"Tentative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up a tentative list. He named four: first, Farrell Kennedy, who was in town, and said nobody should go if he didn't; Frank Elpaso, the Texan; the Englishman, Tommie Meggeson; and Wickwire, if he could be located—any one of them, Lefever knew, could give ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... with deep interest to the introduction among us of the principles of the Hindoo philosophy and religion (including the transmigration of souls), through tentative articles in our magazines; by which there is opening to us a way of escape from that heaven one exponent of which is, to lie in ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... Lydia's tentative efforts to construct a bridge between her world and his met constantly with this ill success. She had had so little training in bridge-building, she ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of the university was at that time divided between sundry general courses and various technical departments, the whole being somewhat tentative. These general courses were mainly three: the arts course, which embraced both Latin and Greek; the course in literature, which embraced Latin and modern languages; and the course in science, which embraced more especially modern languages ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... religious wars of Copt and Greek, had been covered with hermitages by a yens aeterna of semi-maniacal superstition. Syria, ever "feracious of heresies," had allowed many of her finest tracts to be monopolised by monkeries and nunneries.[FN320] After many a tentative measure Mohammed seems to have built his edifice upon two bases, the unity of the Godhead and the priesthood of the pater-familias. He abolished for ever the "sacerdos alter Christus" whose existence, as some one acutely said, is the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... gain time than anything else. She added, "Everything is at sixes and sevens in the flat. There wouldn't be standing-room." A sudden thought flashed upon her, which, because it was sudden and in keeping with her character, she put into tentative words. "You're more at home here than anywhere else. You were almost born here. You've played about here ever since you were a child. You first met Peter here. He proposed to you here, and you rejected him here. ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... not define substance) had been invented by Peter of Blois, but not yet enjoined upon the Church by the Lateran Council of 1215. The language of the earlier fathers, of St. Bernard, did not suffice. Peter Lombard's tentative terms had given way to less reserved speech. Thomas Aquinas, not yet born, was to unite the rival factions which forked now into Berengarius, who objected to the very terms Body of Christ, &c., always used for the Sacrament; and now into some ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... After a while my sensations seemed to be concentrated in my fingers, and I perceived that the grass blades were sharp as knives, and hurt my hands cruelly. I tried to get up cautiously, so as not to cut myself on the sharp grass. I put down a tentative foot, much as my kitten treads for the first time the primeval forest in the backyard. All at once I felt the stealthy patter of something creeping, creeping, creeping purposefully toward me. I do not know how at that time ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... census was taken in 1790, under the act of March 1 of that year, and many of the worst features of that tentative experiment still remain to vex the soul of every one who desires a census which shall be in accord with the demands of science and the times. Then, as now, the United States marshals were designated to conduct the enumeration. They were authorized to employ as many ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... and beliefs be thus tentative and provisional? Must one walk through life, never fathoming the secret? I have myself abundance of material comfort, health, leisure. I know that for one like myself, there are hundreds less fortunate. Yet happiness in this world depends very little upon circumstances; it depends far ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... trying," returned Lummox. He paused and colored deeply. "I beg," he stammered, "I hope—you don't think me guilty of a pun! When I said 'trying' I referred entirely to the effect on your sensitiveness of these tentative attempts toward ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... the Portuguese in the 15th century; Cape Verde subsequently became a trading center for African slaves and later an important coaling and resupply stop for whaling and transatlantic shipping. Following independence in 1975, and a tentative interest in unification with Guinea-Bissau, a one-party system was established and maintained until multi-party elections were held in 1990. Cape Verde continues to exhibit one of Africa's most stable democratic governments. Repeated droughts during the second half of the 20th century caused ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... patient moving. He is thus able to examine not only the involuntary choice of association but also the time of every associative process. But a second condition ought also to be fulfilled. After some indifferent words, others ought to be mixed into the series which touch in a tentative way on various spheres corresponding to the possible suspicions. The groups to which the hidden thoughts of psychasthenics, for instance, belong are not many. As soon as our series of words strikes such a group, the reaction of the mind may be discriminated. The effect may be a general ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... question should be clear and definite. A question that has these characteristics will challenge the attention of the class. It is directed straight at the point at issue, and no time will be lost in wondering what the question means, or in trying two or three tentative answers. Third, the younger the child, the simpler the question must be. With little children, to be good a question may involve only one idea, or relationship. The amount involved in the question, its scope and content, must be adapted to ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... man-like fool, methinks!" quoth the archer. "But for our tall brother now, he is changed these latter days: he groweth harsh, methinks, and something ungentle at times." And Giles thoughtfully touched his arm with tentative fingers. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... every atom of self-control I possessed. "There is nothing to worry about, mother," I said carelessly. "Dicky has often spoken recently about this offer to go to San Francisco. It was always tentative before, but he knew that when it did come he would have to go at a minute's notice. You know he always keeps a bag packed at the studio ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... by denouncing their opponents as pagans, or, at least, heretics. In this way the claims of religion were drawn into the arena, and, as neither the extreme Scholastics nor the extreme Humanists had learned to distinguish between dogmas and systems, between what was essential and what was tentative, there was grave danger that religion would suffer in the eyes of educated men on account of the crude methods of those who claimed to ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... fall, and knew at once that she had an exceptional amount of talent, which, if fostered, under the Herr's careful methods, would make of her one of the musical wonders of the age. It was then I made my offer—which was merely a tentative one—to Miss Calvert, not meaning to in any way override your authority, but merely for the purpose of sounding her out and winning a promise that she would give me an option on her services, provided she decided to adopt the concert stage as ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... priceless the slightest words! What signifies the conversation, when you listen for the heart to answer? What sweetness in the glance of a woman who begins to attract you! At first it seems as though everything that passes between you is timid and tentative, but soon there is born a strange joy, an echo answers you; you know a dual life. What a touch! What a strange attraction! And when love is sure of itself and knows response in the object beloved, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... considered as a critick; a name which the present generation is scarcely willing to allow him. His criticism is condemned as tentative or experimental, rather than scientifick; and he is considered as deciding by taste[202] rather than ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... seldom anything shy and tentative, anything obscure and gradual about the approaches of the London Spring. Spring is always in a hurry there, for she knows that she has but a short time before her; she has to make an impression and make it at once; so she works careless ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... managed institution. The excellence of this article was at once acknowledged on all sides, even by the press; and I appear to have made some impression in the highest administrative circles, for I shortly afterwards heard from my friend Rudolf Liechtenstein, that tentative advances had been made to him with a view to his accepting the position of manager, associated with which there was certainly an idea of asking me to become conductor of the Grand Opera. Among the reasons which caused this proposal to fall ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... had no further use for gold dust. Anyhow the sluice boxes were molested no more forever. But it was impossible to repress the abounding energies of such a nature as his, and he continued, possibly from habit, the tortuous courses which he had pursued for profit of Mr. Bentley. After a few tentative and resultless undertakings in the way of highway robbery—if one may venture to designate road-agency by so harsh a name—he made one or two modest essays in horse-herding, and it was in the midst of a ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... no sooner knocked than the door was opened by Maisie. He was slightly embarrassed at being brought face to face with her thus suddenly after the last scene that they had shared. He entered in a tentative manner, only just crossing the threshold, as though he had not ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... of course, tentative, based upon a yet imperfect knowledge of conditions. For the most part they conveyed, besides the notification of his having taken the command, chiefly general assurances of the good-will of the writer's government, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... and live to write another day. So I wired the Budders I was coming and took the train the same day, and when I reached San Francisco I found them all packed up for this Mexican trip,—indeed, they were sitting on their trunks with a tentative ticket for me in their hands. And I was pleased pink to come. The Budders (doesn't Budder sowd as if I ad a code id by ed?) are nice, comfortable creatures,—the sort who are called the salt of the earth but ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... who were possessed of either her courage or her indiscretion. They all agreed, though, that Andrew Johnstone was the one insurmountable barrier to their hopes. Most of the other elders had been approached in a tentative way. Peter McNabb was a broad-minded man with such a passion for music that, though he looked askance at any innovation, yet he would have welcomed anything that would help the singing. Old Donald Fraser considered an organ an unmixed evil and remarked, when asked for his opinion ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... brought the four friends together, and Betty showed a tentative program she had surreptitiously scribbled ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... also through these orders that the careful student can pass that veil of formal propriety, reticence, and dignity which so often obscured the inner, the tentative, elements of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... from New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut. In the fall of 1836 the comb-makers, the carpenters, the hand-loom weavers, and the printers likewise organized separate national unions or alliances, and several other trades made tentative efforts by correspondence to organize ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... injured leg, and so undo all that had cost them so much of care and labor. But caution restrained him; for he was aware of the danger, though he was also half-mad with impatience to be a man once more. Venturing only a few tentative steps at first, he steadily accustomed himself to movement with the aid of the awkward crutches, and in a few days was able to take up some of the work of their wretched habitation. Marion saw that this pleased him immensely, ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... that he had the bridal chamber, the two men clambered up the bank of the stream, crossed the bridge, and at his gate Barclay said: "Now, I'll sleep on this to-night,—this reorganization,—and then I'll write you a letter to-morrow, covering all that I've said, and you can fix up a tentative charter and fire it down—and say, Lige, figure out what a modest profit on all the grain and grain produce business of the country would be—say about two and a half per cent, and make the capitalization of the reorganization fit that. We'll get the real profits out of the Door Strip, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... There was, of course, no question of drawing back, but I remember very plainly that I was a little aghast, for he was much taller and broader than I, and I had, into the bargain, a very bad cause to defend. But we had hardly exchanged the first tentative blows before I felt overwhelmingly superior. The poor cub! He had not the slightest notion how to fight. From my everyday school life in Copenhagen, I knew hundreds of tricks and feints that he had never learnt, and as soon as I perceived this I flung ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... remark that to any one who has really appreciated the meaning of biblical criticism, it is scarcely conceivable that the evidence for miracles could seem sufficiently cogent to constitute such an attestation. In proof of that I will merely appeal to the modest, apologetic, tentative tone in which {140} scholarly and sober-minded theologians who would usually be classed among the defenders of miracles—men like the Bishop of Ely or Professor Sanday of Oxford—are content to speak of such evidences. ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... winged and finned and fanged, had basked upon it—grotesque, tentative vehicles of the Flame of Life! And then these flashed out, and the wild sea fell, and the land arose—hideous and naked, a steaming ooze fetid with gasping life. And all the while this scarred Sentinel stared unmoved. And then a riot of giant vegetation ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... and Independents. First in order came the adherents of the established church, a church which was in a very real sense the creation of Queen Elizabeth and of her times— for all that had gone before was unstable and tentative, and might readily have been altered by a ruler of different character or policy. When Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558 the great body of the people of England, from a religious point of view, was still a fluid mass, a sea accustomed to be drawn, like ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... region had been steadily rising, and he had his apprehensions. In an hour they were justified. The raw, damp wind brought with it something that touched his face like the brush of a feather. It was the year's first flake of snow, premature and tentative, but it was followed soon by others, until they became a thin white veil, driven by the wind. The brown leaves rustled and fell before them, and the appearance of the forest, that had been glowing in color an hour or two before, suddenly became wintry and chill. The advance of twilight made the ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nettled. He had never found the paper lost out of the closet in his own room, though he had never given up a tentative search ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... were busy ones for Tom. He worked on the powder problem from morning to night, scoring many failures and only a few successes. But he did not give up, and in the meanwhile drew tentative plans for the ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... long block was alerted. The people, like some sluggish beast goaded reluctantly into action, began to make tentative movements toward Dennison, impelled by the outraged ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley
... authorities was hardly wise. Gibbon would have shown a greater sense of historic proportion if he had passed over this period with a few bold strokes, and summed up with brevity such general results as may be fairly deduced. We may say of the first volume that it was tentative in every way. In it the author not only sounded his public, but he was also trying his instrument, running over the keys in preparatory search for the right note. He strikes it full and clear in the ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... of weed attacked a city you utter an absurdity. I think everyone was aware of the fantastic discrepancy between statement of the event and the event itself. So innocent and ridiculous the grass looked as it made its first tentative thrust at the urban nerves; the green blades sloped forward like some prettily arranged but unimaginative corsage upon the concrete bosom of the street. You could not believe those fragile seeming strands would resist the impress ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Hill into his confidence. If Hill had told his master—even Birchill would realise the risk of that—there would be no valuables to get. Next, we come to Sir Horace Fewbanks's unexpected return. According to Hill's story, he made some tentative efforts to commence a confession as soon as he saw his employer, but Sir Horace was upset about something and was too impatient to listen to a word. Is such a story reasonable or likely? Hill says that Sir Horace had always treated ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... to draw down a storm of ridicule. There are certain traditions in school life as firmly established as the doctrine of infant damnation in the good old days of theology. Secretly, however, Skippy adored the first warm contact of the tentative toes, the slow ecstasy of the mounting ripple over the sinking body and the long, drowsy languor of complete submersion. It was the apotheosis of happiness when all the aches and vexations of the day disappeared in a narcotic reverie, when he could forget the scorn of the Roman, ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... another, the same features are reproduced in the prophetic books. The process is always extremely different from what it would be if the prophet arrived at his insight into spiritual things by the tentative efforts of his own genius. There is something sharp and sudden about it. He can lay his finger, so to speak, on the moment when it came. And it always comes in the form of an overpowering force from without, against which he struggles, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... been, he was a ready pamphleteer. His career may easily be traced in the various brochures put forth, most of them from his own pen. Fortunately we have the other side presented by Samuel Harsnett, and by two obscure clergymen, John Deacon and John Walker. The following is a tentative list of the printed ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... Walen's and ascertain full description of the tentative customer who suggested the firm should procure gun-metal cigar-case for him to look at. Ask if he was a tall man with a thin beard and a face slightly pock-marked. Then telephone result to me here. Quite safe, as Henson is away. Great discoveries ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... mother had recently died. They were with their father in a town some distance from Dohnavur; but the source from which our information came was so unreliable that we hardly knew whether to believe it, and we prayed rather a tentative prayer: "If the children exist, save them." For three months we heard nothing; then a rumour drifted across to us that the elder of the two had died in a Temple house. The younger, six months old, was still with her father. On Christmas Eve our informant arrived in the compound ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... development may be explained. The airship and aeroplane in the present stage of evolution possess no economic value. True, cross-country cruises by airship have been inaugurated, and, up to a point, have proved popularly, if not commercially, successful, while tentative efforts have been made to utilise the aeroplane as a mail-carrier. Still, from the view-point of the community at large aerial travel is as remote as ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... was a most intimate presence to the Man. It grew in the very midst of his Garden of Eden. It had a magical virtue, which his tentative science could only explain by chance analogies and assimilations. Attractive and beloved and worshipped by reason of its many gifts to mankind—its grateful shelter, its abounding fruits, its timber, and other invaluable products—why should it ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... his nod was not much more than tentative. He could have denied it next minute without calling ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... of the musicians now leaned together for a moment. The violins wailed in sad search for the accord, the assistant instrument less tentative. All at once the slack shoulders straightened up firmly, confidently, and then, their feet beating in unison upon the floor, their faces set, stern and relentless, the three musicians fell to the work and reeled ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... tentative, the second brisker, netting no response, I deliberately tried the knob and felt the door promptly yield to me; then, with equal deliberation, I dropped my hand into my pocket where my revolver lay. If some one ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Symphonist is already foreshadowed. He was almost a beginner at orchestral work, but it marks an epoch in this class of composition, raising it far beyond anything of the kind that had yet appeared. Viewed in the light of later ones it is apparent that he held himself in; that he was tentative compared with his subsequent ones. Considered as a symphony and compared with what had been produced in this class up to that time, it is a daring innovation and was regarded as such by the critics. He broadened and enlarged the form and gave it a dignity that ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... most effective adjunct of her conversation. Socially, she was absolutely devoid of weakness or of shame. She found society extremely interesting, and she always struck straight for the desirable things in it, making short work of all those delicate tentative processes of acquaintanceship by which men and women ordinarily sort themselves. Rose's brilliant vivacious beauty had caught her eye at dinner; she adored beauty as she adored anything effective, and she always took ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... prose, it seems to shrink and fade before our eyes. Its only means of enlargement seems to be in forgetting its own traditions and assimilating itself to the prose. Moreover, we have traces of various tentative sallies; one poet trying rhymes,[143] another trying hexameters,[144] which reminds us of the efforts and essays of the unsatisfied poetic genius in the middle of the sixteenth century. The Benedictine revival had drawn off the interest ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... Secretariat buildings that raised themselves here and there out of the huddling bazaar looked trivial, childish enterprises in the simple revelation of the morning. A cold silence was abroad, which a crow now and then vainly tried to disturb with a note of tentative enterprise, forced, premature. It announced that the sun would probably rise, but nothing more. In the little dark shops of the wood-carvers an occasional indefinite figure moved, groping among last night's tools, or an old woman in a red sari washed ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... verse, make us feel as though we were reading "Sardanapalus" or "The Two Foscari"—a sensation not easily to be endured. In a poet so far superior as Tourneur to the author of those abortions we must seek for an explanation of this perverse error in a transient and tentative theory of realism rather than in an incurable infirmity or obliquity of talent: for no quality is more remarkable in the execution of his masterpiece than his mastery of those metrical properties in which the style of this play is so generally deficient. Whether in dialogue or in monologue, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that which was known here as "stump" work. Until the eighteenth century English work was more or less archaic in every branch. Personally, I see no more absurdity in the queer doll-like figures than in contemporary wood-carving. It was a period of tentative effort, and was, of course, beneath criticism. English Art has ever been an effort until its one bright burst of genius in the eighteenth century, while the continental nations appear to have breathed artistic perception ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... who he was can be derived from any source, nor does the chronicle itself supply many of those incidental indications from which it is often possible to learn much regarding the author of an anonymous book. The tentative suggestion of Bishop Stubbs that it may have been written by Richard Fitz Neal, the author of the Dialogus de Scaccario, is now generally regarded as inadmissible. The work begins in 1170, and from a ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... softly picking the strings, then drawing across them a tentative bow. "I've a fiddle at home that I play sometimes. Do you mind ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... nor that of those beings divine, But each and the whole—an essence of all the Nine; With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place, A pensive smile on her ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... which should embrace only an account of the superstitious regarding death and burial among the Indians, so thoroughly has the matter been examined and discussed by various authors, and yet so much still remains to be commented on, but in this work, which is mainly tentative, and is hoped will be provocative of future efforts, it is deemed sufficient to give only a few accounts. The first is by Dr. W. Mathews, United States Army,[104] and ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... tentative proposal," Karl said, "certain things have come to my ears which must be considered. A certain amount of unrest we all have. It is a part of the times we live in. But strange stories have reached us here, that your revolutionary party is again active, and threatening. This proposal was ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... party seemed moved with a desire for dancing—except Fred. While the others whirled away he sank into a seat, staring vacantly ahead. He had reached the extreme point of his drunkenness and he was pulling toward sobriety again... He came out of his tentative stupor with the realization that a woman was ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... work at Dashur. His task is to clear out the whole temple thoroughly, to discover in it what previous investigators have left undiscovered, and to restore to its original position what has fallen. Tentative excavations, begun in an unoccupied tract under the wall of the hall, resulted in the discovery of parts of statues; the place was then regularly excavated, and the result has been amazing. The ground was full of statues, large and small, at some unknown period buried pell-mell, one on the top ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... Clifford knocked her tentative little knock at the door. "Come in, mother," Elma cried, starting up in her surprise; and her mother, much wondering, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... OF PROGRAMME TO THE WORK.—Under Traditional Management the tentative calendar might cause speed, but could not direct speed. Under Transitory Management elimination of waste by prescribed methods and routing increases output. This increase becomes greater under Scientific Management. ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... for long occupied my attention," he wrote, "and, in a tentative way, a good deal has been done. But we have reached a point where little more progress can be made without a decision on the main issues. The question is, whether British colonisation is to be undertaken on a large and effective scale, under Government control ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... Hazleton and Long Divide concern, he says they're disposed to regard British Columbian ventures favorably yonder. If it goes through, I'd have to take most of the vendor's payment in shares, which I'm quite ready to do. That's a rough sketch of the scheme, sir, but in the meanwhile it's only tentative." ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Meilhac and Halevy wrote together was a book for M. Offenbach; and it was possibly the good fortune of this operetta which finally affirmed the partnership. Before the triumph of the Belle Helene in 1864 the collaboration had been tentative, as it were: after that it was as though the articles had been definitely ratified—not that either of the parties has not now and then indulged in outside speculations, trying a play alone or with an outsider, but this was without prejudice to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... some of his principal officers to be instructed in arts and religion.' This was four hundred years ago! And now the Portuguese can be safely snubbed and sat upon, even by a SALISBURY! But if your prudent Premier doesn't 'stiffen his back' a bit, with regard to the tougher and tentative Teuton, 'the arts and valour' of the Britishers will not make as great an impression on the minds of the Africans as your ill-used East ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... woman back here!" Max roared. Miss Holzmeyer made a dash for the stairway, and before Elkan had time to formulate even a tentative plan of escape she had returned ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... program—professional preparation for all teachers in the high school and that along the four lines suggested. But the movement has gone much farther than suggested by my statement. The results are found in something more authoritative and more permanent than tentative agreement among educational leaders, or even among educational institutions. The law-making bodies of the land have taken a part, and by legal enactment have required about what I have suggested. The State of North Dakota, for example, requires professional equipment of every teacher within ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... laid stress on certain points likely to be useful to us in this last stage of our studies, and these will, I hope, furnish us with some amount of material. But I confess that I have approached this subject with great hesitation. What I shall have to say will be tentative and suggestive only; but I hope that the account that I have given in these lectures of Roman religious experience may be of use in helping a better qualified student to carry on the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... so unnecessary, Rynason thought. The ancient Outsiders brain, computing from insufficient evidence probably gathered during a brief touchdown on Earth, had undoubtedly been able to give only a tentative appraisal of the situation. But the proto-Hirlaji language was not constructed to accommodate if's and maybe's, and the judgments of the brain were taken as ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... George became impressed with the necessity of increasing the size of the British army, already millions strong. The voluntary system had hitherto been relied on, and there was strong opposition, both in the Cabinet and in the country, to tentative proposals for conscription. Lloyd George took an early opportunity of showing that he was on the side of the conscriptionists. There was an outburst of protests, but it proved of no avail, and it was largely through Lloyd George that conscription in Britain became an established ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... was a tentative one, and rightly so. He laid down no programme which must compel him to be either inconsistent or unwise, no cast-iron theorem to which circumstances must be fitted as they rose, or else be useless to his ends. He seemed to have chosen Mazarin's motto, Le temps et ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... change was made in the otherwise exact reproduction of the Grand Trianon. According to documents published in the seventeenth century, and especially to the tentative drawings made by Lepautri himself, the Grand Trianon architect, that monument was originally to be decorated over its high balustrade railings with some artistic devices and groups of children, each to be found in ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... of Nineveh was forgotten for a period even longer than that stated by the author. Mr. Claudius Rich, the Resident at Baghdad, was the first European to make a tentative identification of Nineveh with the mounds opposite Mosal, in 1818. Real knowledge of the site and its history dates from the excavations of Botta begun in 1843, and those of Layard begun two years later. (Bonomi, Nineveh and its Palaces, 2nd ed., ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... interview which I secured upon that visit was the sole personal interview that ever occurred between us. I called upon Senator Morrill of Vermont, and together we made a visit to the President. I spoke of the features of the proclamation that seemed to be objectionable. He said that "the measure was tentative" only, and that until the experiment had been tried no other proclamation would be issued. Upon that I said in substance that the Republican Party might accept the proclamation as an experiment, but that it was contrary to the ideas of the party, and that a continuance of ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... was almost disconcertingly a stranger. Even Madame Belot, holding a stalwart, brown-fisted baby on her arm, could comment on her husband's work with a discerning aptness of phrase which made his own appreciation seem very trite and tentative. He might be putting up with the Belots, but it was quite as likely, he perceived, that they might be putting up with him. He realized, in this world of the Belots, the significance, the laboriousness, the high level of vitality, and he realized that ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... scientists will be able to give us a complete and satisfactory explanation of these abnormal apparitions, but at present we are very much in the dark, and any explanation that may be put forward is necessarily of a tentative nature. ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... observance of the unities. He did not write 'The Bride of Messina' in any doctrinaire spirit,—either to reform the German drama, or to furnish a model for imitation. The play is simply an aesthetic experiment; a tentative excursion into a field confessedly 'strange'. What Schiller wished was to produce upon a modern audience, by an original treatment of a medieval theme, a tragic effect similar to that which, as he supposed, must have been produced upon an Athenian audience by ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... and 1876 the professor made two voyages to the Yenissei River and up it. By this course he opened up Siberia to trade, and received the thanks of the Russian Government for inaugurating a sea route to Siberia. But these voyages, in a sense tentative, were completely eclipsed by the expedition undertaken in the Vega, in which Nordenskiold accomplished the long-desired North-East Passage from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific Ocean eastwards. The ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... of the reduction of armaments is presented in Article 8 of the Covenant in terms which reveal at the outset the complexity of the question and which explain the tentative manner in which the subject has been treated by the League of Nations in the last ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... lamp, laid out his papers in the prospect of an evening of uninterrupted work. He was surprised, however, after a little interval, by the sound of uncertain and shuffling steps on the half-lighted passage outside, the noise of some heavy article set down on the floor, and then a tentative knock at his door. A little ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... character and power of the force (3) A table showing the relative strength expended in evangelistic, medical, and educational work (4) A table showing the extent to which the native Christians support existing work This is only a tentative ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... Frank took a tentative step forward. In winter he was welcomed always to the fire, but in summer they said he brought in flies. Now no one seemed to notice him, though he was a big fellow and red. He took another step ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... I here give a tentative list of some Celtic words found in dialects. Their etymologies are discussed in my Etymological Dictionary (1910), as they are also found in literary use; and the words are fully explained in the English Dialect Dictionary, which gives all ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... this was accomplished at first in a humdrum and tentative way. About seventy years ago children's books were very uninteresting. In the little stories manufactured for children, the good boy ended in a Coach-and-four, and the bad boy in a ride to Tyburn. The good boys must have been a set of little snobs and prigs, and I could ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... by philanthropy in the poor man as borrower is still in the tentative and experimental stage, but there is an encouraging analogy between its beginnings and the early history of the savings banks. "It is seldom remembered," says Mrs. Lowell, "that the great scheme of savings banks was originally conceived and put into operation as a means of helping the poor. The ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... possession, wherein she has assumed the moral responsibility of establishing a form of government on principles quite opposite to those of the defunct Spanish regime: whether it will be for better or for worse cannot be determined at this tentative stage. Without venturing on the prophetic, one may not only draw conclusions from accomplished facts, but also reasonably assume, in the light of past events, what might have happened under other circumstances. There is scarcely a Power which has not, in the zenith of its prosperity, consciously ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... meanwhile are we to go on living under martial law? They demanded the dissolution of the illegal and, at best, long superannuated Chamber, and fresh elections. The call for freedom grew louder, more insistent, more imperious and dangerous, until M. Venizelos took a first tentative step towards ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... professors and the students in our colleges to adopt a very tentative attitude toward judging the dramatic merits of the plays of other ages. Shakespeare, considered as a poet, is so immeasurably superior to Dryden, that it is difficult for the college student unfamiliar with the ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... advancement and happiness which churchmen and theologians have not violently opposed. Not content with burning each other, they burnt the men who discovered the earth's motion, burnt the men who made the first tentative beginnings of physics and chemistry, burnt the men who laid the foundations of our medical knowledge.... Bad as has been the church's record in the past, it is not greatly improved in the present.... For two thousand years teachers and preachers have striven, by inculcating ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... delight. Julia had been bewildered and heartsick when she turned to The Alexander, but she had never in her life known such an aching loneliness as had been Miss Toland's fate for many years. To such a nature the solitary years in Paris, the solitary return to California, the tentative and unencouraged approaches to her nieces, all made a dark memory. Rich as she was, independent and popular as she was, Miss Toland's life had brought her nothing so sweet as this young thing, to teach, to dominate, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... physicist would stand aghast at the bare proposal of such an experiment. Neither his knowledge of chemistry, nor the present uncertain value attaching to "molecular machinery," would justify him, for a moment, in entering upon such a purely tentative and empirical an undertaking. ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... and turned to toil anew, The Seraph hailed them with observance due; And after some fit talk of higher things Touched tentative on mundane happenings. This they permitting, he, emboldened thus, Prolused of humankind promiscuous. And, since the large contention less avails Than instances observed, he told them tales—Tales of the shop, the bed, the court, the street, Intimate, elemental, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... has a notorious liaison with a dancer at the Opera; she has married lovelessly. They have met again, and, in sentimental mood, he has recalled that sojourn, has begun to make a kind of tentative love to her, probably unimpaired in beauty, certainly more intellectually interesting, for the whole monologue proves that she can no longer be patronisingly summed up in "poor pretty thoughtful thing." And she has cried, in the words ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... tentative period the results of the two methods of pass examination and competitive examination were closely watched and compared. It may be that before we confine ourselves upon this important question within the stringent bounds of statutory enactment we may profitably await the result ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... destroy the monster,—and to make it the very business and object of the war to sweep it out of existence. But that will be the end; and for the way, things will work out their own issues. And in the mean time I do not see that anything could be better than the cautious and tentative manner in which the President ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... out of the sky, and it became softly, mistily blue. All that forenoon Hazel prowled restlessly out of doors without cap or coat. There was a new feel in the air. The deep winter snow had suddenly lost its harshness. A tentative stillness wrapped the North as if the land rested a moment, gathering its force for ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... months of tentative measures or of incidents which taught both parties that they could not, either of them, hope to completely destroy their opponents, the two allied brothers received at Verdun, whither they had repaired to concert their next movement, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... stood staring angrily as one rebuffed—followed her cue and reseated themselves. He, too, dropped back in his chair, leaned forward for the decanter, and poured himself more wine. The buzz of talk revived, at first a word or two here and there, tentative after the check, then more confidently. Within a minute the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... no public; this book's been all round the trade. I've had it before. The man will never come to the front. He'll take to inn-keeping, and that will finish him off." That's what he said, and he seemed to be speaking of me. Some one was knocking at the door of the room—tentative knocks of rather flabby knuckles. It was one of those sounds that one does not notice immediately. The man might have been knocking for ten minutes. It happened to be Lea's employer, the publisher of my first book. He opened the door at last, and came in rather peremptorily. He had the ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... them, to sing. Mrs. Chifney, her cheeks pink, her manner slightly fluttered,—as were her lilac cap strings,—presided over the silver tea and coffee service, admonished the staid and bulky tom-cat who, jumping on the arm of Dickie's chair, extended a scooping tentative paw towards his plate, and issued gentle though peremptory orders to her husband regarding the material needs of her guest. To Mrs. Chifney such entertainings as the present marked the red-letter days of her calendar. Temporarily she forgave Chifney ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... replied good-heartedly to this tentative question of mine; "glad to hev ye along o' me, seeing as how we both hev ben a-prospectin' ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and all that, don't you think?" Pink asked. "We can draw up a tentative one, and then fix it up at the first meeting. This is going to be a big thing. It'll go ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the Director of Transports was asked how long it would take to despatch 49,000 men and 8,000 horses. His reply was that in the then state of the labour market, four to five weeks would be required. Tentative enquiries of this kind, and the evidently critical state of affairs in South Africa, had led the Transport department, as early as July, to make for eventualities every preparation that was possible within the department—such as conferring ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... determination was unabated, at the end of six months little had been done beyond the building of a wagon road and the importation of new machinery for the working of the lead. The peculiarity of their design debarred any tentative or temporary efforts; they wished the whole settlement to spring up in equal perfection, so that the first stage-coach over the new road could arrive upon the completed town. "We don't want to show up in a 'b'iled shirt' and a ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... which he had served, sweeping across the bows of a Frenchman, and raking him, gun after gun, from stem to stern. Nor did the warlike mood abate until he reached home and looked his wife in the eyes. He told her all, ending with the half repudiatory, half tentative words. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... quarter to the hour it was discovered that Y.D. had not yet dressed for the occasion. He was, in fact, engaged with Landson in making a tentative arrangement for the distribution of next year's hay. Zen had been so insistent upon an invitation being sent to Mr. and Mrs. Landson, that Y.D., although fearing a snub for his pains, at last conceded ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... contracted, from living so long with strangers, a delightfully frank and free way of speaking. He never gave me, as he used to, the least feeling of constraint; he always seemed perfectly at his ease. And he had acquired, too, the art of asking unobtrusive questions of a tentative kind, so as to feel out the interests of his companion, and draw him out; not in that professional way which so-called influential people often acquire—the melancholy confidential smile, the intimate manner, ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... is the sole reference in the interview to the murder. I take it for tentative, and that Hamlet is satisfied by his mother's utterance, carriage, and expression, that she is innocent of any knowledge of that crime. Neither does he allude to the adultery: there is enough in what she cannot deny, and ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... early as the 29th of January, there was held at Aberdeen (historically the most natural place for such a purpose, for it was the city of the "Aberdeen Doctors" and their eirenic efforts) a conference—modest, unofficial, tentative—yet truly representative of the Church of Scotland, of the United Free Church, and of the Scottish Episcopal Church, which drew up, and has issued, a Memorandum[18] suggesting a basis for reunion in Scotland, very much on the lines of the Precedents of 1610, but ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... it turned out. Throughout the sultry hours he held his position, not daring to move his men save to drive back tentative advances on the part of the enemy, which he knew were designed to cover the movements of their artillery. He could not press his attack home, far less penetrate to the guns, and the range of his musketry would of course be hopelessly inadequate ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... not last a great while. The motor control was more tentative than absolute. Once while driving beside a creek on a hot and thirsty day, the super-heated buffaloes suddenly espied the water, twenty feet or so below the road. Without having been bidden they turned toward ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Quennerstedt's species setigerum. While the latter possesses only a few setae, the former has a number of them, and Stokes described his species as having a variable number. For this reason I include the Woods Hole form under the tentative name armatum, as a variety of Quennerstedt's L. setigerum. The flat margins are distinctly striated longitudinally, and faintly marked radially, on the dorsal surface. Longitudinal elevated striae also run the length of the dorsal hump and upon the entire ventral surface. ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... of Life,—what can we say except that out of the Eater there comes Strength; out of the Unwise there comes not Wisdom! Shams are burnt up; nay, what as yet is the peculiarity of France, the very Cant of them is burnt up. The new Realities are not yet come: ah no, only Phantasms, Paper models, tentative Prefigurements of such! In France there are now Four Million Landed Properties; that black portent of an Agrarian Law is as it were realised! What is still stranger, we understand all Frenchmen have 'the right of duel;' the Hackney-coachman ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... not justifying Mr. Shubrick. This was a kind of tentative speech for his own satisfaction; but he made it, watching for Dolly's answer the while. It ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... of a contemporary character, if I may say so—a case possessing, in the fullest sense of the word, the hallmark of time, and circumstances pointing to a person and life of different surroundings. The real culprit is a theorist, a bookworm, who, in a tentative kind of way, has done a more than bold thing; but this boldness of his is of quite a peculiar and one-sided stamp; it is, after a fashion, like that of a man who hurls himself from the top of a mountain or church steeple. The man in question has forgotten to cut off evidence, ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... "moderate muscular exercise," and it may easily be understood that the 14-year-old boy eats as much as his father who is engaged in business or professional occupation, both requiring, according to the tentative standard, 0.8 of the food needed by a man with moderate muscular work. (3) It is not assumed that any housewife will find it convenient to follow exactly the proportions suggested in the menus. The purpose is to show her about what amounts ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... Palaeographical Society (p. 184); but I nowhere find the proofs that the Naskhi character (vol. i. 128) so long preceded the Cufic which, amongst vulgar Moslems, is looked upon like black letter in Europe. But Semitic epigraphy is only now entering upon its second stage of study, the first being mere tentative ignorance: about 80 years ago the illustrious De Sacy proved, in a learned memoir, the non-existence of letters in Arabia before the days of Mohammed. But Palmer[FN454], Halevy, Robertson Smith, Doughty and Euting have changed all that, and Herr Eduard Glaser of Prague is now bringing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the wrong way with a tentative woolly-gloved finger. "Plitty, high hat," she cooed. "Can plitty little Fay have ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... adventure, Watson carried away no bitterness. It was a social experience of a new order, and it led to the writing of another book, which he entitled, "POLICE COURT PROCEDURE: A Tentative Analysis." ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... fittest! A fac-simile reproduction of a hitherto unpublished Polonaise in A flat, written at the age of eleven, is also included in this unique number. This tiny dance shows, it is said, the "characteristic physiognomy" of the composer. In reality this polacca is thin, a tentative groping after a form that later was mastered so magnificently by the composer. Here is the way it ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... relentless war, which never ceased until Mr. Wilson disbanded his company. Carl Rankin, who was a Columbus boy and an old friend of Alfred's called on Alfred. He advised that he was dissatisfied with his surroundings and a tentative partnership agreement was entered into for the next season. However, the arrangements went no further as Mr. Rankin's health failed him rapidly and it was not long until minstrelsy lost one of the most versatile performers that ever ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... certainly want to be found out, either by Nelly or the Farrells; and she took elaborate steps to prevent it. She wrote first a long letter to Howson giving her reasons for refusing to believe in his tentative identification of the man at X—— as George Sarratt, and begging him not to write to her sister. 'That would be indeed cruel. She can just get along now, and every month she gets a little stronger. But her heart, which was weakened by the influenza ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mine's career shafts of such size or equipment as would be available for great depths. Moreover, the proper location of a shaft so as to work economically extension of the ore-bodies is a matter of no certainty, and therefore shafts of speculative mines are tentative in any event. ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... originally contributed to the Cornhill Magazine, tells the story of their close friendship, and of their journey to London in 1860 in search of fame. After a period of struggle and disappointment Buchanan published Undertones in 1863. This "tentative" volume was followed by Idyls and Legends of Inverburn (1865), London Poems (1866), and North Coast and other Poems (1868), wherein he displayed a faculty for poetic narrative, and a sympathetic insight into the humbler conditions of life. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... self-complacency and feeling of consequence; it certainly does nothing for her comfort or her children's improvement nor for the cleanliness of anyone concerned. Another thing that prevents better houses in Chicago is the tentative attitude of the real estate men. Many unsavory conditions are allowed to continue which would be regarded with horror if they were considered permanent. Meanwhile, the wretched conditions persist until at least two ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... been revealed, she had seemed more puzzling to him than ever. When he had sought her glance, her look had told him nothing. It was as though with the doffing of the motley she had discarded its recollections. In a tentative mood, he had striven to fathom her, but found himself at a loss. She had been neither reserved, nor had she avoided him; to her the past seemed a page, lightly read and turned. Had Caillette truly said "now ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... renovating those noisome places of the city where human nature, undiluted by space, stews corrosion and corruption for its souls and bodies. Every day he would give her a glimpse of one or another of a multitude of half formed ideas, perhaps but just conceived, perhaps taking tentative form, which he was eager to work out and put to practical test. For the most part they seemed to her to be an unusual combination of business shrewdness, just feeling, and altruistic intent. Apparently his aim in ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... for solution of the problem thus established, the actual solution (page 44), conforming to the system indicated in the Fundamental Military Principle, starts with consideration of pertinent methods of procedure, as tentative solutions of the problem. These take the form of military operations, each denominated a course of action (discussed in detail hereinafter). Each such course embodies, specifically or inferentially, an objective ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College |
