"Middling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Napoleon, which we had seen in the preceding rooms. The policemen, distributed pretty abundantly about the rooms, themselves looked military, wearing cocked hats and swords. There were many women of the middling classes; some, evidently, of the lowest, but clean and decent, in colored gowns and caps; and laboring men, citizens, Sunday gentlemen, young artists, too, no doubt looking with educated eyes at these art-treasures, and I think, as a general ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of these mountains above the level of the sea, has not yet been determined; but I should imagine that it cannot exceed four thousand feet. For the first ten or twelve miles they are tolerably well clothed with timber, and produce occasionally some middling pasture; but beyond this they are excessively barren, and are covered generally with a thick brush, interspersed here and there with a few miserable stunted gums. They bear, in fact, a striking similarity, both ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... two 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 Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... baronet came in for about half as much; a knight, to a quarter. Bragg had also a sort of City or monetary tariff of politeness—a tariff that was oftener called in requisition than the 'Debrett' one, in Mr. Puffington's country. To a good 'tip' he vouchsafed as much cap as he gave to a lord; to a middling 'tip' he gave a sort of move that might either pass for a touch of the cap or a more comfortable adjustment of it to his head; a very small 'tip' had a forefinger to the peak; while he who gave ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... had the great advantage of a complete translation in Yiddish. I faithfully studied the portion assigned in Hebrew, but I need no longer wait for the next lesson to know how the story ends. I could read while daylight lasted, if I chose, in the Yiddish. Well I remember that Pentateuch, a middling thick octavo volume, in a crumbly sort of leather cover; and how the book opened of itself at certain places, where there were pictures. My father tells me that when I was just learning to translate single words, he found me one evening poring over the humesh ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Mr. Shrimplin, looking into the round innocent face of his son, "that's the stuff the traders used to sell the Indians. Strong? Well, you might say it was middling strong—just middling—about three drops of it would make a rabbit spit in ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... republic, with the power in the hands of the most influential citizens in intelligence and wealth. The third was that of the ultra Democrats or Jacobins, who wished to raise the multitude from degradation, penury, and infamy, into power, by the destruction of the throne, and the subjection of the middling classes, and the entire subversion of all the distinctions of wealth and rank. The approach of the allies united both of these latter classes against the throne. A motion was immediately introduced into the Assembly that the monarchy be entirely abolished, and a mob rioting through Paris threatened ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Carabas, held public days twice a week at his grand castle. And now came the neighbouring peer, full of grace and gravity, and the mellow baronet, with his hearty laugh, and the jolly country squire, and the middling gentry, and the jobbing country attorney, and the flourishing country surveyor; some honouring by their presence, some who felt the obligation equal, and others bending before the noble host, as if paying him adoration was almost ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... only one which can be maintained successfully, will express the greatest satisfactions which can be reached, though not the greatest that might be conceived or desired. To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. Wisdom discovers these possible accommodations, as circumstances impose them; and education ought to prepare ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the creature abandoned to grief made a romantic and striking picture, and Sophia thought for an instant that she had at length encountered life on a plane that would correspond to her dreams of romance. And she was impressed, with a feeling somewhat akin to that of a middling commoner when confronted with a viscount. There was, in the distance, something imposing and sensational about that prone, trembling figure. The tragic works of love were therein apparently manifest, in a sort ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... remarked that the lower and middling classes of society never entertained the opinion that the highest classes exhibited models of piety and virtue, and were, indeed, disposed to believe them worse than they ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Coolidge had told. He had spoken of a widow with three 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 ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... said the old woman, undoing the iron hasp with a trembling hand. The door flew open, and there entered a man of a middling stature, and of a handsome but melancholy countenance. He was clad in the Circassian dress: the water trickled down his bourka and bashlik.[22] Without any apologies, he threw it on the feather-bed, and began to untie the lopasti of his bashlik which half covered his face—Fatma, having in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... to me 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
... is sufficient; but then it is such a monotonous variety of UNSTRIKING dishes. It is an inane dead-level of "fair-to-middling." There is nothing to ACCENT it. Perhaps if the roast of mutton or of beef—a big, generous one—were brought on the table and carved in full view of the client, that might give the right sense ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 1 middling-sized head of celery. 1 ounce butter or frying oil. 1/2 teaspoon salt. A ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... something," she said, with a manner less cordial but more sincere than that she had previously assumed. "Leave the matter with me, and I may be able to open to you a grand house, not a plain, middling place like mine"—and she waved her hand deprecatingly toward the furnishings which seemed to Mrs. Frankland inconceivably rich—"a grand house with all the prestige of a great family. I don't know that I shall succeed with my friend, but for the sake of the cause I am willing to try. I won't ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... chit-chat, or SMALL TALK, which is the general run of conversation at courts, and in most mixed companies. It is a sort of middling conversation, neither silly nor edifying; but, however, very necessary for you to become master of. It turns upon the public events of Europe, and then is at its best; very often upon the number, the goodness or badness, the discipline, or the clothing ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... political observers that it was positively needful to launch the country into an international struggle to divert attention from demands for domestic reform. "Democratic ambition was awakened; the desire of power, under the name of reform, was rapidly gaining ground among the middling ranks; the only mode of checking the evil was by engaging in a foreign contest, by drawing off the ardent spirits into active service and, in lieu of the modern desire for innovation, rousing the ancient gallantry of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... to me at the Ostable station and dragged Nellie and me off the train. We rode with that person the rest of the way and—the said person told us what had happened and begged us to help you. Seemed to have made a middling good guess that I COULD help, if ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it in middling order," said Mrs. Patton, humbly. "Me and Mis' Dockum have done the best we knew,—opened the windows and let in the air and tried to keep it from getting damp. I fixed all the woollens with fresh camphire and tobacco the last o' the winter; you have to be dreadful careful in one ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... in volume that grew as the twilight deepened. Along with the troops, the motors flowed up, and soon there was an unbroken roar. Limousines glided through an enormous sea of lorries, little, middling, and big. All these cleared aside, wedged themselves in, subsided in their appointed places. A vast hum of voices and mingled noises arose from the ocean of men and vehicles that beat upon the approaches to the station and began ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... in a disappointed tone. "I thought they'd have been middling grown by now. But may-be He keeps th' wings till we've got yon? Ay, I reckon that's it. She'll have 'em all ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... elementary stage first. One of the Tantras or ritual scriptures of Modern Hinduism, the Mahanirv[a]na Tantra, thus explains the three stages in the path and their respective merits: "The knowledge that Brahma alone is true is the best expedient; meditation is the middling [ the means?]; and (2) the chanting of glories and the recitation of names is the worst; and (3) the worship of idols is the worst of the worst.[128] Of the pantheist's "saving knowledge," perhaps enough has been said. But again, it is the piercing ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... impartial, equitable, unbiased, just, honorable, unprejudiced, ingenuous; average, middling, tolerable, so-so, passable; comely, attractive, pretty, handsome; blond, light; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Johnson A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism The Editor An Experiment in Syndicalism Hugh H. Lusk Labor: "True Demand" and Immigrant Supply Arthur J. Todd The Way to Flatland Fabian Franklin The Disfranchisement of Property David McGregor Means Railway Junctions Clayton Hamilton Minor Uses of the Middling Rich F.J. Mather, Jr. Lecturing at Chautauqua Clayton Hamilton Academic Leadership Paul Elmer More Hypnotism, Telepathy, and Dreams The Editor The Muses on the Hearth Mrs F.G. Allinson The Land of the Sleepless ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... toleration as the fifth, were fully treated therein. Deliberation of all kinds, counsels for producing disunion, the errors of deliberation, the results of the success or failure of counsels, treaties of three kinds, viz., bad, middling, and good, made through fear, good offices, and gifts of wealth, were described in detail. The four kinds of time for making journeys, the details of the aggregate of three, the three kinds of victory, viz., that secured righteously, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... "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 down, but I think we'll hold our own with them. We ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... have taken the trouble to work out for the last ten years, from figures kindly supplied by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, the average margin between the price of a pound of standard yarn (32's twist) and a pound of standard cotton (middling American). The result shows that while the spinners' margin was slightly less in 1895 than in 1893, it stood at practically the same figure as in 1892 and 1894, and was a good deal higher than it had been in 1886. So that here again there is no real ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... giving orders about the horse, soon joined them, and from him she directly received the amends which were her due; for while he slightly and carelessly touched the hand of Isabella, on her he bestowed a whole scrape and half a short bow. He was a stout young man, of middling height, who, with a plain face and ungraceful form, seemed fearful of being too handsome unless he wore the dress of a groom, and too much like a gentleman unless he were easy where he ought to be civil, and impudent where he ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... hunting-field! By your experiments, from age to age, to have discovered variety in diet; to have practised it, to the great advantage of your race, and to end up with uniformity, the cause of decadence; to have known the excellent and to repudiate it for the middling: oh, my Sphex-wasps, it would be stupid if the theory of evolution ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... George, man, let me see how soon you'll be at the foot." Schiller's negligence and lack of alertness called for repeated reproof, and his final school thesis was unsatisfactory. Hegel was a poor scholar, and at the university it was stated "that he was of middling industry and knowledge but especially deficient in philosophy." John Hunter nearly became a cabinetmaker. Lyell had excessive aversion to work. George Combe wondered why he was so inferior to other boys in arithmetic. Heine agreed with the monks that Greek was the invention of the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... little shepherd took his lesson out of the priest's breviary. At the end of three months he had learned to read. This was not enough—he must now learn to write. The priest had a writing teacher at Rome make three alphabets—one large, one middling, and one small; and pointed out to him that by the help of a sharp instrument he could trace the letters on a slate, and thus learn to write. The same evening, when the flock was safe at the farm, the little Luigi hastened to the smith at Palestrina, took a large nail, heated ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of 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 ...
— The Art of Fencing - The Use of the Small Sword • Monsieur L'Abbat
... congregation doesn't startle us. It is known, I fancy, that the heads of the Church are to be absent to-day, and the attendance is slim. There are no ravishingly beautiful women present, and no positively ugly ones. The men are fair to middling. They will never be slain in cold blood for their beauty, nor shut up in jail for ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the plain of Hazeldale, which was a wide valley with a middling river winding about it, the wild-wood at its back toward the Tofts, and in front down-land nought wooded, save here and there a tree nigh a homestead or cot; for that way the land was builded for a space. Forsooth it was not easy for the folk thereabout ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... "Middling," said the boatswain grudgingly. "Might be better; might be wuss. But look here, young fellow; I don't like working ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... never die another death, if I don't die aither ov consumption or production! I ever and always thought that asthronomy was the hardest science that was till now,—and, it's no lie I'm telling you, the same asthronomy is a tough enough morsel to brake a man's fast upon,—and geolidgy is middling and hard too,—and hydherastatics is no joke,—but ov all the books ov science that ever was opened and shut, that book upon P'litical Econimy lifts the pins! Well, well, if they wait till they persuade me that taking a man's rints out ov the counthry, and spinding ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... 'He's only a middling lover, signore. He lives at Cles, over Val Pejo, in Val di Non, a long way, and courts me twice a year, when he comes over to do carpentering. He cuts very pretty Madonnas. He ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... good and generous woman, and she patronized her parents grandly, and all the cousins who came from all about to see her. Mrs. Haydon's people were of the middling class of farmers. They were not peasants, and they lived in a town of some pretension, but it all seemed very poor and smelly to ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... "Middling, middling, maister. I reckon 'at us manufacturing lads i' th' north is a deal more intelligent, and knaws a deal more nor th' farming folk i' th' south. Trade sharpens wer wits; and them that's mechanics ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... chart will show the fluctuations of the average prices of prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, in middle Georgia, and at New Orleans, aL well as the contemporary range of average prices for cotton of middling grade in the chief American market, that of New York. The range for prime slaves, it will be seen, rose from about $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South respectively in 1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803, in consequence of the initial ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... a shell—they were coming over off and on—struck two hundred yards down the road and we both turned to look. In thirty seconds, maybe, another—and another—placed middling close, half a minute apart maybe, till eight had plowed along that bit. When they stopped, he looked at me. 'That's the first time I ever saw shells light nearby,' he spoke. 'Eight, I made it. But ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... aristocratical institutions, the middling and lower classes, whose chances of advancement are so small that they seldom lift their eyes or thoughts above their own sphere, are therefore much happier, and it may be added, much more virtuous than those who struggle continually for preferment ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... stalks being dried, got the colour of a dead leaf to the height of about five feet; and from thence springs the tuft of rushes, which crown this stalk; so that at a distance, these stalks together have the appearance of a wood of middling height. These rushes only grow near the sea side, and on little isles; the mountains on the main land are, in some parts, covered all over with heath, which are easily mistaken for bushes."—Forster's Translation, where a pretty interesting account of these islands ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... "Just middling," replied Wayland, reticent from weariness and with joy of their camping-place. The lake, dark as topaz and smooth as steel, lay in a frame of golden willows—as a jewel is filigreed with gold—and above it the cliffs rose three ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... rest, as one athirst finds joy who drinks of heavenly 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 with joy, he found a twofold growth of piety. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... he failed in 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 ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... my disgust that it was impregnated with a flavor of a like character, and after it was swallowed this flavor would cling to the palate with provoking tenacity for several minutes. The sailors smacked their lips over it once or twice, and pronounced it "from fair to middling." When boiled, and drank under the name of tea or coffee, it might have deserved that character; but when taken directly from the cask, and quaffed in hot weather, as a pleasant and refreshing beverage it ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... are used in navigating the sea of China.... There are three classes of these: (1) the Large, which are called Jonuk (sing. Junk); (2) the Middling, which are called Zao; and (3) the Small, called Kakam. Each of the greater ships has from twelve sails down to three. These are made of bamboo laths woven into a kind of mat; they are never lowered, and they are braced this way and that as ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... especially all sudden fame, has its drawbacks. Gray read the poem, and wrote of it to his friends, in a style thought at the time depreciatory, although it comes pretty near the truth. He says, "It seems to me above the middling, and now and then for a little while rises even to the best, particularly in description. It is often obscure and even unintelligible. In short, its great fault is, that it was published at least nine years too early." ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... attached to it. All this belonged, under the name of Mademoiselle, to Madame de Mare, her governess. I sat down and chatted with them; but the impatience of the Duc d'Orleans to learn the news could not be checked. He asked me if I was very satisfied. "Middling," I replied, not to spoil his dinner; but he rose at once and took me into the garden. He was much affected to hear of the ill-success of my negotiation; and returned downcast to table. I took the first opportunity to blame his impatience, and the facility with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... persons who think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery, and brilliantly illuminated with ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... remarks 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
... her notions of education went; and, in a few years after her marriage, by judiciously using the means which her husband's wealth afforded her of advancing her position in society, no one could have recognised in the lively and well-dressed Mrs. Flanagan the gawky daughter of a middling farmer. She was very good-natured, too, towards her sisters, whose condition she took care to improve with her own; and a very fair match for the eldest was made through her means. The younger one was often staying in her house, dividing her ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... passed 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 ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... call me—Silas Grant. Let me take your bag. My son John will be here in a minute, and will help you in with your trunk. Needn't worry, it's all right where it is. Folks are middling honest about here," he added, with a dry laugh, and his hand closed on his guest's—a cold limp, dead-fish sort of a ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... which abounds ordinarily with beaver, produced nothing; those of Detroit and Michilimakinac, only furnished very little. Happily the post of the Sioux and of the Western Sea produced near to 100,000 which swelled up the receipt; otherwise it would have been very middling. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... insight into the most poetical aspects of poetry," and his Horatian Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland. The town of Hull voted him a monument, which was, however, forbidden by the Court. His appearance is thus described, "He was of middling stature, pretty ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... he gave any token of jeering or malice, but could see nought such: nay, his face was grave and serious, not ill-fashioned, though it were both long and broad like his body: his cheek-bones somewhat high, his eyes grey and middling great, and looking, as it ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... appearance. 'Akbar,' wrote his son, the Emperor Jahangir,[1] 'was of middling stature, but with a tendency to be tall; he had a wheat-colour complexion, rather inclining to be dark than fair, black eyes and eyebrows, stout body, open forehead and chest, long arms and hands. There was a fleshy wart, about the size of ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... hastily from the chapel, and hurried her across the garden, through a small postern door, which stood ajar, into an obscure street bordering the convent wall. Here stood the expectant porter, with a bundle in his hand, which he opened, and took thence a long cloak, such as the women of middling rank in Madrid wore in the winter season, with the customary mantilla or veil. With these, still without speaking, the stranger hastily shrouded the form of the novice, and once more hurried her on till ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 139. INGREDIENTS.—8 middling-sized onions, 3 oz. of butter, a tablespoonful of rice-flour, salt and pepper to taste, 1 teaspoonful of powdered sugar, thickening of butter and flour, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... find the case of a man entering the Indian Service by force of Languages alone, which I cannot but think a miscarriage. Then the very high marks assigned to Mathematics allow a man to win with no other science, and no other culture, but a middling examination in English. To those that think so highly of foreign languages, this must seem a much greater anomaly than it does to me. I would prefer, however, that such a candidate had traversed a wider field of science, instead of excelling in ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... blooded steed of the Rothschilds by the side of the old plug of the cabman. Fresh beef, mutton, pork are now out of the question. A little poultry yet remains at fabulous prices. In walking through the Rue St. Lazare I saw a middling-sized goose and chicken for sale in a shop-window, and I had the curiosity to step in and inquire the price (rash man that I was). The price of the goose was $25, and ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... always my rule to be sparing with that drink for the sake of the shipwrecked men we may have to bring home, and who are pretty sure to be in greater need of the stuff than us. I never drink myself, sir, and that's one reason, I think, why I manage to meet the cold and wet middling well, and rather better than some men who look stronger than me. However, I told Charlie Verrion to measure the rum out and serve it round, and it would have made you laugh, I do believe, sir, to have seen the care the men took ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... 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 for ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... 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 desirable an effect, than ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... boardinghouse life, which would show themselves some fine morning or other in events, if not in catastrophes. I have been watchful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell as yet. You may laugh at me, and very likely think me foolishly fanciful to trouble myself about what is going on in a middling-class household like ours. Do as you like. But here is that terrible fact to begin with,—a beautiful young girl, with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to Nature's women, turned loose among ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... 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 which he desires ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... getting middling hungry, though. Had no breakfast to-day. Couldn't you scare up some bread from that tea ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... at least, if we may judge of the increase of money by the price of corn. The medium between the highest and lowest prices of wheat, assigned by the statute, is four shillings and threepence a quarter; that is, twelve shillings and ninepence of our present money. This is near half of the middling price in our time. Yet the middling price of cattle, so late as the reign of King Richard, we find to be above eight, near ten times lower than the present. Is not this the true inference, from comparing these facts, that, in all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... a good mind to try and wake you up myself,' said he. 'I'm reckoned middling good at waking people up where ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... 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 ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... one part of the system, which is stated by all the witnesses (in the opinion of the committee very justly stated) to have had the best effects upon the people of Scotland, and particularly upon the middling and poorer classes of society, in producing and encouraging habits of frugality and industry. The practice referred to is that of CASH-CREDITS. Any person who applies to a bank for a cash-credit is called upon to produce two or more competent securities, who are jointly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... on middling soft mud—I should think about sixty miles from here. We are the second boat sent off for assistance. We parted company with the other on Tuesday. She must have passed to the northward of you to-day. The chief officer is in her with orders to make for Singapore. I am second, and ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of the middling or better class, in her turn, pines for the society of the circle of friends she has quitted, probably for ever. She sighs for those little domestic comforts, that display of the refinements and elegancies of life, that she had been accustomed to see around her. She has little ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... an hour before taking up your roasts, peel middling-sized potatoes, boil them until partly done, then arrange them in the roasting-pan around the roast, basting them with the drippings at the same time you do the meat, browning them evenly. Serve hot with the meat. Many cooks partly ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... wheel shouted, "Somewheres towards midnight, Miss. We're a-goin' through it middling smart, and we can always ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Queen was in her chamber, and she was middling old, Her petticoat was satin and her stomacher was gold. Backwards and forwards and sideways did she pass, Making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass. The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass As comely or as kindly or as ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... was that Mrs. Hume committed herself to this not too flattering judgment of her younger son. For as Hume reached the mature age of four and thirty, before he obtained any employment of sufficient importance to convert the meagre pittance of a middling laird's younger brother into a decent maintenance, it is not improbable that a shrewd Scots wife may have thought his devotion to philosophy and poverty to be due to mere infirmity of purpose. But she lived till 1749, long enough to see more than the dawn of her son's literary fame ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... to see Southey soon, so I need only send my remembrance to him now. Doubtless I need not tell him that Burnett is not to be foster'd in self-opinion. His eyes want opening, to see himself a man of middling stature. I am not oculist enough to do this. The booksellers may one day remove the film. I am all this time on the most cordial supping terms of amity with G. Burnett and really love him at times: but I must speak freely of people behind their backs and not think it ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... 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 ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... heard what was said of the universe, Heard it and heard it of several thousand years; It is middling well as far as it goes—but ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... bears evident marks of hurry in its execution. If the author shall ever learn the self-possession of the true artist, and come to tell his stories with leisurely dignity of manner—and so on—and so on—and so forth—he will—well, he will—do middling well for a man who had the unhappiness to be born in longitude west from Washington." Ah! well, I shrug my shoulders, and bidding both Cormorant and Critic to get behind me, Satan, I write my story in my own fashion for my gentle readers who are neither ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... 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 ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... correct. But 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 ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... men who were amused by the tart briskness of her tongue and attracted by the comeliness of her healthful youth. She had married the first man who proposed to her—a young insurance agent. Since then they had lived in a very comfortable, middling state of harmony, apparently on about the same social scale as Marietta's parents. That this feat was accomplished on a much smaller income was due to Marietta's unrivaled instinct and trained capacity ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... sake of gain; and accompanied by only a few priests, and often without a single taper, it was borne to the very nearest church, and lowered into the grave that was not already too full to receive it. Among the middling classes, and especially among the poor, the misery was still greater. Poverty or negligence induced most of these to remain in their dwellings, or in the immediate neighbourhood; and thus they fell by thousands; and many ended their lives in the streets ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... members of the Convention went calmly on their way, accepting as a matter of course the crude and haphazard methods known to them, the unscientific system of voting so dear to the heart of the "middling" politician and the party intriguer. I believe Mr. Glynn alone raised his voice in favour of proportional representation, in the Convention, as he has done consistently in every representative assembly of which he has been a member. Instead ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... the profession, for two solid reasons. One I have already told you; and it is, that I know my own writings are trifling and of no depth. The other is, that, light and futile as they were, I am sensible they are better than I could compose now. I am aware of the decay of the middling parts I had, and others may be still more sensible of it. How do I know but I am superannuated? nobody will be so coarse as to tell me so; but if I published dotage, all the world would tell me so. And ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... I guess 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
... despotic sovereign whom England had yet seen on the throne, we discern at once the excuse which Henry would make to himself for his severities against the nobility, and the motive of that extreme popularity of manners by which Elizabeth aimed at attaching to herself the affections of the middling and lower orders of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... are as plenty as soft clams, in the Mediterranean, and the Egyptians use them as a pan-fish. In the East, they catch them to bait with, for hallibut, and other middling sized creatures, that are particular about their diet. It is a good fish, I own, as is seen in this ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... my head. I didn't have to veil my mind because I knew that Gimpy was about as talented a telepath as a tallow candle. Frankly between me and thee, dear reader, I do not put anybody's bet on the cuff. I do a fair-to-middling brisk trade in booking bets placed and discussed by telepathy, but the ones I accept and pay off on—if they're lucky—are those folks who've been sufficiently foresighted to lay it on the line with a retainer against which their ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... risked their lives on this expedition. They had no hope of reward; for they neither expected nor received any pay, except in liquidated certificates, worth two cents on the dollar. Shelby's share of these, for his services as colonel throughout '80 and '81, was sold by him for "six yards of middling broadcloth" [Footnote: Shelby's MS. autobiography.]; so it can be readily imagined how little each private got for the King's Mountain expedition. [Footnote: Among these privates was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... are numerous hotels and boarding-houses, capable of suiting the pockets and the wishes of all the middling, and even of the lower classes of society:—but there are three or four principal houses,—and especially two, reserved for the aristocracy; and here all the elite of the visitors congregate. We wealthy English may laugh at the moderate expense for which this kind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... indeed some time before Lovel could, through the thick atmosphere, perceive in what sort of den his friend had constructed his retreat. It was a lofty room of middling size, obscurely lighted by high narrow latticed windows. One end was entirely occupied by book-shelves, greatly too limited in space for the number of volumes placed upon them, which were, therefore, drawn up in ranks of two or three files deep, while numberless others littered the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... have just come in, and brought me a host of odorous violets. I made George a visit in the afternoon, in the midst of my battle with headache, and to my question of 'How dost?' he replied, for the first time, 'Pretty fair,' instead of the unvarying 'Middling.' Skeptics surely cannot disbelieve in one thing that is ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... to cut out in Shivers as Dutch-Beef:—Take a middling leg of mutton, then take half a pound of brown sugar, and rub it hard all over your mutton, and let it lie twenty-four hours; then take an ounce and half of saltpetre, and mix it with a pound of common salt, and rub that all over the mutton every other day, till ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... the ministerial benches, and vote in and out of parliament for the Bill with which all England rang. Levison Stopford did not make brilliant speeches, but he had a fair share of prominence in county business, was a middling landlord, a respectable head of a family, connected by marriage with a Whig peer, the father of a promising son, and, as the newspapers said, four lovely daughters. All these recommendations to public ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... standard, just as the placer-miner who washes out ten dollars each day and gives up five of it nightly to cut-throat gamblers; but in this prosperity the great body of the American people have neither lot nor part. Texas is selling middling cotton at 5 1/2 and paying $3 for flour. Adult male operatives are working in Massachusetts cotton mills for 50 cents a day, and their families doing without flour. Pennsylvania miners are braving subterranean dangers for ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... custom formerly prevailed at the public-houses in Highgate, to administer a ludicrous oath to all travellers of the middling rank who stopped there. The party was sworn on a pair of horns, fastened on a stick: the substance of the oath was, never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress, never to drink small beer ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Japara is seated at the bottom of a mountain of moderate height, is of a middling size, and is inhabited by Javans, Chinese, and Dutch; and was of more considerable extent than now, when in the hands of the Portuguese. Before getting possession of Jacatra, now Batavia, the Dutch East-India Company had their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... extremely productive.* (* At Javita, an extent of fifty feet square, planted with Jatropha manihot (yucca) yields in two years, in the worst soil, a harvest of six tortas of cassava: the same extent on a middling soil yields in fourteen months a produce of nine tortas. In an excellent soil, around clumps of mauritia, there is every year from fifty feet square a produce of thirteen or fourteen tortas. A torta weighs three quarters of a pound, and three tortas cost generally ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... have levied upon the wealthy rebels, and paid out nearly half a million of dollars to feed forty thousand of the starving poor of all nations assembled here, made so by this war. I saw that this rebellion was a war of the aristocrats against the middling men—of the rich against the poor; a war of the landowner against the laborer; that it was a struggle for the retention of power in the hands of the few against the many; and I found no conclusion to it, save in the subjugation of the few and the disenthralment of the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... was not the presiding executive of a southern state, but was Staple pere, of the heavy cotton firm of Staple, Long & Middling, New Orleans. Staple fils had been for years a great social card in Washington. The clubs, the legations, the avenues and the german knew him equally well; and though he talked about "the house," his ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... burning, close question to my simple selfishness. But it's a lot of women—a lot. We're waking all over the world. We want to help, to be worth while; to help, to count. It won't do much longer to know French and Italian and play middling tennis and be on the Altar Society. You know what I mean. All that—yes—but beyond that the power which a real person carries into all that to make it big. The stronger you are the better your work is. I want to be strong, to be useful, to touch things with a personality which will move them, make ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... "Helena is but middling, poor dear," answered Miss Blake—on that occasion she called her niece Hallana. "She frets, the creature, as is natural; but she will get better when we leave England. England is a hard country for anyone who is all ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... eye could carry you, except towards the sea, which is about twelve miles from it. We put up at the same house, and with the same jolly landlord that recommended Le Fleur to Sterne. Here we wished much to be fixed; but neither good lodgings or masters could be had here—for there are no middling class of people. Sixty noblemen's families lived in the town, who owned the vast plain round it, and the rest very poor indeed. This is the finest country for game that ever was; partridges twopence-halfpenny a couple, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Academician like Pierston himself—rather popular than distinguished—had given up that peculiar and personal taste in subjects which had marked him in times past, executing instead many pleasing aspects of nature addressed to the furnishing householder through the middling critic, and really very good of their kind. In this way he received many large cheques from persons of wealth in England and America, out of which he built himself a sumptuous studio and an awkward house around it, and paid for the education ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... over and above their school learning they've been taught to swim, ride, dance, use tools, play on the piano, and speak fair to middling French. Yet, as you say, Fred, the most difficult part is to come, just as we fancied that we were through. And the terrible reflection is that we're not so sure now what we ought to do for them as we ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... that he was educated at Eton, and that at seventeen he was entered at Trinity College, Oxford. During the second year of his residence at the University, George the First died; and the event was, after the fashion of that generation, celebrated by the Oxonians in many middling copies of verses. On this occasion Pitt published some Latin lines, which Mr. Thackeray has preserved. They prove that the young student had but a very limited knowledge even of the mechanical part of his art. All true Etonians will hear with concern that their ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 15,000 of the 25,000 families did not attend church. Pawnbrokers were an incentive to theft, cunning and lack of honest industry, etc., etc. Thus their explanations ran. In referring to mechanics and paupers, the committee described them as "the middling and inferior classes." Is it any wonder that the working class justly views "charitable" societies, and the spirit behind them, with ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Moorthorne Road, from behind the Wesleyan Chapel-keeper's house. And as it appeared it burst into music. First a purple banner, upheld on crimson poles with gilded lance-points; then a brass band in full note; and then children, children, children—little, middling, and big. As the procession curved down into Trafalgar Road, it grew in stature, until, towards the end of it, the children were as tall as the adults who walked fussily as hens, proudly as peacocks, on its flank. And last came a railway lorry on which dozens of tiny ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... inertiae in my total want of social and scholastic ambition. I never in my life felt the faintest desire to rise in the world either by making the acquaintance of people of rank (which is the main reason why boys of middling station are sent to aristocratic schools), or by getting letters put after my name as a reward for learning what had no intrinsic charm for me. In the worldly sense I never had ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Nevertheless, some middling epigrams found entrance into the anthology—he confesses the fact so the reader will not look for excellence without flaw. The reasons were, first, that the complete perfection he was looking for is ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... years of age. She was born in the United States, of middling well-to-do people. Her father was a gruff, hearty man, not in the least bit finicky, who really despised manners and the like, though he was conventional enough in his own way. Her mother was an old-fashioned housewife, fond of her ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... individual, with or without a franchise, is of importance; the poor and the middling are no otherwise so than as they obtain some collective capacity, and can be aggregated to some corps. If legal ways are not found, illegal will be resorted to; and seditious clubs and confederacies, such as no man living holds in greater horror than I do, will grow and flourish, in spite, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the boat she stepped then, and found the earth all paved of a middling gravel, and nought at all growing there, not even the smallest of herbs; and she stooped down and searched the gravel, and found neither worm nor beetle therein, nay nor any one of the sharp and slimy creatures which are ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... in the marish hollow I have heard the lady who sings. And once in an April gleaming I met a maid on the sward, All marble-white and gleaming and tender and wild of eye;— I, Jehan the hunter, who speak am a grown man, middling hard, But I dreamt a month of the maid, and wept I knew ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... II. The middling order say to them the roads are an inconvenience, instead of being useful, as they have turned them out of their old ways; for their horses being never shod, the gravel would soon whet away their hoofs, so as ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... alternately under 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; and such the feelings with which she ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... if you would only give me the wages of a middling mechanic, you would have pleasure in my undisturbed work, which should ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... wanting to go rambling, not content 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
... said Merril dryly, "but it strikes me that it's middling cheeky for you fellows to be discussing how you 'll jilt your sweethearts with least expense to their feelings, when the chances are that if you should ever get one, you 'll need all your wits to keep her from ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... if they could help it. Here I'd been working like a nigger 'most five 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, 'I'm mighty sorry, but you see we've been putting in a big rope drive on a water-power plant ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... rather middling. He explained why he was paying his visit so early in the season; the family had gone to the sea-side for Easter; the cook was doing spring cleaning, on board wages, with particular instructions to clear out the mice. There were four kittens, and ...
— The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse • Beatrix Potter
... radiant Clementina would know how he felt; he did not dance, and he professed to have found himself at the party by a species of accident. He told her that he was out in Europe looking after a patent right that he had just taken hold of, and was having only a middling good time. He pretended surprise to hear her say that she was having a first-rate time, and he tried to reason her out of it. He confessed that from the moment he came into the room he had made up his mind to take her to supper, and had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... truth and the whole truth. And inasmuch as I have not shrunk from making mention of certain matters which many will deem of small honor to Herdegen, who was, by the favor of Heaven, so far more highly graced in all ways than I, who have never been other than middling gifted, it would ill-become me to shrink from relating matters whereof I myself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... make about two volumes like little Pompadour, that is about one middling volume. The bargain which I made with Mr. Johnson was seventy five pounds (or guineas) a volume, and twenty five pounds for the second edition. I will sell this either at that price or for sixty[2], the first edition of which he shall himself fix the number, and the property then ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... think, is an excellent example of Miss Austen's genius for making her characters talk. Luckily, conversation was still formal in her day, and it was as possible for her as for Congreve to make middling men and women talk first-rate prose. She did more than this, however. She was the first English novelist before Meredith to portray charming women with free personalities. Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse have an independence (rare ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... others of high rank in intellect, should place Rogers, as they do, above Southey, Moore, and even Scott himself, is what I cannot conceive. But this comes of being in the highest society of London. What Lady Jane Granville called the Patronage of Fashion can do as much for a middling poet as for a plain girl like Miss Arabella Falconer. [Lady Jane, and Miss Arabella, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... The rent, without furniture, would probably have been one hundred pounds; furnished, it is one hundred and sixty pounds. Rock Park, as the locality is called, is private property, and is now nearly covered with residences for professional people, merchants, and others of the upper middling class; the houses being mostly built, I suppose, on speculation, and let to those who occupy them. It is the quietest place imaginable, there being a police station at the entrance, and the officer on duty allows no ragged or ill-looking person ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... comes gliding in, And quite in middling haste? It is the picture of my Jones, And painted ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... 