"Passable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Company (Captain D.D. Ogilvie) started off to report to the gunners near Ain Yebrud and make the track passable for the artillery as far as Selwad on the far side of Tel Asur. The track was a dry river bed between two very thick walls most of the way, and where it was impassable a track had to be made across country, which meant cutting down trees and levelling terraces. Though there was about five miles ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... only relatively few salmon elude the traps, weirs, and gill nets, surmount the dams and fishways, escape the poachers, and succeed in depositing their eggs under conditions favorable to their development. The dam at Bangor, while certainly a formidable obstruction to the passage of fish, is probably passable at high water. It is provided with a fishway, and some fish are known to surmount the dam by this means. Above Bangor, in the main river, there are dams at Great Works and Montague, the dam at Montague being an especially serious obstruction, although it is provided with a good ...
— The Salmon Fishery of Penobscot Bay and River in 1895-96 • Hugh M. Smith
... municipality,—or even, sometimes, an old one,—with a million dollars to spend, will choose to spend it in erecting a most unnecessarily gorgeous town-hall rather than in making the street in front of it passable for the ordinarily shod pedestrian. In New York itself the hilarious stockbroker returning at night to his palace often finds the pavement between his house and his carriage more difficult to negotiate than even the hole for his latch-key; and I have more than once ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... vital interest for all the world. The hopes and expectations of bacteriology halt at nothing short of the ultimate extirpation of contagious diseases. The way to that goal is long and hard, yet in time it will be made passable. And in our generation there is no company of men who are doing more towards that end than the staff of that most famous of bacteriological ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... stay about the ranch a little closer instead of going off on these armed forays against sheep—now just for example, how much would it cost to clear a passable trail over that ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... dear general, and I have but time to take my last leave of you. I may now be certain that congress did not intend to send anything more by me. The navy board and Mr. Nevil write me this very morning from Boston, that the North River is passable; that a gentleman from camp says, he did not hear of anything like an express for me. All agree for certain that congress think I am gone, and that the sooner ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... reign entered a theatre. The piety of Queen Mary rendered her a rare attendant at the play-house. Plays were therefore no longer wanted. A playwright could not amuse. Congreve was a dramatist who had never exhibited even passable talent for other forms of poetical composition. But Tate's limited gifts, displayed to Dorset's satisfaction in various encomiastic verses addressed to himself, were fully equal to the exigencies of the office under the new ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the North-West Frontier Province of India. It is about 45 m. long by 20. broad, and lies at a high level to the east of the Kunar valley, from which it is separated by a continuous line of rugged frontier hills, forming a barrier easily passable at one or two points. Across this barrier the old road from Kabul to India ran before the Khyber Pass was adopted as the main route. Bajour is inhabited almost exclusively by Tarkani (Tarkalanri) Pathans, sub-divided into Mamunds, Isazai, and Ismailzai, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... purified for a while the fetid inner darkness with divine light. She had entered the room, with her own base interests to serve. In her small sordid way she, like her employer, was persecuted by debts—miserable debts to sellers of expensive washes, which might render her ugly complexion more passable in Ovid's eyes; to makers of costly gloves, which might show Ovid the shape of her hands, and hide their colour; to skilled workmen in fine leather, who could tempt Ovid to look at her high instep, and her fine ankle—the only beauties ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... from timber. There were spots where fires had swept over the land and the trees disappeared. On such spots they probably planted their corn; the land being made at once fertile and easily cultivable, by the effects of the fires. Near large inland sheets of water, having no outlets passable by their canoes, and well stocked with fish, they sometimes had permanent plantations, as at Will's Hill. With such slight exceptions, when the white settler came upon his grant, he found it covered by the primeval wilderness, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... trenches as models of what we were supposed to imitate in the front line between hates. Having been neglected since the Armistice they had caved in a bit and sagged round the corners till they were a very passable imitation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... marriage without repulsion. Nor did Mary, he said, really love him. He knew what love was—something different entirely from that pallid flame of affection and esteem, of which alone she was capable. Mary loved him for certain qualities of mind, because his station in life was decent, his manners passable, his ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... as they fancied that they could distinguish their own home, and D'Arcy's clearing, and the settlement, they determined to try to reach one or the other. The settlement was the nearest, and if they reached that they might easily find their way home. There was a nominal road, though scarcely passable, except when covered with snow in winter. They were debating whether it would be better to attempt to skate or to walk ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... I left my bed betimes, and as I felt in passable good case, I went up to the castle to see whether I might peradventure get to my daughter. But I could not find either constable, albeit I had brought a few groats with me to give them as beer-money; neither would the folks that I met ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... three days march distant from our present quarters, and that the way lay across some deep rivers and trembling marshes. Two soldiers were sent on by Cortes to examine the route, who reported on their return that the rivers were passable by means of timber bridges, but as for the marshes, which were more material to know, they were beyond the rivers and had not been examined. Cortes sent me in the next place, along with one Gonzalo de Mexia and some Indian guides, with orders to go forward to Huy-acala ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... public officials exercising command; quasi-public organizations might nominate a certain proportion of their staffs, and organized trade-unions with any claim to skill, a certain proportion of their men, their "decent" men, and every artist or writer who could submit a passable diploma work; it would be, in fact, a mark set upon every man or woman who was qualified to do something or who had done something, as distinguished from the man who had done nothing in the world, the mere common unenterprising esurient ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... a hundred feet in depth, and about the same in width. Its sides were less precipitous at this point. The escarpment rocks had fallen in, and formed a sort of shelving bank, by which a man on foot might have descended into its bed, and climbed out on the opposite side; but it was not passable for a horse. Its cliffs were furrowed and uneven; rocks jutted out and hung over; and in the seams grew cactus plants, bramble, and small trees of dwarf cedar ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... ordered the rangers to the rear, to guard the baggage. Before daybreak, a large party of pioneers, or road-cutters, with a small guard of regulars, numbering in all about three hundred, had gone on before to open a passage for the army through the woods, and make the fords more passable by ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... five-and-twenty, who had devoted himself to the cultivation of his intellect and the suppression of his soul. Because his mother had been a religious woman, he reasoned that faith was merely an amiable feminine weakness, and because he himself was clever enough to make passable Latin verses, he argued that no Supernatural Being could have been clever ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... The climate is insidious. A daily antidote against laziness is needed. I was glad that I volunteered to take the children to school at eight and two, and go after them at eleven and four, and that they held me to it. In order to reach a passable route on the steep wall of rock and pine, the road built by the Touring-Club de France makes a bend of two kilometers in the valley behind Theoule. By taking a footpath from the hotel, the pedestrian eliminates the bend in five minutes. In spite of curves, the road is continuously ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... writers, it would appear that they were followed by very little substantial progress, and travelling continued to be attended with many difficulties. Even in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, the highways were in certain seasons scarcely passable. The great Western road into London was especially bad, and about Knightsbridge, in winter, the traveller had to wade through deep mud. Wyatt's men entered the city by this approach in the rebellion of 1554, and were called the "draggle-tails" because of their wretched plight. The ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... its stuffs in return. The Venetians of every class amused themselves in visiting this free mart, and the gentler and more delicate sex pressed eagerly forward to traverse with their feet a space hitherto passable only in gondolas. [Footnote: Origine delle Feste Veneziane, di Giustina Renier-Michiel] The lagoon remained frozen, and these pleasures lasted eighteen days, a period of cold unequaled till last winter. A popular song now declares that the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... suffered hitherto, was nothing to the difficulties we were now entering upon, and which God had decreed us to undergo for the sake of Jesus Christ. Our way now lay through a region scarce passable, and full of serpents, which were continually creeping between our legs; we might have avoided them in the day, but being obliged, that we might avoid the excessive heats, to take long marches in the night, we were every moment treading upon them. Nothing but a signal interposition of Providence ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... morass on stilts was Master Matyas, whose distance marches during this campaign were something phenomenal. Matyas found Count Vavel with his troop already at Eszterhaza, and apprized him at once of De Fervlans's arrival at the bridge-inn. The Volons had not yet rested, but they had traveled over passable roads, and were not so exhausted. Their leader at ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... sweater, too shrunken and misshapen for him to wear again, came next. Dismayed, she inspected the battered loot; then was inspired to quick alterations. Pant-legs cut off well above the baggy knees made passable shorts; the sweater bulged a trifle at the shoulders, it fit adequately elsewhere—and something ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... together, so we had furnished our pleasant little six-roomed, second-floor flat quite comfortably, and as Harry had looked after the artistic side of its furnishings—aided by a pal of his, an impecunious artist who lived in Chelsea—it certainly was a very passable bachelor's snuggery. ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... been there from all time; and that the apparently defenceless Valley City was once chosen as an impregnable site, when the water-meadows of the Stour were impassable as marsh, or with difficulty passable as a shallow lagoon. And it is delightful to stand on the earthwork a few miles west and to say to oneself (as one can say with a fair certitude), "Here was the British camp defending the south-east; here the tenth legion charged." All these are pleasant, but more pleasant, I ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... not, indeed," he says ruefully. "I have lost a chance. Well, I am ready. But here the shadow is bad. Let us go to the obelisks and stand each back to one. There is a passable light there." ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... horse hunter's passion that reminded him of his pursuit. The deer trail led down through a break in the wall. Only a few rods of it could be seen. This trail was passable, even though choked with snow. But the depth beyond this wall seemed to fascinate Slone and hold him back, used as he was to desert trails. Then the clean mark of Wildfire's hoof brought back ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... improvements I have anywhere met with. The whole country twenty-two years ago was a waste sheep-walk, covered chiefly with heath, with some dwarf furze and fern. The cabins and people as miserable as can be conceived; not a Protestant in the country, nor a road passable for a carriage. In a word, perfectly resembling other mountainous tracts, and the whole yielding a rent of not more than from three shillings to four shillings an acre. Mr. Forster could not bear so barren a property, and determined to attempt the ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... drunk at all times and seasons. When they work they are not to be relied on to continue at it steadily, and when drunk they are only too often dangerous. Their type of face is often very low, and I never saw but one handsome man among the half-breeds, though the women, especially the Hydahs, are passable in looks. This man was a pilot, and a good one, on the lakes; but he was perpetually being discharged ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... certainly an "undertaking," therefore it must be a job—a big one at that. It interferes with the holding of any more remunerative job and consumes most of one's time in trying to keep his health in a passable condition. I have had positions of some importance handed to me, which I discharged with eminent satisfaction to all concerned until I got ready to go off at some new tangent. If I did not imagine myself in the actual embrace of some grave physical or mental disease, I feared that something ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... too, I took for the grove that surrounded our house. On reaching its border, I literally dismounted, and shouted out for Charon Tommy. There was a stream running through our plantation, which, for nine months out of the twelve, was only passable by means of a ferry, and the old negro who officiated as ferryman was indebted to me for the above classical cognomen. I believe I called twice, nay, three times, but no Charon Tommy answered; and I awoke as from a pleasant dream, somewhat ashamed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... appropriated by these localities. I omit many of the points that are used as arguments. For our tradition does not rank this god amongst those that were born, and then made immortal, as Hercules and Bacchus, whom their virtue raised above a mortal and passable condition; but Apollo is one of the eternal unbegotten deities, if we may collect any certainty concerning these things, from the statements of the oldest and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... much one of years, but they gave Mrs. Samstag, in spite of the only slightly plump and really passable figure, the look of one out of health. Women of her kind of sallowness can be found daily in fashionable physicians' ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... said Carroll again. "I have to make some change in my business, and"—he essayed a laugh—"I have to think, as we have agreed is the thing to do, of some salable wares in my possession. It did occur to me that I might make a passable floor-walker. I have even thought of a drum-major, but there seems no vacancy in ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... grain and flour trade were thus centralized, what would be the effect of a succession of large crops, or even of a single one? Would not the roads be covered with wagons whenever they were passable, and even at times when, they were almost impassable? Would not every one be anxious to anticipate the apprehended fall of prices by being early in the market? Would not freights be high? Would not the farmer, on his ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... monstrous the last two letters are is a matter of taste,—how impossible, a matter of knowledge; but we submit that any man with a passable degree of either taste or knowledge is able to decide, and will decide that No. 6 is not more impossible than No. 1, or No. 4 more monstrous than No. 2; while in Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, there is exhibited a variation in the form of capital letters, instances of which Dr. Ingleby ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... the winter of 1911-12 shut down, David Drennen had found a nugget which he had concealed, saying nothing about it. The snows came and he went back to MacLeod's Settlement to wait for the coming of springtime and passable trails. The first man to pack out of the Settlement prospecting, he had come to the spot which last year he had marked under the cliffs known locally as Hell's Lace. The trail had been rotten underfoot and he ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... out, why clink the cannikin?' The story of Julia and her Romeo, like all other stories, had found its end, and merged a little later into the history of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Reddy. The family feud was buried, and Samson and Abel made very passable grandfathers and dwelt in peace one with another. Dick never told a living soul, not even Julia herself, of the stratagem by which Mrs. Jenny had succeeded in uniting them, and Mrs. Jenny, by complete reticence on the subject, disproved the time-worn calumny which declares woman's inability ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... checked head-kerchiefs. The women prefer hats and bonnets, decked with cheap ribbons or artificial flowers; and these bring no trade to Mr. Quinn's mill. Still, he manages to hold on. The Lancashire people, though they have invented flannelette, cannot as yet make a passable imitation of frieze, and there is a Dublin house which buys annually all the blankets he can turn out. It is true that even there, and for the best class of customers, prices have to be cut so as to leave a bare margin of profit. Yet since ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... any certainty, it behoves us not to go beyond what we really know. I am beginning to have a passable acquaintance with insects, after spending some forty years in their company. Let us question the insect, then: not the first that comes along, but the most gifted, the Hymenopteron. I am giving my opponents ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... a passable fish of the pleuronect genus. Also, a slight fitful breeze or transient ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... near the extensive ruins of the destroyed city: they soon found tolerably passable roads, the few unobstructed tracks of the former principal streets of the large royal city; but they were often obliged to scramble over the rubbish of overthrown buildings, across pillars, and the remains of mighty columns. His guide turned now right, now left, to seek the easiest ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... "Passable," said the colonel—"passable, my good Clement. But do you know, I could send you to prison for providing this excellent leveret at this time of year. Are there no game laws, ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... features, which made one look twice. Mrs. Wagoner used to say she did not know where that boy got all his ugliness from, for she must admit his father was rather good-looking before he became so bloated, and Betty Duval would have been "passable" if she had had any "vivacity." There were people who said Betty Duval had been a beauty. She was careful in her limitations, Mrs. Wagoner was. Some women will not admit others are pretty, no matter what the difference in their ages: they feel as ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... 22nd, was despatched immediately to De Aar, but subsequently, at the urgent request of Sir George White, was sent by train to East London and re-embarked for Natal. Steps were taken to make the Orange River railway bridge passable by artillery and cavalry, by planking the space between the rails. Meanwhile, on the advice of the local magistrate, Colonel Money, who was in command at Orange River, destroyed Hopetown road bridge, eleven miles to ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... mischief." "Pray, my dear," answered the marechale, "be under no mistake: you might be as much beloved as others are, if you did not monopolize the king's affections; the consequence is, that every woman with even a passable face looks upon you as the usurper of her right, and as the fickle gentlemen who woo these gentle ladies are all ready to transfer their homage to you directly you appear, you must admit that your presence is calculated to produce no inconsiderable ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... fact I didn't care in the least whether I saw the thing again or not. All I cared about was reaching the Khan and putting down my bag. We found tracks where some scrubby plants were growing, where the surface was passable, but as we neared the entrance to the Khan, where carts and horsemen had made a veritable quagmire, we stuck, all three, without apparently any prospect of getting on at all unless we abandoned our baggage. However, some Arabs came to our assistance and ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... marsh which was not safe for the horses, they agreed to leave them in charge of the Hottentots, and advance on foot, thinking that if any of the buffaloes should turn upon them, it would be easy to escape by retreating across the quagmire, which, though passable for man, would not support the weight of a heavy quadruped. They advanced accordingly, and, under covert of the bushes, approached the game with such advantage, that the first volley brought down three of the fattest of the herd, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... for two months up here, not having been allowed to go to the Virginia springs, on account of the difficulty of carrying my children there; but I am promised that we shall all go there next summer, when there is to be something like a passable road, by which the health-giving region may ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... rooms are very passable," said the voice. "Small, of course, and underfurnished, but some pictures and antimacassars would take off that bare look. And Marmaduke is adorable. Your cook would soon be devotion itself. Why, at my ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... Cund to Cundigen, Lading, to Geladen: eruing goods, to Erbnuss. So Thwyting, is properly the cutting of little chippes from a stick. Pilme, the dust which riseth: Brusse, that which lyeth: which termes, as they expresse our meaning more directly, so they want but another Spencer, to make them passable. ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... well keep her, Sargent," said Mrs. Severance placidly. "You will have to pay her blackmail, of course—but after all that's really your fault a little, isn't it?—and it seems as if that was more or less what you had to do with any kind of passable servant nowadays. And Elizabeth is perfection—as a servant. As police—" she smiled a little cruelly. "Well, we shan't go into that, but I think it would be so much better to keep her. Then we'll be getting something ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... this purpose enabled Mr. Cox, to whose superintendence this work was entrusted, to complete a road passable for loaded carriages early in 1815. This road extended in length upwards of one hundred miles, the first fifty of which passed along a narrow ridge of the Blue Mountains, bounded on each side by deep ravines, and ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... stretched from the confluence of the Saklauiyeh with the Euphrates to the site of the modern village of Jibbara on the Tigris; on both sides of it four or five deep trenches were excavated, which were passable on raised causeways or by bridges of boats, so arranged as to be easily broken up in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... place for symbolic hint, none of that reliance on the helpful imagination of the spectator, the legitimate scope of which is a large one, when art is dealing with religious objects, with what in the fulness of its own nature is not really expressible at all. In any passable representation of the Greek discobolus, as in any passable representation of an English cricketer, there can be no successful evasion of the natural difficulties of the thing to be done—the difficulties of competing with nature itself, or its maker, in that marvellous ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... washes three-fourths of its base. The remaining fourth was in a great measure covered by a deep marsh, commencing near the river on the upper side and continuing into it below. Over this marsh there was only one crossing place, but at its junction with the river was a sandy beach passable at low tide. On the summit of this hill stood the fort which was furnished with heavy ordnance. Several breastworks and strong batteries were advanced in front of the main work, and about half way down the hill were two rows of abattis. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... pronounced it very good. The white-fish were better than any of the party had ever eaten in their lives, although most of them had travelled over the length and breadth of the North American wilderness. The ducks were perfect. Even the ptarmigan were declared passable; and the venison, with an inch of fat on the haunches—words were not found sufficiently expressive to describe it. Those who are philosophically inclined may suspect that some of this super-excellence lay in the keen appetites ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... she soon discovered how difficult it was to get anything remotely approaching her simple needs. She required a small bedroom in a house where there was a bathroom; also, if possible, she wanted the use of a sitting-room with a passable piano on which she sought permission to give lessons to any pupils whom she ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... last village where it was possible to procure a wheaten loaf for the guidance of those who were little familiar with the Land of Cakes. He was acquainted with the road every mile, and could tell to an inch which side of a Highland bridge was passable, which decidedly dangerous. [This is, or was at least, a necessary accomplishment. In one of the most beautiful districts of the Highlands was, not many years since, a bridge bearing this startling caution, "Keep to the right side, the left being dangerous."] In short, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... an object of affection and devotion to its inhabitants. The departments and communes have become more or less vast lodging-houses, all built on the same plan and managed according to the same regulations one as passable as the other, with apartments in them which, more or less good, are more or less dear, but at rates which, higher or lower, are fixed at a uniform tariff over the entire territory, so that the 36,000 communal buildings and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... been here long enough now to discover the differences between this front and the old fighting-line in Gallipoli. The rain has been heavier in March than for thirty-five years, and April until yesterday seemed almost as bad. The trenches are made passable by being floored with a wooden pathway which runs on piles—underneath which is the gutter of water and mud which is the real floor of the trench. Sometimes the water rises in the communication trenches so that the boards float or disappear, and if you happen to step into an interval between ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... are upset by certain plants dark-coloured individuals escape. At any rate blacks are not affected by the fruit, though large consumers of it, and many whites also eat of it raw and preserved, without fear and without untoward effects. Some of the Eugenias produce passable fruits, and one of the palms (CARYOTA) bears huge bunches of yellow dates, the attractiveness of which lies solely ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... celestial, sublime, and transcendent things, the lacqueys and footboys of the court, upon the upper steps of stairs between two doors, jumbled, one after another, as often as they listed, his wife, who is passable fair, and a pretty snug hussy. Thus he who seemed very clearly to see all heavenly and terrestrial things without spectacles, who discoursed boldly of adventures past, with great confidence opened up present cases and accidents, and stoutly ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... were all good to him. From Carr's Indian woman—who could, he now learned, speak passable English—down to the sloe-eyed youngest Carr of mixed blood, they accepted him as one of themselves. However, it happened to be Sophie who waited on him most, who impishly took the greatest liberties with him, who was never ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... demonology is so hopelessly threadbare. But why an artist? I think you were made for a bank manager, Denis. Don't look so surprised. Everybody grows up, you know. Shelley, if he had lived long enough, would have become a passable gentleman farmer. You can take my ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... tubers, called by the Indians taboose. The common reed of the ultramontane marshes (here Phragmites vulgaris), a very stately, whispering reed, light and strong for shafts or arrows, affords sweet sap and pith which makes a passable sugar. ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... corner of his mouth which might advantageously have been hidden. A beard also would have become him, for his chin verged slightly to the cut-away type, and a three-days' stubble looks merely unkempt. He would never have been a beauty, but groomed up he would have made a very passable appearance amongst other men, although the scar near his mouth, and another similar emblem of roughness over the opposite eye, would have made him a ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... the bearings of several of these I found that the plundered camp was only seventeen miles distant; and as the ground was so soft that we could not move farther with the carts until fair weather had again rendered it passable, I resolved to halt the party here until after my intended excursion to ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... swore fluently, but Royson spoke no word until they were free of the boulders, and had gained a passable incline which led to the steeper ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... part of the world; he told us he began it three years ago with a force of but nine men; that it would be extended to San Cristobal and San Bartolome; that he was no engineer, but that he could tell quite well when a road was passable for a cart. We found him greatly interested in a congress which he had called of persons interested in labor questions. Among the questions which he hoped to see considered was the abolition of the system of peonage, which still exists in full development ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... One of us must suffer for it, if you do not help me. I must speak freely to you, I am under bad circumstances, for besides my harlots in service, my Reformado Concubines lie heavy upon me. I have a passable good estate, I confess, but, God's-fish, I have a great charge upon't. Here's my lord treasurer can tell, that all the money designed for next summer's guards must, of necessity, be applyed to the next year's cradles and swadling-cloths. What shall ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... standing, back his topsail, and hoist Spanish colours, only to haul them down again in token of surrender. Whereupon Mr Seaton, our first lieutenant, in charge of an armed boat's crew, went away to take possession of the prize, and since I was the only person on board possessing even a passable acquaintance with the Spanish language, I was ordered to ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... the enormous stem of the sequoia supported quite a forest. The capricious network of its upper boughs presented the aspect of a wood crowded with trees, which no gap rendered passable. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... and drain, as if we were tallying at the tail of a fox. The night was dark, and a recent fall of rain had so swollen a mountain stream which lay in our road, that when we reached the ford, which was generally passable by foot passengers, Terence was obliged to swim his horse across, and to dismount on the opposite side, in order to assist the animal up a steep clayey bank which had been formed by the torrent undermining and cutting away ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... thought, sinking back. "Dorita, I want you to run ahead and see what the trail's like," he said. "See if the ledge is passable. And find a place, not too far ahead, where we can block the trail by exploding that demolition-bomb. It has to be close enough for a couple of you to carry or drag me and get me ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... they were dancing all together, dancing the Schuhplatteln, the Tyrolese dance of the clapping hands and tossing the partner in the air at the crisis. The Germans were all proficient—they were from Munich chiefly. Gerald also was quite passable. There were three zithers twanging away in a corner. It was a scene of great animation and confusion. The Professor was initiating Ursula into the dance, stamping, clapping, and swinging her high, with amazing force and zest. When ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... days stay at Inverary we proceeded Southward over Glencroe, a black and dreary region, now made easily passable by a military road, which rises from either end of the glen by an acclivity not dangerously steep, but sufficiently laborious. In the middle, at the top of the hill, is a seat with this inscription, 'Rest, and be thankful.' Stones were placed to mark the distances, which the inhabitants have taken ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... support each other but act apart, each on its own ground and each in its own way; only the Church no longer acts through the toleration and gracious permission of the University, but through the legal abolition of the monopoly and by virtue of a written law. The whole composes a passable regime, less oppressive than those that preceded it; in any event, the two millions of devout Catholics who consider unbelief as a terrible evil, the fathers and mothers who subordinate instruction to education,[6335] and desire above all things to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... up all along the seemingly inaccessible heights were holes with their roofs log supported, in which solitary and patient men were selling their lives for treasure. Down by the stream, all among the icicles, men were sluicing and washing, and everywhere along the heights were the scars of hardly-passable trails, too steep even for pack-jacks, leading to the holes, and down which the miner packs the ore on his back. Many a heart has been broken for the few finds which have been made along those hill sides. All the ledges are covered with charred stumps, a picture of desolation, where nature ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... vein, he told me what adventures he had seen since joining the filibuster army; which, however, I have no intention to recount;—honor enough, if I may relate veridically, and with passable phrase, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... (Timb's Year Book, 1848-235) in Persia fell a substance that the people said they had never seen before. As to what it was, they had not a notion, but they saw that the sheep ate it. They ground it into flour and made bread, said to have been passable enough, though insipid. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... white robe, and then at her own dark gown, which scarcely allowed her neck and wrists to be seen. "Yes," she replied laughing, "I only look passable when I don't dress as a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Foka in the dark over four miles of rock-strewn country. It was not till two o'clock on the following morning that all the convoys of wounded passed through Foka, but by that time the track to Tahta had been made into passable order, and some of these helpless men were out of the hills soon after daylight, journeying in comparative ease in light motor ambulances ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... voice in good and even polished French; and La Salle, turning, found that Regnar stood beside him. An air of education which he had never noticed before seemed to pervade this youth, who spoke English almost execrably, and had shown little more than a passable knowledge of the coast of Labrador, and a keen insight into all the varied ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... cold did not make the swamp passable except by the roadway because warm springs here and there prevented the ice from freezing sufficiently strong to bear the troops. The German gunners noted too that their shots fell practically without effect, plunging quietly into the mud to a great depth so that they did not ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... in. Like all the rest, he gave up the brilliant idea of trying to find an unpreempted place for his precious newly ironed silk hat, and resignedly dumped it on the bed. He was a passable man, with a gentlemanly mustache and good pumps. Carl knew that fact because he was comparing his own clothes and deciding that he had none the worst of it. But he was relieved when the waxed mustache moved a couple of times, and ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... and was esteemed less perilous. They came in sight of the Thames at Lambeth, but Master Headley, remembering how ill his beloved Poppet had brooked the ferry, decided to keep to the south of the river by a causeway across Lambeth marsh, which was just passable in high and dry summers, and which conducted them to a raised road called Bankside, where they looked across to the towers of Westminster, and the Abbey in its beauty dawned on the imagination of Stephen and Ambrose. The royal standard floated over the palace, whence Master ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... few village physiognomies before considering ourselves fit to take the minister and his deacons. After years of practice there is always something to learn, but every one is surprised to find how little time is required for the acquisition of skill enough to make a passable negative and print a tolerable picture. We could not help learning, with the aid that was afforded us by Mr. Black and his assistants, who were all so very courteous and pleasant, that, as a token of gratitude, we offered to take photographs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... clouds with which it had overspread them before; it advances not the traveller one step in his journey, but conducts him back again to the spot from whence he wandered. Thus the land of Philosophy consists partly of an open champaign country, passable by every common understanding, and partly of a range of woods, traversable only by the speculative, and where they too frequently delight to amuse themselves. Since then we shall be obliged to make incursions ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... at length provided. The supports of the burned wagon-bridge were still standing at a level with the surface of the water. They were timbered and planked over, and the railroad bridge was also covered with planking, thus giving us two passable bridges. The trains had all been crossed over, and a part of the artillery. Orders had been issued for the troops to begin crossing at dark, when Hood disclosed his purpose to attack. The artillery was ordered back to its position in line, and General Stanley and I, who ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... supper reassured, and we ate the rustic meal together very merrily. One of them wrote a letter to her father, saying that they had been detained by the snow at the house of an acquaintance, and a messenger set off with it at sunrise, but we were told that the road would not be passable before noon. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not, or could not, conceive of an industry either so vast or so depersonalized as at present. He was rather writing of a system which, like the politics of the eighteenth century, had reached an equilibrium of passable comfort. His natural order was, at bottom, the beatification of that to which this equilibrium tended. Its benefits might be improved by free trade and free workmanship; but, upon the whole, he saw no reason to call in question ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... dear fellow, you are joking then," said I, "this is a very passable SKULL,—indeed, I may say that it is a very EXCELLENT skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology—and your scarabaeus must be the queerest scarabaeus in the world if it resembles it. Why, we ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... the neighboring ruins of Susa. He was not one, this young man who was out for a bit of a lark, to sentimentalize about antiquity or the charm of the unspoiled. Yet even such young men are capable of finding the rumness of strange towns a passable enough lark, to say nothing of the general unexpectedness of life. And Dizful turned out to be quite as unexpected, in its way, as Bala Bala. Matthews found that out before he had been three days in the place, when a sudden roar set all the loose little panes tinkling ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... passable only from Avignon to l'Isle. They covered the nine miles between the two places in an hour. During this hour Roland, as he resolved to shorten the time for his travelling companion, was witty and animated, and their approach to the duelling ground only served to redouble his gayety. To one unacquainted ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... seemly, and thy velvets and brocades are passable, but the heavy articles are not fit to offer to a Mohawk Sachem. There must be a reduction of prices, or ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... toleration of this joke as being a passable quality of joke. And then she smiled in the same sense, hastening to agree with him that as a joke it was ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... end of the eighteenth century, at which time this happened: In Germany, which had not produced even passable dramatic writers (there was a weak and little known writer, Hans Sachs), all educated people, together with Frederick the Great, bowed down before the French pseudo-classical drama. Yet at this very time there appeared in Germany a group of educated and talented writers and poets, ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... "One of their big guns clear in the open, and moving at a crawl. I want you to take the battery along the road here, sharp to the right at the cross-road, and through the wood. The Inf. tell me there is just a passable road through. Take guns and firing battery wagons only; leave the others here. When you get through the wood, turn to the right again, and along its edge until you come to where I'll be waiting for you. I'll take the range-taker with me. The order ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... of his parents' income. He assumed that it was little enough, and that he must now leave Oxford and work to support the household. He knew some Latin and Greek; but without a degree he had little chance of teaching what he knew. He was a fair carpenter, and a more than passable smith. . . . He revolved many schemes, but chiefly found himself wondering what it would cost to enter ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fun all to themselves. The latter had decided to go as a friar. She had contrived a capital monk's habit out of her waterproof, tied round the waist with the cord that held back the window curtains. The hood formed the cowl, a dictionary made a very passable breviary, and a hockey stick ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... very pleasant to loaf along a passable road mounted on a light-footed horse, and Hazel enjoyed it if for no more than the striking contrast to that terrible journey in and out of the Klappan. Here were no heartbreaking mountains to scale. The scourge of flies was well-nigh past. They took the road in easy stages, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... M. T. SIMM, M.P., there are many wayside inns of a passable nature. The trouble, of course, is that so many people have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... colonel—"passable, my good Clement. But do you know, I could send you to prison for providing this excellent leveret at this time of year. Are there ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... to mourn over lost opportunities now, but she did wish there was some one thing she could do and do well, some service of value that would guarantee self-support. If she could only pound a typewriter or keep a set of books, or even make a passable attempt at sewing, she would have felt vastly more at ease in this rude logging camp, knowing that she could leave it ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair |
