"Debatable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enable us, I think, to mark the just frontier of common sense even in this debatable land of psychology. All that is biological, observable, and documentary in psychology falls within the lines of physical science and offers no difficulty in principle. Nor need literary psychology form a dangerous salient in the circuit of nature. The dramatic poet or dramatic ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... solicitude. One or two of the old lady's simple, homely letters to him have been preserved, with their fond messages and faulty spelling. Now and then, it is recorded, he would gratify her by setting her to transcribe his "Homer," an assistance of which the advantages must have been debatable. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... in each of the great departments of psychological research to give the reader an intelligent idea of what is being done, and to whet his appetite for more detailed information. In the choice of materials I have relied frankly on my own experience and in debatable matters given my own opinions. This gives greater reality to the several topics, besides making it possible, by this general statement, at once to acknowledge it, and also to avoid discussion and citation of authorities ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... equivocal; undefined, undefinable; confused &c. (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c. v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c. 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, debatable, disputable; unreliable, untrustworthy. contingent, contingent on, dependent on; subject to; dependent on circumstances; occasional; provisional. unauthentic, unauthenticated, unauthoritative; unascertained, unconfirmed; undemonstrated; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... states where his side was sure to win. In this way he was free to give his entire thoughts to the twelve states that were debatable, and upon whose votes the election would turn. He divided each of these states into units containing five thousand voters, and, at the national headquarters, he placed one man in charge of each unit. Of the five thousand, he roughly calculated ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... be frescoed, covered with some rich colored plain paper, or hung with violet velvet, according to your taste and means. The old-fashioned chair-rail seems to me a sensible institution It occupies the debatable ground between use and beauty, and may therefore be somewhat enriched. The plastering beneath it may be given a different tint from that above, and when the walls are high its effect is good. It is really carrying out the idea of panelling, to which there is hardly ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... tell, Paul de Virieu would have found it very difficult to give an honest answer to the question. He was in a strange, debatable state of mind about Sylvia—beautiful, simple, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... never twice alike. He is unanimous on few debatable matters. One of them, as I have said, is the desirability of finishing the war—in the proper way. (But even here there are differences as to what constitutes the proper way.) Another is (I trust I shall not shock the reader) the extreme displeasingness ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... to the Minto descent, Stevenson claims to have 'shaken a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots.' He evidently knew little or nothing of his relations on the Elphinstone side. The Logie Elphinstones were a cadet branch of Glack, an estate acquired by Nicholas ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... signal office and platoon head-quarters. In case of intense shelling, the front line garrison, except sentries, could obtain fair cover behind the traverses in the narrow trenches which connected up the wider and more exposed fire bays. It is a debatable question whether deep dug-outs in or near the front line are advisable. When the enemy shells intensively, if he means business, his barrage is closely followed by his infantry. When the barrage lifts, therefore, it is of vital importance to man the fire-step immediately. It is not easy ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... even so disagreeable a topic as "Reprisals" (Art. 8), upon which the Brussels, and after it The Hague, Conference preferred to keep silence; and they take a definite line on many questions upon which there are wide differences of opinion. On most debatable points, the rules are in accordance with the views of this country—e.g. as to the right of search (Art. 22), as to the two-fold list of contraband (Arts. 34-36), as to the moment at which the liability of a blockade-runner commences (Art. 44), and as to the capture of private ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... evening of the 27th there was much cheering along the Rebel lines. Their bands, too, were unusually lavish of the Rebel airs they were wont occasionally to waft across the debatable ground which separated our lines. Had the enemy received reinforcements, or had Grant met with a reverse? While on picket that night, in making my rounds, I could distinctly hear the Rebels chopping on the knob which they had so recently occupied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... though there are a few principles in the art of fiction that have appeared to emerge and to become established in the course of time, a reader of novels is left at last amazed by the chaos in which the art is still pursued—frankly let it be said. Different schools, debatable theories, principles upheld by some and rejected by others—such disagreement would all be right and natural, it would be the mark of vigour in the art and the criticism of it. But no connected argument, no definition of terms, no formulation of claims, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... lots for sale in the Sydney and Melbourne Fish Markets varies, and this opens up a somewhat debatable point. with us the lots are comparatively small, both at the Woolloomooloo and at the Redfern Market; while at Melbourne, on the other hand, the lots are much larger. When the lots are small it gives private ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... he could argue it out with her. She so believed in eugenics, you see—a very radical, compared with Ferguson. It was she who had had no doubt about tow-head. And the love-part of it seemed to him fixed: it didn't occur to him that that was debatable. So he stuck to something that could be discussed. Then—and this was his moment of exceeding folly—he caught at the old episode of the Argentina. That had nothing to do with her present state of shock. She had seen tow-head; but she hadn't seen the sprinkled Mediterranean. And she had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... troubles in some other part of his empire. But it is, perhaps, as likely that he retired, simply because he had effected the object with which he engaged in the war. It was a constant practice of the Romans to advance their frontier by building strong towns on or near a debatable border, which attracted to them the submission of the neighboring district. The recent building of Theodosiopolis in the eastern part of Roman Armenia had been an instance of this practice. It was perhaps being pursued elsewhere along the Persian border, and the invasion of Isdigerd may have ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... specimen of a half grown lad, with a rosy face, and laughing blue eyes. Larry Densmore expected to become a lawyer some fine day, and in evidence of his fitness for the business he was constantly asking questions, and finding debatable points in such matters as naturally ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... of the establishment of the Kit-Cat club has never been decided, the consensus of opinion fixes the year somewhere about 1700. More debatable, however, is the question of its peculiar title. The most recent efforts to solve that riddle leave it where the contemporary ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... took shares in many mining speculations, and, in many instances, lived to repent it; for he got into troubled waters, and sought for his ore in vain. He attended agricultural meetings, and endeavoured to comprehend that debatable query, the corn question; he argued the point, like other great people, as if he did understand it, and got into repute with the leading Chiropodists, or corn cutters, of the day. He went to Cheltenham, and became proprietor of an acre of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... pay for the losses. He was always between wind and water, keeping himself afloat by his bold, sudden strokes and the nervous energy of his play. Hither and thither he would swim over the vast sea of interests in Paris, in quest of some little isle that should be so far a debatable land that he might abide upon it. Clearly Couture was not in ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... considered that this possibly debatable statement was sufficiently answered by a grunt, for that was all ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... to deflect many strong spirits from a life of warfare to a life of study. They made the problems of learning seem much more worth while, and their work helped to create a more tolerant attitude toward the supporters of either side of debatable questions by revealing so clearly that there are two sides to every question. This new learning, new interest in learning, and new spirit of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... off and kicked out. Any self-respecting employer would do the same." The thing had happened overnight, and the men did not at once take a clear line upon what was, after all, a very intricate and debatable occasion. But they came out in a sort of semiofficial strike from all Lord Redcar's collieries beyond the canal that besets Swathinglea. They did so without formal notice, committing a breach of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... us back to that debatable thing—the pathos of Dickens—from which one has been withdrawn by the attractions of his boys. Little Dombey is a prize example of his pathos. Little Nell is another. Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Review, who criticised "Marmion" and the "Lady of ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... present plan of milling machinery in making the change. Of course the cleaning machinery is the same In both cases, so are the elevators, conveyors, bolting chests, etc. But to use the millstone is a debatable question. After carefully considering the matter I have come to the conclusion that it has its place, and an important one at that, under the new regime, viz., that of reducing the finer purified middlings to flour. The reason for this lies in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... saying, perfectly neutral in the struggle, he was glad to meet gentlemen, irrespective of the opinions they held. The line taken by Mr. Jackson was the one which was very largely pursued among the inhabitants of the country houses and farms scattered over what was, throughout the war, a debatable land. So frequent were the changes of the position of the armies that none could say who might be in possession in a week's time, and it was, therefore, an absolute necessity for those who wished to live unmolested to abstain from any ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... embarrassed by the woods and hills. We made reconnoissances, too, to learn the country in different directions, and were apt to be fired upon during these. Along the farther side of what we called the "Debatable Land" there was a line of cottages, hardly superior to negro huts, and almost all empty, where the Rebel pickets resorted, and from whose windows they fired. By degrees all these nests were broken up and destroyed, though it cost ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... doctrine or duty, we may rest assured, when he did undertake to give an explanation, he would not have left that part altogether unexplained. On the whole, I think the earlier portion of the parable is debatable ground; it is left in the shade; there is room for difference of opinion in regard to it. In some aspects it may suggest useful reflections as a picture of the good and evil mingled in the Church; in other aspects it may suggest solemn thoughts as a picture of successive generations being gradually ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Grand Canyon of the Colorado. But few persons have seen the Canyon, and far fewer ever have proven its existence by descending to its bottom; but none the less Reason admonishes all of us that the great chasm exists, and is not a debatable question. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... justification of the argument two cases in which scrub fowl (MEGAPODIUS DUPERREYI TUMULUS) are concerned may be cited. Being a previously recorded fact, the first is excusable only on the grounds of its applicability to a debatable point. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... last, however, a deep sleep fell upon them, from which they were awakened by the distant roar of cannon. The village, though no longer a depot for Confederate stores, was not to be given up without a struggle. It now became a sort of debatable ground, and cannonading, more or less distant, told the anxious listeners ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... want either to know them better, or not to know them at all. I want to enter the house, the furnished chambers of people's minds; and I am willing enough to throw my own open to a cordial guest; but I do not want to stand and chatter in some debatable land of social conventionality. I have no store of simple geniality. The other night we went to dine quietly with a parson near here, a worthy fellow, happy and useful. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, I sate beside my host. I saw Maud listening, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and Booth is the princeliest Hamlet that ever trod the stage. If Kean and the elder Booth were more supernal in their lightnings of passion and scorn,—and there are points in "Richelieu" which leave this a debatable question,—Edwin Booth is more equal throughout, has every resource of taste and study at his command; his action is finished to the last, his stage-business perfect, his reading distinct and musical as a bell. He is thus the ripened product of our eclectic later age, and has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Mississippi. But we know that the southeast corner of Missouri and the northeast corner of Arkansas, east of the St. Francis River, belonged to Algonquian tribes. A study of the map of Arkansas shows reason for believing that there may have been a slight overlapping of habitats, or a sort of debatable ground. At any rate it seems advisable to compromise, and assign the Quapaw and Osage (Siouan tribes) all of Arkansas up ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... a successful way. He had good windfalls, too; for example, Brandenburg, as we shall see. He made friends; reconciled himself to his Brother Kur-Pfalz and junior Cousinry there, settling handsomely, and with finality, the debatable points between them. Enemies, too, he made; especially Johann the Luxemburger, King of Bohemia, on what ground will be seen shortly, who became at last inveterate to a high degree. But there was one supremely sore element in his lot: a Pope at Avignon to whom he could by no method make himself ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... late, thought Mary; she quite avoided the society of gentlemen, in which she had formerly taken such pleasure. Richard and Archdeacon Long sat on the verandah, and in moving to and fro, Mary caught a fragment of their talk: they were at the debatable question of table-turning, and her mental comment was a motherly and amused: "That Richard, who is so clever, can interest himself in such nonsense!" Further on, Zara was giving Grindle an account of her voyage "home," ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... permanence of the Elgin settlement, which even today preserves its character, it opened the way for a certain number of the refugees to provide for their own needs and it lessened to some extent the congestion of refugees in border towns like Windsor and Sandwich. It is a debatable question whether segregation of these people was wise or not. At that time it seemed almost the only solution of the very pressing problem. After the Civil war many of the Negroes in Canada returned to the United States and those who remained found conditions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... It is not proper, and my cap at home, too," Katy kept thinking as she fidgeted in her chair, and watched the girl setting the table so cosily for two, and occasionally deferring some debatable point to her as if she ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... confront one at every turn in Florence, I am neither qualified nor anxious to enter. When doctors disagree any one may decide before me. The thought, moreover, that always occurs in the presence of these good debatable pictures, is that any doubt as to their origin merely enriches this already over-rich period, since some one had to paint them. Simon not pure becomes hardly less remarkable ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... be slighted with impunity. Foolish of him, for, man of the world to his fingertips, he knew perfectly well that a woman living with a man to whom she was not married could not be recognized by people with any pretensions to orthodoxy; Gyp was beyond even the debatable ground on which stood those who have been divorced and are married again. But even a man of the world is not proof against the warping of devotion, and Winton was ready to charge any windmill at any moment on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... special effort in a given direction, so, when moral, it is with special effort in favour of a limited class; but I yet trespass for a few moments on your patience in order to note that the acceptance of this second principle still leaves it debatable to what point the disfavour of the reprobate class, or the privileges of the elect, may advisably extend. For I cannot but feel for my own part as if the daily bread of moral instruction might at least be so widely broken among the multitude as to preserve them from ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Kings is tucked away in Long Island, in the Debatable Land where the generous boundary of New York City zigzags in a sporting way just to permit horse racing at Belmont Park. It is the most rustic corner of the City. To most New Yorkers it is as remote as Helgoland and as little known. It has no movie theatre, no news-stand, no cigar store, ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... increase in numbers until they were able to work such devastation on British commerce as marked the course of the War of 1812. The period allowed the new nation to acquire the strategic mouth of the Mississippi, and to make such inroads of settlers in the debatable land of the Floridas that Britain was unable to secure a permanent footing in them during hostilities. Twenty years carried forward the Old World struggle to a point so near its close that the Americans were able ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... be, however, that in this, as in other cases of implied repeal, doubts may arise. It is confessedly one of the most subtle and debatable questions which arise in the construction of statutes. If upon such a question I have fallen into an erroneous construction, I submit whether it should be characterized as a violation of official duty ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... knew it was there, to keep silence altogether would only increase her pain. So from time to time he skimmed the surface just to let her show him where he was wrong and think she won the day. It remained a debatable land of compromise. He listened with patience to her criticisms, her excursions and alarms, knowing that while it gave her satisfaction, it could not change himself. The thing lay in him too deep and true for change. But, for ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... that the only alternative left for him would be to retire and leave those who had opposed the policy of Conciliation a free stage for any more heroic projects they might contemplate. Mr Redmond still remained indecisive and Mr O'Brien—whether wisely or unwisely will always remain a debatable point with his friends—quietly quitted the stage, resigning his seat in Parliament, withdrawing from the Directory of the United Irish League, and ceasing publication of his weekly newspaper on the ground, as he says himself, that "the authorised national policy having ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... the border-line between Russia and Turkey and with further indefinite promises, but he dared not. Accordingly he devised the plea that the aggrandizement of the Eastern and Western empires must keep equal pace, not in the West, for that was his by right, but in those debatable lands wherewith Russia hoped to secure a permanent seat in the councils of Europe. He was confirmed in his desire to postpone the partition of Turkey by finding that Mustapha, the Sultan who had overthrown Selim in defiance of France, was now ready in turn to make friends with her and perform ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... etymologies, of course, I leave to be discussed by scholars. As we have seen, they are at odds on the subject of phonetic laws and their application to mythological names. On the mosses and bogs of this Debatable Land some of them propose to erect the science of comparative mythology. Meanwhile we look on, waiting till the mosses shall support ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... between the spirit and the flesh made Cecil's heart an odd sort of debatable land; if she could not always insure success and supremacy to the right side, she certainly did endeavor to preserve the balance of power. Personally she rather disliked Mr. Fullarton, but she seemed to look upon him as the embodiment ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... "V." But, alas! Jaguars never dropped at all. They subsided. They subsided slowly back to 1—so slowly that you could hardly observe them going. A week later they were 63/64, which, of course, is practically the same as 1. A month afterwards they were 31/32, and it is a debatable point whether that is less or more than 63/64. Anyhow, by the time I had worked it out and decided that it was slightly less, they were at 61/64, and one had the same trouble all over again. At 61/64 I left them for a time; and when I next read the ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... French, however, disputed their claim to this country; and constant quarrels arose between the rival settlers about their right to land, of which, in reality, the poor Indians were the proprietors. In virtue of a grant of parliament in 1750, a large body of English took possession of this "debatable ground;" but scarcely had they done so, when a superior force of French and Indians attacked them, and killing some, made prisoners of others, and drove the rest back. Many vigorous but unsuccessful efforts were made on the part of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... class, they had just enough knowledge to render them dogmatic and intolerant. It requires a good deal of information to discover one's own ignorance, but to the consciousness of this the good people had never arrived. They felt they knew as much as necessary, and naturally on the most debatable questions were most assured. Their standpoint was inconceivably narrow. They had the best intentions in the world of doing their duty, but what their duty was they accepted on trust, frivolously. They walked ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... whether Austria was justified in going to war against Servia is a debatable one, but I respectfully refer to the fact that our own country, the United States, was only very recently on the verge of precipitating war with a "much weaker" nation than ours, on account of the latter's refusal to salute the American ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... fortified city, occupying a commanding hill overlooking the Danube; it is a rare old town, battle-scarred and rugged; having been a frontier position of importance in a country that has been debatable ground between Turk and Christian for centuries, it has been a coveted prize to be won and lost on the diplomatic chess-board, or, worse still, the foot-ball of contending armies and wrangling monarchs. Long before the Ottoman Turks first appeared, like a small dark cloud, no ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... it's a debatable matter, which I don't intend to debate. You are our man. If you won't deny the Brown canard, then we must ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... for dolorous looks or hot words—no! Rather is it a family trick, a good, old-fashioned game that all boys play, and no harm, either. Have I not played it, too? Has any gentleman present not pinked or been pinked on that debatable land we call the field of honor? Come, kinsmen, we have all had too ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... their whole career of song, will exert a very different influence, not only on earth, but in eternity, on the destiny of their amateurs. We need not argue this position as though, among a Christian people, it were a doubtful or debatable position. If the evil spirit, or the melancholy demon, that fitfully possessed the first king of Israel, was expelled by the skilful hand of his successor, even when his youthful fingers awoke the melodies ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 1777, his regiment was detailed for scouting duty in New Jersey, which was then the debatable ground between colonial and British armies. In January of 1779, Colonel Burr was given command of the "lines" in Westchester County, New York. It was at this time that he first met Mrs. Prevost, the widow of a British officer. She lived across the Hudson, ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... is a place to go is another of those debatable questions and I feel that the same conclusion holds good. A book is the wisest passport to Russia at present. Marooned in Moscow, by Marguerite E. Harrison, is not a new book—in the sense of having been published ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... a cord of fear in every man's heart which throbs more or less responsively to the relation of the wonders of that "debatable land," which, by some, is believed to lie "on the boundaries of another world." La Salle felt impressed in spite of himself, and the whole party seemed grave and unwilling to pursue the subject. The silence was, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... answer to the serious question with which we opened this chapter. Whether or not reliable analyses can be made by the observation of physical characteristics is no longer debatable. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the twinkling of an eye, the whole of the Northern slopes of the Kereves Dere Ravine was covered by bright coloured irregular surging crowds, moving in quite another way to the khaki-clad figures on their left:—one moment pouring over the debatable ground like a torrent, anon twisted and turning and flying like multitudes of dead leaves before the pestilent breath of the howitzers. No living man has ever seen so strange a vision as this: in its disarray; in its rushing to and fro; in the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... was, to which, far back in times unknown to its annals, the family had given its name, taking in return no small portion of its history, and a good deal of the character of its individuals. It lay in the debatable land between highlands and lowlands; most of its inhabitants spoke both Scotch and Gaelic; and there was often to be found in them a notable mingling of the chief characteristics of the widely differing Celt and Teuton. The country ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... paved the way for the formation of the University later in the century. This is not however his greatest distinction in the history of education. His most enduring influences came from (1) his independence in thinking, (2) his novel method of dealing with debatable questions, and (3) his contributions to scholastic philosophy and theology. The first two of these are considered below; the last belongs more properly ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... time, London was divided into twenty-six wards (and several liberties). The "Out Parishes" of the "City," the City of Westminster, and the five "Parliamentary Boroughs" of Marylebone, Lambeth, Southwark, Finsbury, and Tower hamlets, and a region of debatable land lying somewhere between that which is properly called London and its environs, and partaking in a certain measure of ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... he had spread over it. In the midst of a fine glen of renovated corn fields, he was met by a courier from Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, with information that the Northumbrians, being apprised of King Edward's approach, were assembling in immense bodies; and having crossed the debatable land in the night, had driven Sir Eustace Maxwell, with great loss, into Carlaveroch; and though harassed by Kirkpatrick himself, were ravaging the country as far as Dumfries. The letter of the brave knight added, "These Southron thieves blow the name of Edward before them, and with its sound ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... train. We have passed the fortifications. The stuccoed houses of the suburbs, the factories, taverns, and gloomy hovels in the debatable land round Paris are so many points of sunshine in the far distance. The train is going at full speed. The fields of green or gold are being unrolled like ribbons before my eyes. Now and again a metallic sound and a glimpse of columns and advertisements show ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Drina, we descended to that of the Morava by a steep road, until we came to beautifully rich meadows, which are called the Ushitkza Luka, or meadows, which are to this day a debatable ground for the Moslem inhabitants of Ushitza, and the Servian villages in the neighbourhood. From here to Ushitza the road is paved, but by whom we could not learn. The stones were not large enough to warrant the belief of its being a Roman causeway, and it is probably ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... from any but Shakespeare himself, I should be disposed to claim but little credit for a discovery which must in all likelihood have been forestalled by the common insight of some hundred or more students in time past. The difficulty begins with the really debatable question of subdivisions. There are certain plays which may be said to hang on the borderland between one period and the next, with one foot lingering and one advanced; and these must be classed according to the ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... cooked food; all animals do better fed on what they can digest. A lot of people have taken Pottenger's data and mistakenly concluded that humans also should eat only raw food. This idea is debatable. However, the most important result of the cat experiments took years to reveal itself and is not paid much attention to, probably because its implications are very depressing. Dr. Pottenger continued his experiments for several ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... ill-luck would have it, the bride herself was of this way of thinking, and would not be consoled for the loss of her title as queen, or the contemptible age of her new husband. PLEUROIT FORT LADITE ISABEAU; the said Isabella wept copiously. (1) It is fairly debatable whether Charles was much to be pitied when, three years later (September 1409), this odd marriage was dissolved by death. Short as it was, however, this connection left a lasting stamp upon his mind; and we find that, in the last decade of his life, and after he had remarried ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him abroad, only requiring a sum of ready money, which, on being communicated to Deronda in private, might immediately draw from him a question as to the amount of the required sum: and it was this part of his forecast that Lapidoth found the most debatable, there being a danger in asking too much, and a prospective regret in asking too little. His own desire gave him no limit, and he was quite without guidance as to the limit of Deronda's willingness. But now, in the midst of these airy conditions preparatory to a receipt which remained indefinite, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... firing line, and a total of two and a half infantry battalions held that end of the position. It was not a man too much. With the dawn of day it could be seen that the Boers held the southern and we the northern slopes, while the narrow plateau between formed a bloody debatable ground. Along a front of a quarter of a mile fierce eyes glared and rifle barrels flashed from behind every rock, and the long fight swayed a little back or a little forward with each upward heave of the stormers or rally of the soldiers. For hours the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ample knowledge was available, it was a debatable point whether or not the inmates of No. 11 Fortescue Square were saved from an almost maniacal vengeance by the fact that a crisis was precipitated. Winter maintained stoutly that the police must triumph in the long run, whereas Furneaux held, with even greater tenacity, that although the gang would ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... suddenly to a land of altered features. But at what turn of the road this will happen, just how long the small multiplied impressions will take to break into surmise, into conviction—that nobody can tell. So it is with poetry and prose. They are different realms, but between them lies a debatable land which a De Quincey or a Whitman or a Paul Fort or a Marinetti may attempt. I advise you who are beginners to keep well one side or other of the frontier, remembering that there is plenty of room and what happened ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Stripped of its diplomatic covering of ceremony and further presents, the Aztec Emperor's reply may be condensed as "Get thee hence!" And, as if to bear out some royal mandate, the natives disappeared from the vicinity, the supplies were cut off, leaving the Spaniards halting upon this debatable ground, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... year, the debatable ground between spring and summer, had come round once more. There were leaves on the trees and flowers in the grass. The sunshine was golden and full, not like the bleak brightness of March. The winds were warm, the showers soft. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... senses reveal to us. I refer to radioactive change, or to the atomic transformation of one element into another, such as the change of radium into helium, and the change of helium into lead—a subject that takes us to the borderland between physics and chemistry where is still debatable ground. ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... prince of Wales, discover America? Stimulated by the importance of the question, and accustomed to admire the spirit of maritime enterprise, at whatever period it may have been called into action, I have sometimes reflected on this debatable point—but can ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... bank your head thrice sweet and dear I lay, and spread your hair on either side, And see the new-born woodflowers bashful-eyed Look through the golden tresses here and there. On these debatable borders of the year Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow; And through her bowers the wind's way still ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... view which may be taken of Mary's conduct during the next three months depends the whole debatable question of her character. According to the professed champions of that character, this conduct was a tissue of such dastardly imbecility, such heartless irresolution, and such brainless inconsistency as forever to dispose of her time-honored claim to the credit of intelligence and courage. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... times in criticisms contained in these articles. This is the author's duty to write in such a fashion as to seem impartial. It is needless to suggest that he ought to be impartial, since no one ever takes a real interest in any debatable matter without ceasing to be impartial, and nobody will ever write a play worth seeing unless he takes a deep ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... in Flanders held by the United Provinces, with a very mixed garrison. The archduke besieged Ostend (1601). Maurice did not attack him, but captured the keys of the debatable land of Cleves and Juliers. The siege of Ostend developed into a tremendous affair, and a school in the art of war. Maurice, instead of aiming at a direct relief, continued his operations so as to prevent the archduke from a thorough concentration. In ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... all countries. Homer presents, in addition, and beyond every other writer, a vast field for ethnological, geographical, and historical speculation and research. The ancient world stands revealed in the Homeric poems. Besides, almost numberless volumes have been written based upon the equally debatable questions of the Homeric text and the ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... her waiting for him, and, after being duly cautioned by her mother to "be careful," though whether that was of any value or not is possibly debatable, the small, speedy ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... curious as to the concerns of the Prince de Gonzague for other reasons than the presence of the three pictures, for to any one who knew anything about the arrangements of the palace this room represented, as it were, a kind of debatable land between the kingdom of Gonzague on the one side and the kingdom of Nevers on the other. A door on the left communicated with the private apartments of Louis de Gonzague. Cross the great room to the right, and you came to a door communicating with the private ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in medieval Europe two groups of states with separate interests and types of polity. They were divided from one another by a broad belt of debatable territory, extending from Holland to the coast of Provence—the northern lands of ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... which relates to the prepuce and circumcision that, before such tables could be satisfactorily and convincingly constructed, time and the evolutionary processes that follow it will bid fair to completely remove this debatable appendage from man. It may be at a very far-distant period that this evolutionary preputial extinction will take place,—probably contemporary with the existence of Bulwer's "Coming Race,"—but not at a too ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... treatment of the ash Yggdrasill of the Scandinavians, as well as in that of the Bo-tree of the Buddhists. The prototype was not the Egyptian, but the Babylonian crux ansata, the lower member of which constitutes a conical support for the oval or sphere above it. With the Gnostics, who occupied the debatable ground between primitive Christianity and philosophic paganism, and who inscribed it upon their tombs, the cone symbolized death as well as life. In every heathen mythology it was the universal emblem of the goddess or mother of heaven, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... and Cumberland rivers the landscape became varied with open groves of woodland, with flower-strewn glades and great barrens or prairies of long grass. This region, one of the fairest in the world, was the debatable ground between the northern and the southern Indians. Neither dared dwell therein,[1] but both used it as their hunting-grounds; and it was traversed from end to end by the well marked war traces[2] which they followed when they invaded each ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... up, and by this time—1789, or thereabout—were quite too populous and strong to apprehend any further serious molestation from their Indian neighbors. But between these points and the Ohio River lay a wide border of debatable land, where the restless savages still kept up their hostile demonstrations, which, though less bloody and wasting than at an earlier period, were yet sufficiently frequent and harassing to keep the white settlers in ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... themselves; and of the subsequent appearance of aquatic before terrestrial forms of life. But whether these "protoplasts" would, if we could examine them, be reckoned among the lowest microscopic algae, or fungi; or among those doubtful organisms which lie in the debatable land between animals and plants, is, in my judgment, a question on which a prudent ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... or "penny wise and pound foolish" policy for Bobby to undertake such a long walk, is certainly a debatable question; but as my young readers would probably object to an argument, we will follow him to the city, and let every one settle the point to ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... an unwritten constitution is that there are always a number of cases for which the law does not provide; and there were many more in the seventeenth century than there are to-day. These cases constituted the debatable land between the crown and parliament. Parliament assumed that the crown could neither diminish parliamentary privilege nor develop its own prerogative without parliamentary sanction; and it read this assumption ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... handling his own early experience as to make it an encouragement and a stimulus, and not (as the manner of some is) a burden and a bogey. Mr. Morley never obtrudes his own opinions, never introduces debatable matter, never dogmatizes. But he is always ready to pick up the gauntlet, especially if a Tory flings it down; is merciless towards ill-formed assertion, and is the alert and unsparing enemy of what Mr. Ruskin calls "the obscene ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... a Crusaders' Union, pledged, like Spenser's Red Cross Knight, to avenge the wrongs of distressed damsels in the junior forms. The ring of battle certainly added a spice of excitement to their secret. It was much more interesting to interfere personally on behalf of their protegees than to place debatable matters before the prefects. If war were involved with another sorority it could not be helped. And war there undoubtedly was. Bertha and Mabel, too clever to court open ignominy, desisted for the present from biscuit-snatching, but sought other means of retaliation. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... unrestricted; ajar, unlocked; extended, expanded, spread, gaping, yawning, unfolded, dehiscent; frank, unreserved, candid, ingenuous, guileless, overt, undisguised; generous, liberal, bounteous, open-handed; revealed, patent, manifest; unsettled, undetermined, debatable, undecided, controvertible; mild, clement; free, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... with the fact of a representative assembly of two parties only, the Whig and the Tory, the Right and the Left, or by whatever other names they may have been called, with strictly drawn lines of demarcation with no debatable or intermediate territory, that perhaps has become everywhere, more or less, a thing of the past." Such opinions so freely expressed must prepare the way for the more serious consideration of proportional representation by the practical politicians. It will in no sense ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... geographical division of the kingdom into four provinces, as did not correspond with any ancient division, and still less with the modern, by which the number was multiplied to twelve. [3] The central portion, comprehending the Capitanate, the Basilicate, and the Principality, became debatable ground between the parties, each of whom insisted on these as forming an integral part of its own moiety. The French had no ground whatever for contesting the possession of the Capitanate, the first of these provinces, and by far the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... for Psychical Research was founded at the beginning of 1882, for the purpose of making an organised and systematic attempt to investigate various sorts of debatable phenomena which are prima facie inexplicable on any generally recognised hypothesis. From the recorded testimony of many competent witnesses, past and present, including observations recently made by scientific ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... leaders, was at the time a young officer in the Mounted Rifle Regiment, now known as the 3rd United States Cavalry. It was some years before the Civil War, and the regiment was on duty in the Southwest, then the debatable land of Comanche and Apache. While on a scout after hostile Indians, the troops in their march roused a large grisly which sped off across the plain in front of them. Strict orders had been issued against ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... North Carolina is, perhaps, debatable. Nearly all historians have represented it as settled by Dissenting refugees; but Mr. S.B. Weeks, a Carolina historian, has written an essay to prove that this was not the case ("Religious Development in the Province of North Carolina," Baltimore, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... sir," Malcolm replied, "that you would at once order a squadron of horse to escort me and my companion through the debatable land between your army and that of the Swedes, with orders for us to pass freely on as soon as we are beyond your outposts and in the neighbourhood ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... at the present moment the only opportunities which he has given us to check his statements do not wholly encourage us to accept them. It will be seen therefore that the knowledge of Palladian Masonry was first brought to light under circumstances of a debatable kind. ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... there are still a vast number too many. When old Gifford made a solitude round him, Blagg built those reed-thatched hovels at Morte which contribute more poor rogues to the quarter sessions than all the surrounding parishes. That strip of debatable land is the seedbed of crime and misery: the laborers take refuge in the hamlet, and herd together as animals left to their own choice never do herd; but their walk to and from their work is shortened by one ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... of about a hundred miles separated this mountain fastness from the similar passes which guarded eastern Virginia along the line of the Blue Ridge. This debatable ground was sparsely settled and very poor in agricultural resources, so that it could furnish nothing for subsistence of man or beast. The necessity of transporting forage as well as subsistence and ammunition through this mountainous belt ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... rather than from the happy accident of our world position. But peace is an entirely relative term, as any one who has given heed to the social conditions we have created should realize. We have enjoyed a certain kind of peace, the value of which is debatable. And now, alarmed at the exposed condition of our eastern seaboard, we are agitatedly preparing to arm to protect ourselves—from what? From Germany? Or is it from England? And still we recommend an instant peace ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... that they too were the salt of the earth; and it may be added that in their pungent and antiseptic quality there was mingled a measure of sweetness, not to be found in the children of Israel. I do not say outright that Odysseus ought not to have slain the suitors. That is a debatable point. It is true that they were guests under his roof. But he had not invited them. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt. I am thinking of another episode in his life. By what Circe did, and by his disregard of what she had done, a searching light is cast on the laxity ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... species will be quite as beautiful and distinctly more useful than any of the other trees that are commonly selected for planting upon public grounds. Because of the inclusion of the economic factor the question as to whether nut trees may well supplant the kinds of trees commonly selected is not a debatable question. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... preparation of our army and of backing up our troops with undivided enthusiasm were his main theme. But he delivered himself on other subjects almost equally important. He paid his respects to the "Conscientious Objector," and he insisted at all times that "Murder is not debatable." "Murder is murder," he wrote Professor Felix Frankfurter, "and it is rather more evil when committed in the name of a professed social movement." * Mr. Frankfurter was then acting, by appointment of President Wilson, as counsel to a Mediation Commission, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... an arm than a leg," remarked the Gunner from the next bed. For a while they pursued this debatable point, much as men discuss politics, and incidentally with far less heat. . . . It was a question of interest, and the fact that the Gunner had lost his leg made no difference to the matter at all. An onlooker would have listened in vain for any note of complaint. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Here we are on firm ground. The law we acknowledge, the light we follow,—these may be expressed with entire clearness and confidence. The test they invite is present experiment. Nothing vital shall be staked on far-away history or debatable metaphysics. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... he knows that sectional rancor will not long exist in California. Not really, in the war, a divided community, a debatable land, there will be thousands of able, hardy men, used to excitement, spreading over the West. It is a land of easy and liberal opinion. Business and the mine's affairs cause him to visit San Francisco frequently. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... my object is to state facts, rather than to moot theories, I leave this debatable ground to others, and here close a narrative, compiled with much care, of this interesting and instructive case. I was the rather disposed to examine it critically and report it in detail, because it seems to suggest valuable hints, if it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... and tobacco. For a while he forgot the evening's adventure, but eventually found himself listening to a discussion—carried on over steaming tumblers of toddy—in regard to certain predispositions of the always debatable sex. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... waste. Macdonell's ideas of border warfare were derived from his Highland ancestors; and, as he expected no quarter, he gave none. Colonel Butler, with his Rangers and a party of Indians, descended into the valley of Wyoming, which was a sort of debatable ground between Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and carried fire and sword through the settlements there. This raid was commemorated by Thomas Campbell in a most unhistorical poem entitled ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... one of the most debatable of all points in the conduct of this doubly lamentable struggle. Whilst those who were far away from the scene of operations denounced what they deemed the wanton barbarities of the British, those on the spot denounced almost as warmly ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... doubt, invaded him. He had an unjustified sense of meddling, of blundering into a paramount situation to which he lacked the key. He had done nothing debatable, he assured himself; Mariana's inherent, well—prejudices, couldn't be charged to him. In the room where he was to sleep the uneasiness followed him. She was his greatest, his only concern. Howat Penny reviewed his desire for her, his preference for a Mariana untouched by the common surge of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... end of the tenth century, having met with severe reverses and been compelled to withdraw into Hungary, they at length settled down under an established government. The first king was undoubtedly Stephen (997 or 1008 A.D.), and they annexed Transylvania, which up to that time had been a debatable territory, either about 1002 according to some writers, or, as others affirm, not until the time of Ladislaus the Holy ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... woman is the horizon where heaven and earth meet—a sort of land debatable between the confines where positive institutions end and intellectual supremacy begins. It includes the whole region over which politeness should extend, as well as a large portion of the territories over which the fine ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... have been seen on the west coast of Bali but not in Java, Heilprin avoids the unscientific term line, because he finds his zoological realms divided by "transition regions," which are intermediate in animal types as they are in geographical location.[333] Wallace notes a similar "debatable land" in the Rajputana Desert east of the Indus, which is the border district between the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... curmudgeon, after the reaction of the winter months, became very prominent towards the time of the Easter vestry, when he would appear, having enlisted a small band of supporters, with a number of grievances relating to rates, parish officials, rights of way, footpaths, and such-like debatable subjects. Of course, he should have been promptly squashed by the chairman, but too often an indulgent Vicar would allow him ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... "Romola" there is a change, debatable ground is entered upon at once. Hitherto, the story-teller has mastered the preacher, although an ever more earnest soul has been expressing itself about Life. Now we enter the region of more self-conscious literary art, of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... and the abnormal development of loyalty and bigotry, were not the only evil results of the chronic struggle in which Spain had been engaged. For many centuries, while Christian Spain had been but a fringe of debatable border-land on the skirts of the Moorish kingdom, perpetual guerilla warfare had rendered consecutive labour difficult or impracticable; and the physical configuration of the country contributed in bringing about this result. To plunder the Moors across the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the period was sizzling in the fire, Mr. Meredith recovered enough to pull out his purse and pay up the debatable levy. A moment later the steaming drink was poured ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Bordeaux, the tourist proceeded to the village of Margaux, in the true claret country—a general idea of which he gives by describing it as a debatable ground, stretching between the sterile Landes and the fat, black loam of the banks of the Garonne. The soil is sand, gravel, and shingle, scorched by the sun, and would be incapable of yielding as much nourishment to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... wrong again as long as she lived! Her father paced up and down the room with a grave smile upon his lips, the little suppliant following with eager feet, ever renewing her request, and he answering little; for the matter was beyond her ken. But he was a Christian who kept off the Debatable land; and where his foot might not enter, he would not send his child. Had he not himself dedicated her to be the Lord's? She never went again. Never to the theatre; never again to any such place, until long afterwards; and with that going ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... point in the early morning, threading through the pass, making their way across the section known to the outlaws. From here they could survey the debatable land where their temporary allies insisted the Reds were ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... boundaries of London until the time came when he could enjoy his brief period of well-earned ease. Dr. Sidney Lee says that the name of Shakespeare does not appear in any known list of the actors who travelled from England between 1580 and 1630, a period more than sufficient to cover the debatable years. Against this must be set the fact that the name appears in certain records of the town of Aberdeen as that of a member of a travelling company visiting the city in the period covered ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... of Russia, from the Sea of Azof to the Danube, there spreads far inland a fertile region, embracing the whole or part of the Governments of Podolia, Poltava, Kharkof, Kief, Voronei, Don Cossacks, etc., including the districts of what was once known as the "Ukraine," which was for many years debatable land between Poland, Turkey, and Russia, and on which roamed the mongrel bands of the Cossacks, an uncouth population recruited among the many tramps and vagabonds from the northern provinces, mixed with all the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... to-morrow, a vision of himself in skull-cap and seedy clothing (the trousers well-bagged at the knees) with rather more than a mere hint of an equator emphasized by grease-spots on his waistcoat, presiding over the fortunes of one of those dingy little Parisian shops wherein debatable antiques accumulate dust till they fetch the ducats of the credulous; and of a Sunday walking out, in a shiny frock-coat with his ribbon of the Legion in the buttonhole, a ratty topper crowning his placid brows, a humid grandchild adhering to his hand: a thrifty and respectable bourgeois, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... from hell—well, that was debatable. But no thrust from the hellmaker was not a debatable point. The Cow wasn't likely to be wrong, though her appalling literalness was such that an improperly phrased question might make her seem ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... slave-trade in the District of Columbia was abolished; a more stringent fugitive-slave law was passed; and for the adjustment of State boundaries, which reduced the positive slave-area in Texas and threw it into the debatable territory of New Mexico, Texas received ten millions of dollars. Although this adjustment was not entirely satisfactory to either the North or the South, the nation settled itself for a period of quiet to repair the waste and utilize the conquests of the Mexican War. It became absorbed in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... the purpose of Clematis. It was debatable whether Clematis had remained upon the premises after the departure of Genesis, or had lately returned thither upon some errand of his own, but one thing was certain, and the manner of Clematis—his attitude, his every look, his every ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... frequently important, and books of unusual interest are sometimes considered in the body of the work; but in such a study as the present imaginative literature can be hardly more than a secondary and a debatable ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... in the former edition, I have received great assistance from my friend Mr. Lennox Browne, the eminent throat surgeon, who, by ever patiently discussing with me debatable points, and by giving me access to cases, interesting from a physiological point of view, both at the Central Throat and Ear Hospital, Gray's Inn Road, and in his extensive private practice, has afforded me opportunities of increasing my knowledge ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... conduct it with the gentlemanly leisure its pretended unimportance allowed—was Lieutenant Hugh Campbell, one of several officers of that name who served in the Highland regiment that had been stationed earlier at Valentine's Hill; he therefore knew the debatable country beyond Kingsbridge as well as I. He was a mere youth, a serious-minded Scot, and of a different sort from Captain Falconer: 'twas one of the elegant captain's ways, and evidence of his breadth of mind, to make friends of men of other kinds than his own. Young ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... that the excitement of presidential campaigns is detrimental to the nation. This could hardly be said of the campaign of 1908. To produce political excitement there must be debatable questions termed, by the politicians as "issues." Just what the issues were in the campaign few people could determine. There were no issues which involved foreign affairs. The Democratic party did not criticise the sending of the fleet around the world, the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... must not only know what to select but in what order to present it. Knowledge consists in being able to find a thing when you want it and accordingly an attempt has been made to pigeonhole each joke where it would be most useful. Such a classification is at best a difficult and debatable question, and numerous cross references have been placed wherever it was thought they might direct the reader to the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... which falls on one side drains into the Chambal, and so into the Bay of Bengal; that which falls on the other side into the Luni, which discharges itself into the Runn of Cutch. The province is on the border of what may be called the arid "zone''; it is the debatable land between the north-eastern and south-western monsoons, and beyond the influence of either. The south-west monsoon sweeps up the Nerbudda valley from Bombay and crossing the tableland at Neemuch gives copious supplies to Malwa, Jhalawar and Kotah and the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a debatable question; undeniably he did need to be brought up with a sharp turn. It was in her mind that perhaps she had said enough; but she wished to make ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... up a regular military cordon. The troops composing this cordon were called Cossacks; but these were not the "Free Cossacks" best known to history and romance. These latter lived beyond the frontier on the debatable land which lay between the two hostile races, and there they formed self-governing military communities. Each one of the rivers flowing southwards—the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, and the Yaik or Ural—was held by a community of these Free Cossacks, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... in order, Kent was the frontier exposed to attacks from Picardy, and Durham, the patrimony of St. Cuthbert, lay as a sacred boundary between England and Scotland; Northumberland and Cumberland were still a debatable ground between the two kingdoms. Chester was held by its earls as freely by the sword as the King held England by the crown; no lay vassal in the county held of the King, all of the earl. In Shropshire there were only ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... whom came the learned amongst the Faithful, to discuss the tenets of their religion and to listen to the wisdom of the wise. With them came also Dilawur, full of zeal and thirsting for knowledge, who artlessly introduced so debatable a subject, that the assembly was thrown into an uproar; and lest worse things might happen unto him, the worthy, but too enquiring, subadar was hustled hastily forth, and requested in future to stick to soldiering, and to avoid bringing his infernal questions to cause ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... the Union in 1848 that brought about the organization of the Territory of Minnesota. The peculiar situation in which all the people residing west of the St. Croix found themselves set them to devising ways and means to obtain some kind of government to live under. It was a debatable question whether the remnant of Wisconsin which was left over when the state was admitted carried with it the territorial government, or whether it was a "no man's land," and different views were entertained on the subject. The question was somewhat embarrassed ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... As I do not propose to make here any treatise of Geology, but simply to place before my readers some pictures of the old world, with the animals and plants that inhabited it at various times, I shall avoid, as far as possible, all debatable ground, and confine myself to those parts of my subject which are best known, and can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... country; and then generosity, pride, ardour—all enhanced by woman's more peculiar gifts of gentleness, modesty, tenderness, insight, gravity . . . for Balaustion is like many women in having, for all her gaiety, more sense of happiness than sense of humour. It often comes to me as debatable if this be not the most attractive of deficiencies! Certainly Balaustion persuades us of its power; for in the Apology, her refusal of the Aristophanic Comedy is firm-based upon that imputed lack in women. No man, thus poised, could have convinced us of his reality; while she ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... the lay courts; but with the development of ecclesiastical law in the middle of the twelfth century, it was inevitable that difficulties should spring up. The boundaries of civil and ecclesiastical law were wholly uncertain, the scientific study of law had hardly begun, and there was much debatable ground which might be won by the most arrogant or the most skilful of the combatants. Every brawl of a few noisy lads in the Oxford streets or at the gates of some cathedral or monastic school was enough to kindle the strife as to the jurisdiction of Church ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... city the French seem entrenched. A French post-office, a French hospital, French shops, hotels, missions, and above all the huge consulate, are there like advance posts of a greater invasion. There is an ominous look to these pretentious establishments holding strategic points in this or that debatable territory. Take the French consulates, here in Yunnan-fu and in Hoi-hou, or the Russian in Urga, the North Mongolian capital, they have more the aspect of a fortified outpost in a hostile country than the residence ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall |
