"Improving" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him. And by what is said, I should not think he was an improving friend for any good ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... its excellence lies in the fact that, a short time since, a Committee, appointed by the authorities of the city of Boston, for the purpose of inquiring into the public school systems of other American cities, with a view to improving that of the "Hub," stated in their report, that they regarded the system in practice in the city of New York, as the best in the world, and recommended that the school system of Boston be modeled upon the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... adversary's every trick. He will thus have become the President of the local Glee Club, the Patron of a Scientific Association, and a local Dog Show, the Vice-President of four Cricket Clubs and of five Football Clubs, a Member of the Committee of the Hospital Ball, and of the Society for Improving the breed of Grey Parrots; to say nothing of the Guild for Promoting the happiness of Middle-aged Housemaids, and the local Association for the Distribution of Penny Buns, at cheap prices, to the deserving poor. Moreover, before he has discovered the true relation ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... man could have made the translation of 1611. No one generation of men could have done it. It was not the labour of a single century. It represented the work of hundreds of translators working through hundreds of years, each succeeding generation improving a little upon the work of the previous generation, until in the seventeenth century the best had been done of which the English brain and the English language was capable. In no other way can the surprising beauties of style ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... knew the signs of it. She could even anticipate them. But this new menace she could never have foreseen. It was simply his crutch. An evil magic seemed to have fallen upon it, and it was no longer a crutch but a weapon. Tenney would not abandon it. His foot was improving fast, and the doctor had suggested his dropping the crutch for a cane; but he kept on with it, kept on obstinately without a spoken pretext. To Tira, there was something sinister in that. She saw him not relying on it to any extent, but sedulously keeping it by him. Sometimes he gesticulated ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the captain thought, but he sat chatting about how busy they had been setting up the second hut and improving the first, besides making preparations for ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... wholly consumed in gathering the sweets of literature. I had long been exercising myself in writing, improving my style, arranging my thoughts, and enabling myself to communicate the knowledge I might amass. Of sermons I had written some dozens; and the most arduous of the efforts of poetry had been attempted by me; from the elegy to the epic poem, each ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Russell had even offered to take up with America an agreement by which both countries were to amend their neutrality laws at the same moment. This was in December, 1862, but now on February 14, 1863, he wrote to Lyons that the project of amendment had been abandoned as the Cabinet saw no way of improving the law[981]. While this letter to Lyons was on its way to America, a letter from Seward was en route, explaining to Adams the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... spacious building of stone has been erected for gymnastic purposes. As new buildings have been constructed, old ones have been rearranged and better adapted for the various uses of the college, and so it has been provided with the means of enlarging and improving its work, and it is believed that few, if any, of our colleges are better equipped in this respect ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... busily engaged in improving our own house, that we had not remarked the progress made by our friends in the construction of their habitations. They now invited us to enter them again, when we found all the ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... followed Benham had a feeling that Sir Philip was engendering something still more personal. If so, he might be constrained to invert very gently but very firmly the bowl of chrysanthemums over Sir Philip's head, or kick him in an improving manner. He had a ridiculous belief that Sir Philip would probably take anything of the sort very touchingly. He scrambled in his mind for some remark that would avert ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... still hoping to find That he took better care for improving his mind; He told me his dreams, talked of eating and drinking. But he scarce reads his Bible, and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... know they were alive once, but so were mummies, and you can't expect me to be interested in them. However, I think I really am improving. 'Hereward' brought William alive for me, it truly did; and this Parkman book delights me. Oh! I should like to have made that voyage down the Mississippi, girls! I think, on the whole, I would rather be Cavalier de La Salle than any one I ever ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... her Indian admirers, the Aga Khan, came to visit her. She expatiated on the marvellous advances she had lived to see in the management of hospitals— in drainage, in ventilation, in sanitary work of every kind. There was a pause; and then, 'Do you think you are improving?' asked the Aga Khan. She was a little taken aback, and said, 'What do you mean by "improving"?' He replied, 'Believing more in God.' She saw that he had a view of God which was different from hers. 'A most interesting man,' ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... is my practice at this hour to read some improving book; but, if you desire my services, this can easily be ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... manage it now. My ground is improving. The great difficulty in this part of the country is want of water, and I have overcome that. Of course, it will be hard work for some time yet, but Meta knows what the life will be like, and an aunt in England has lately died, and left her a legacy. ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... things they talked about were not so funny as that. They had their troubles and dangers, and they discussed various plans for improving their condition and considered how they could best defeat the skill and cleverness of ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... improving; and there are jewelled goblets and centre-pieces of yellow glass covered with gold and what looks like jewels. Knives and forks are now to be had with crystal handles set in silver, very ornamental and clean-looking; these come from Bohemia. The endless succession ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... employing them better at home. Hence it appears that emigration from the Highlands, though not in such numbers at a time as of late, has always been practised. Dr. Johnson observed that 'the Lairds, instead of improving their ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... name of "mist-healing," while in others it is called "butter-churning." On a misty or rainy day a number of children will shut themselves up in a stable or byre and proceed to make fire for the purpose of improving the weather. The way in which they make it is this. A boy places a board against his breast, takes a peg pointed at both ends, and, setting one end of the peg against the board on his breast, presses the other end firmly against a second board, the surface of which has been flaked into ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... a party, and that makes me realize the imperative need of improving this golden moment," Stuart Farquaharson announced urbanely, "because I have certain rude and elementary powers ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... work willingly pay obedience to the voice of the public. It has been the general sentiment, that the style in which these Tales are written, is not so precisely adapted for the amusement of mere children, as for an acceptable and improving present to young ladies advancing to the state of womanhood. They therefore now offer to the public an edition prepared with suitable elegance. In the former impression they gave twenty prints, illustrative ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... man meditates long before he speaks," said Tayoga, "and it follows then that our Achille Garay is very wise. He knows, too, that his figure is improving already. He has ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... left for him at the hotel where he first put up on arriving in London. But, when both of these hopes forsook him, and he found himself in what he deemed the ridiculous position of shopman to a bird-stuffer, without an influential friend in the great city, or the slightest prospect of improving his condition, ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... enough that I was to be endowed: to what extent and upon what conditions I was now left for an hour to meditate in the wide and solitary thoroughfares of the new town, taking counsel with street-corner statues of George IV. and William Pitt, improving my mind with the pictures in the window of a music-shop, and renewing my acquaintance with Edinburgh east wind. By the end of the hour I made my way to Mr. Gregg's office, where I was placed, with a few appropriate words, in possession of a cheque for two thousand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a Congregational missionary recently made, is probably true, viz.: that "one-fourth of the race is improving rapidly," yet much the larger part of them are almost, if not altogether, heathen. They are not across the ocean; under God's providence they are here, where you can touch them with your finger. Why here? {130} It will not do to say that nothing can be made out of them. ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... severe upon us," said Mr Oliphant laughing; "but we are gradually improving; there is, however, plenty of room yet ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... seeds sown after the plough,) seems much in practice here. The late noise about improving pasture grasses has been made with little reference to the nature of an Indian climate, or the genius of the Indian people. Pasture grasses only excel in countries where there is no division of climate into hot, rainy, and cold seasons; but not in those in which rain is equally, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... true. It is a desirable position for a rich man, or a rich man's eldest son, or even for a poor man, if by getting into Parliament he can put himself in the way of improving his income. But, my dear Tudor, you are in none of these positions. Abandon the idea, my dear Tudor—pray abandon it. If not for your own sake, at any rate do so for that of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... looked more 'n a yard long, Amanda told Susan Benson. (She afterward confessed that this was a slight exaggeration due to extreme excitement.) She spoke his name three times, but he did not stir. She must get the doctor and send for William Benson, that was clear; but first she must try her hand at improving the immediate situation. ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... degrees at 8 a.m. Rested at Weld Springs. Shod some of the horses. Repairing saddles. Rating chronometer. Windich shot an emu. Horses doing first-rate, and fast improving. ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... the object. At this last place, Mark told Betts it would be necessary, for the moment, to make some sort of a fence. Within the crater, it was equally difficult to ascend, except at one or two places; but these ascents our mariners thought of improving, by making steps, as the animals were effectually excluded from the plain within by means of the sail which served for a curtain at the ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... them talk of finger-tips, Pearly teeth, or coral lips, Cheeks the morning rose that mock, Still there is a charm in Stock! Solid mortgage, five per cent, Freehold with "improving" rent, Russia bond, and railroad share, Steal my soul, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... where I prevailed upon him to do what I had long desired, and favour me with his explanation of several passages in his works. It happened that just at that juncture was published a ridiculous book against him, full of personal reflections, which furnished him with a lucky opportunity of improving this poem, by giving it the only thing it wanted—a more considerable hero. He was always sensible of its defect in that particular, and owned he had let it pass with the hero it had purely for want of a better; not entertaining the ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... Cold-Bath Fields he saw A solitary cell; And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint For improving his prisons in hell. ...
— English Satires • Various
... we anchored a short way up the river, as the government will not allow their boats to travel up the river by night, it being unsafe. We were off again at daylight the next morning, the scenery improving as the interminable mangroves gave place to the forest. Sixty miles up the river found us at Sibu, where I put up with Dr. Hose, the Resident, the celebrated Bornean explorer and naturalist. The only other Europeans here were two junior officials, Messrs. ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... were improving. For perhaps the first time in his life he suppressed the hot and abusive words rising to his tongue—that no son of that man, Hamlyn, should come into Leet ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... Welland and St. Lawrence canals; the opening of the Canadian, New York, and Michigan canals to vessels of both countries; the free navigation of Lake Michigan; the appointment of a joint commission for improving waterways, protecting fisheries and erecting lighthouses on the Great Lakes. Had the treaty been ratified, there would have been reciprocity in farm and other natural products, and in a very important list of manufactures, including agricultural implements, ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... historical sketch. But our account would be very incomplete if we were to stop short of mentioning some of the recent attempts that have been made toward reconstructing our theories of city government and improving its practical working. And first, let us point out a few of the peculiar difficulties of the problem, that we may see why we might have been expected, up to the present time, to have been less successful in managing our great cities than in managing our rural ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... improving or degenerating? What, if it seem probably degenerating, are the causes of so great an evil? How they can be, if not destroyed, at least arrested? These are questions worthy attention, not of statesmen only and medical men, but of every father and mother in these isles. I shall ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the wind somewhat lulled, and the ship looked up more to the northward than she had hitherto done, showing that the wind had shifted a point or two. Even the master thought that the weather was improving. The watch below was ordered to turn in and some of the officers went to ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... and distilled into brandy. The son of Colonel Haraszthy subsequently succeeded, in conjunction with Mr. Isidor Landsberger, of San Francisco, in discovering the cause of these failures, and for ten years past the wine has been constantly improving in quality owing to the increased use of foreign grapes, which yield a vin brut with a delicate bouquet and flavour approaching in character to the finer champagnes. The wine is perfectly pure, no flavouring extracts or spirit being employed in the composition of the ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... thereby induced to embark upon the purchase of the entire series, must feel a natural resentment if succeeding volumes drop below the implied standard. He cannot go back: and to omit the offending volumes is to spoil his set. And I contend that the action taken by Messrs. Bell & Sons in improving several of their more or less obsolete editions will only be entirely praiseworthy if we may take it as an earnest of their desire to place the whole series on a level with contemporary knowledge ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... right, Eben!" cried Seth, "because in the old days you seldom did blow your own horn; but I notice that you're improving right along now, and we have hopes of making a champion bugler out ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... enthusiast for England, and all that is English—an excellent physician, but a still better friend; and, like Nudi, when he has a pint of Madeira in his belly, and the fumes of it in his brain, a most cheerful and improving companion: for, I protest to you that, during my convalescence, I made greater strides to recovery by his Attic evenings, than by his morning potions, or even his ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... abundance of money to be had for investment. Fortunately, the evil seen from this aspect must, to a certain extent, be but a temporary one, and will tend to work its own cure. For as the world's stock of invested wealth continues to grow, there is less opportunity for its profitable investment in improving undeveloped natural resources. The greater portion of our wealth we save and invest, the faster will the rate of interest tend downward. But, as this occurs, the operators of mills and mines have to pay less out of their receipts as interest on their borrowed capital, ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... came forth, balmy, genial, and mild; worthy of the great festival of the Christian world. On the subject of religion, captain Willoughby was a little of a martinet; understanding by liberty of conscience, the right of improving by the instruction of those ministers who belonged to the church of England. Several of his labourers had left him because he refused to allow of any other ministrations on his estate; his doctrine being ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... those of the educated, town-bred, unsuccessful business or professional man, the misfit skilled laborer, or the actual loafer and sharper of the cities, who comes over here when home gets too hot for him. As to illiteracy, moreover, the peasant is improving. The great mass of this unskilled labor pushes directly through the great gateway of New York, where unfortunately so many other races stop. They go to the eastern, middle, and northern states, mainly into our coal and iron mines, and ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... charge was brought against our immaculate bhistie, by the Q.M.G., of secreting about half-a-pound of precious white sugar in his sheepskin bag. On being confronted with the Bench he confessed the crime, improving on it, like most natives, by declaring that it was for medicine for his little boy at home, who had sore eyes! The cook, being taken up with the festivities and the turquoises, gave us our dinner at ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... best means we've found for perpetuating and improving the race. It's a duty we owe society, to marry. I don't believe much in divorce either. Except for unfaithfulness. Unless the average lot of us are true to the marriage ideal the whole institution will be tainted. I guess ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... had endeavoured to check the increase of estates; and Pericles had not only strengthened the public resources by bringing the rich under the control of an assembly in which they were not supreme, but he had employed those resources in improving the condition and the capacity of the masses. The grievance of those who were taxed for the benefit of others was easily borne so long as the tribute of the confederates filled the treasury. But the Peloponnesian war increased the strain on the revenue and deprived Athens of its dependencies. The ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the convent were improving little tales of conversion, and edifying stories of Catholic girls who decline to enter into mixed marriages, and she thought of the novices reading this artless literature on Sunday afternoons. There were endless volumes of meditations, mostly translations from the French, full of Gallicisms ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... "wrought the will of the flesh." We most earnestly commend to her prayerful contemplation the last words of our blessed Saviour to his disciples, "In my Father's house are many mansions." I go to prepare a place for you—just such a mansion—such a place as each ransomed soul, by improving the discipline of God—by holy and self-denying efforts in this life, to do his will, is fitted ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... Schiller's practice, at that point of time, did not much exceed that of a third-class Surgeon, and was scarcely adequate, as above stated, to support the thriftiest household. And therefore it is not surprising that Schiller, intent on improving so bare a position, should, at the breaking-out of the Seven-Years War, have anew sought a military appointment, as withal more fit for employing his ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... President of the United States be respectfully requested to furnish this House with copies of all contracts made by and correspondence subsequently with the Chief of the Bureau of Topographical Engineers for furnishing materials of wood and stone for improving the harbors and rivers on Lake Michigan, under and by virtue of the act making appropriations for the improvement of certain harbors and rivers," approved August 30, 1852, I transmit a letter of the Secretary of War submitting a report ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... which may accurately apply to one province will misrepresent another. But, taking one consideration with another, as the song says, and drawing an average, it is plainly evident that the peasant population of India is slowly improving in condition. The scales of wages have undoubtedly risen; there has been an improvement in the housing and the feeding of the masses; their sanitary condition has been radically changed, although they have fought against ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... La Bruyere's observations are noted in a manner that is disjointed, apparently even disordered, but it was no part of his scheme to present his maxims in a system. We shall find that he was incessantly improving his work, revising, extending and weighing it. He was one of those timid men who surprise us by their crafty intrepidity. It was dangerous to publish sarcastic "portraits" of well-known influential ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... than you would be, the other way. These old patriarchs and prophets have got ages the start of you; they know more in two minutes than you know in a year. Did you ever try to have a sociable improving-time discussing winds, and currents and variations ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procured Xenophon's ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... which are among the latest written by Longfellow. I do not expect that men who have no children of their own will appreciate them duly; but they seem to me among the most pleasing and touching which that pleasing poet ever wrote. Miserable solitary beings, see what improving and softening influences ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of the conversation he related a multitude of facts which satisfied me as to the general disposition of the people; but he gave me little satisfaction as to the measures taken for improving this disposition, for driving the business on with vigour if it tended to a revolution, or for supporting it with advantage if it spun into a war. When I questioned him concerning several persons whose disinclination ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... have opportunities of improving your education, and you need not fear about being well received by the young gentlemen in the midshipmen's berth," observed Mr Saltwell. "Captain Martin and I will make arrangements for giving you an outfit and supplying you with such funds as you will require, besides which you will ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... grounds to help us. We know that our great Mother Queen Victoria, loves her Indian subjects; often have we fought for her and we are ready to fight her battles again. We have readily given up our hunting grounds to you, and all that we ask of you is that you will help us in improving ourselves and in ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... John Penaluna. They spent their honeymoon at home, as sober folks did in those days. John could spare no time for holiday-making. He had entered on his duties as master of Hall, and set with vigour about improving his inheritance. His first step was to clear the long cliff-garden, which had been allowed to drop out of cultivation from the day when he had cast down his mattock there and run away to sea. It was a mere wilderness now. But he fell to work ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... childhood there should result in the child a taste for interesting and improving reading which will direct and inspire its subsequent intellectual life. The training which results in this taste for good reading, however unsystematic or eccentric it may have been, has achieved one principal aim of education; and any school or home training which does not result ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... other reason can never be given. 2. He doesn't do nothing. 3. He isn't improving much, I don't think. 4. There must be something wrong when children do not love neither father nor mother. 5. He isn't no sneak. 6. Charlie ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... and soul of the house; the sound of his feet pattering about, and all his prattle, are the sweetest music to my ear; and his heart is brimful of love and joy, so that he shines on us all like a sunbeam. Baby is improving every day, and is one of those tender, clinging little things that appeal to everybody's love and sympathy. I never saw a more angelic face than hers. Father sits by the hour looking at her. To-day ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... by the tax was utilised in improving the main roads to the railway, and when I was in that district some years afterwards I saw these cleared two chains wide ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... forward spirit, and having, by frequent baths, and avoiding the heat and scorching of the sun, with a constant use of all the ointments and washes and dresses that serve to the adorning of the head or smoothing the skin or improving the complexion, in a manner changed them from what they were before, and having taught them farther to counterfeit the very voice and carriage and gait of virgins, so that there could not be the least difference perceived; he, undiscovered by any, put them into the number of the Athenian maids designed ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Jahan became queen she was ruler indeed, "the one overmastering influence in his life."[8] From that time on we see her, restraining her husband from his self-indulgent habits, improving his administration, crossing flooded rivers and leading attacks on elephants to save him from captivity; "a beautiful queen, beautifully dressed, clever beyond compare, contriving and scheming, plotting, planning, shielding and saving, doing all things for the man hidden in ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... you're improving your dugouts," British soldiers would call out across No Man's Land, "as that is all the better for ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... seems to have passed his life in traveling over Italy and Greece, collecting materials for this work, and, wherever he goes he never fails to meet with agreeable, intelligent friends, who delight, like himself, in improving conversation. ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... most important personage, and his vocation the most absolutely needful in all the world. The farmer is in very truth a creator, certainly a co-creator, improving Nature by the aid of science, just as the human mind and character are improved by means of education. And when the prejudice of the ages has been rolled away the name "farmer" will rank among the most envied names that enrich our ...
— The Stewardship of the Soil - Baccalaureate Address • John Henry Worst
... this story through the last Afghan war, you will be improving your acquaintance with a country which is of supreme importance to the British Empire and, at the same time, be able to trace the operations by which Lord Roberts made his great reputation as a general, and a leader of men. Afghanistan stands ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... very authors (Latin and Greek), whom we read for the sake of improving our language, incidentally, in no small degree is a ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... woodcutter, very miserable, though prudent and industrious; he had a wife and three grown-up sons, yet their united labours scarcely sufficed for bread. No hope appeared of improving his lot, when he was one day fortunate enough to save the life of his master when attacked ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... large share of the cause of immorality at the door of the economic dependence of women. Mrs. Florence Kelley, executive secretary of the National Consumers' League, whose life was being spent in improving the economic position of women, said: "How are we dealing with this monstrous evil? Are we going to wait patiently and rear a whole generation of children and grandchildren and trust to their gradual increase in strength of character?" She told of the mothers who bring ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... the country were rapidly improving. Stage coaches ran from London to all the principal towns. They started, for the most part, at eight in the evening. They charged fourpence a mile, and they pretended to accomplish the journey at the rate of seven miles an hour. You may easily compare the cost of travelling when ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... The Report of the Committee of Ten of the N. E. A. in 1893 contains extensive and almost revolutionizing suggestions for improving the organization, study, and presentation ...
— A Guide to Methods and Observation in History - Studies in High School Observation • Calvin Olin Davis
... a good deal in such matters, and learned as much about them as my opportunities have allowed; and when the course of events shall place the estate in my hands, it will be my first desire to afford my tenants all the encouragement a landlord can give them, in improving their land and trying to bring about a better practice of husbandry. It will be my wish to be looked on by all my deserving tenants as their best friend, and nothing would make me so happy as to be able to respect every man on the estate, and to be respected by him ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... me the favour to treat me with great kindness: I should be inconsolable if I had the misfortune to fall under your displeasure. If such a calamity were to befall me, I should endeavour to divert my grief by improving some beautiful estates of mine in such and such a province;" and he thereupon gave a description of three or four fine seats. About a month after, talking of the disgrace of a Minister, he said, "I hope your Majesty will not withdraw your favour from me; but if I had the misfortune to lose ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... these persons, the justice of what has been said as to the duty and importance of improving these people. We have sometimes tried; but the want of real gratitude which, in them, is associated with such warm and wordy expressions of regard, with their incorrigible habits of falsehood and evasion, have ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... did and understand its divine Principle. Implicit faith 25:27 in the Teacher and all the emotional love we can bestow on him, will never alone make us imitators of him. We must go and do likewise, else we are not improving the 25:30 great blessings which our Master worked and suffered to bestow upon us. The divinity of the Christ was made manifest in the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... when very young, and mingled freely in the gayest society, the expensive pleasures of which made great inroads upon his moderate wealth. Like other Romans, he looked to a career in the provinces for means of improving his fortune, but was disappointed, and like our own Chaucer, but more frequently, he pours forth lamentations to his empty purse. He was evidently a friend of most of the prominent men of letters of his time, and he entered ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Act of February 25, 1862. Second, by the purchase of bonds the world had assurance that the debt would be paid. The effect of these two measures was seen in the increasing market value of the bonds. In other words the credit of the country was improving. When the President was preparing his message of December, 1869, he called upon me for my views in regard to the Treasury, and I furnished him with a synopsis of my plan which he embodied in his message. I retained a ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... cast off and began to lumber along the edges of the town with its dense cargo of hats and parasols and lunch parcels. We were a most extraordinary litter of man and womankind. There was the severe New England type, improving each shining hour, and doing it in bleak costume and with a thoroughly northeast expression; there were pink sunbonnets from (I should imagine) Spartanburg, or Charlotte, or Greenville; there were masculine boots which yet bore incrusted upon their heels the red mud of Aiken or of Camden; ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... are so superlative. Well, Hilda, then, just listen to this! I have been improving a little on one of your ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... March, 1734 (Preuss, i. 75).] Which the Crown-Prince did with much interest, under very wise architectural advice, for the next three years; then went into it, to reside;—yet did not cease new-building, improving, artistically adorning, till it became in all points the image ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... prevalent than those that are performed but by words and fawning, though very great advantages are daily obtained that way; and therefore he esteems flattery as the next most sure and successful way of improving his interests. For flattery is but a kind of civil idolatry, that makes images to itself of virtue, worth, and honour in some person that is utterly void of all, and then falls down and worships them; and the more dull and absurd these applications are, the better they are ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... knowledge, is the art of being and doing good, conduct is the only real subject of knowledge, and there is no science but morals. He is the best man, says Xenophon, who is always studying how to improve, and he is the happiest who feels that he is improving. Life is a skill, an art like a handicraft, and true knowledge a form of will. Good moral and physical development are more than analogous; and where intelligence is separated from action the former becomes mystic, abstract, and desiccated, and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... news was that the marriage had just taken place; the next that Lester's health was steadily improving. Then came a description of the rooms they were occupying; both as they were when first seen by Elsie and himself and as they had become under his renovating and ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... nature, and he has no sort of difficulty. The plantation superintendents and teachers have the same experience, they say; but we have an immense advantage in the military organization, which helps in two ways: it increases their self-respect, and it gives us an admirable machinery for discipline, thus improving both the fulcrum ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... briefly that the relative unimportance of enlightenment is a fact, but no argument against it. Modesty, austerity, and clean living on the part of parents will counterbalance much negligence in direct guidance or protection. But the former need be in no wise lessened by improving the latter. Of the second, I dare affirm that if the men and women in America should stop whatever they are doing for an evening and read this book, there would be less harmful imagination as a result than from the occupations which its reading would replace. Of all the causes of sexual disorder, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... rents have doubled since my great-grandfather began to make the book. Ay,—but there are more than four times the number of labourers employed on the estate, and at much better wages too! Well, my men, that says a great deal in favour of improving property, and not letting it go to the dogs. [Applause.] And therefore, neighbours, you will kindly excuse my bobby: it carries grist to your mill. [Reiterated applause.] Well, but you will say, 'What's the squire driving at?' Why this, my friends: There was only one worn-out, dilapidated, tumble-down ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... improving my mind and showing me the path I ought to walk in. How would you like me if I turned out ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... things that can be spoken of without either a blush or a wink. But the Philistines have been too strong; and, to say truth, Whitman has rather played the fool. We may be thoroughly conscious that his end is improving; that it would be a good thing if a window were opened on these close privacies of life; that on this subject, as on all others, he now and then lets fall a pregnant saying. But we are not satisfied. We feel that ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had marched twenty-one miles, and both light and surface were improving, so I proposed making a long run of it. Hurley and Webb eagerly agreed, and we had a preparatory hoosh. Ten miles scudded by monotonously without a sign of the mounds around the one-hundred-and-seventy-mile camp. As we were in the vicinity of a point where we had determined ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... one of the chief recreations of the men while not engaged in bringing various necessaries from the wreck. But for many days at first they found their hands fully occupied in making their new abode habitable, in enlarging and improving the tent, which soon by degrees came to merit the name of a hut, and in inventing various ingenious contrivances for the improvement of their condition. It was not until a couple of weeks had passed that time began to hang heavy on their hands and ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... heroine, a solid Spanish person, as perfect a reality as Don Quixote or St. Theresa. She was dressed in an extraordinary splendor of laces, brocades, and jewels, her coiffure and complexion were of the finest, and she evidently would answer to her name if you spoke to her. Improving the stateliest title I could think of, I addressed her as Dona Maria of the Holy Office; whereupon she looked round the great dusky, perfumed church, to see whether we were alone, and then she dropped her fringed eyelids and held out her hand to be kissed. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... from the New, to the Old World, should not find a great deal to say; and Harry told his adventures very agreeably. His letters to Elinor were almost as straight-forward and matter-of-fact, as they might have been if she had already become his wife. His brother's health was improving; so much so, that they were talking of leaving Mrs. Hazlehurst, and her children, in Paris, while Harry and the invalid made a six weeks' excursion to England. Madame de Bessieres had been all kindness, and they were delighted with the society they met at her ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... devoted follower of Thespis. He had roughed it patiently in the provinces for years, his only consolation during a long season of poverty and neglect arising from the conviction that he was slowly but surely improving himself in the difficult art he had chosen as his mode of earning his daily bread. When the manager of the Royal Tabard, then on a provincial tour, picked him out from all his brother actors, and offered him a Metropolitan engagement, James Madgin thought himself ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... words are misspelt. The language may be conversational, or even dialectic, but the words are written correctly. The school-books that have survived bear testimony to the attention that had been given to improving the educational system. Every means was adopted for lessening the labor of the student and imprinting the lesson upon his mind. The cuneiform characters had been classified and named; they had also been arranged according ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... mischievous boys. I have generally found that wherever an evil exists the remedy is not far off; and in this case it was strikingly obvious. It was only engaging these ill-directed children by trifling rewards to apply their lively energies in improving instead of destroying the works of nature, as had formerly been their zealous practice. In a short time the change on the moral as well as the vegetable part of creation became very perceptible: the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... attun'd to imitate the strain; The god well-pleas'd the rustic genius spy'd, Approv'd his aim, and deign'd to be his guide! Aided his trembling hands to touch the string, Whisper'd the words, and shew'd him how to sing! The swain improving blest the care bestow'd, Nor in the master yet perceiv'd the god: Nor knew the immortal flame his bosom fir'd, But like a shepherd lov'd him, and admir'd! In me, great prince, the image stands renew'd, I feel myself with kindred warmth indu'd; As to thy praise I tune the conscious ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... Dunroe had just left the house of the former for the Ecclesiastical Court, in Henrietta street, a few minutes before his arrival. Sir Thomas was mistaken, however, in imagining that his daughter's health was improving, The doctor, indeed, had ordered carriage exercise essentially necessary; and Lucy being none of those weak and foolish girls, who sink under illness and calamity by an apathetic neglect of their health, or a criminal ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Fagiano, "your manners are improving. You do not know my name, but I know yours, ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... blackguards have had their fingers in everything already; sugar, chocolate, raisins, coffee, cakes, and all! I wonder who they think would like to use articles they have handled! And there is poor Toast, gentlemen, an aspiring and improving young man; one who had the materials of a good steward in him, though I can hardly say they were completely deweloped. I did look forward to the day when I could consign him to Mr. Leach as my own predecessor, when Captain Truck and I should retire, as I have no doubt we should ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... to remain chaste, were generally shrunken and wrinkled like those of old men, and that the contrary is the case with those who use them to an excess. "All the athletæ," says he, "as well as those who for the sake of preserving or improving the voice, are, from their youth, debarred the pleasures of love, have their natural parts shrunken and wrinkled like those of old men, while, in such as have from an early age indulged in those delights to an excess, the vessel of those parts, by the ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... said Raoul, who felt the necessity of embracing this opportunity of improving his hawking establishment, and hastened to the gate, where he met the merchant, attended by a servant, who kept in separate cages the three falcons ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... deal upon military subjects, and all agreed that the system of election of officers had proved to be a great mistake. According to their own accounts, discipline must have been extremely lax at first, but was now improving. They were most anxious to hear what was thought of their cause in Europe; and none of them seemed aware of the great sympathy which their gallantry and determination had gained for them in England in spite ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... log hut which whilom nestled this improving family snugly within its narrow but comfortable walls, stands hard by, in ignominious contrast, degraded into a cow-house or pig-sty; and the whole scene reminds one forcibly of a fable, which I am surprised has never been recorded, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... how you like him,' he said, with an amused sparkle in his eye; 'I never saw my little wife more determined on making acquaintance with any of my friends, or of improving the opportunity. Who else is to be invited to your dinner-party on ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... no doubt perfectly legitimate for a Caliph, especially for one whose title depends upon the strength of his sword, to stir up the enthusiasm of his people and attract their attention to himself as their leader. He cannot be blamed for improving every occasion to defend their rights and interfere in their behalf. If he is strong enough to do so, it is no doubt in full accord with the example and teaching of the Prophet that he should lead them against the infidels. It is not strange ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... I want to stay here till I am quite grown up and educated. I want papa and mamma to think that I am doing better here, improving more than I have ever done before—as I am—so that they will leave me till I am grown up and quite old. Uncle Horace and Aunt May would keep me; Uncle Horace said he would like to have me ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... remain the city of cities, the centre of art, fashion, and culture; and he took up the Emperor Napoleon's policy of beautifying and improving it by costly public works. "Je veux ma republique belle, bien paree" ("I want my republic beautiful and well dressed") was a sentence which brought him into trouble with the Radicals, who said he had no right to say "my republic," as if he were looking forward to being its dictator. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... the parent of knowledge. He who possesses most of the information of his age will not quietly submit to neglect its current acquisitions, but will go on improving as long as means and opportunities offer; while he who finds himself ignorant of most things, is only too apt to shrink from a labour which becomes Herculean. In this manner ambition is stifled, the mind gets to be inactive, and finally sinks into unresisting apathy. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... letter reported that his condition was improving. Perhaps he might soon return. Then the money would enable her to weave a joy into the sorrow that awaited him. It had always been a humiliating thought that he had lost his own house and was obliged to live in a hired one, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... shares were bought up pretty freely. Conducted on strictly honorable principles, keeping carefully aloof from all such damaging connection as the Credit Mobilier, and having its books always thrown open for public inspection, its reputation even to-day is excellent and continually improving in the popular estimation. Holding out no utopian inducements to catch the unwary, and making no wheedling promises to blind the guileless, it states its great objects with all their great advantages, without at the same time suppressing ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... fathers in order to escape from the impiety of so meretricious an abuse of the substance of godliness. In the case of the latter, appearances occupy the mind more than that love of God which is the one great test of human conversion from sin to an improving state of that holiness, without which we are told no man shall see his Creator; without which, indeed, no man could endure to look upon that dread Being ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... about this work of nailing his sins to the cross of Christ, and of improving Christ's death, resurrection, and constant intercession, for the obtaining of pardon, would not think of going alone, or of doing this in his own strength; for of himself he can do nothing. He must ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... export revenues. Since 1986, the government - with the support of foreign countries and international agencies - has acted to rehabilitate and stabilize the economy by undertaking currency reform, raising producer prices on export crops, increasing prices of petroleum products, and improving civil service wages. The policy changes are especially aimed at dampening inflation and boosting production and export earnings. In 1990-99, the economy turned in a solid performance based on continued investment ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... criminals, and to criminals only, why are not the prisoners in Newgate brought out to see the show before the debtors' door? Why, while they are made parties to the condemned sermon, are they rigidly excluded from the improving postscript of the gallows? Because an execution is well known to be an utterly useless, barbarous, and brutalising sight, and because the sympathy of all beholders, who have any sympathy at all, is certain to be always with the criminal, and ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... began to feel her actual position. She resented General Armour's imputation, but in her heart she began to pine and wonder. At times, too, she was fitful, and was not to be drawn out. But she went on improving in personal appearance and manner and in learning the English language. Mrs. Townley's appearance marked a change in her. When they met she suddenly stood still and trembled. When Mrs. Townley came to her and took her hand and kissed her, she shivered, and then caught ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man and particularly of the woman, who makes a noise about lining your pocket or improving your condition. An altruist is my friend James Schuyler Grim, but he makes less noise than a panther on a dark night; and I never knew a man less given to persuading you. He has one purpose, but almost never talks about it. It's a sure bet that if we hadn't struck up a close ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... chances are, that she will have quite as strong an innate sense of the decencies and proprieties of life as if she had run the gauntlet of a dozen London seasons—possibly a stronger one, for such senses have been known to blunt in this improving process. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... of the pine forests. I had never seen a pine until I came to Colorado; so the idea of a home among the pines fascinated me. At that time I was hoping to pass the Civil-Service examination, with no very definite idea as to what I would do, but just to be improving my time and opportunity. I never went to a public school a day in my life. In my childhood days there was no such thing in the Indian Territory part of Oklahoma where we lived, so I have had to try hard to keep learning. Before the time came for the examination I was so discouraged ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... our Fabien into one of those nests, where he will be protected against idleness by the little he will do, and against revolutions by the little he will be. It's a charming profession; the very smell of books is improving; merely by breathing it ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... you know, Vivian. I am not one of those who wish to oppose the application of refined philosophy to the common business of life. We are, I hope, an improving race; there is room, I am sure, for great improvement, and the perfectibility of man is certainly a pretty dream. (How well that Union Club House comes out now, since they have made the opening), but, although we may have steam kitchens, human nature is, I imagine, much the same this moment ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... trial flight from Elizabeth only forty birds had returned. It is usually so. Some were weak and got left behind, some were foolish and strayed. By this simple process of flight selection the pigeon-owners keep improving their stock. Of the ten, five were seen no more, but five returned later that day, not all at once, but straggling in; the last of the loiterers was a big, lubberly Blue Pigeon. The man in the loft ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... got so frightfully empty-headed and unintellectual through just living, never reading or thinking, when we go down to the Green Gate I shall read a lot of serious books. I'm going to read H. G. Wells, and Hichens, and Aristotle, and some history, and all sorts of 'improving' things. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... morbidly excited, and I have read of some strange freaks done by persons under the influence of that infernal hashish. However, trust me, I shall find out what is the matter before long, and bring the boy round nicely. He is improving fast now, and all we have to do is ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... Hakuseki, desired to restore the currency to the system pursued in the Keicho era (1596-1614), but their purpose was thwarted by insufficiency of the precious metals. They were obliged to be content with improving the quality of the coins while decreasing their weight by one half. These new tokens were called kenji-kin, as they bore on the reverse the ideograph ken, signifying "great original." The issue of the new coins took place in the year 1710, and at the same time the daimyo were strictly forbidden ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... sympathize with him wholly in heart and intellect. She encouraged him to fresh endeavors and continual improvement. Thus he went on year by year broadening his mind, strengthening his faculties, and improving his reputation. The days of frolicsome gaiety were over. He now lived in a more serious vein, and felt a deeper, more satisfying happiness. It was much more the ideal life of a poet than that of Thoreau, paddling up and down Concord River in search of the inspiration which only comes ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... you find her improving?—gradually, of course. That constitutional languor is not shaken off in a hurry. But surely ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the sons of a rich merchant, and when he died he left all his estate to be divided between them equally. This was done, and the elder at once set about trading and improving his condition, so that very soon he became twice as rich as he ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... life is divided between a struggle with nature and his fellow-man for the permission and the means to live, on the one hand, and seasons of idleness, empty perforce of every opportunity and every desire for improving his condition, on the other, cannot acquire the materials of a real knowledge of his physical environment. His only data for interpreting the world and the objects it contains, so far as he is acquainted with them, are ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... took five hundred years to develop out of the splendid Norman through the various transitions of Gothic down to the perfection of the English country house in Elizabethan and Jacobean times. If church architecture was decaying, domestic architecture was improving. Architecture is, of course, the first and most important of all the arts, and when the human intellect is being used up for some other purpose there is a temporary cessation; there is never any decay of architecture. The putting ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... technique and quality by intelligent labor. If he is a concert performer, he feels his art becoming more perfect with each new recital. He has learned how to play, and now there remains nothing but the necessity for keeping constantly—note the expressive phrase—in practice, and improving the quality and style ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... luck. While undoubtedly he was fortunate in happening to be at the right place at the right time, yet he was precision, method, accuracy, energy itself. What seemed luck with him was only good judgment and promptness in seizing opportunities, and the greatest care and zeal in improving them ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... it, but who, in despair of making things better, tried sadly to fix their thoughts upon other subjects: who took to illuminating missals, or constructing systems of logic, or cultivating vegetables in the garden of the monastery, or improving the music in the chapel: quietly resigned to evils they judged irremediable. Great reformers have not been resigned men. Luther was not resigned; Howard was not resigned; Fowell Buxton was not resigned; George Stephenson ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... theatre. It is probable that at this time she became acquainted with Lord Rochester, who took her under his protection, and gave her instructions in her theatrical performances. By his interest she seems to have been restored to the stage, and, improving daily in her profession, she soon eclipsed all her competitors, and in the part of Monimia in "The Orphan" established her reputation, which was enhanced by her performance as Belvidera in "Venice Preserved," and as Isabella in "The Fatal Marriage." "In characters of greatness," says Cibber, "Mrs. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... in the protection of youth, could easily prevent him from using his own methods, thus depriving him of the benefits that are legally his. This could be done under the guise of protection, and the result would be the super-education of the protectors—whose improving intellectual competence would only teach them more and better reasons for depriving the young man of his rights. James Holden has a secret, and he has a right to keep that secret, and his only protection is for ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... night. To-day we again spent in improving our billets. The sailor is always known as the handy man, but I doubt if he would have a look in even with amateur Tommies like ourselves. We made scrapers for each barn door out of nothing, mats to scrape our boots on out of straw, roadways over muddy places out of brushwood ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... I did," cried Mr Deering, passionately. "I made model after model, improving one upon the other, till I had reached, as I thought, perfection. They worked admirably, and when I was, as I thought, safe, and had obtained my details, I threw in the capital, for which you were security, started my works, and began making on a large scale. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... without something from Aristophanes under his pillow." He adds: "But the noble tone of morals, the elevated taste, the sound political wisdom, the boldness and acuteness of the satire, the grand object, which is seen throughout, of correcting the follies of the day, and improving the condition of his country—all these are features in Aristophanes which, however disguised, as they intentionally are, by coarseness and buffoonery, entitle him to the highest respect from every ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... virtue of the heroine is saved, and Menelaus, (to make good the ridicule of Aristophanes on the beggary of Euripides' heroes,) appears in rags as a beggar, and in nowise dissatisfied with his condition. But this manner of improving mythology bears a resemblance to the Tales of the Thousand and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... minute now and then.' He brought a cornet-a-piston to practise on, having had three weeks' instructions on that melodious instrument; and if you could hear the horrid sounds that come I especially at heavy rolls. When I hint he is not improving, there comes a confession: 'I don't feel quite right yet, you see!' But he blows away manfully, and in self-defence I try ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jellico, Tenn., who was so seriously injured by an unprovoked and cowardly attack, is, we are happy to learn, slowly improving. Suffering, both from excruciating pain and from great nervous prostration, all that a human being can endure and live, yet he has borne it uncomplainingly. Large expenses have been necessarily incurred ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... the South is improving, and will continue to improve, and the process will be hastened as the white man lays aside his race prejudice and the black man lifts himself above it by acquiring property, intelligence and character. Whatever helps this consummation does ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 49, No. 4, April, 1895 • Various
... shoemaker intended to say did not appear, for he smilingly abandoned the opportunity for improving the occasion. He had put on flesh and vigor, and now, instead of regarding him as a flippant worldling, which was formerly his plainly expressed opinion, he even looked up in a curious way toward my partner, and once informed me that there ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... secure me a cheap, decent residence and respectable protection. I should have the opportunity of seeing her frequently; she would make me acquainted with the city; and, with the assistance of her cousins, I should probably be introduced to connections far more improving, polished, and cultivated, than any I ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sister,'" began Laura. "'Here we are, Landry and I, in New York at last. Very tired and mussed after the ride on the cars, but in a darling little hotel where the proprietor is head cook and everybody speaks French. I know my accent is improving, and Landry has learned any quantity of phrases already. We are reading George Sand out loud, and are making up the longest vocabulary. To-night we are going to a concert, and I've found out that there's a really fine ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... next. You will see, my dear madam, that I am not disposed to trust to the chapter of accidents on my side. Reflection has convinced me that you and I are not (logically speaking) so conveniently situated as we might be in case of emergency. Cabs are, as yet, rare in this rapidly improving neighborhood. I am twenty minutes' walk from you; you are twenty minutes' walk from me. I know nothing of Mr. Armadale's character; you know it well. It might be necessary—vitally necessary—to appeal to your superior knowledge of him at ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... sturdy young girl, of course; their offspring should give us a generation of rare outdoor ability. Similarly the young man and the older woman, despite their difference in ages, shall marry for the sake of improving the ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... Instead, Anne received kind but brief and worried notes from Miss Drayton, enclosing the weekly pocket money. Now and then, there was a picture post-card from Mrs. Patterson, with a loving message to Anne or two or three lines to Honey-Sweet. The invalid was not improving. In fact, she was growing worse. So the days wore ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... improving the efficiency of air compressors were made with one of the Cockerill compressors in use at the St. Fargeau Station, and considerable difficulty attended this work, because the machinery was necessarily kept almost in constant operation. These compressors were designed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... Wingfield Park is a recent acquisition given the city by George Wingfield and consists of a beautiful island of over two acres, situated in the Truckee river within three blocks of the business district. The city is now improving this park and connecting it with the playground on the shore. The playground has three tennis courts, swings, and teeters and is used constantly during the year. In addition to the municipal parks the children of Reno have all ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... to his place was the word he had given and his pride as an honest man. And now he was out, doing an honest man's work and building a highway for the state; and by the irony of fate the road he was improving was the one that led to Pinal. For time had wrought other changes while he lay in prison and the rough road up the canyon was swarming with traffic going and coming from Murray's camp. It was called "Murray" now, and a narrow-gauge railroad ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... to Alfieri that his own character, whose faults during youth he so keenly appreciated, was not improving with years? ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... a judicious resolution of a father, as well as a most pleasing compliment to his wife, when, on being asked by a friend what he intended to do with his girls, he replied: "I intend to apprentice them to their mother, that they may learn the art of improving time, and be fitted to become wives, mothers, heads of families, and useful members of society." Equally just, but very different, was the remark of an unhappy husband—his wife was vain and thoughtless—"It is hard to say, ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... The sending of telegrams to various stations at home and abroad, with the object of improving the science of meteorology, and issuing storm ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the Governor, nodding in response to the salute. "I am glad to see that you are hard at work and that your men are rapidly improving. Have you a copy of your ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon |
