"Middling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But, while a general action is kept up, by vigorous exercise, nature itself will resist the most unfriendly vapors of the atmosphere. There is a great and growing evil in the education of ladies of the middling and higher classes, at the present day. The tender and delicate manner in which they are bred, enfeebles their constitutions, and greatly diminishes their usefulness, in every station of life. Many of them are sickly, and few of them are able to ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... unbiased, just, honorable, unprejudiced, ingenuous; average, middling, tolerable, so-so, passable; comely, attractive, pretty, handsome; blond, light; unsullied, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... English firms, because, as you say, they couldn't; but they can boycott you. Everything your boss makes is turned out just as well and just as cheap, or cheaper, by the nuns at Robeen. Perhaps you didn't know that these holy ladies have hired a traveller. Well, they have, and he's a middling smart man, too—quite smart enough to play the trumps that are put into his hand; and he's got a fine flush of them now. What with the way that wretched rag of a paper, which started all the fuss, goes on rampaging, and the amount of feeling that's got up over the station-master, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... formed but two were missing! In passing the fox-gloves, where the little China had been hidden, many had shut up never to open again, and she could not be found. A middling-sized Doll, with boots, was missing also! In vain they ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... children in destitute circumstances following the father's death. The boy asserted there were no children in the family. And they had just moved in, within a very few days, during which time the neighbourhood had only glimpsed a "middling old" woman. It was strange at least, adding distinctly to the puzzle of the whole affair. West grew nervous, wondering why the two should remain so long within, out of sight and hearing. If this was merely a charitable visit, it surely did not need require such a length of time. He had been ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... Checking a Wagon on a Hill-side.—In going down a steep hill a middling-sized tree may be felled, and its root tied to the hind axletree, while its branchy top sweeps along the ground, as is seen in the lowermost wagon in the sketch. [Sketch of horses and wagons on hill] In the south-west of France the leaders of the team are unharnessed and taken ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... injury, falsehood, theft, incontinence, envy; whether committed, or caused, or assented to, through greed, wrath, or infatuation; whether faint, or middling, or excessive; bearing endless, fruit of ignorance and pain. Therefore must the weight be cast on the ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... honey-bird. You can have him and welcome if you can put up with him. He's like Mis' Peavey always says of her own jam; 'Plenty of it such as it is and good enough what they is of it.' A real slow-horse love can be rid far and long at a steady gate. He ain't pretty, but middling smart." And the handsome young Doctor's mother eyed him with a well-assumed tolerance covering ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... pretty middling, within doors; but I don't like the climate, Mr. John I don't the climate, Sir. There's no country like h'England, I believe, for my business. 'Ere's a fine rose, Sir if you'll step a bit this way quite a new kind I got it over ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in a simple, dark-blue uniform, without epaulets, booted to the knee, and with a cloth cap upon his head; and, at first sight, you might have taken him for a corporal of dragoons, of particularly neat and soldier-like aspect, and in the prime of his age and strength. He is only of middling stature, but his build is very compact and sturdy, with broad shoulders and a look of great physical vigor, which, in fact, he is said to possess,—he and Beauregard having been rivals in that particular, and both distinguished above other men. His complexion is dark ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I kept one of middling size for many months. During two or three weeks I wondered how he lived, for he was never seen to eat. He used to climb to the top of the tank and slide down the slippery glass as though it were a montagne russe. Then he would wander about upon the bottom, ploughing deep furrows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... "Middling ... middling," Uncle William replied. "We're having a wee bit of opposition to fight against. One of these big firms has just opened a branch here. Pippin's! They're causing me a bit of anxiety, the way they're cutting prices ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... instance, recited his grammar lesson without a slip, the letter B—standing for bene, well—was put in the grammar column. If he made one mistake, the entry was V B, vix bene—scarcely well; if two mistakes, Med, mediocriter—middling; and if three, M, male—badly, equivalent to not knowing it at all. The same system prevailed for all the lessons, and in a modified form for the behaviour or deportment also. As regards behaviour, the arrangement was one bad mark for each offence, the ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... Guards are not so much practised, with Sword in Hand, as the middling Guard, People being more careful of parrying with the Sword, and a Man is in much better Condition to parry from the middling Guard than from ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... direction. With such a comrade to focus and stimulate his energies he felt modestly but agreeably sure of "doing something". And under this assurance was the lurking sense that he was somehow worthy of his opportunity. His life, on the whole, had been a creditable affair. Out of modest chances and middling talents he had built himself a fairly marked personality, known some exceptional people, done a number of interesting and a few rather difficult things, and found himself, at thirty-seven, possessed of an intellectual ambition sufficient to occupy the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... whichever one of us had hailed, heeling over to that side as if her ballast had shifted. She acted to me kind of uneasy, but everybody that come into that parlor—and they kept piling in all the time—looked more'n middling joyful. They kept pretty quiet, too, so that every yell we let out echoed, as you might say, all 'round. I begun to git shaky at the knees, as if I was preaching to a ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the Widow for help.] — I'm a poor scholar with middling faculties to coin a lie, so I'll tell you the truth, Christy Mahon. I'm wedding with Pegeen beyond, and I don't think well of having a clever fearless man the like of you dwelling in ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... magpies, I requested l'Encuerado to guide us back to our bivouac. All of a sudden my friend enjoined silence; an opossum, followed by five young ones, was coming near us on our left. The animal indolently approached a tree of middling size, which it climbed, aided by its prehensile tail. Its progeny crowded busily round the foot of the tree, uttering plaintive cries. The opossum then came down again, and scarcely had it put foot to the ground before its disconsolate family rushed pell-mell into the maternal pouch. ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... would have been better advised had they stayed at home, foddering the cattle, cleaning dishes,—in fine, performing their moderate share of the labors of life, without being harassed by its cares. The sable inmates of the mansion were not excluded from the domestic affections: in families of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the circle closed round the evening hearth, its blaze glowed on their dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's children. It must have contributed to reconcile them ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sugar tree, walnuts, hickory, elm, and other varieties common to the West. There is much level, table land, between the streams. Along the Wabash, below Terre Haute, is an undulating surface, diversified with forest and prairie, with a soil of middling quality, interspersed with some very rich tracts. Along the Wabash and its tributaries above Terre Haute, the land in general is first rate,—a large proportion forest, interspersed with beautiful prairies. The timber consists of ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... These were organizations of many merchants belonging to the same trade; such as shipbuilders, carpenters, candle-makers, and so forth. Their main object was to see that the work which was turned out was good. Every man belonged to his guild; some were for 'common and middling folks,' while kings and princes were members of others. A great deal of good was done by these companies, for each, besides aiding and protecting its own members, usually had some other charity. For instance, ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... at least right then. This exasperated the haughty Captain, and he hollowed for the First Lieutenant to come and put me in irons. I asked him what he was there for, and he told me that it was "none of my business." I then got pretty middling hot myself, and I told him that if he did not know his business, that it was "up to me" to "put you next," or words to that extent. I told him that he was there for the purpose of furnishing escorts for the United ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... there are men in this world in whose lot failure seems to be the rule. Everything to which they put their hand breaks down or goes amiss. But most human beings can testify that their lot, like their abilities, their stature, is a sort of middling thing. There is about it an equable sobriety, a sort of average endurableness. Some things go well: some things go ill. There is a modicum of disappointment: there is a modicum of success. But so much of disappointment comes to the lot of almost all, that there ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... my heart in a ferny hill, Twix' a liddle low shaw an' a great high gill. Oh hop-bine yaller an' wood-smoke blue, I reckon you'll keep her middling true! ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... feel proud of being connected, either personally or through their relatives, with those pursuits on which their country's greatness depends. The wealthier manufacturers and merchants already mix with those classes, and the larger and even the middling tradesmen are frequently found associating with the gentry of the land. It is good that this ambition should be cultivated, not by any rivalry in expense, but by a rivalry in knowledge and in liberal feelings; and few things would more contribute to so ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... "Middling," she answered. "My aunt's been terrible bad with bronchitis this winter. Poor soul, it'll carry her off one of these days, ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... she explained to herself. "If we were poor, we could go on excursions with the charity children; and if we were rich, we'd travel to the mountains or the sea. We're only middling, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the state of things he spoke more sadly than ever. 'The rich cannot guess, sir, how high ill-feeling is rising in these days. It's not only those who are outwardly poorest who long for change; the middling people, sir, the small town shopkeepers especially, are nearly past all patience. One of the City Mission assured me that he has been watching them these several years past, and that nothing could beat their fortitude ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... furniture, and personal effects would have to be sold in order to pay his debts. When all was settled, Edwin Gurwood found himself cast upon his own resources with good health, a kind but wayward disposition, a strong handsome frame, a middling education, and between three and four hundred pounds in his pocket. He soon found that this amount of capital melted with alarming rapidity under the influence of a good appetite and expensive tastes, so he resolved at once to commence work of some kind. But what was he to turn to? His uncle ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... one winter evening, trying to enter the mouth of the Sacramento. There was a freshet on the river, the flood tide from the bay had been beaten back into a strong ebb, and the lusty west wind died down with the sun. It was just sunset, and with a fair to middling breeze, dead aft, we stood still in the rapid current. We were squarely in the mouth of the river; but there was no anchorage and we drifted backward, faster and faster, and dropped anchor outside as the last breath of wind left us. The night came on, beautiful and warm and ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... Aricia received me in but a middling inn: Heliodorus the rhetorician, most learned in the Greek language, was my fellow-traveller: thence we proceeded to Forum-Appi, stuffed with sailors and surly landlords. This stage, but one for better travellers than we, being laggard we divided into two; the Appian way is less ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... of an unnatural and adulterous race, whose youths are catamites, and whose old men are obstinate as asses." "But I am from Yemen," said the boy. "If so," answered the tyrant, "thou belongest to a comfortless region, where the most honourable profession is robbery, where the middling ranks tan hides, and where a wretched poor spin wool and weave coarse mantles." "But I am from Mecca," said the boy. "Then," replied Hyjauje, "thou comest from a mine of perverseness, stupidity, ignorance, and slothfulness; ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... with, for fear the reader might have a good Italian dictionary—an article, by the way, the writer has never yet seen. Suffice it to say, that the exclamations made use of by the Romans, men and women, not only of the lower but even the middling class, are of a nature exceedingly natural, and plainly point to Bacchic and Phallic sources. The bestemmia of the Romans is viler than the blasphemy ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... antiquaries; the extreme obscurity of the subject, even though faction had never entered into the question, would naturally have begotten those controversies. But the great influence of the lords over their slaves and tenants, the clientship of the burghers, the total want of a middling rank of men, the extent of the monarchy, the loose execution of the laws, the continued disorders and convulsions of the state; all these circumstances evince that the Anglo-Saxon government became at last extremely aristocratical; and the events, during the period ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... countenance is very expressive; but from her long residence with the Indians, she has acquired the habit of peeping from under eye-brows as they do with the head inclined downwards. Formerly her hair was of a light chestnut brown—it is now quite grey, a little curled, of middling length and tied in a bunch behind. She informed me that she had never worn a ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... when it came to his turn to charge them. "Are they guilty, or not? If the question was put to me I should say the Laird of MacLachlan, arrant Papist! should keep his men at home to Mass on the other side of the loch instead of loosing them on honest, or middling honest, Campbells, for the strict virtue of these Coillebhraid miners is what I am not going ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... embouchure is a mile and a half, and the banks on both sides are high, steep, and little wooded. It is crossed by a shallow, not above two or three feet deep; but on its east side the channel will admit ships of a middling size fully laden. The current was so strong against us, that it was with much exertion our rowers accomplished crossing the shallow. We landed on the left bank in order to determine the geographical position ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... people, as that of intoxicating liquors among other nations, is a species of luxury which all ranks adopt according to their ability, and which, when once become habitual, it is almost impossible to shake off. Being however like other luxuries expensive, few only among the lower or middling class of people can compass the regular enjoyment of it, even where its use is not restrained, as it is among the pepper-planters, to the times of their festivals. That the practice of smoking opium must be in some degree prejudicial to the health is highly probable; ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... sir," assented Mr. Quarterpage. "Yes, a middling-sized man, and fair—very fair. Deary me, Mr. Spargo!—this is a revelation. And you really think, sir, that John Maitland and John Marbury are ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... boat which the best boat-builder in the place had finished and tarred over that very autumn. Elias had a very good notion of what a boat should be, and it seemed to him that he had never seen a Femboering so well built below the water-line. Above the water-line, indeed, it looked only middling, so that, to one of less experience than himself, the boat would have seemed rather a heavy goer than otherwise, and anything but ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... thirty millions per annum. If cotton can be sold in the Liverpool market at anything less than 4-3/4d. per lb., the slaveholders in America will cease to grow what, under altered circumstances, would be unprofitable. Cotton of middling quality (which is in the greatest demand) may be obtained in West and Eastern Africa at 4d. per lb.; and, already, cotton from Western Africa (Liberia) has been sent to Liverpool, there re-shipped, and ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... "Middling," said the President.—"By the way," he added, "if you have any money, it is usual to offer some champagne. It keeps up a good spirit, and is one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... truth?" answered Warner; "pardon me, I believe not: the middling classes are as human as the rest. There is the region, the heart, of Avarice,—systematized, spreading, rotting, the very fungus and leprosy of social states; suspicion, craft, hypocrisy, servility to the great, oppression to the low, the waxlike mimicry of courtly vices, the hardness of flint ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "They be both middling good. They ain't much odds atwixt 'em. But I see most fish movin' o' mornin's in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... divers colors that do accompany the same. Second, retrench all eating not necessary to health and comfort. A French family would live in luxury on the leavings that are constantly coming from the tables of those who call themselves in middling circumstances. There are superstitions of the table that ought to be broken through. Why must you always have cake in your closet? why need you feel undone to entertain a guest with no cake on your tea-table? Do without it a year, and ask yourselves ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of TIBBS, living at Hackney, near London, sorely against his will, and after warm remonstrance, finally yielded to his wife's entreaty that he would go in character to a masquerade-ball, given to the 'middling interest' by one of his old neighbors. He went accoutred as a knight, wearing his visor down. What was his surprise on entering the room, to find first one and then another member of the motley company slapping him familiarly on the back, with: 'Halloa! TIBBS! who thought to see you ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... food—with difficulty, for the proprietors had removed their valuables during the night and made a middling breakfast. He had not fully determined what to do, so he stayed where he was until his next step should become clearer. The morning passed slowly, with no developments. He kept an eye on the crowd of watchers, and once or ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... liberty—our real liberty—the liberty both of ourselves and our country—is in our own hands. England cannot crush or kill it, or even seriously injure it. England can only remain in Ireland, indeed, as long as our character is weaker than her guns. Guns are stronger than middling character. Against real character, passionate, determined, and organized, they are less availing than children's catapults. English domination feeds and thrives on weak character. When every Nationalist ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... answer this objection, and still preserve the reason for the preference which Mr. Locke gives to a home education; and that is, what I formerly hinted, to take into your family the child of some honest neighbour of but middling circumstances, and like age of your own, but who should give apparent indications of his natural promptitude, ingenuous temper, obliging behaviour and good manners; and to let him go hand-in-hand with yours ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... "Middling," said the boatswain grudgingly. "Might be better; might be wuss. But look here, young fellow; I don't like working in ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... supposing him to continue sound, the breeder of this horse must have better luck or better judgment in breeding than his neighbors, if more than one in five or six that he does breed turn out desirable horses in every respect. If he turns out but a middling sort of beast, it is but small satisfaction to know that he is sound; in fact, so little satisfaction should we feel, that, if we were compelled to keep and use him, so far from rejoicing that he was sound, we should only regret that he ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... governing—except that they were loyal; and this was of no more use to them in this great work, than piety in the pulpit when the preacher cannot repeat the Lord's prayer without biting his tongue. The carpet-baggers ran all the way from "good to middling." Some went South with fair ability and good morals, where they lost the latter article and never found it; while many more went South to get all they could and keep all they got. The Negro could boast of numerical strength only. The scalawag managed the ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the jug. — A little small sup only I'm thinking. MARY — sees the priest, and holds out jug towards him. — God save your reverence. I'm after bringing down a smart drop; and let you drink it up now, for it's a middling drouthy man you are at all times, God forgive you, and this night is cruel dry. [She tries to go towards him. Sarah holds her back. PRIEST — waving her away. — Let you not be falling to the flames. Keep off, I'm saying. MARY — persuasively. — Let you not be shy of us, your reverence. ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... It is the rapidity of the throws, the glitter of the blades, the curve which the handles make towards their living aim, which give an air of danger to an exhibition that has become common-place, and only requires very middling skill. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... away, and during the passage of that period March Marston's bosom became a theatre in which, unseen by the naked eye, were a legion of spirits, good, middling, and bad, among whom were hope, fear, despair, joy, fun, delight, interest, surprise, mischief, exasperation, and a military demon named General Jollity, who overbore and browbeat all the rest by turns. These scampered through his brain and tore up his heart and tumbled about in his ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... about shortening canvas, and the yacht began to snore as she felt the wind. On a sudden, and as if the steamer had only just then spied us, she altered her course by three or four points, as one could see by the swift rising of her hull, till, whilst the sun was still hanging a middling height over the sea line, you could see the whole of the vessel—a long, low craft of about one hundred and fifty tons—sweeping through the seas like an arrow, the smoke streaming black and fat from her small, yellow funnel, and her hull sinking ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... I can't have you call Utica inferior. It isn't supreme—that's what's the matter with it, and I hate anything middling," said Pandora Day. She gave a light dry laugh, tossing back her head a little as she made this declaration. And looking at her askance in the dusk, as she trod the deck that vaguely swayed, he recognised something in her air and port ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... and snow, his belt and the strap of his revolver case keeping together the torn ruins of the blue coat of a Servian artillery officer. As far as the candlelight and his unwashed, unkempt condition make it possible to judge, he is a man of middling stature and undistinguished appearance, with strong neck and shoulders, a roundish, obstinate looking head covered with short crisp bronze curls, clear quick blue eyes and good brows and mouth, a hopelessly prosaic nose like that of a strong-minded baby, trim soldierlike carriage and energetic ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... from a mud cabin on the Curragh, not a hundred miles from here. My father was kill . . . but never mind about that now. When he left us it was middling hard collar work, I can tell you—what with me working the bit of a croft and the mother weeding for some of you—some of your fathers I mane—ninepence a day dry days, and sixpence all weathers. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... cows with small and slightly developed milk-mirrors are, in the majority of cases, bad milkers. There are, undoubtedly, cows with very small mirrors, which are, nevertheless, very fair in the yield of milk; and among those with middling quality of mirrors, instances of rather more than ordinary milkers often occur, while at the same time it is true that cases now and then are found where the very best marked and developed mirrors are found ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... feet long by two and a half at the widest part, and fourteen inches deep within, both ends alike, and painted green, which Joe thought affected the pitch and made it leak. This, I think, was a middling-sized one. That of the explorers was much larger, though probably not much longer. This carried us three with our baggage, weighing in all between five hundred and fifty and six hundred pounds. We had two heavy, though ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... is a coward sparing in the heart, Offspring of penury and low-born fear:— Prayer must take heed nor overdo its part, Asking too much of him with open ear! Sinners must wait, not seek the very best, Cry out for peace, and be of middling cheer:— False heart! thou cheatest God, ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... incongruity. Thus, too, we have Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne writing to his daughters about the learned women of his century, and cautioning them, in conclusion, that the study of letters was unsuited to ladies of a middling station, and should be reserved for princesses.[63] And once more, if we desire to see the same principle carried to ludicrous extreme, we shall find that Reverend Father in God, the Abbot of Brantome, claiming, on the authority of some lord of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... personal and local in its application, and thereby it became evident that the new proprietor of the "Herald" was a theorist who believed, in general, that a politician's honor should not be merely of that middling healthy species known as "honor amongst politicians"; and, in particular, that Rodney McCune should not receive the nomination of his party for Congress. Now, Mr. McCune was the undoubted dictator of the district, and his followers laughed at ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... sons, Tembaitake and Tembinatake. Tembaitake, our king's father, was short, middling stout, a poet, a good genealogist, and something of a fighter; it seems he took himself seriously, and was perhaps scarce conscious that he was in all things the creature and nursling of his brother. There was no shadow of dispute between the pair: the greater man filled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that man of whom he expected things so fair. He had asked in a loud voice of the middling funny gentleman (then in the middle of a song) whether he thought Joey would be long in coming, and when at last Joey did come he screamed out, "How do you do, Joey!" and went into convulsions ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... clear-sighted, and Juccio truly blind. The next day Cola called on his friend with very downcast and melancholy looks, and when Juccio bade him good day, he said, "I wish from my soul it were a good, or even a middling, day for me." "Why, what is the matter?" "The matter?" echoed Cola; "why, it is all over with me: some rascal has stolen a hundred florins from the place where they were hidden, and I cannot recover a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... middling horrible things already, and if these two men of ours call the frightful things we have seen normal, and are planning on deliberately hunting up things that even they will consider monstrous, you and I most certainly ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... cite certain experiments. Ligatures are either very tight or of middling tightness. A ligature I designate as tight, or perfect, when it is drawn so close about an extremity that no vessel can be felt pulsating beyond it. Such ligatures are employed in the removal of tumours; and in these cases, all afflux of nutriment and heat being prevented by the ligature, we ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... that there is anything particularly new or interesting. Not much is going on there. We have had a good crop of hay, the corn looks middling well; the rye is not much rusted. I think we shall not want ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... and a poor man that is proud. These two, O tiger among men, can pierce the orb itself of the sun, viz., a mendicant accomplished in yoga, and a warrior that hath fallen in open fight. O bull of the Bharata race, persons versed in the Vedas have said that men's means are good, middling, and bad. Men also, O king, are good, indifferent, and bad. They should, therefore, be respectively employed in that kind of work for which they may be fit. These three, O king, cannot have wealth of their own, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... upon was far more dangerous than any hitherto attempted by me, needs no further proof than this:—I went and made my will at Porlock, with a middling honest lawyer there; not that I had much to leave, but that none could say how far the farm, and all the farming stock, might depend on my disposition. It makes me smile when I remember how particular I was, and how for the life of me I was puzzled to bequeath most ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of light, but it was only a glimmering. He could understand that a man should not call his own goods middling; but he could not understand that a man is only carrying out the same principle in an advanced degree, when he proclaims with a hundred thousand voices in a hundred thousand places, that the article ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... I cannot help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat—at least with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you want for the present; not the largest kind, but simply good, middling-sized whales!—Mark Twain's Letter to a ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... repairs to the Continent, first to Rouen, then to Switzerland and Italy, in company with his friend Evelyn, and, in fine, settles for a season in Paris. Here he keeps open table for the banished royalists, as well as for the French wits, till his means are impaired by his liberality. A middling poet, a pitiful politician, a fickle dangler in affairs of love, Waller was an admirable host, and not only gave good dinners and suppers, but flavoured them delicately with compliment and repartee. In Paris he recovered his tone of spirits, and, had his ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... not exactly tall, but you wouldn't call him short. Complexion—well, don't you know?—that kind of middling complexion. Colour of his eyes—does anybody ever notice a thing like that? You needn't take my word for it, but I should say they were a kind of average ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... last time I was there, I gave you some idea of the state of society. Among the upper classes gaming is reduced to a science and is almost exclusively the order of the day. There is little or no taste for litterature among any part of the native society. The upper classes are sensualists; the middling ignorant and superstitious. With regard to the Lazzaroni, I do not think that they at all deserve the ill name that has been given to them. They always seem good humoured and willing to work, when employment is given to them; and they do not appear at all disposed to disturb ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... neither one of us give a dern about them getting away from us. All we wanted was jest to get away from there and not get mixed up with no nigger problems any more. We eat supper, and we set around a while, and we went to bed purty middling early, so as to get a good ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... to settle in the place where he was reared. But I kept a guard over him; I watched the time poverty gave him a nip, and then I settled him into the business. He never was so good a worker as Martin; he is too fond of wasting his time talking vanities. But he is middling handy, and he is always steady and civil to customers. I have no complaint worth while to be making this last twenty years against Andrew. [ANDREW ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... months on the Duluth house—and the last three weeks running night shifts and Sundays; didn't stop to eat, half the time—and what does Brown do but— 'Well,' he says, 'how're you feeling, Charlie?' 'Middling,' said I. 'Are you up to a little job tomorrow?' 'What's that?' I said. 'Seems to me if I've got to go down to the Calumet job Sunday night I might have an hour or so at home.' 'Well, Charlie,' he says, ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... drawing near to the inn door and the night's rest. The pictures swarmed and vanished in his brain; a surge of temptation, a beat of all his blood, went over him, to set spur to the mare and to go on into the unknown for ever. And then it passed away; hunger and fatigue, and that habit of middling actions which we call common sense, resumed their empire; and in that changed mood his eye lighted upon two bright windows on his left hand, between ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the despotism of a father, a brother, and a husband; and the middling and the poorer classes shut out from the acquisition of bread with independence, when they are not shut out from the very means of an industrious subsistence. Such were the views she entertained of the subject; ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... his larger poems, he had a genius little short of perfect in his handling of shorter forms. The Arthurian story which produced only middling moralizing in the Idylls, gave us as well the supremely written Homeric episode of the Morte d'Arthur, and the sharp and defined beauty of Sir Galahad and the Lady of Shallott. Tennyson had a touch of the pre-Raphaelite faculty of minute painting ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... or get something to fill up my time till the day—yes, the day comes. I've always been a middling writer, tho' I can't say much for the grammar, and spelling, and that, but I'll put it all down, from the beginning to the end, and maybe it'll save some other unfortunate young chap from pulling back like a colt when he's first roped, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... moment, he had an insatiable longing to know the truth, mingled with a strange fear of knowing it. What he wished to know was whether or not he had the potentialities of a great author in him. He knew that his story was not commonplace stuff, but he was afraid that it might only be middling writing, and he did not wish to be a middling writer. If he could not be a great writer, he did not wish to be a writer at all. There were thousands and thousands of novels in the world which did no more for men than ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... in middling circumstances, but having lost her husband by a railroad accident six months previously, the widow was reduced to quite a straightened condition. And when the fever seized her, she was in utter despair at the thought of being taken away ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... gentleman of middling height and very slenderly built, with a pair of dreamy blue eyes set in the oval of a face whose pallor was rendered more effective by a patch at the corner of his mouth. His coat, of a fine blue satin laced with silver, sat upon him with scarce a wrinkle (the which especially ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... and you. You think they have designs upon my life? Who could make capital out of the death of an old lady of seventy-three, who never did harm to anybody in the world except the miscreants and peace-breakers in the romances which she writes herself, who makes middling verses which can excite nobody's envy, who will have nothing to leave except the state dresses of an old maid who sometimes went to court, and a dozen or two well-bound books with gilt edges? And then you, Martiniere,—you ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... his day, did play the villain. Or maybe some at the Court of Mahound. I know not, for I was never there. But here is a goodly world, with prizes for them that can take them. Yet virtue may still flourish, for I have done middling well by serving my country. Now I am minded to retire into my lands, to cultivate good letters and to pursue virtue. For here about the Courts there are many distractions. The times are evil times. Yet will I do one good ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... you will carefully remember throughout your round is that of quiet Christian courtesy; impartially shown to rich, to middling, and to poor. I say impartially, with a view to both ends of the scale. Some men (perhaps not many, but some) seem to think that ministerial courage and fidelity in dealing with well-to-do parishioners demand a certain dropping of the courtesies of life; a very great mistake. ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... homines, non Di, non concessere columnae.' 'But God and man, and letter'd post denies That poets ever are of middling size.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... there's no harm in them ones. What the sergeant said to the gentleman Patsy the smith couldn't hear but it was maybe half an hour after when the sergeant went home again and he had a look on him like a man that was middling well satisfied. Patsy the smith saw him for he was in the ditch when he passed, terrible sick, retching the way he thought the whole of his liver would be out on the road before he'd done. Well, there was no more happened last night; but it wasn't ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... just in his merciless criticism. He showed the youthful bard a thousand glaring defects in his chef-d'oeuvre. The humbled country author burnt his tragedy, returned home, took to his chamber, and died of vexation and grief. Of all unfortunate men, one of the unhappiest is a middling author endowed with too lively a sensibility for criticism. Athenaeus, in his tenth book, has given us a lively portrait of this melancholy being. Anaxandrides appeared one day on horseback in the public assembly at Athens, to recite a dithyrambic ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Much of the charm and many of the fascinations which delight you are the result of association of time and of place. The lovely voice, whose tones have spoken to your heart, may, like some instrument, be delightful in the harmony of the orchestra, but, after all, prove a very middling performer ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... it may not be amiss if we bear him company. He had pretty well recovered of his fit of discontent, for morning air and exercise can soon chase gloom away; so he cheerily tramped along, thinking as he went, how that, after all, it is a middling happy world, and how that the raindrops, now that it had cleared up, hung like diamonds on the laurels, when of a sudden, as he turned a corner near the house, there broke upon his ear, at that quiet hour, such a storm of boisterous sounds—voices so loud with oaths and altercation—such ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... before the wind in that parallel. This resolution was formed on the 2d February, all which day and most of the ensuing night we had fine calm weather, and caught abundance of yellow-tails, which swam about the vessel. This fish is about four feet long, having twenty fins on its back; a middling one behind the head, a large one on the middle of the back, and eighteen small ones between that and the tail. It has a large fin on each side near the gills, and thirteen under the belly, viz. a middling one under the gills, a large one near the middle of the belly, which goes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... dew. The elephant being thus converted, the people around were filled with joy; they all raised a cry of wonder at the miracle, and brought their offerings of every kind. The scarcely-good arrived at middle-virtue, the middling-good passed to a higher grade, the unbelieving now became believers, those who believed were strengthened in their faith. Agatasatru, mighty king, seeing how Buddha conquered the drunken elephant, was moved at heart by thoughts profound; then, filled ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... will have their run in a few brief months and will be much sought after by the followers of fashion, but in a short time the little ones that pout, and look cunning, will come to the front and the large ones will be for rent. The best kind of a mouth to have is a middling sized one, that has a dimple by its sides, which is always ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... are doing every day, you ought to be hanged; and some day, when we take a sensible view of the matter, you will be; and serve you right. The child does not stand between a good and a bad angel: what it has to deal with is a middling angel who, in normal healthy cases, wants to be a good angel as fast as it can without killing itself in the process, which is a ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... yield about four hundred pounds of seed-cotton per acre, and the character of the fruit and the arrangement upon the stalk make it very expensive to harvest. Besides, the stalk grows too much to a tree and is not prolific proportionately, and the quality of the lint is equal to American "middling." We are trying to develop a plant that will yield 1,000 pounds of seed-cotton to the acre, with a lint equal in quality to fully good "middling" or to Allen's ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... middling," Uncle William replied. "We're having a wee bit of opposition to fight against. One of these big firms has just opened a branch here. Pippin's! They're causing me a bit of anxiety, the way they're cutting prices ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Brown Sauce for ragout, Game, Poultry, Fish, &c.)—If you want gravy, put in a thick and well-tinned stewpan a thin slice of fat ham or bacon, or an ounce of butter, and a middling-sized onion; on this lay a pound of nice juicy gravy-beef (as the object in making gravy is to extract the nutritious qualities of the meat, it must be beaten so as to reduce the containing vessels, and scored to render the surface more susceptible to the action ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous |
