in his career. The pocket-borough which he had represented since 1874 was merged, and he courageously betook himself to Manchester, where for ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... of interest that holds together the separate pictures composing this mele is slight. It will, perhaps, give to the whole a more definite meaning if we recognize that it is made up of snapshots at various objects and localities that presented themselves to one passing along the old ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... here that the various chapters composing this book—like those of "Astronomy with an Opera-glass"—were, in their original form, with the single exception of Chapter IX, published in Appletons' Popular Science Monthly. The author, it is needless to say, was much gratified by the expressed wish of many ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... afterward be so happy as to attain leisure and other opportunities, this knowledge may even turn to account to me as a man of letters, which I confess has always been the sole object of my ambition. I have long had an intention, in my riper years, of composing some history; and I question not but some greater experience in the operations of the field and the intrigues of the cabinet will be requisite, in order to enable me to speak with judgment on ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... credit thereto, why do not you the same in these jovial new chronicles of mine? Albeit when I did dictate them, I thought upon no more than you, who possibly were drinking the whilst as I was. For in the composing of this lordly book, I never lost nor bestowed any more, nor any other time than what was appointed to serve me for taking of my bodily refection, that is, whilst I was eating and drinking. And indeed that is ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... had insisted that religion was an affair not of national institutions nor of outward observance, but of the people's heart—by which heart they and their hearers must have understood the individual hearts composing it. But, in urging upon his generation repentance, faith and conversion to God, Jeremiah's language is more thorough and personal than that used by any previous prophet. The individual, as he leaves Jeremiah's hands, is ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... perished. However, the expedition of De Soto will always remain one of the most remarkable journeys in the history of North America. It had extended the Spanish claims far into the interior. With it had begun the written history of the country now composing at least eight states in the United States, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas. It had perhaps reached the present Oklahoma and Texas, and had certainly passed down the Mississippi ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... him, lord, to visit Rome, for he is dying on my hands. Dost thou know that that Lygian hostage whom thou gavest him has been found, and Vinicius, when leaving for Antium, left her in care of a certain Linus? I did not mention this to thee, for thou wert composing thy hymn, and that was more important than all besides. Vinicius wanted her as a mistress; but when she turned out to be as virtuous as Lucretia, he fell in love with her virtue, and now his desire is to marry her. She is a king's ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... joined the Muscatine migration. Just before that happened (which I think was in 1853) I disappeared one night and fled to St. Louis. There I worked in the composing-room of the "Evening News" for a time, and then started on my travels to see the world. The world was New York City, and there was a little World's Fair there. It had just been opened where the great reservoir afterward was, and where the sumptuous public library is now being built—Fifth ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... There were Guy Fawkes, Punch, his then Majesty the King, Bogy, the Man in the Moon, the Clerk of the Weather Office, a Dunce, and Old Father Christmas. Beneath each sketch was a stanza of my godmother's own composing. ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... organs of the external senses. The Archbishop of Bordeaux attested the case of a young ecclesiastic, who was in the habit of getting up during the night in a state of somnambulism, taking pen, ink, and paper, and composing and writing sermons. When he had finished one page he would read aloud what he had written, and correct it. In order to ascertain whether the somnambulist made use of his eyes, the archbishop held a piece of pasteboard under his chin to prevent his seeing the paper upon which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... him to put the family estate on a proper standing. He had arrived at this place since the year before last, and had, what is more, lived all along in very straitened circumstances. He had made the temple his temporary quarters, and earned a living by daily occupying himself in composing documents and writing letters for customers. Thus it was that Shih-yin had been in constant ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... engaged in composing a theme for Mr. Cheyne on no less a subject than the interpretation of the work of William Wordsworth, I found myself unexpectedly sprawling on the floor, in my descent kicking the table so vigorously as to send the ink-well a foot or two toward the ceiling. This, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in size as the comet approaches the orb, and diminishes as it recedes from him. This depends upon the degree of heat to which the comet is exposed, which has the effect of driving off or evaporating some of the matter composing the head. During the time the comet is travelling round the Sun there is a continuous emission of this highly attenuated matter, which is visible as the tail, but when the comet begins to recede from the orb and reaches cooler regions ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... Trabue's brigade, of Breckenridge's reserve, off to his extreme left, to report to General Beauregard, who, stationed at Shiloh Church, was superintending operations in that quarter. The three brigades, Bowen, Statham, Trabue, composing the reserve, had marched in rear of General Johnston's right in echelon, at intervals of eight hundred yards. Johnston, observing with anxiety the stubborn resistance opposed to Withers' division, and eager ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... touching the bishop on the shoulder, 'you must take your composing draught and get to bed. You'll be all ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... laughed to myself when thinking how a large part of the material composing this book was collected. It came to me in conversations, at intervals, during several years, with the shepherd. In his long life in his native village, a good deal of it spent on the quiet down, he had seen many things it was or would be interesting to hear; the things which had interested him, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... relations to the Federal Government." It is to be noted that Johnson fixed the qualifications of delegates and of those who elected them, but, this stage once passed, the convention or the legislature would "prescribe the qualifications of electors... a power the people of the several States composing the Federal Union have rightfully exercised from the origin of the government to the present time." The President also directed the various cabinet officers to extend the work of their departments over the Confederate ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... and the afternoon was all her own, she was able to give herself up to this unexpected delight, and spent many hours composing new groups of flowers, and arranging them in fanciful designs. When a maid brought up her solitary tea she lifted her flushed face and murmured, "Oh, can it be tea-time?" and then spread out all her ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... but a man, and am apt to be hampered oftentimes by my mortal trappings. We have prolonged our conversation further than I intended. I assure you it is better for you to try to sleep, even though, as I know, you feel so wide awake. Let me give you a soothing draught; it will have the effect of composing your physical ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... vexed. Just after his portmanteaus were brought up I went out from my room to descend, when, at the moment of stepping towards the first stair, my eyes were caught by an object in the hall below, and I paused for an instant, till I saw that it was a bundle of canvas and sticks, composing a sketching tent and easel. At the same nick of time the drawing-room door opened and the affianced pair came out. They were saying they would go into the garden; and he waited a moment while she put on her hat. My idea was to let them pass on without seeing me, since they seemed ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... remembrance of his former wicked and impudent behaviour, prayed with great fervency, and said he hoped that God would yet have mercy on him. Barnham continued unmoved to the last. He did, indeed, abstain from ill-language and disturbing people at chapel, but employed his time in his cell, in composing a song to celebrate the glorious actions of himself and his companions. This was work he very much valued himself upon, and sending for the person who usually prints the dying speeches, he desired it might be inserted, but it containing incitements ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... a third of that composing the band of Borlasse; as there are only four of them. Three are on horseback, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... A current conductor arranged to avoid induction from other lines. Many kinds have been invented and made the subject of patents. A fair approximation may be attained by using a through metallic circuit and twisting the wires composing it around each other. Sometimes concentric conductors, one a wire and the other a tube, are used, insulated, one acting as return circuit for ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... They may be very old memories, forgotten during waking hours, drawn from the most obscure depths of our past, or memories of objects we have perceived distractedly, almost unconsciously, while awake. They may be fragments of broken memories, composing an incoherent and unrecognizable whole. In a waking state our memories are closely connected with our present situation (unless we be given to day-dreams!). In an animal memory serves to recall to him the advantageous or injurious ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... sharpened the keen edge of his wit and perhaps magnified the irksomeness of the restraint which his older fellow-adventurer tried to put on his "unrelenting excitement," and it is possible that his feelings found vent in the novel which he then was composing. It is pleasing to remark that at a later date his confidence and esteem for his father's old friend returned to him, and that the incident ended in a way ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... was to happen, Brown arranged, as softly as he could, the means of peeping from under the coverings by which he was hidden, and awaited with a throbbing heart the issue of this strange and most unpleasant adventure. The old gipsy, in the meantime, set about arranging the dead body, composing its limbs, and straightening the arms by its side. "Best to do this," she muttered, "ere he stiffen." She placed on the dead man's breast a trencher, with salt sprinkled upon it, set one candle at the head, and another at the feet of the body, and lighted both. Then she resumed her song, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the only leading naturalist "who did not take into his very conception of a species, explicitly or by implication, the notion of a material connection resulting from the descent of the individuals composing it from a common stock, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... the first six books, all of which will be published together. Due notice will be given of succeeding issues. The orders of publication will be arranged to give as much variety of subject as possible, and the volume composing the complete works of an author will ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... ascertained that the destination of the Count D'Estaing was America, he was followed by a squadron of twelve ships of the line under Admiral Byron, who was designed to relieve Lord Howe, that nobleman having solicited his recall. The vessels composing this squadron meeting with weather unusually bad for the season, and being separated in different storms, arrived, after lingering through a tedious passage, in various degrees of distress, on different and remote parts of the American coast. Between the departure of D'Estaing from the Hook ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Porteous mob, as given by the novelist, is not, it seems, entirely accurate. Like most artists, Sir Walter took the liberty of "composing" his picture. In his "Illustrations of the Author of Waverley" (1825) Mr. Robert Chambers records the changes in facts made by Scott. In the first place, Wilson did not attack his guard, and enable ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... as we drove through the streets; with closed shops, and barred windows, and cannon planted, and soldiers riding about. At every village we passed, the drivers called for brandy, tossed off a glassful, which appeared to act like a composing draught, as they gradually recovered their equilibrium. We were glad to arrive at San Xavier, where we received a most cordial welcome, and to be removed, at least for a while, from sights and sounds of destruction. A great part of the road to Tlanapantla, the village near which San Xavier ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... his own master, as regards style; he (the "Tea-Pot") intending to show him (the "Gazette") the supreme, and indeed the withering contempt with which the criticism of him (the "Gazette") inspires the independent bosom of him (the "TeaPot") by composing for the especial gratification (?) of him (the "Gazette") a leading article, of some extent, in which the beautiful vowel—the emblem of Eternity—yet so offensive to the hyper-exquisite delicacy of him (the "Gazette") shall most certainly not be avoided by his (the "Gazette's") most obedient, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... no room for them, but men of worth fill the first offices in the state: but where the power is not vested in the laws, there demagogues abound: for there the people rule with kingly power: the whole composing one body; for they are supreme, not as individuals but in their ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... child has!" he said; "why, she is a second Mrs. Norton!" and advanced smiling to peep over her shoulder and see what pretty thing Rosa was composing. ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Composing Investigations of the Comparative Theoretical and Practical Advantages of the various Adopted or Proposed Type Systems of Construction; with numerous Formulae and Tables. By B. ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... satisfaction, as I am confident you will be no less unanimous in giving your approbation, than they have been in addressing you for it upon this occasion. For though they were not insensible of the just title that several of the Papers, composing the present volume of your Transactions, had to your particular notice, yet they did not hesitate in preferring that which I presented to you from Captain Cook, giving An account of the method he had taken to preserve the health of the crew of ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... refuge with her brother after the capture of her husband. She was one of the most beautiful females of the island; her name in the Indian language signified "The Golden Flower." She possessed a genius superior to the generality of her race, and was said to excel in composing those little legendary ballads, or areytos, which the natives chanted as they performed their national dances. All the Spanish writers agree in describing her as possessing a natural dignity and grace hardly to be credited in her ignorant and ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... it were the only sounds she heard, save the rushing water in the gorge and the thrashing of the trees when the wind blew. The minutes hung long on her hands, and the hours seemed to mock her as they dragged along in interminable sequence. With her face toward the window, she passed several hours composing a piece which had been in embryo in her heart for a long time. The solitude, the grandeur of the scenery, the wonderful lake with its curves and turns, sometimes made her forget the tragic future that ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... from being a mere spectator by discovering the case to be more serious than he had at first imagined. A scroll of smoke blew aside and revealed to him a wheat-rick in startling juxtaposition with the decaying one, and behind this a series of others, composing the main corn produce of the farm; so that instead of the straw-stack standing, as he had imagined comparatively isolated, there was a regular connection between it and the remaining ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... ports and provinces no returns are made out. All known of the important seaport of Barcelona was, that its foreign trade in the same year occupied 1,645 vessels of 173,790 tonnage. The special aggregate exports from the nine ports cited to the United Kingdom—the separate commodities composing which, as of imports, are given with exactness of detail—are stated for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... unbroken, or but rarely interrupted, series of strata through a long period of time in which the group of animals to be investigated has existed in such abundance as to furnish the requisite supply of remains; and in which, finally, the materials composing the strata are such as to ensure the preservation of these remains in a tolerably perfect ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 1893 (many of the sonnets composing this volume had appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes and elsewhwere ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... day Napoleon invited Madame Letitia to dinner, and Fouche had orders to make a strict search, during her absence, among the persons composing her household. Though he, on this occasion, did not find what he was looking for, he made a discovery which very ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... was to be given to the state officials that night, and she knew from experience that after that solemn event was concluded it would be too late for the departing mails. She seemed to have no difficulty in composing her thoughts and transferring them to paper. There were times when she would lean back, nibble the end of her pen and smile in a dreamy, retrospective fashion. No doubt her thoughts ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... sight, and lo, the old woman was no longer before him! He stared, and rubbed his eyes, but she was clean gone. Then ran he to the knolls and eminences that were scattered about, to command a view, but she was nowhere visible. So he thought, ''Twas a dream!' and he was composing himself to despair upon the scant herbage of one of those knolls, when as he chanced to gaze down the city below, he saw there a commotion and a crowd of people flocking one way; he thought, ''Twas surely no dream? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... extent. The tower, or leading feature, is first repeated by the low echo of it to the left; put your finger over this lower tower, and see how the picture is spoiled. Then the spires of Coblentz are all arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality does not matter; when we are composing a great picture, we must play the towers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if they were chessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrangement of these towers would have been too easily seen, were it not for the little one which pretends to make a triad of the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... gaining possession of the brig, only to be blown out of her a few minutes later, however; and my own impression— and Hawkesley's too, for that matter, as I afterwards discovered on comparing notes with him—was that our losses must have amounted to at least half of the men composing the expedition." ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... the sensuous natives of Hispaniola rolling up and smoking tobacco-leaves with the same persistent indolence that we recognize in the Cuban of the present day. Rough Cortes saw with surprise the luxurious Aztec composing himself for the siesta in the middle of the day as invariably as his fellow Dons in Castile. But he was amazed that the barbarians had discovered in tobacco a sedative to promote their reveries and compose them to sleep, of which the hidalgos were as yet ignorant, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... visit to the Squire and another to the Vicar, said that he was trying to kill two birds with one stone, would probably have expressed himself differently if he had premeditated his remark; and a London physician who found his patient busy composing a book of Recollections, and asked, "Why have you put it off so long?" uttered a "Thing one would rather have left unsaid." The "donniest" of Oxford dons in an unexampled fit of good nature once undertook ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... military chief, of whom a slight mention has been made, brought in with two others of inferior rank; and it was afterwards currently reported that they had been sentenced to close imprisonment. It was, also, ascertained by Velasquez, that the four companies of rangers, already noticed, composing a regiment of two hundred men, constituted the whole military force of ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... we caught sight of the animals scampering away in the distance. The outlaws had probably taken up this position under the idea that they could effectually defend themselves against us, evidently not knowing the numbers composing our party. The instant we emerged from among the trees, several bullets came flying past our heads. By a simultaneous impulse ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... friend looks and gives life to everything. She imparts intelligence to those around her. In every corner of the house some one is engaged in composing a great work.... Corinne is writing her delightful letters about Germany, which will, no doubt, prove to be the best thing she has ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... was not in a proper state of mind to be trusted with the charge of a night-watch, and that Robinson, the oldest boat-steerer, should take his place. Coffin earnestly recommended a glass of hot punch, as "composing to the nerves;" but the patient declined, though he permitted Captain Hazard to qualify a tumbler of warm wine and water with thirty drops ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... men than with individuals. From back of the chancel railing he could sway the crowd and make it all his own; whereas, taking that same crowd singly, and beyond his sacerdotal functions, he might be at the mercy of each man composing it. He knew, in short, that Cyrus Browett as one of his congregation on a Sabbath morning would be a mere atom in the plastic cosmos below him; whereas Browett by himself, with the granite hardness of his crag-like face, his cool little green eyes—unemotional as two algebraic ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... all askew; or the scheme of Light and Dark in one or two flat tones minus the balance of gradation will prove false as many times as faithful, as it draws toward completion. It is because of this that artists when composing roughly in the presence of nature seldom if ever produce note-book sketches which lack the unity of gradation. It is the custom of some artists to paint important pictures from such data which, put down hot when the impression is compulsory, contain more of the essence of the subject than the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... I not only believe, for the reasons given, but have more than once actually experienced that the most fearful forms, when produced simply by association, instead of causing fear, operate no other effect than the same would do if they had passed through my mind as thoughts, while I was composing a faery tale; the whole depending on the wise and gracious law in our nature, that the actual bodily sensations, called forth according to the law of association by thoughts and images of the mind, never greatly transcend the limits of pleasurable feeling ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the time when the great English critic was oracularly declaring that the verities of religion were incapable of poetic treatment, there was a simple Highlander, quietly composing poems, which, of themselves, would have upset the strange view, otherwise sufficiently absurd. But in all justice, we must say that many, very many, both of Gaelic and English poets, who have attempted to embody religious sentiments in poetic forms, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... gun-case, and presently came to the quarters prepared for him. The room was rough, with its unceiled walls of yellow pine, a chair, washstand, bed, and a nail or two for his wardrobe. It had been the affectation of the wealthy men composing the Foam Island Duck Club to exist almost primitively when on the business of duck shooting, in contradistinction to the overfed luxury of other millionaires inhabiting other more luxuriously ...
— Blue-Bird Weather • Robert W. Chambers
... While composing the first two cantos of the Souvenirs he seemed half ashamed of the homeliness of the tale he had undertaken to relate. Should he soften and brighten it? Should he dress it up with false lights and colours? For there are times when falsehood in silk and gold are acceptable, and the naked ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... an office, and topographic bureau. The ushers had charge of the apartment of honor; the valets de chambre of the other. A rigid etiquette determined the right of entrance into the different rooms composing the state apartment, according to a carefully studied system. The pages were authorized to enter the Hall of the Marshals; members of the household of the Emperor and Empress could enter the first and second drawing-rooms; the Princes and Princesses of the Imperial family, the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... views the poet entrusted to his nephew, the late Bishop of Lincoln, the task of composing memoirs of his life, in the just confidence that nothing would by such hands be given to the world which was inconsistent with the dignity either of the living or of the dead. From those memoirs the facts contained in the present work have been for ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... speculative thought upon the state of my mind, during my illness, with regard to Miss Oldcastle and the stranger who was her mother's guest at the Hall. Possibly, being by nature gifted, as I have certainly discovered, with more of hope than is usually mingled with the other elements composing the temperament of humanity, I did not suffer quite so much as some would have suffered during such an illness. But I have reason to fear that when I was light-headed from fever, which was a not uncommon occurrence, especially in the early mornings during the worst ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... In composing this ode, which was done four years ago, the writer had not the most remote idea, of complimenting any one. Without the slightest pretensions to "connoiseurship" she has only described the absolute effect of the pictures alluded to, on an individual, and ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... below and the most impure above. It is true that carbonic acid is heavier than common air, when pure; but this it rarely is except in chemical experiments. It is the property of all gases, as well as of the two (oxygen and nitrogen) composing the atmosphere, that when brought together they always are entirely mixed, each being equally diffused exactly as it would be if alone. Thus the carbonic acid from the skin and lungs, being warmed in ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... minutes the nurse came back to Dr. Staunton. "I have undressed her, and she is in bed," she said. "She is very weak, and in a terribly nervous condition; she ought to sleep for hours. Will you prepare a composing draught for her ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... Padua, where he had a salary of only 180 florins, and where he was again obliged to add to his income by the labours of tuition. Notwithstanding this fruitless occupation of his time, he appears to have found leisure for composing several of his works, and completing various inventions, which will be afterwards described. His manuscripts were circulated privately among his friends and pupils; but some of them strayed beyond this sacred ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... the ring, and suddenly it came apart in his hand. The coils of the snake were still linked together, but instead of composing one solid ring they could now be spread several inches apart like the links of a golden chain. Mrs. Tremain turned pale, and gave a little ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... statement Alfred was to be one of the business staff, although there was no written agreement to that effect. However, Harrison made mention of this fact several times in conversation with the family. As Harrison was editor, reporter, foreman of the composing room, and also the compositor, pressman, etc., the only opening for Alfred was in the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... wanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then composing—at least, what untattooed parts might remain—I did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... foot of the garden. A copy-book lay on the grass before him, in which he was writing with a pencil. Arthur wrote poems, and histories, and tragedies, which he and his companions acted for the edification of their relations and friends. At this moment he was composing a story which he intended should be very thrilling. He had only got as far as ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... spent all that "duty" left him of the next day composing a letter to copy out and send the several scholastic agencies. In this he gave a brief but appreciative sketch of his life, and enlarged upon his discipline and educational methods. At the end was a long and decorative schedule of his certificates and ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... practice of the law; the only interruption to this was a two years service as State senator in the legislature of Ohio during the years 1844 and 1845. He was elected to the senate by the Whig party of the counties of Cuyahoga and Geauga, these two counties then composing one senatorial district. During the first session of the General Assembly, of which he was a member, the Democrats had a majority in the Senate while the Whigs had the control of the lower house. As is usual when a legislature is thus politically ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Nismes, Court was one day seated under a tree composing a sermon, when a party of soldiers, hearing that he was in the neighbourhood, came within sight. Court climbed up into the tree, where he remained concealed among the branches, and thus ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... district has its own letter on each boat belonging to it, and a number, and the name of every man composing its crew is registered; also his residence, the day of his birth, etc. This is necessary, for every year some poor fisherman's boat is lost and the crew drowned; thus the boat and crew missing can be identified. All the Norwegian men you see at the fisheries have homes—humble ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... life, ran rapidly away, and the Community had gained something of position and name in the outward world. Personal contact had modified the extreme views of many of the founders. Changes had taken place in the Individuals composing it; some had departed. Six of the original stockholders remained. The number had increased to about seventy, including some thirty who were pupils. The financial success had not been all that was desired. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... so thorough that a vessel at one end of the fleet cannot have mackerel 'alongside,' technically speaking, five minutes, before every vessel in a circle, the diameter of which may be ten miles, will be aware of the fact, and every man of the ten thousand composing their crews will be engaged in spreading to the wind every available stitch of canvas to force each little bark as quickly as possible into close proximity to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... art of the bibelot appeared under the name of the two Goncourts, and in particular their great work on "L'Art du XVIIIe Siecle," which began to be published in 1859, although not completed until 1882. All this while, moreover, they were secretly composing their splenetic "Journal." On the 20th of June, 1870, the fair companionship was broken by the death of Jules de Goncourt, and for some years Edmond did no more than complete and publish certain artistic works which had been left unfinished. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... the snug comforts of a private gentleman, for the sake of popularity! His complaint is popular indeed. Then your physician, courting extensive practice, and ambitious of the honour of never having time to eat a comfortable meal, and proud of being called out of bed the moment he is composing himself to sleep! He must be raving. Then your barrister, fagging over dull books, and wearing a three-tailed wig, and talking for hours, that his client, right or wrong, may be successful! All these people appear to me to be awfully excited: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... of Hymen, from which shot tongues of flame, produced by bituminous materials. At a great elevation above the platform of the observatory, an immense star, isolated from the platform, and which from the variety of many-colored glasses composing it sparkled like a vast diamond, under the dome of night. The palace of the senate also attracted a large number of the curious; but I have already extended too far the description of this wonderful scene which unfolded itself at ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... that scientist recommended Baudin as one who had taken an interest in natural history researches, and who had given "a new proof of his talent and of his love for science by the choice of the specimens composing his last collection, deposited in the museum." The Minister of Marine minuted Jussieu's recommendation in the margin: "No choice could be happier than that of Captain Baudin,"* and so he was appointed. (* Manuscripts, Bibliotheque Nationale, nouveaux acquisitions, France 9439 page ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... mercenaries that are the scandal of the Established Church, her most faithful friends will not greatly resent this conduct of a dissenter-(Scott). Dr. Paley would have done well to have read this chapter in Bunyan before composing some of the chapters in his Moral Philosophy, and his Sermon on the Utility of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... faults just mentioned have now been corrected, though it would require more labor than would produce an entirely new work, to repair all the inherent defects that are attributable to haste, and to the awkwardness of a novice in the art of composing. In this respect, the work and its blemishes are probably inseparable. Still, the reader will now be better rewarded for his time, and, on the whole; the book is much more worthy of ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... incoherence into silence, and rose from silence to snores, while Paul alone lay sleepless, listening to the creeping tinkle of the dying fire, drearily wondering at the marvellous change that had come over his life and fortunes in the last few hours, and feverishly composing impassioned appeals which were to touch the Doctor's heart and convince ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... latter. For it is a curious fact, that the more uneducated a man is,—in which condition his ordinary language must of necessity be proportionately idiomatic,—the greater pains he takes, when he has formed the resolution of composing, to be splendid and expansive in his style. He racks his brains until he rummages out imperfect memories of the turgid paragraphs of cheap newspapers and novels which he has some time or other read, and forthwith struts off with all the finest feathers in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... Tayoga obeyed, composing himself in the easiest attitude on his blanket and bed of leaves, and he exerted his will to the utmost. He wished sleep, and sleep must come, yet he knew that the fever was still rising in his veins. The shock and loss of blood from the ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... (1814-1889) was an English journalist, poet, and miscellaneous writer. He was especially popular as a writer of songs, composing both words and music. Other well-known poems of his are "The Miller of Dee" and "Tubal Cain." "Little and Great" presents a familiar idea through a series of illustrations—the idea that great and lasting results may spring from unstudied ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... present Duties, as in a conscionable and Brotherly freedome, so in, a fair and in offensive way; for we have no pleasure nor purpose to provoke any Person or Party whatsoever, not to encrease, but to endeavour the allaying and composing of the present unhappy differences. If any shall offend at our discharging our conscience & doing our duty, yet we shall rather chose to take our hazard of that, then of displeasing God by neglect of duty. But we hope better things, then to be mis-understood, or ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... established themselves in it. They then applied to the Delawares for some territory on which to reside. When granted, a council was held to consider the propriety of accepting the offer of the Delawares. On this question the Shawanoes divided—part of them remained on the Wabash,—the others, composing chiefly the Piqua tribe, formed a settlement in the forks of the Delaware. Alter a time, a disagreement arose between them and the Delawares, which induced the former to remove to the valley of the Wyoming, on the Susquehannah, on the west bank of which they ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... the word, surrounded them even there. But it was a society differing in its habits, and even in its constitution, from that which formed itself in London, and of the total lives of most of the persons, composing it, London life represented not more than a quarter. For me, my own annual life as a Londoner rarely exceeded three months out of twelve. Except for these three months, my habits, as they formed themselves ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... genera composing this family have now been described in relation to our present subject, as far as my means have permitted. They all capture insects. This is effected by Drosophyllum, Roridula, and Byblis, solely ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... Indians composing the Tuscarora nation, have, by their chief Sacarrissa, and others, regularly deputed and authorized, requested the concurrence of the general assembly of this State, to enable them to lease or demise, for a number of years, the residue of their lands ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... John Wesley (Works, x. 445), records an amusing reminiscence of his boyhood: 'One Sunday, immediately after sermon, my father's clerk said with an audible voice: "Let us sing to the praise, &c., an hymn of my own composing: ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... he was composing a great deal. Much of his manuscript was, of course, torn up or consigned to the flames, but one piece of work survived. This was his first Mass in F (No. 11 in Novello's edition), erroneously dated by some writers 1742. It shows signs of immaturity and inexperience, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... Mrs. Lawrence's bell rang. The noise had startled her from her first sound sleep. Dr. Maverick explained simply, and gave her a composing draught. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Bonner's menaces to make a seeming recantation; but she qualified it with some reserves, which did not satisfy that zealous prelate. She was thrown into prison, and she there employed herself in composing prayers and discourses, by which she fortified her resolution to endure the utmost extremity rather than relinquish her religious principles. She even wrote to the king, and told him, that as to the Lord's supper, she believed as much as Christ himself had said of it, and as much ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume |