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 ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "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 of my ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frost, carry the inconveniencies of the frigid zone far into the temperate. The Samoiede and the Laplander, however, have their counterpart, though on a lower latitude, on the shores of America: the Canadian and the Iroquois bear a resemblance to the ancient inhabitants of the middling climates of Europe. The Mexican, like the Asiatic of India, being addicted to pleasure, was sunk in effeminacy; and in the neighbourhood of the wild and the free, had suffered to be raised on his weakness a domineering superstition, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... his Hat commonly flopt before, and an old laced Waistcoat, has short curled black Hair; when he speaks he seems jaw-fallen and very effeminate, is about 35 Years of Age, walks much like a Foot-pad, and has a comely Woman with him whom he calls his Wife.——John Cassady, a middling siz'd Fellow much pock-broken, square-shoulder'd, wears a Wig upon the yellow cast, and has a very guilty Countenance, is about 40 Years of Age, and calls himself a Shoe-maker.—John Willson, a short ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... was not flattering. Miss Ingate was a Guardian of the Poor, and the Local Representative of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association. She had studied intimately the needy and the rich and the middling. She was charitable without illusions; and, while adhering to every social convention, she did so with a toleration pleasantly contemptuous; in her heart she had no mercy for snobs of any kind, though, unfortunately, she was at times absurdly intimidated ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... opportunity my father had of finding his expectations disappointed was in the middling figure I made at the University; he had flattered himself that he should soon see me rising into the foremost rank in literary reputation, but was mortified to find me utterly unnoticed and unknown. His disappointment ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Without numbers he is a host in himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they might be finished; but too much security on the Republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose him. In truth when he comes forward there is no one but yourself can meet him.... For God's sake take up your pen and give a fundamental reply to "Curtius" ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... laughed, "I'll not rob you of your occupation. I'll put no bungling hand into your concerns. I know a sound piece of timber when I see it; but I should hardly be able to tell a sample of Sea Island cotton from the veriest low middling." ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... on his own observations, and are, on the whole, favorable to the natives. The English, while wooding and watering, were surprised by the visit of eight men and a boy. They were unarmed, except that one of them carried a stick, pointed at the end. They were of middling stature, slender, and naked. On different parts of their bodies were ridges, both straight and curved, raised in the skin: the hair of the head and beard was smeared with red ointment. They were indifferent to presents; they rejected bread, and the flesh of the ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... "I thought of mask," whimpered Tommy, "but that would mean the kirk was crammed, and I just meant it to be middling full." ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... the business without risk, in counting-houses, where no insurances were taken, but to which books were carried, as well as from the different offices in every part of the town, as from the Morocco-men, who went from door to door taking insurances and enticing the poor and middling ranks to adventure. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... eastwards, and E. By S. having from 30 to 20 and 10 fathoms, and still no land to be seen. The greatest depth was on an oose bottom, the least a coarse yellow sand. About nine o'clock we espied land, bearing N.E. about 8 leagues distant, being a round hummock of middling height. By noon we were in latitude 7 deg. 56' N. having steered all day east, sometimes half a point north or south, as our water deepened or shoaled, for we would sometimes have ten fathoms or more one cast, and the next seven fathoms, the ground being full of pits, believing that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... saw, and follow one another in their modes; that you may know where they belong, especially the women, meet them where you will." And see her description of the dress of the Dutch women of New York: "The English go very fashionable in their dress. But the Dutch, especially the middling sort, differ from our women in their habit, go loose, wear French muches, which are like a cap and a head band in one, leaving their ears bare, which are set out with jewels of a large size, and many in number; and their fingers hooked ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... considerable number of middling tradesmen, who having lived decently in the former part of life, begin, as age approaches, to lose their business, and at last ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... consulted London, Lindley, and Linnaeus,—the thick Gray, the middling Gray, and the child's Gray,—Worcester's Dictionary, and Webster's, in both of which you can usually find almost anything but what should be there,—Johnson's "Dictionary of Gardening," and Gardner's "Dictionary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... into 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 ...
— The Tinker's Wedding • J. M. Synge
... were three Bears who lived in a castle in a great wood. One of them was a great big Bear, and one was a middling Bear, and one was a little Bear. And in the same wood there was a Fox who lived all alone, his name was Scrapefoot. Scrapefoot was very much afraid of the Bears, but for all that he wanted very much to know all about them. And one day as he went through the wood he found himself ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... 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 more than nine o'clock ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... of Northerners, with spirited and often aristocratic faces, but somewhat more devil-may-care in expression than we are accustomed to see in New England. They poured down the gangway, trailed arms, ascended the promenade-deck, ordered arms, grounded arms, and broke line. The drill struck me as middling, which may be owing to the fact that the company has lately increased to about two hundred members, thus diluting the old organization with a large number of new recruits. Military service at the South is a patrician exercise, much favored by men of "good ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... it is painted by Tacitus: inter ardores opacum fidumque nivibus—a daring metaphor, (Hist. v. 6.) Note: Of the oldest and best looking trees, I counted eleven or twelve twenty-five very large ones; and about fifty of middling size; and more than three hundred smaller and young ones. Burckhardt's Travels ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... forgotten by which we can possibly be Chastised." This statement of the morality of the Puritans of the Netherlands was the justification of martyrs—not the self-glorification of Pharisees. The fact was incontrovertible. Their tenets were rigid, but their lives were pure. They belonged generally to the middling and lower classes. They were industrious artisans, who desired to live in the fear of God and in honor of their King. They were protected by nobles and gentlemen of high position, very many of whom came afterwards warmly to espouse the creed which at first they had only generously defended. Their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 endure the slightest ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb |
