"Sterling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the specification of an exact amount, but the use of a round number which is to suggest an undefined magnitude. 'Ten thousand talents,' according to one estimate, is some two millions and a quarter of pounds sterling. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... justice. But the mere dread or distrust resulting from the want of the inner virtues of Faith and Charity prove often no less costly than war itself. The fear which France and England have of each other costs each nation about fifteen millions sterling annually, besides various paralyses of commerce; that sum being spent in the manufacture of means of destruction instead of means of production. There is no more reason in the nature of things that France and England ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... less," continued the official, "a man of sterling worth? You do not think he can be in some lost property office en route, waiting to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... church has had a dignified and fruitful past, dating from that day in 1761 when young Paul Coffin received his call to preach at a stipend of fifty pounds sterling a year; answering "that never having heard of any Uneasiness among the people about his Doctrine or manner of life, he declared himself pleased to Settle as Soon as ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... recorded that when Halley had undertaken to measure the length of a degree of the earth's surface, at the request of the Royal Society, it was ordered that his expenses be defrayed either in 50 pounds sterling, or in fifty books of fishes. Thus it happened that On June 2nd, the Council, after due consideration of ways and means in connection with the issue of the Principia, "ordered that Halley should undertake the business of looking after the book and printing ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... "There is sterling worth in this rustic hoyden," thought Mrs. Mellicent, who, in contriving some occupation for so active a mind, recollected that Mrs. Beaumont's dressing-plate had not been cleaned lately, and undertook ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... two serious mistakes. They fell into the Law and Order trap by committing an act of technical piracy. From this Durkee saved them by taking upon himself the legal onus of the seizure. The second error, though a minor one, proved much more serious. They sent Sterling Hopkins, a vainglorious, witless, overzealous wight, to rearrest Maloney. Coleman was not responsible for this; nor were the Vigilantes in a larger sense, for a few hotheads in temporary command issued the order. Hopkins, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... present writing Australia has realized from her soil over three hundred and thirty millions of pounds sterling, or $1,650,000,000. Her territory gives grazing at the present time to over seventy-five million sheep, which is probably double the number in the United States. When it is remembered that the population ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... rooms could be found Bayard Taylor's chair—his for years, from which he dispensed wisdom, adventure and raillery to a listening coterie—King, MacDonough and Collins among them, while near the stairs, his great shaggy head glistening in the overhead light, Parke Godwin held court, with Sterling, Martin and Porter, to say nothing of still older habitues who in the years of their membership were as much a part of the fittings of the club as the smoke-begrimed portraits ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the unanimity with which the parliament gives away a dozen of millions sterling; and the unanimity of the public is as great in approving of it, which has stifled the usual political and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... making a little visit to Madam Williams, who did give me information of W. Howe's having bought eight bags of precious stones taken from about the Dutch Vice-Admirall's neck, of which there were eight dyamonds which cost him L60,000 sterling, in India, and hoped to have made L2000 here for them. And that this is told by one that sold him one of the bags, which hath nothing but rubys in it, which he had for 35s.; and that it will be proved he hath made L125 of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of sums of money the expression takes the form of "pounds, shillings, and pence"; for example, Twenty-one pounds five shillings and nine pence. Sometimes the word "sterling" is added, meaning genuine or standard coin of the realm. In accounts the figures are placed in three parallel columns under the heading of s. d. "" for pounds, "s." for shillings, and "d." for pence, from Libri, ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... also the showers of hot ashes and of scalding water that will frizzle up in a few seconds every green blade and leaf upon his tiny domain, for which he pays an enormous rental, sometimes as much as L12 sterling an acre. Yet the contadino takes his chances with a seraphic resignation that we do not usually attribute to the southern temperament. After the eruption of 1872, which covered the rich Paduli with a deep coating of grey ashes, a young peasant girl was heard deploring the loss of her carefully ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... his front teeth and his lips, whence the sounds broke forth in a wonderful sonorous gravity and fulness and a buzzing sibilancy. But through these strange husks the young man and the old one soon learned to like each other. Inasmuch as both were men of full-weight, sterling stuff they could not fail to understand each other's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... treacherous Italian; indeed, as I never before believed a word that he said in his life, I know not why I was so foolish as to credit him now, and go to bed, leaving the keys of our cash-box with him. It contained, after our loss to the cuirassiers, in bills and money, near upon L8000 sterling. Pippi insisted that our reconciliation should be ratified over a bowl of hot wine, and I have no doubt put some soporific drug into the liquor; for my uncle and I both slept till very late the next morning, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... eyes—the very result which Prince Albert had striven to avoid, and that the official would be forced, as it were, on the Prince's intimacy without such previous acquaintance as might have justified confidence. It was only the sterling qualities of both Prince and secretary which obviated the natural consequences of such an ill-judged proceeding, and ended by producing the genuine liking and honest friendship which ought to have preceded ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... Canadian leather resembles hide, and one pair of English shoes will easily last out three American. In Canada, a sovereign generally fetches 23s. or 24s. currency, that is 5s. to the dollar;—1s. sterling, passes for 1s. 2d. currency, so that either description of bullion gives a good remittance: "one great objection, however, to bringing out money, is the liability there is of losing, or being robbed of it." Live stock is much wanted: "dogs would be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... political power, and then following, in providential order, for human freedom. A struggle culminating in the entire subjection of the South, in 1865, after four years' war—a struggle costing a million of lives, untold human misery, and a loss in money, or money's worth, of over a thousand millions sterling. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... sterling qualities he was regarded by the world in general, as, perhaps, a little hard and self-opinioned. But he was never hard to her, or to the one son who was born to them. He exacted what was his due from the rest ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... waters of the canal into the new docks was performed by the Emperor in October, 1883. The Empress and heir apparent, with a large number of the Court, were present on the occasion. The works on the canal, costing about a million and a half sterling, were begun in 1876, and have been carried out under the direction of a committee appointed by the Government, presided over by his Excellency, N. Sarloff. The resident engineer is M. Phofiesky; and the contractors ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... rules of international law; and the merchants of the famous Hansa towns extending their operations as far as Novgorod in one direction, and in another to the Steelyard in London, where the pound of these honest "Easterlings" was adopted as the "sterling" unit of sound money. Fats and tallows, furs and wax from Russia, iron and copper from Sweden, strong hides and unrivalled wools from England, salt cod and herring (much needed on meagre church fast-days) from the North and Baltic seas, appropriately followed by generous casks ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... members of the Davidson family were sterling, sedate, hearty, and thorough-going. Daniel and Peter were what men style "dependable" fellows, and bore strong resemblance to their father, who died almost immediately after their arrival in the new country. Little Jessie ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... containing sugar. In throwing up the works this sugar was used. Rolling the hogsheads towards the front, they were placed in the parapets of the batteries. Sugar, to the amount of many thousand pounds sterling, was thus disposed of. ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... keeping the Citie cleane. There is great aboundance of hennes, geese, duckes, swine, and goates, wethers haue they none: the hennes are solde by weight, and so are all other things. Two pound of hennes flesh, geese, or ducke, is worth two foi of their money, that is, d. ob. sterling. Swines flesh is sold at a penie the pound. Beefe beareth the same price, for the scarcitie thereof, howbeit Northward from Fuquieo and farther off from the seacoast, there is beefe more plentie and solde better cheape; We haue had in all the Cities we passed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... America may possibly vie in cheapness of manufactures with Britain. The labor of slaves can never be so cheap here as the labor of working men is in Britain. Any one may compute it. Interest of money is in the colonies from six to ten per cent. Slaves, one with another, cost thirty pounds sterling per head. Reckon then the interest of the first purchase of a slave, the insurance or risk on his life, his clothing and diet, expenses in his sickness and loss of time, loss by his neglect of business (neglect ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... in the dinner-hour he called at Mrs Pengelly's shop and gave that good woman an order for groceries. The size of it almost caused her to faint. It ran into double figures in pounds sterling. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... last grand profession of this man of many talents—that of the wit. That it was a profession there can be no doubt, for he lived on it, it was all his capital. He paid his bills in that coin alone: he paid his workmen, his actors, carpenters, builders with no more sterling metal; with that ready tool he extracted loans from the very men who came to be paid; that brilliant ornament maintained his reputation in the senate, and his character in society. But wit without wisdom—the froth ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... jaunt, and have the pleasure to find all my friends well. I breakfasted with your greyheaded, reverend friend, Mr. Smith; and was highly pleased, both with the cordial welcome he gave me, and his most excellent appearance and sterling good sense. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... this should be done; and Tirumala, thinking that now he had no further use for his allies, requested the Sultan to return home. He paid over the subsidy agreed upon, which was assessed at something approaching two millions sterling, and made many other gifts. The story ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... fewer than twenty thousand individuals, of all ages, from ten or twelve years old and upwards, are thus employed; and the annual produce of their labor is estimated at one hundred and seventy thousand pounds sterling. Caen lace is in high estimation for its beauty and quality, and is exported ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... be at the rate of thirty pounds sterling per calendar month, with uniform and your keep, of ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... those sterling specifics whose curative effects are quickly realized on the first trial. It is intended to be used in connection with the flushing treatment, and the two used ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... as our friends crowded about us and offered their congratulations. Our home was saved, and Lawyer Douglass had won a reputation for eloquence and sterling worth that stood undimmed through all his ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... twenty-two Missionary Societies, have planted stations in the most populous and influential cities. Joined by two hundred ordained Native Ministers and two thousand Native Preachers, they carry on a system of christian agency which costs the important sum of 300,000 pounds sterling a year. Many calumnies have been uttered respecting missionaries, and their work, by men who have professed to visit the cities where they labour, and saw nothing of its results. But these are more than answered by the striking fact that, of the money annually expended on these Missions no less ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... fight With every cur that looms in sight, None ever saw thee quail beneath A foeman worthy of thy teeth. Thou art, in brief, a model hound, Not so much beautiful as sound In heart and limb; not always strong When nose and eyes impel to wrong, Nor always doing just as bid, But sterling as the minted quid. And I have loved thee in my fashion, Shared with thy face my frugal ration, Squandered my balance at the bank When thou didst chew the postman's shank, And gone in debt replacing stocks ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... of Cambrai, had seven abbeys, with respect to which he was insatiable to the last; and he had set on foot overtures in order to seize upon those of Citeaux, Premonte, and others, and it was averred that he received a pension from England of 40,000 livres sterling! I had the curiosity to ascertain his revenue, and I have thought what I found curious enough to be inserted here, diminishing some of the benefices to avoid all exaggeration. I have made a reduction, too, upon what he drew from his place of prime ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... I gallop down the race, Here charge the sterling[2] like a bull; There, as a man might wipe his face, Lie, pleased and panting, in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... London, whom I have just heard from, discovered my address. He mentioned a trunk-tag as his clew; he and the Englishman evidently met. As to the title, it was of no use to me here. I may use it now, at home, for he writes that there were several hundreds of pounds sterling saved out of my own and my father's wreck, together with a small cottage and a few acres of land near London. Had I known it, however, before I came here, it would have made no difference, nor would it ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... are a soldier facing the cannon's mouth; you will know it in a still different way if you have to face the hostility and prejudice of a whole community for standing by something which you believe to be right. Perhaps you have a manly little son; he, like you, may believe in his sterling good qualities. But wait till he has gone out to fight his way in life; then you will realise what he is worth, and so will he. It is one thing to know that you are a lover of truth; it is another thing to realise ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... Canada fields, mountains, forests, and water yield an immense revenue. Think only of all the agricultural produce which is shipped from here, not to speak of gold, fish, and furs. The wheat produced in Canada is alone worth over 22 million pounds sterling a year. There are also huge areas which are worthless. We get little advantage from the northern coasts, where ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... inhuman. And his mother, who has nothing of all this to reproach herself with, who was everything to him and would have given herself for him, has lost the occupation of sixteen years, and has to begin life over again. The one endless comfort to us is the thought of the sweet, firm, sterling character which the darling child developed in and by all his sufferings and privations. Of that we can think ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... it is very reasonable that faith in the sense already explained should be constituted the test of divine acceptance. If there be such a thing as Christ's winnowing fan, the quality of sterling weight for the discovery of which it is adapted cannot be conceived as anything other than this moral quality. No one could suppose a revelation appealing to the mere intellect of man, since acceptance would thus become a mere matter ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... whatsoever her one general rule was: "Side with the weaker." And it cannot but have been perceived that so much sympathy with weakness could hardly have been in the gift of weakness. No; Aunt Tipping was entirely impersonal in these charities of feeling, and it was because there was so much sterling honesty and strength hidden in her little wiry frame, that she could afford so much succour to those who were neither ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... and it will probably never recover its numbers. An idea of its value and former abundance may be formed from the fact that between 1669 and 1778 it yielded to 1,400 Dutch vessels about 57,000 individuals, of which the baleen and oil produced a money value of four million pounds sterling. Of late years a single large Greenland whale would bring L900 for its whalebone and L300 for its oil. These two great Right whales having been practically exterminated, the merciless hunt has now been turned on to the wilder and less valuable Finback whales or Finners. In ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... leaves no afterthought, you must go to Ned's for it." Of course Ned had won the respect even of those who abused him most, and of none more truly than Thomas Johnson. Spite of all his swaggering and blustering speeches no man knew better than he the sterling worth of Brierley's character; no man was more truly convinced, down in the depths of his heart, that Ned's principles and practice were right. And so now, restless and wretched, he was coming, he hardly knew exactly why, to ask counsel of this very man whom he had openly abused and ridiculed at ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... in which all revenue is calculated, is of varying value. At the cheapest it is worth rather more than a pound sterling, and sometimes almost three times as much. The salaries of officials being paid in rice, it follows that there is a large and influential class throughout the country who are interested in keeping up the price of the staple article of food. Hence the opposition ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... Dynamite Monopoly. They had distributed L3,329,000 in salaries to their employes, native or European. If we take it that the expenditure of the sixty other Mining Companies, gold or coal, in the vicinity of Johannesburg, was similar to the above, we have a total of something like nine million pounds sterling put in circulation, plus purchases of dynamite, plus merchandise bought through the medium of local tradespeople. Thus we see that the bulk of the cost of production actually remained ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... the most refined taste. There are, too, a great many interesting historical facts connected with the general topic, both in an ethical and physiological point of view, which show much discrimination in their production, and a good amount of sterling scholarship. To the medical reader there are many points in the book that are worthy of attention, prominent among which are remarks bearing upon the right of limitation of offspring. We sincerely hope that, for the real benefit of American women, it may meet with a hearty reception, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... Burgess—on the stone appear How worthy he! how virtuous! and how dear! What wailing was there when his spirit fled, How mourned his lady for her lord when dead, And tears abundant through the town were shed; See! he was liberal, kind, religious, wise, And free from all disgrace and all disguise; His sterling worth, which words cannot express, Lives with his friends, their pride and their distress. All this of Jacob Holmes? for his the name: He thus kind, liberal, just, religious?—Shame! What is the truth? Old Jacob married thrice; He dealt ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... sterling character, highly and deeply principled, though not demonstrative, and showing his Scots descent. None of the brothers had been extravagant, but Tom, with the income of his lately achieved fellowship, performed feats of economy, such as attaining to the purchase of an ultra perfect ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... coins, amounting to an ort, a piece of Norwegian money equivalent in value to eight-pence sterling, and begged the peasant to tell me if the offer were sufficiently generous. He counted the coins in the palm of my hand. When he had done so, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... vessel for myself, and be off again. With this view, I quitted a negro who had been sent with me to market, under the pretence of going to school, but went along the wharves until I found a ship that took my fancy. She was called the Sterling, and there was a singularly good-looking mate on her deck, of the name of Irish, who was a native of Nantucket. The ship was commanded by Capt. John Johnston, of Wiscasset, in Maine, and belonged to his father ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... professed instructors and inspirers, what of those who merely listen? The reading-public—oh, the reading-public! Hardly will a prudent statistician venture to declare that one in every score of those who actually read sterling books do so with comprehension of their author. These dainty series of noble and delightful works, which have so seemingly wide an acceptance, think you they vouch for true appreciation in all who buy them? Remember those who purchase to ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... shop, if shop it could be called, of Jeames Merson, the watchmaker of the village. There all its little ornamental business was done—a silver spoon might be engraved, a new pin put to a brooch, a wedding ring of sterling gold purchased, or a pair of earings of lovely glass, representing amethyst or topaz. There a second-hand watch might be had, with choice amongst a score, taken in exchange from ploughmen or craftsmen. Jeames was poor, for there was not much trade ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... to that," said Julius. "Poor Fanny is soft, and likes to produce an effect; but I believe there is sterling stuff ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... agreeing that a fresh estimate should be made on the spot by experts chosen by both English and Turks. The result of this valuation was that the indemnity granted to the Christians was reduced by the English to the sum of 276,075 sterling, instead of the original 500,000. And as Ali's agents only arrived at the sum of 56,750, a final conference was held at Buthrotum between Ali and the Lord High Commissioner. The latter then informed the Parganiotes that the indemnity allowed them was irrevocably ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all-wool pants. It was a new country, and he was a raw boy, rather a bright and likely lad; but the big world seemed far ahead of him. We were all slow-goin' folks. But he had the stuff of greatness in him. He got his rare sense and sterling principles from both parents. But Abe's kindliness, humor, love of humanity, hatred of slavery, all came from his mother. I am free to say Abe was a ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... go cheap; and so the foreshore westward of the brook being claimed by divers authorities, a tidy little cantle of it had been leased by Admiral Darling, lord of the manor, to Zebedee Tugwell, boat-builder, for the yearly provent of two and sixpence sterling. The Admiral's man of law, Mr. Furkettle, had strongly advised, and well prepared the necessary instrument, which would grow into value by-and-by, as evidence of title. And who could serve summary process of ejectment upon an interloper in a manner so valid as Zebedee's ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... three hundred and fifty Attic talents of silver are worth upwards of two millions and one hundred thousand pounds sterling. The proportion between gold and silver among the ancients we reckon as ten to one; therefore seven thousand three hundred and fifty Attic talents of gold amount to above one and twenty ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... distributed into regiments within twenty-four hours after that sanction should be obtained. These preparations required ready money: but William had, by strict economy, laid up against a great emergency a treasure amounting to about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. What more was wanting was supplied by the zeal of his partisans. Great quantities of gold, not less, it was said, than a hundred thousand guineas, came to him from England. The Huguenots, who had carried ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... or aid a sun-struck soldier in the ranks; none more ready to deny himself a comfort or a luxury to help a more needy comrade. A braver man, a surer or more reliable officer, never trod in shoe-leather. A grand example to our pessimistic, socialistic friends and cheap demagogues of the sterling worth and noble, chivalric character of a "society man of wealth." He is a living type of "Bel a faire peur," without the idiotic sentimentality of that maudlin hero, and ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... at Steamer Point, north-west of Aden harbour, to take in coal. This matter of fuelling steamers is a serious one at such distances from the coal-mines; it costs the Peninsular Company some eight hundred thousand pounds a year. In these distant seas, coal is worth three or four pounds sterling a ton. ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... and noble. On many a terrible battle-field his courage has been unsurpassed. His brave and tireless struggle for existence where both climate and soil are unfriendly is equally worthy of respect. Then, too, his sterling honesty and independence in speech and action and his high moral and religious qualities combine to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... and movable property, and all were regulated on a scale of almost intolerable severity. The whole sum annually obtained from Holland by these means amounted to about thirty millions of florins (or three million pounds sterling), being at the rate of about one pound thirteen shillings four pence from every soul inhabiting ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... this subject which is injuring the Southern States far more than those who have not been drawn into the question of English investment for the South as I have can surmise. This feeling is by no means all sentiment. An Englishman whose word and active cooperation could send a million sterling to any legitimate Southern enterprise said the other day: "I will not invest a farthing in States where these horrors occur. I have no particular sympathy with the antilynching committee, but such outrages indicate to my mind that where life is held to be of ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... Napoleonic Wars in 1815, to the Victorian Jubilee in 1897, Great Britain became and remained top dog economically, politically and to a large extent culturally. Britain was the workshop. British shipping was omnipresent. The pound sterling was the chief medium of foreign exchange. The British Navy patrolled the seas. English was replacing French as the language of commerce ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... which most frequently entered its narrow archway was driven by his Grace the sixth Duke of Beaufort, who put up at the inn on his visits to Bristol, as he had, it is said, a great respect for Isaac Niblett's sterling ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... reoccupy Missouri. Fremont, the Federal commander, proved quite unable to deal with this, and the gallant Lyon was defeated and killed at Wilson's Creek (August 10). Soon afterwards, after a steady resistance, the Unionist garrison of Lexington surrendered to Sterling Price. But the work of Blair and Lyon had not been in vain, and the mere menace of Fremont's advance sufficed to clear the state, while General John Pope, by vigorous action in the field and able civil administration, restored order ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Committee to do to show its resolution to act as the State pro tempore. That little it now proceeded to do by practically suspending the Supreme Court of California. In making an arrest of a witness wanted by the Committee, Sterling A. Hopkins, one of the policemen retained for work by the Committee, was stabbed in the throat by Judge Terry, of the Supreme Bench, who was very bitter against all members of the Committee. It was supposed that the wound would prove fatal, and at once the Committee ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... hairs should caution you against slander. The man I speak of was of great simplicity of mind, but of sterling worth. Unlike most of those who live a border life, he united the better, instead of the worst, qualities of the two people. He was a man endowed with the choicest and perhaps rarest gift of nature; that of distinguishing good from evil. His virtues were those of simplicity, because such ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... pathos and quietly keen depiction of human nature afford contrast, and every chapter is worth reading. It is a very human account of life in a small country town, and the work should be commended for those sterling qualities of heart and naturalness ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... Hudson's Bay stock had fallen from two hundred and fifty to fifty pounds sterling a share. On returning to Scotland Lord Selkirk had begun buying up Hudson's Bay stock in the market, along with Sir Alexander MacKenzie; but when MacKenzie learned that Selkirk's object was colonization first, profits second, he broke in violent anger from the partnership in speculation, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... encountered him by an accident, to which I may refer on some future occasion. Mr. Miles was once a very rich merchant; but receiving a severe shock in the death of his wife, he retired from business, and devoted himself to a quiet, unostentatious life. He is an excellent man, of thoroughly sterling character: not of quick apprehension, and not without some amusing prejudices, which I shall leave to their own development. He holds us all in profound veneration; but Jack Redburn he esteems as a kind of pleasant wonder, that he may venture to approach ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... fate of two good and sterling Germans, who had been my companions in this wild country, where degrees of rank are entirely forgotten, provided a man be honest and true. I constantly look back to the European acquaintances and friends that I made during my sojourn in Africa, nearly all of whom are dead: a merciful ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... two sides to every coin, my dear. John's the head-and I'm the tail. He has the sterling qualities. Now, you girls have got to smooth him down, and make up to him. You've tried him ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... said, halting before her, "'in a way' is the only way there is. The only way any two people ever do love each other. That's what makes half the trouble, I believe. Trying to define it as if it were a standard thing. Like sterling silver; so many and so many hundredths per cent. pure. Love's whatever the personal emotion is that draws two people together. It may be anything. It may make them kind to each other, or it may make them nag each other into ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Evening Post, May 25, 1808.) "Baltimore, Sept. 30. 1808. Arrived brig. 'Sophia' from Rotterdam, July 28, via Harwich, England. Boarded by British brig 'Phosphorus', and ordered to England. After arrival, cargo (of gin) gauged, and a duty exacted of eight pence sterling per gallon. Allowed to proceed, with a license, after paying duty. In company with the 'Sophia', and sent in with her, were three vessels bound for New York, with similar cargoes." (Ibid., Oct. 3.) "American ship 'Othello,' from New York for Nantes, with assorted cargo. Ship, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... rhapsody, to command success or respectful attention." The publishers thought the same. Carlyle took the MS. to Fraser of Regent Street, who offered to publish it if Carlyle would give him a sum not exceeding L150 sterling. He had already been to Longmans & Co., offering them his "German Literary History," but they declined to publish the work, and he now offered them his "Sartor Resartus," with a similar result. He also tried Colburn ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... handsome, not merely in the eyes of a partial sister, but generally allowed to be so. His cheeks had the glow of health; his eyes,—the finest in the world,— the brilliancy of genius, and were soft as a tender and affectionate heart could render them. The same playful fancy, the same sterling and innoxious wit, that was shown afterwards in his writings, cheered and delighted the family circle. I admired—I almost adored him. I would most willingly have sacrificed my life for him, as I, in some measure, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Bannatyne (pop. 1165), 2 m. north by west of Rothesay, is a flourishing watering-place, named after Lord Bannatyne (1743-1833), a judge of the court of session, one of the founders of the Highland and Agricultural Society in 1784. Near to it is Kames Castle, where John Sterling, famous for Carlyle's biography, was born in 1806. Kilchattan, in the south-east of the island, is a favourite summer resort. Another object of interest is St Blane's Chapel, picturesquely situated about 1/2 m. from Dunagoil Bay. Off the western shore of Bute, 3/4 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... he referred to that sterling leader of Fulman County's faithful cohorts, Captain Stonewall ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... consequently large numbers of men, women and children attended at the place of meeting, for all of whom food was provided. The price of provisions, even at the lowest price for which they could be obtained, was high, pork being fifty dollars a barrel, and flour twenty shillings sterling per hundred, and such cattle as I was able to purchase L16 per head, so that the expense of keeping the Indians during the negotiation of treaty and payment of the gratuity, which lasted eleven days, forms no small share of the total expenditure. ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... "Six thousand pounds sterling I was to have got for that," he said, with a touch of pardonable pride in his voice, "and they set him free the day before I got there, just ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... rose to discover the Government's intention on Church matters. Did the speaker ken that on his small holding he paid ten pound sterling in tithes, though he himself did not hold with the Establishment, being a Reformed Presbyterian? The Laodicean George said he did not understand the differences, but that it seemed to him a confounded shame, and he would undertake that Mr. Haystoun, if returned, would ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... carrying forward the great work thus inaugurated was the Teutonic race. The despised northern barbarians, who had conquered Rome, had become civilized and Christianized, and were found to possess the sterling qualities which made them capable of bearing the great responsibilities of progressive civilization. The proud Roman Empire had at last succumbed to its internal weaknesses and vices, and had disappeared forever from the face ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... Stayner was postmaster in 1841, and through his recommendation a uniform rate of 1s 2d sterling, per half ounce, was adopted between any place in Canada and the mother country. About this time regular steam communication across the ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... cartel was ready to depart, Alonzo, taking Jack apart from the company, presented him with a draught of five hundred pounds sterling, on a merchant in New York, who privately transacted business with the Americans. "Take this, my friend, said he; you can ensure it by converting it into bills of exchange on London. Though you once saw me naked, I can now conveniently ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... building hospitals, but the flourishing time of hospital building seems to have begun early in the tenth century. Lady Seidel, in 918 A.D., opened a hospital at Bagdad, endowed with an amount corresponding to about three hundred pounds sterling a month. Other similar hospitals were erected in the years immediately following, and in 977 the Emir Adad-adaula established an enormous institution with a staff of twenty-four medical officers. The great physician Rhazes ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... swimmer and dancer besides, she possessed none of those shortcomings, so handsomely acknowledged when they are present, which would even have justified her in taking up an unassuming position. Besides she was quite rightly aware of owning certain sterling qualities which promised to afford a very much more solid support to the everyday life of this world, than the constant carnival brilliance of her sister; and she found it oppressive to have to appear perpetually in carnival spirits, when ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... although it had its attendant irritations—chief of which was the propensity of J. Harry Stott to gallop ahead and then gallop back to see if the party was coming: rare sport for Mr. Stott, but less so for the buckskin. As soon as that sterling young fellow had discovered that he could ride at a gallop without falling off he lost no opportunity to do so, and his horse was already showing ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... lodged in one of the finest houses in the village, that of the catechist, an opulent man. It is considered to be worth a pound sterling. Do not laugh; there are some of the value of eightpence. My room has a sheet of paper for a door, the rain filters through my grass-covered roof as fast as it falls outside, and two large kettles ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... joint author with his brother Horace,—who was buried at Tunbridge Wells,—of "The Rejected Addresses"; there rests Richard Yates, the original "Sir Oliver Surface"; and there were laid the ashes of the romantic Mrs. Centlivre, and of George Farquhar, whom neither youth, genius, patient labor, nor sterling achievement could save from a life of misfortune and an untimely, piteous death. A cheerier association of this church is with the poet Thomas Moore, who was there married. At St. Giles's-in-the-Fields are the graves of George Chapman, who translated Homer; Andrew Marvel, who wrote such lovely lyrics; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... music of the spheres, to see the union of poetry and philosophy; and behold truth and genius embracing under the eye of religion. His description of the youthful Coleridge has a fit pendant in the wonderful description of the full-blown philosopher in Carlyle's 'Life of Sterling;' where, indeed, one or two touches are taken from Hazlitt's Essays. It is Hazlitt who remarked, even at this early meeting, that the dreamy poet philosopher could never decide on which side of the footpath he should walk; and Hazlitt, who struck out the epigram that Coleridge was an excellent ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... has been imprisoned time and again for offences against the Spanish press laws. Senor Gomez, whose home is in Matanzas, is now on the shady side of 40, a spectacled and scholarly looking man. After the peace of Zanjon he collaborated in the periodicals published by the Marquis of Sterling. In '79 he founded in Havana, the newspaper La Fraternidad, devoted to the interest of the colored race. For a certain fiery editorial he was deported to Centa and kept there two years. Then he went to Madrid and assumed ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... presses in getting on with the work. This he attributed to the absurd costliness, as he considered it, of the style in which the work was brought out. The cost of producing that first volume he told me had been over 1,600l. sterling. It was to be sold at a little less than a hundred francs. Something was said (by me, I think) of the possibility of obtaining assistance from the King, who was generally supposed to be immensely ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... part of his methods, he said, was their rapidity and their cheapness. In three-quarters of an hour (and he smiled sardonically) he could produce a diamond worth at current prices two hundred pounds sterling. "As you shall now see me berform," he remarked, "viz zis ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... alone, and she surrounds you now, great nature, refuge of the weary heart and only balm to breasts that have been bruised. She bath cool hands for every fevered brow and gentlest silence for the troubled soul," from "The Triumph of Bohemia," by George Sterling. ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... coins; and of these we saw a full score in each collection. We might indeed have purchased, as well as admired, but were deterred by the price asked, which, for one perfect specimen, was from 45 to 50 crowns, (L7 or L8 sterling.) These coins are among the largest extant. On one side, the head of Arethusa is a perfect gem in silver, (the hair especially, treated in a way that we have never seen elsewhere;) on the other, is a quadriga. One of these ecclesiastics dealt like any other dealer. The other consulted the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... characterize Courbet as brutal and material, but what is easy is generally not exact. What one glibly stigmatizes as brutality and grossness may, after all, be something of a particularly strong savor, enjoyed by the painter himself with a gusto too sterling and instinctive to be justifiably neglected, much less contemned. The first thing to do in estimating an artist's accomplishment, which is to place one's self at his point of view, is, in Courbet's case, unusually difficult. We are all dreamers, more or less—in ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... have their sensations heightened in the hot-bed of luxurious indolence, at the expence of their understanding; for, unless there be a ballast of understanding, they will never become either virtuous or free: an aristocracy, founded on property, or sterling talents, will ever sweep before it, the alternately timid and ferocious slaves ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... enjoyment and culture who fails to read the best of Scott's novels. Take them all in all, they are the finest fiction that has ever been written, and their continued popularity, despite their many faults, is the best proof of their sterling merit. ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... our law are called Legales homines, free men born English, and may dispend of their own free land in yearly revenue to the sum of forty shillings sterling, or six pounds as money goeth in our times. Some are of the opinion, by Cap. 2 Rich. 2 Ann. 20, that they are the same which the Frenchmen call varlets, but, as that phrase is used in my time, it is very unlikely to be so. The truth is that the word is derived ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... buildings of Hyderabad, mere remnants of the past glory, are still known to renown. Mir-Abu-Talib, the keeper of the Royal Treasury, states that Mohamed-Kuli-Shah spent the fabulous sum of L 2,800,000 sterling on the embellishment of the town, at the beginning of his reign; though the labor of the workmen did not cost him anything at all. Save these few memorials of greatness, the town looks like a heap of rubbish ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... but I am sure you will think no more of him. A suitor has just appeared for you in the person of a man who does not fear the sun—an honorable man—no prince indeed, but a man worth ten millions of golden ducats sterling—a sum nearly ten times larger than your fortune consists of—a man, too, who will make my dear child happy—nay, do not oppose me—be my own good, dutiful child—allow your loving father to provide for you, and to dry up these tears. Promise to bestow your ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... Its principal founders were men of wealth and education; the twelve years' tyranny of Charles the First and Laud, during the suspension of Parliament, caused a flow of more than twenty thousand emigrants to Massachusetts Bay, with a wealth exceeding half a million sterling, and among them not less than seventy silenced clergymen. During the subsequent twenty years of the civil war and Commonwealth in England, the rulers of that colony actively sided with the latter, and by the favour and connivance of Cromwell ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... of little value, which at Williamsburg could be bought for a few shillings, would command from an Indian hunter on the Hiwasse or Tennessee peltries amounting in value to double the number of pounds sterling. Exchanges were necessarily slow, but the profits realized from the operation were immensely large. In times of peace this traffic attracted the attention of many adventurous traders. It became mutually advantageous to the Indian not less than to ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... largely. The Ambassador told his master that six thousand guineas was the smallest gratification that could be offered to so important a minister. Lewis consented to go as high as twenty-five thousand crowns, equivalent to about five thousand six hundred pounds sterling. It was agreed that Sunderland should receive this sum yearly, and that he should, in return, exert all his influence to prevent the reassembling of the Parliament. [59] He joined himself therefore to the Jesuitical cabal, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and sent home. While he was recovering I fanned the flies off him. That's the first thing I remember about the war. When he got well he went back and then the war soon ended. After the war ended father and the family moved to Halifax County and worked on a farm belonging to Mr. Sterling Johnston. I was in Warren County when I first began to remember anything and I do not have any specific remembrance of the Yankees. We stayed in Halifax County eighteen years, going from one plantation to another, but we made no money. The landlords got ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... intended for a body of trustees were agreed upon and invited to Skibo to organize. They imagined it was in regard to transferring the Park to the town; not even to Dr. Ross was any other subject mentioned. When they heard that half a million sterling in bonds, bearing five per cent interest, was also to go to them for the benefit of Dunfermline, they ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... the universal maintenance of this high standard when women managers have had longer experience; but so far conscience and sterling integrity have been attributes of all my expert women, even if they have now and then disappointed me in endurance or in ability. Is not this a fact of great ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... the distinguished architect Mansard. Over thirty thousand soldiers were called from their garrisons to assist the swarms of ordinary workmen in digging the vast excavations and constructing the immense terraces. "It is estimated that not less than forty millions sterling—two hundred million dollars—were exhausted upon the laying out of these vast domains and the erection of this superb chateau. Such was the extraordinary vigor with which the works were pushed, that in 1685, hardly twenty-five years after its commencement, the whole was ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... books. But one may see that a thing is desirable and possible, even though one may not at once know the best way to it,—and in my island of Barataria, when I get it well into order, I assure you no book shall be sold for less than a pound sterling; if it can be published cheaper than that, the surplus shall all go into my treasury, and save my subjects taxation in other directions; only people really poor, who cannot pay the pound, shall be supplied with the books they want for nothing, in a certain limited quantity. I haven't made up my ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... this earth, For angel true thou art In noble deeds and sterling worth And sympathetic heart. I, therefore, seek none from afar For what they might have been, But sing the praise of those which are That ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... fact, the office of the firm was built over one of the old plague pits of 1665. His father had died several years before; and for the boy to become an apprentice in this well-known firm Mrs. McFee had to pay three hundred pounds sterling. McFee has often wondered just what he got for the money. However, the privilege of paying to be better than someone else is an established way of working out one's destiny in England, and at the time the mother and son knew no better than to conform. You will ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... sale of the Adventurer was greater than that of the Rambler on its first appearance. But still there were those, who "talked of it as a catch-penny performance, carried on by a set of needy and obscure scribblers[5]." So slowly is a national taste for letters diffused, and so hardly do works of sterling merit, which deal not in party-politics, nor exemplify their ethical discussions by holding out living characters to censure or contempt, win the applause of those, whose passions leave them no leisure for abstracted truth, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... hundred acres with a quit-rent of a halfpenny per acre in 1732, soon turned the eyes of the thrifty Scotch-Irish settlers southward and southwestward. In Maryland in 1738 lands were offered at five pounds sterling per hundred acres. Simultaneously, in the Valley of Virginia free grants of a thousand acres per family were being made. In the North Carolina piedmont region the proprietary, Lord Granville, through his agents was disposing of the most desirable lands to settlers at the ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... of these things, and declaim very fluently, in good set terms, upon the necessity of their abolition. Such fellows as these are ever your dullest of blockheads. Conscious of their lack of ideas, they think to earn the reputation of men of sterling sense, by inveighing continually against what they deem to be frivolity; while they only expose more clearly to all observers the sad vacuum which exists in their pericraniums. Far, far from us be such dullards, and such opinions; and let us continue to laugh heartily ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Melrose continued, in a deliberately even voice, "concerns a fortune of rather more—than a million sterling—allowing little or nothing for the contents of this house. I inherited a great deal, and by the methods I have adopted—not the methods, my dear Faversham, I may say, that you have been recommending to me to-night. I have more than doubled it. I have given nothing ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... smaller scale having been tentatively tried in the interval, in 1903 Parliament finally decreed that sufficient money should be provided to buy out all the remaining agricultural land. In a not remote future, some two hundred million pounds sterling—a billion dollars—will have been advanced by the British Government to enable the tenants to purchase their holdings, the money to be repaid in easy instalments during periods ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... colored scarf at his throat. These things were the badges of his calling, and were, of course, indispensable, but she saw them not. But the virile manhood of him; the indomitability; the quiet fearlessness, indicated by his steady, serene eyes; the rugged, sterling honesty that radiated from him, she saw—and admired. But above all she saw the boy in him—the generous impulses that lay behind his mask of grimness, the love of fun that she had seen him exhibit ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... The wedding bells peeled joyfully at the home of Mr. H. R. Drake last Tuesday, when their highly accomplished and beautiful daughter, Melva, became the blushing bride of that sterling young farmer, Henry Eastman. The bride's brother, Charlie, played Mendelssohn's wedding march on his cornet, and considering the fact he has only had it about 9 months it sounded good. Rev. Osgood, who has been working through harvest ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... common concern, and may also directly or indirectly affect the thought, action, and character of those with whom he comes in contact. The underlying principle may be put in two ways. In the first place, the man is much more than his opinions and his actions. Carlyle and Sterling did not differ "except in opinion." To most of us that is just what difference means. Carlyle was aware that there was something much deeper, something that opinion just crassly formulates, and for the most part formulates inadequately, that is the real man. The real man is something ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... the Caves saw them home to Silk Land. There the Master Mariner found his crew waiting for him, and in a few days they had rigged new sails for the ship which were even whiter than the old. The inhabitants got back the fifty-three scarf pins, the hundred and eighty-five sterling silver berry-spoons, the thousand clocks, and the rest of the booty which the pirates had stowed away in the Master ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... all-enthralling sense of duty, Nelson flashed like a meteor across the ken of his generation to vanish in a haze of glory. He died at the psychological moment—his life, according to this account, the sacrifice to a dazzling folly. And the man whom he loved—the man whose sterling worth is swamped by Nelson's more vivid personality, was left to battle on alone through the weary years. The intoxication of victory did not blind Collingwood to the colossal task which yet lay before him. To Stanhope he ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... fifty years ago. To-day the two islands, which together have not half the area of Surrey, grow 32,000 metric tons of cacao a year, or about one-tenth of the world's production.[6] The income of a single planter, once a poor peasant, has amounted to hundreds of thousands sterling. ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... which you laugh with a lump in your throat and smile with a tear in your eye, the story of plausible punches, a big, vital theme masterfully handled—thrills, action, beauty, excitement—carried to a sensational finish by the genius of that sterling star of the shadowed world, Clifford Armytage—once known as Merton Gill in the little hamlet of Simsbury, Illinois, where for a time, ere yet he was called to screen triumphs, he served as a humble clerk in the so-called emporium ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... to Illinois early in their youth; the strong, courtly, old-fashioned men, carrying with them the early traditions of the republic, in their way Lincolns—honest, truth telling, industrious, courageous Americans—plain and unlettered, many of them, but full of the sterling virtues. Yes, he would have written poems out of these people; and he would have done something more—he would have given us symbols, songs of eternal truth, of unutterable magic and profound meaning like "La Belle Dame sans Merci." I am sure he would have done something of this kind—though it ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... dollars! they would exclaim. The sale of a wilderness has not usually commanded a price so high. Ferdinand Gorges received but twelve hundred and fifty pounds sterling for the Province of Maine. William Penn gave for the wilderness that now bears his name but a trifle over five thousand pounds. Fifteen millions of dollars! A breath will suffice to pronounce the words. A few strokes of the pen will express the sum on paper. But not one man in a thousand has any ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... apprenticed to a trade, he ran away while a mere stripling, and shifted for himself ever after. An adventurer, therefore, in the fullest sense of the word, he was; and doubtless he had the appreciation of his own achievements which self-made men are apt to have. But there was sterling pith in him, a dauntless and humane soul, and inexhaustible ability and resource. Such a man could not fail to possess imagination, and imagination and self-esteem combined conduce to highly-colored narrative; but that ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... though he wanted but fame to have a set of admiring disciples. Old men censured his presumption and recoiled from the novelty of his ideas. Women alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight into character, they generally do what is honest and sterling. Some strange failings, too, had John Ardworth,—some of the usual vagaries and contradictions of clever men. As a system, he was rigidly abstemious. For days together he would drink nothing but water, eat nothing but bread, or hard biscuit, or a couple of eggs; ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... even among the later Romans for his gluttony and voracious appetite. During the four months of his reign he is said to have spent seven millions sterling on the pleasures of his table. When at last the people rose against him, and the soldiers proclaimed another emperor, Vitellius was found hiding in his palace. He was dragged out into the Forum and killed on the Gemoniae (les Gemonies), a staircase which went up the Capitoline ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... Veronese, and several of the works of Tintoretto. The Titians had come to Spain before, and it was from the study of them, perhaps, that Velasquez learned to paint so well. At any rate, we know what he thought of Titian; for Mr. Sterling gives an extract from a poem by a Venetian, Marco Boschini, which was published not long after Velasquez's journey to Italy, in which part of a conversation is given between him and Salvator Rosa, who asked him what he thought of Raphael. You ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... transhipped here for the Solimoens and Peru. A steamer runs once a fortnight between Para and Barra, and a bi-monthly one plies between this place and Nauta in the Peruvian territory. The steam-boat company is supported by a large annual grant, about 50,000 sterling, from the imperial government. Barra was formerly a pleasant place of residence, but it is now in a most wretched plight, suffering from a chronic scarcity of the most necessary articles of food. The attention of the settlers was formerly devoted almost entirely ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... caroling their first songs of the season, and the white mantle of snow disappearing under the sun-rays. These tokens told me I must be "up and doing." Selecting a companion among the kind group of Pecatonica friends, Miss Sarah Rogers, a lady of sterling virtue and pronounced character, I went to Chicago. The war conflict being still at its height, I could do little in the way of book selling, but managed to dispose of sufficient bead work to be entirely self-sustaining. In my business route in Chicago I entered a millinery establishment, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... about it, but the fuse was short, the survivors leaped overboard, while he slipped his anchor and got away. They've got one hundred fathoms of shell money on his head now, which is worth one hundred pounds sterling. Yet he goes into Suu regularly. He was there a short time ago, returning thirty boys from Cape Marsh—that's the ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... whether you will get off under ten millions sterling. And where is it to come from? You will have a nice time making your assessments in Bengal, Mr. Ghyrkins, and we shall have an income-tax and all sorts ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... usual just so long as he was successful and no longer. But he was blessed in his household, or at his table, or in his confidence, with four sterling adherents who stuck to him through thick and thin, through prosperity and adversity. These were Richard Hakluyt, Jaques Le Moyne, John White and Thomas Hariot. When Wingandacoa makes up her jewels she will not forget these Four, whom it is just ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... refusing, however, all payment for his publications. He entered the lists against Tindal, Chubb, and Mandeville, against Hoadly, against Warburton, against Wesley. His answer to Mandeville is called by J. Sterling 'a most remarkable philosophical essay,' full 'of pithy right reason,'[528] and has been republished by Frederick Maurice, with a highly commendatory introduction. The authority last mentioned also speaks of him as 'a ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... since I began the Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and Abroad. This Institution was in its beginning exceedingly small. Now it is so large, that I have not only disbursed, since its commencement, about Fifty Thousand Pounds sterling, but the current expenses, after the rate of the last months, amount to above L6,000 a year. I did "open my mouth wide," this very evening fifteen years ago, and the Lord has filled it. The New Orphan-House is now inhabited by 300 Orphans; and there are altogether 335 persons connected with it. ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... made on the youth, strength, and energy of the community. Our four and a quarter millions of people, mainly agricultural, have, speaking generally, a very low standard of comfort, which they like to attribute to some five or six millions sterling paid as agricultural rent, and three millions of alleged over-taxation. They face the situation bravely—and, incidentally, swell the over-taxation—with the help of the thirteen or fourteen millions worth of alcoholic stimulants which they annually consume. The still larger consumption ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... engaged, their affections are too apt to follow; and hence much of the talk between the sexes degenerates into something unworthy of the name. The desire to please, to shine with a certain softness of lustre and to draw a fascinating picture of oneself, banishes from conversation all that is sterling and most of what is humorous. As soon as a strong current of mutual admiration begins to flow, the human interest triumphs entirely over the intellectual, and the commerce of words, consciously or not, becomes secondary to the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this less from any inherent element in the subject or from the difficulty of accurately apprehending the peculiarities of sentiment proper to former ages, than from the readiness of all ages alike to accept in such matters the counterfeit coin of conventional protestation for the sterling reticence of natural delicacy. No doubt this tendency has been aided by the fact that the secrets of a girl's heart, whatever may be their true dramatic value, form an unsuitable and ineffective subject for declamation. The difficulties must not, however, be allowed ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Portugal, on the way back to England, when the Duke of Ormond received intelligence that the treasure-ships from America had just arrived in Europe, and had, in order to avoid his armament, repaired to the harbour of Vigo. The cargo consisted, it was said, of more than three millions sterling in gold and silver, besides much valuable merchandise. The prospect of plunder reconciled all disputes. Dutch and English admirals and generals, were equally eager for action. The Spaniards might with the greatest ease have secured ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... closed his career on the gallows; but, as it was, he escaped, and a more worthy man suffered. He received, as the reward of his treachery, the appointment of Brigadier General in the British Army, and ten thousand pounds sterling. But his name will go down with the history of his country, to the latest generation, black with infamy. He was a bad boy, and he made a bad man. And, as Solomon has said, "The name of the ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb |
