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More "Improve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... door, and making his brief report learned as he moved away that there was some trouble on the left wing. Meade coming out with Hancock, they mounted and rode away in haste, too late to correct General Sickles' unfortunate decision to improve General Meade's battle-line. It was not Penhallow's business, nor did he then fully understand that costly blunder. Returning to his guns, he sent, as Hunt had ordered, two of his reserve batteries up to the back of the line of ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... the useful arts perfect man's executive faculties, and thus are said to improve upon, while in a certain sense they imitate nature; so the fine arts extend and exalt man's faculty of expression, or self-utterance, regarded not precisely as useful and propter aliud; but as pleasurable and propter se. Even the most uncultivated savage finds pleasure ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... I have been much interested with an attempt,—a further morsel of cobbling, which is being done to improve the representation of the people. Though it be but cobbling, if it be in the right direction one is glad of it. I do not know how far you may have studied the theories and system of the British House of Commons, but, for myself, I must own that it was not till the other day that I was aware that, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... for all the social theories that were ever made unless they help to make better men and women by bettering their lot. I have had cranks of that order, who rated as sensible beings in the ordinary affairs of life, tell me that I was doing harm rather than good by helping improve the lot of the poor; it delayed the final day of justice we were waiting for. Not I. I don't propose to wait an hour for it, if I can help bring it on; ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... career and to do what he could to redress the wrongs from which the people were suffering. Strange to say, at this time he, who afterwards became most eloquent, had an impediment in his speech, which it took much labour to overcome. To improve his knowledge of French, he spent some months with a French family in Madawaska, among the descendants of the ancient Acadians. In this way he acquired a colloquial knowledge ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... raised a cheer. The sound did not improve the morale of the other side. Even in the dark, the difference between the two ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... glass held over a magnet. The filings arrange themselves in characteristic curves. Tapping the paper or pane of glass facilitates the arrangement, or jarring the filings off a smaller magnet, so that they fall polarized upon the paper, is thought by some to improve the effect. The group of curves forms what are termed ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... of the Commonwealth, not endowed by the provisions of this act, with the rights of citizenship, and to aid them, by advice, counsel, and whatever other suitable means may be within his control, to promote their welfare, to improve their general condition, and to qualify themselves, judiciously, and with safety to themselves and others, to be placed, at as early a time as may be, on the same legal footing as the other inhabitants of the Commonwealth. He shall exercise all the powers, perform all the duties, and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... I stared in my turn. 'Expression of yours,' he said. 'Sounds rude; but all depends how you say it. I reckon I've caught up the accent—eh?—by the quick way you looked up. . . . I hadn't much school and never went to College: but I've studied you, Doctor, and I'll improve.' ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my mind not to remain at Rowfant; first, because it was not a profitable farm to occupy; and, second, because the situation of the country being low, and damp in the winter, did not agree with me, and had caused me to suffer very considerable ill health from rheumatism, I was induced to improve the estate, more with an idea of disposing of the lease, than with the intention of making any immediate profit from the cultivation of the soil. In this object I completely succeeded. I so effectually on my own principles drained a great part of arable, as well as of the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... told Emily," said Lady Rowley, "that she must not meet him, and she is quite of the same opinion." Nevertheless, there had been remissness. Sir Marmaduke felt that it was so, in spite of his wife's excuses. In this way he was becoming sore with everybody, and very unhappy. It did not at all improve his temper when he was told that his second daughter had refused an offer from Lord Peterborough's eldest son. "Then she may go into the workhouse for me," the angry father had said, declaring at the same time that he would never give his consent to ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... occasionally write valuable books, containing high ideals of the spiritual life. As a rule, they do not concern themselves with the affairs of the outer world, which they regard as unimportant. Their cry continually is that the world is evil, and they call on men to leave it, not to improve it. To them God and the world are in opposition, "the world, the flesh, and the devil" are the three great enemies of the spiritual life. In the West, this is almost universal, for in the Roman Catholic Church seclusion ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... it does really appear as if nature were endeavoring to improve upon herself, and that all the virtues of the ancient world were but so many studies preparatory to the patriot of the new. Individual instances no doubt there were; splendid exemplifications of some single qualification. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... afterwards, idleness of both kinds did too much prevail amongst us; both that when we were in a manner driven from the world, and shut up from all employment but the exercise of godliness, many did not improve that opportunity of the cross to promote acquaintance and communion with God, being slothful in prayer, reading and other duties; and some again, even when they might have had access to lawful employments, continued idle and out ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... Ribiera in drowsy contentment, "and I had thought you would be glad to improve her acquaintance. Especially since, as my friend, you may congratulate me. A contract of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... at that time to maintain, and the pressing necessities of the state, continually engrossed the attention of the ministry, nor allowed them time to think of Louisiana. What was then thought most advisable, was to make a grant of it to some rich person; who, finding it his interest to improve that country, would, at the same time that he promoted his own interest, promote that of the state. Louisiana was thus ceded to M. Crozat. And it is to be presumed, had M. d'Hiberville lived longer, the colony would have made considerable progress: but that ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... friendship, and brought more presents, which we received, and took our leave. He sent us away with every honour he could heap upon us; as a band of music before us, guides to show us the way, etc....The Soobah is to pay us a visit in a little time, which I hope to improve for the great end of settling a mission in ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... well indeed, though he was not sure that the acquaintance was one he desired to improve. He took the proffered ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... "and take care that you neglect not the worship of God. Avoid bad company; be not quarrelsome at school; study to improve yourself diligently; attend mass regularly; and be ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... terrible. But even that sentence, which was a good deal more cheerful than what he actually felt, did nothing whatever to improve his mood. All of the evidence, after all, had been practically living on the tip of his nose for God alone knew how long, and not only had he done nothing about it, ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the people good-by and received their kindly wishes for a safe journey, Uncle Dick was still at the fireplace, trying to improve ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and Goldsmith there says of it, "It is at least free from the false taste of loading the lines with epithets;" or as he puts it more fully "a string of epithets that improve the sound without carrying ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... elevation did not necessarily improve the condition of his father and brother. The Dey cared only for those slaves who made themselves useful to him; their relations he utterly ignored, unless they succeeded in gaining his regard. The Sicilians had too much common-sense ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... cables busy as he distributed congratulations, condolences, messages of one kind and another to foreign merchants. His publicity department never rested. He employed famous scientists and inventors to improve the products of his factories. He reared six sons to carry ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... discovery will appear greater and greater every year, and one century to come will improve America far more than the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... and many, also, who looked about for an excuse for abstaining from the battle, whom Luther's personal participation in the din and clamour of the fray served to scandalise, if not to alienate from his cause. Thus among those who had formerly been united by a common endeavour to improve the condition of the Church and repel the tyranny of Rome, a ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... do; and from the first line if possible. I want to improve on the Battle of the Somme film. What time ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... the mountains, and the river Pinarus running through the midst of it, would necessitate him to divide his forces, render his horse almost unserviceable, and only cover and support the weakness of the enemy. Fortune was not kinder to Alexander in the choice of the ground, than he was careful to improve it to his advantage. For being much inferior in numbers, so far from allowing himself to be outflanked, he stretched his right wing much further out than the left wing of his enemies, and fighting there himself in the very foremost ranks, put the barbarians to flight. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the front room, and to this Adela Branston went at Mr. Saltram's request, and began to play some of Handel's oratorio music, while he stood beside the piano, talking to her as she played. Mrs. Pallinson and Gilbert were thus left alone in the back room, and the lady did her best to improve the occasion by extorting what information she could from ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... story seems to me informed with a saner philosophy of life. There is gloom in her story; and many of the circumstances are sordid enough; but throughout I see the recognition that man and woman can at least improve and dignify their lot in this world. Many people believe Tess to be the finest of its author's achievements. A devoted admirer of Mr. Hardy's genius, I decline altogether to consent. To my mind, among recent developments of the English novel nothing ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Sabbath, when it is in his power to attend, can expect a blessing upon his soul. When preaching is of an ordinary character, and not very full of instruction, or when the manner of the preacher is disagreeable, people are frequently tempted to think they can improve their time better at home, in reading, meditation, and prayer. But this is a very great mistake, unless they can spend the Sabbath profitably without the presence of God. If, as I think I have already shown, ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... seen them early that morning and knowing that they had had no drink, I felt sure they would return, and so had patiently waited, crouched in the rock hole, waist deep in water. This, perhaps, did not improve its flavour, but emu meat was worth procuring at the small cost of tainting the water with the taste of clothes. Presently I heard the drumming of the approaching birds, and, cautiously looking up, found them attentively examining the bucket and pannikin, I had left on the rock. They made such a ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... have not yet reached such a point as in France and elsewhere, it is I think incontestable that the English race, like many another, is physically deteriorating. Athletics tend to improve the standard, but there must be proper material to work upon, and M. Zola, I found, held the view that for a race to be healthy its womenfolk should be willing and able to discharge the primary duties of Nature. When he discovered that so many Englishwomen ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... her lovingly. After a pause, he said, "Well, Sis, if you do know him, you know one of the best and most promising of my early acquaintances, and from what I have heard of him since my return, I feel that I want to improve my own acquaintance with him, and shall not be sorry to know that he has become your friend as well ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... The Girl did not improve as she should. The interne did the dressing day after day, while the Probationer helped him—the Senior disliked burned cases—and talked of skin grafting if a new powder he had discovered did no good. Internes are always trying ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... they thought matters would have improved by this time. Improved! How, I'd like to know? The whole world is sliding down hill faster and faster every minute, and folks in Brookville think matters are going to improve, when they are sliding right along with the Emperor of Germany and the King of England, and all the rest of the big bugs. I can't figure it out, but in some queer, outlandish way that war over there has made it so folks in Brookville can't ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... began life as a family man on a footing entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs—which had been in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's debts—had begun to improve. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... possessed several country-houses, where he kept a large number of cattle of every kind. He retired with his wife and family to one of these estates, in order to improve it under his own direction. He had the gift of understanding the language of beasts, but with this condition, that he should not, on pain of death, interpret it to any one else. And this hindered him from communicating to others what ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... expansion of our economy depend upon the wise management of our land, water, forest, and mineral wealth. In our present dynamic economy, the task of conservation is not to lockup our resources but to develop and improve them. Failure, today, to make the investments which are necessary to support our progress in the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... had much to do with young people; but, all at once, it seemed to him that it might prove worth his while to cultivate the closer acquaintance of these nieces of his. Pauline, in particular, struck him as likely to improve upon a nearer acquaintance. And that afternoon, as he rode up Broadway, he found himself wondering how she would enjoy the ride; and all the sights and wonders of ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... of parents improving their children," she said. "It is my belief that the children quite as often improve the parents. I have had some happy minutes with Minna—and (would you believe it?) I am already disposed to forgive Mr. Keller's brutality, and to write to him in a tone of moderation, which must surely have ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... honest way, of omitting practically all the essentials from their records and substituting glittering imaginings that delight the reader—and wofully mislead him as to the truth about life. What wonder that we learn slowly—and improve slowly. How wofully we have been, and are, misled by all upon whom we have ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... little attempt on the part of the Federals to improve their victory. The hard fighting of the Virginians had left its impress on the generals. Jackson's numbers were estimated at 15,000, and Banks, who arrived in time to take direction of the pursuit, preferred to wait till Williams' two brigades came ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... "but it is not wishes alone which can improve us in anything. Turn the same exertion and perseverance which have won you the prize to-day to this object, and you will meet with the same success; perhaps not on the first, the second, or the third attempt; but depend upon it that you will at last. Every new effort ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... begins, and a select company of young men who are standing in the rear of the audience improve every possible opportunity for breaking into rapturous applause. Their zeal occasionally outruns their discretion, and they finally ruin the attempt of Miss RICHINGS to execute a florid cadenza at the end of one of her arias. An intelligent usher is therefore detailed ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... the power of forming mental images can be cultivated so as to improve one's fitness for different kinds of employment. Such self-culture rests upon improvement in the vividness of your sense-perceptions. It suffices for your present purpose to know that to cultivate your power of sense-imagery in any respect you must (1) Keep the appropriate ...
— Power of Mental Imagery • Warren Hilton
... different hands had been employed, as in those completed by a single master. Thus it is observable that the buildings which a single architect has planned and executed, are generally more elegant and commodious than those which several have attempted to improve, by making old walls serve for purposes for which they were not originally built. Thus also, those ancient cities which, from being at first only villages, have become, in course of time, large towns, are usually but ill laid out compared with the regularity ...
— A Discourse on Method • Rene Descartes
... before Dryden was dreamed of, and his own work is not entirely devoid of brick; but that Dryden rendered to English services of inestimable value is not to be questioned. For forty years the great aim of his life was, as he tells us himself, to improve the English language and English poetry, and by constant and tireless effort in a mass of production of antipodal types he accomplished his object. He enriched and extended our vocabulary, he modulated our meters, he developed new forms, ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... Tom. '"Cook, housemaid, and nursemaid; each female servant required to join the Little Bethel Congregation three times every Sunday—with a serious footman. If the cook is more serious than the footman, she will be expected to improve the footman; if the footman is more serious than the cook, he will be expected ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... if I know how I am going to improve on those patents so as to make my locomotive twice as speedy and quite as powerful as those other locomotives—well, I've got to tell you flat that I have not as yet ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... sold their mules, their implements, their cows, their pigs, their sheep, and their household goods for anything they would bring,—frequently as low as one sixth of their value,—in order that they might improve an immediate opportunity to go away; it is evident that there must have been some cause outside of extortion in their case. There are candid native whites who do not deny, but justify, the violent methods which have been employed to disfranchise the negroes, or ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... excuse the wretched stuff I write; perhaps I may improve by being in this town, and then my letters will be less unworthy your reading. Meantime, I am, Your dutiful and affectionate, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... much engrossed by a sudden influx of customers to improve the occasion; and Fisher minor, who never enjoyed ginger-beer less in his life, was allowed to depart in peace to meditate on the evil of his ways, and the possible hot water he had been preparing for ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... If you press the subject on me now, you will only excite disgust where you hope to create a favorable impression. I have had many opportunities of close observation, and failed not to improve them. ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... my opportunities improve greatly. I must say, also, that the colors are a little too bright for me, although they suit him. Everything must be in harmony, Harry, and it is certainly true of Stuart and his uniform that they are in perfect accord. Good clothes, Harry, ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nature would afford ample nourishment for all the European animals. Horses feed extremely well even during the winter, and so would oxen if provided with hay, which might be easily done[4]. Pigs also improve, but require to be kept warm in the winter. Hence it appears, that the residents might easily render themselves far less dependent{14} on the Indians for support, and be relieved from the great anxiety which they too often suffer when the hunters are unsuccessful. The neighbourhood of the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... estimate exactly the cost of these fine plans. Nor did they feel any need of estimates; that was a mere matter of detail. They would vote a fund, and when that was exhausted they would vote more; and so they appropriated sum after sum: one hundred thousand dollars to improve the Rock River; one million eight hundred thousand dollars to build a road from Quincy to Danville; four million dollars to complete the Illinois and Michigan Canal; two hundred and fifty thousand for the Western Mail Route—in all, some ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... too glad to be satisfied, perhaps, to urge the matter quite so far as his judgment might have dictated to others. It was an alliance which he could not have relinquished without pain; and thus he reasoned. Mr. Rushworth was young enough to improve. Mr. Rushworth must and would improve in good society; and if Maria could now speak so securely of her happiness with him, speaking certainly without the prejudice, the blindness of love, she ought to be believed. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to look upon plenteous game without going after it. Some of these days, a new call of the wild will arise in Colorado, demanding an open season on mountain sheep. Those who demand it will say, "What harm will it do to kill a few surplus bucks? It will improve the breed, and ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... interesting work," commented the girl; "a profession that requires years of particular experience and study, and I suppose one must be really thoroughly efficient and successful himself, too, before he can help to improve upon the methods of others or to bring ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it is, old cock," continued the Aid-de-Camp, edging his seat closer, and giving his host a smart friendly slap upon the thigh, "this dull life of yours don't much improve your temper. Why, as I am a true Tennessee man, bred and born, I never set eyes upon such a crab apple in all my life—you'd turn a whole dairy of the sweetest milk that ever came from prairie grass sour in less than no ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... stopping, recasting a sentence, striking out and filling in, hospitable to every suggestion, not in the least disturbed by interruption, holding on stoutly to his purpose, and producing finally, out of these most unpromising conditions, a clear and logical statement, which he could not improve with solitude and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... by custom, precept and example, so that from earliest infancy to introduce such an innovation as Penloe proposes would apparently, to our minds, seem like undermining our social structure and its very foundations. While we admit the state of society is morally low, yet what can be done to improve it? Can we ever reconcile ourselves to persons of both sexes and all ages undressing in the presence of each other and all bathing together naked? We question whether society is ready for such a change? Penloe's theories are like many other ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... will try to improve on the secrets of the universe. He will try to invent an apparatus by means of which the rotation of the world may be made faster or slower, according to his will. If he has but one day, for instance, in which to do a stated piece ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... of others; no otherwise than as the master of ancient days lived on the labour of his slave, or as the baron lived on the labour of his serf. If the capital of the rich man consists of land, he is able to force a tenant to improve his land for him and pay him tribute in the form of rack- rent; and at the end of the transaction has his land again, generally improved, so that he can begin again and go on for ever, he and his heirs, doing ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... professor pulls his beard, and involuntarily glances round the somewhat meagre apartment, that not all his learning, not all his success in the scientific world—and it has been not unnoteworthy, so far—has enabled him to improve upon. It has helped him to live, no doubt, and distinctly outside the line of want, a thing to be grateful for, as his family having in a measure abandoned him, he, on his part, had abandoned his family in a measure also (and with reservations), and it would ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... exerted in the promotion of whatever would elevate and improve the aims and habits of his townsmen. He was active in the movement for the establishment of a Library which should be open to all; in the absence of an Academy, he favored the introduction of a ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... desired for stage effect, and rather more than was necessary for propriety. All Mrs. Beaumont's art, therefore, was exerted to throw a veil of becoming delicacy over what might have been too glaring, by hiding half to improve the whole. Where there was any want of management on the part of her young coadjutrix, she, with exquisite skill, made advantage even of these errors by look? and sighs, that implied almost as emphatically as words could have said to her son—"You see what I told you is too true. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... I am leading you? Well, it's part of my occupation to investigate mining propositions, and where the owners want to sell, to find a buyer. Sometimes I lend them money to improve the claim. In fact, I imagine you would find me ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... which he kept fingering with one hand as though trying to loosen it for his greater comfort; and his hair had been plastered flat on his head with plenty of cold water. His red and scratched chin further indicated that he had taken considerable pains with a razor to improve his personal appearance in keeping with his unwonted part of a respectable witness in a place which knew a more sinister side of him. As he stood in the witness-box, awkwardly avoiding the significant glances that the Scotland Yard men and the police cast at him, he appeared to be more nervous ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... conclusion of the democratic peace which it will directly propose to all nations. The new Government will take all necessary steps to secure everything needful to the revolutionary Army, by means of a determined policy of requisition and taxation of the propertied classes, and also to improve the situation ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... plains, and removed thither, have unquestionably died. In a country like Jamaica, with a range of lofty mountains, far exceeding this height, intersecting the island through nearly its whole length, might not Government, after satisfying themselves of the truth of the fact, improve on the hint? Might not a main—guard suffice in Kingston, for instance, while the regiments were in quarters half—way up the Liguanea Mountains, within twelve miles actual distance from the town, and within view of it, so that during the day, by a semaphore on the mountain, and another at the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Ganges is to India, what the Amazon is to Brazil—all this, and even more than this, the Mississippi River is to the North American Continent. In an earlier age men would have worshiped the Mississippi, but in this age we can do better, we can improve it. To this all our efforts should be directed, and we should continually bear in mind that no other improvement, ancient or modern, relating to the interests of commerce has ever commanded the attention of men equal in importance ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... imperial city, exclusively for court officials; its Tartar division and Chinese division, all completed according to the grand khan and Confucius. Happy Celestials! There is nothing more to be done, nothing to reconstruct, nothing to improve; it stands alone, the only city in all the world that is absolutely finished and perfect. But of a truth our public works sink into insignificance beside those of the ancient barbarians, the great wall and canal of China, the pyramids ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft
... girl has endless ambition. She has a hunger for knowledge, for opportunities to better herself, to get on in the world, to improve. There is ample material in the factories as they exist for forming a new, higher, superior class of industrial art labourers. There is a great work to be accomplished by those who are willing to give their time and their ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... settle in any. At once obstinate and fickle, he complains of innovations, and is never sated with novelty. He is perpetually busied in reformations, and is continually wedded to his errors. If he dwells in a cave, he would improve it into a cottage; if he has already built, he would still build to a greater extent. But he does, not propose to make rapid and hasty transitions; his steps are progressive and slow; and his force, like the power of a spring, silently presses on every resistance; an effect is sometimes produced ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... temporal nature—and it is not only temporal—for which I ought to render so many thanks as my connection with the Earlham family. It has given a colour to my life. Its influence was most positive, and pregnant with good at that critical period between school and manhood. They were eager to improve; I caught the infection. I was resolved to please them, and in the college at Dublin, at a distance from all my friends and all control, their influence and the desire to please them kept me hard at my ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... teeming with all the comforts of life.—And where then stood the town of Losantiville with its three or four little cabins and their twenty inmates, is now to be seen a flourishing city with its splendid edifices, and a population of 26,513 souls. Continuing thus progressively to improve, the mind of man, "pervading and far darting" as it is, can scarcely picture the state which may be there exhibited in the lapse of a ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... take a broad view of a case in all its bearings. And so it has come about that the results of operations upon the interior of the abdomen have been improving day by day. And doubtless they will continue to improve. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... one of a shivering handful who awaited the diligence for the Furka Pass; and an ominous drizzle made me thankful that my telegram of the previous day had been too late to secure me an outside seat. It was quite damp enough within. Nor did the day improve as we drove, or the view attract me in the least. It was at its worst as a sight, and I at mine as a sightseer. I have as little recollection of my fellow-passengers; but I still see the page in the hotel register at the Rhone ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... (and had been one of the few who owned a nugget), instead of in these times of universal gold-leaf, glitter without weight, and shining shallowness of mere surface. Vigor is better than refinement, and to create better than to improve, and to conceive better than to combine. I wonder if the world, or rather the human mind, will ever really grow decrepit, and the fountain of beauty in men's souls run dry to the dregs; or will the manifestations only change, and the eternal spirit reveal ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... other parts of the kingdom, far less aptitude for music is shown among the working classes. The singing in the churches is, for the most part, of the lowest order. In many parishes considerable pains have, of late, been taken in order to improve the psalmody, but no corresponding effect has been produced. In the agricultural districts of the south of England, no songs are heard lightening the daily toil of the labourer, and the very plough-boys ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... afterwards in General Fairfax's and Cromwell's, coaches were an ordinary part of the camp equipage. The roads, meantime, were as they have been described, viz., ditches, morasses, and sometimes channels for the course of small brooks. Nor did they improve, except for short reaches, and under peculiar local advantages, throughout that century. Spite of the roads, however, publick carriages began to pierce England, in various lines, from the era of 1660. Circumstantial notices of these may be found in Lord Auckland's (Sir ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... always had their head bumped whenever the ferry-boat arrived. It was a heavy and cumbersome machine, and the ferry-boy was not a good punter. He admitted this frankly, which was creditable of him. But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was wrong. His method was to arrange the punt before starting in a line with the point towards which he wished to proceed, and then to push hard, without ever looking behind him, until something suddenly stopped him. This was sometimes the bank, sometimes ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... ingeniously remarks that the remedies classed as "an old woman's recipe" are those oftenest prescribed, to the glory of her sex, who by patience, humanity and observation have invented without the help of Galen and Hippocrates an infinity of reliefs for the sick which their adherents can neither improve nor disapprove. She makes her final point on the question of moral superiority. It is sometimes stated "that some women have been more flagitious than any men, but that in nowise redounds to the dishonor of our sex in general. The corruption of the best is ever ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... keep you to that bargain. Now, sit down; listen to the newspaper, and improve your mind as to what the world is doing. It ought to be doing something, with the new century it began this year. Did it not seem very odd at first to ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... the storm of fire around me that I nearly dropped my rifle so as to improve my pace, and all the moisture left my mouth. Holding grimly on I at last cleared the exposed ground, and jumped through into the Japanese barricades. In their rage the Chinese soldiery rushed into the open ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... thrifty, well-to-do man, anxious to give his children greater advantages than he had enjoyed, and to improve the fine place of which he was justly proud. Mrs. Grant was a notable housewife, as ambitious and industrious as her husband, but too busy to spend any time on the elegancies of life, though always ready to help the poor and sick like ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... subdivided into a great number of different branches, each of which affords occupation to a peculiar tribe or class of philosophers; and this subdivision of employment in philosophy, as well as in every other business, improve dexterity, and saves time. Each individual becomes more expert in his own peculiar branch, more work is done upon the whole, and the quantity of science is ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... cried the farmer, fearful lest the master should be minded to improve on the pupil. E23, with relaxed mouth, gave himself up to the opium that is meat, tobacco, and medicine to ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... agriculture, or they are the foundation truths or principles upon which all agriculture is based. Having found these conditions, the next most important step is to find out how to bring them about in the soil, or, if they already exist, how to keep them or to improve them. This brings us, then, to a study ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... Immodesty of speech or action in public places, however, is rare, even among those women who change their man so often as it suits their caprice or convenience. Both the married and unmarried have apparently not neglected their opportunities to improve upon the native stock by the introduction of foreign blood. There are Russian, English, Canadian, American, Chinese and Negro Hydas; Hydas with fiery red hair, tow heads, blue eyes, and all complexions from black to pale white. Many of these homeless half-breeds are ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... home?" Xenophon replied that since he had been abroad, he had not sacrificed to that god. Accordingly Eucleides counselled him to sacrifice in the old customary way: he was sure that his fortune would improve. The next day Xenophon went on to Ophrynium and sacrificed, offering a holocaust of swine, after the custom of his family, and the signs which he obtained were favourable. That very day Bion and Nausicleides arrived ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... famous work the 'Ruva-Kalama' descended by oral tradition from mouth to mouth till it came to us in its 'improved' present condition. 'Improved!'" and Sah-luma laughed disdainfully,—"As if the mumbling of an epic poem from grandsire to grandson could possibly improve it! ... it would rather be deteriorated, if not altogether changed into the merest doggerel! Nay, nay!—the 'Ruva-Kalama,' is the achievement of one great mind,—not twenty Oruzels were born in succession to write it,—there was, there could ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... St Julians, and her unrivalled information, the health of the king did not improve: but still it was the hay fever, only the hay fever. An admission had been allowed to creep into the Court Circular, that "his majesty has been slightly indisposed within the last few days;" but then it was soon followed by a very ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... number of unemployed in London was estimated by the Mansion House Committee at 20,000. This vast reservoir of unemployed labour is the bane of all efforts to raise the scale of living, to improve the condition of labour. Men hungering to death for lack of opportunity to earn a crust are the materials from which "blacklegs" are made, by whose aid the labourer is constantly defeated in his attempts to ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... made by a divided court—dividing differently on the different points. Judge Douglas does not discuss the merits of the decision, and in that respect I shall follow his example, believing I could no more improve on McLean and Curtis than he ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... provinces; their proper place was Italy, and he allowed them to go abroad only when they were in office or in the service of the governors. He formed large engineering plans, a plan to drain the Pontine marches and the Fucine lake, a plan to form a new channel for the Tiber, another to improve the roads, another to cut the Isthmus of Corinth. These were his employments during the few months of life which were left to him after the close of the war. His health was growing visibly weaker, but his superhuman energy remained unimpaired. He ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... city folks coming out here just to get a deed and then leaving the country," added another. "If they ain't going to improve the land they oughtn't to ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... deep sonorous Tone This Belfry King sits on his throne; And when the merry Bells go round, Adds to and mellows ev'ry Sound; So in a just and well pois'd State, Where all Degrees possess due Weight, One greater Pow'r one greater Tone Is ceded to improve their own." ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... might with great advantage be adopted by our own large cities, which are lamentably wanting in a good and liberal supply of fresh water—greedy monopolists charging what they choose, and giving us the precious fluid clean or unclean, when or how they like. The Government might do much to improve this state of things by constructing aqueducts ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... But Mr. Fearing, whatever faults you may think he had—and faults, too, that you think you could mend in him—at any rate, he was never heedless. Everybody has his fault to find with poor Mr. Fearing. Everybody blames poor Mr. Fearing. Everybody can improve upon poor Mr. Fearing. But I will say again for Mr. Fearing that he was never heedless. Had Peter been on the road at that period he would have stood up for Mr. Fearing, and would have taken his judges and would have said to them, with some scorn—Go to, and pass the ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... these were made under many difficulties; but they answered the purpose of showing what might be done, with proper tools, at a future period. There was not any doubt, but that the flax plant would considerably improve by cultivation; and the manufacture of woollens promised to be of great benefit to the settlement, whenever a sufficiency of the raw materials was collected. Necessity has been long known as the parent of resources, and the poverty of the public stores in the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... exchanged all the words that there was time for before Bertha, at the sound of the re-opening door, flew down to put her hand into Humfrey's and grasp it tightly, looking in his face instead of speaking. 'Thank you,' he said, returning the pressure, and was gone. 'We improve as we go on. Number three is the best of my brothers-in-law, Phoebe,' said Bertha, lightly. Then leaving Phoebe to pacify Maria about the flowers, she went into her own room, and cried bitterly ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... experience a weight, like that of lead in his forehead, a raging thirst, and a burning fever. Now it was that our poor solitary hermit felt the magnitude of his imprudence and the weight of the evils of his peculiar situation. That he was about to be seriously ill he knew, and it behoved him to improve the time that remained to him, to the utmost. Everything useful to him was in the ship, and thither it became indispensable for him to repair, if he wished to retain even a chance for life. Opening an umbrella, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... make the next season the banner one in baseball in all our school's history. This will call for some real work, for constantly sustained effort. Every man who goes into the baseball training squad will be expected to do his full share of general gymnastic work here, and to improve every favorable chance for such cross-country running and other outdoor ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... exercise, catch birds, improve your figures!" Poppy cried, clapping her hands encouragingly as she stood at the head of the flight of iron steps down which, with her foot, she shot the toy spaniels unceremoniously into the ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... has never proved sufficient to restrain or improve them, they become enamoured with the idea of absolute license, and are far too high-spirited to entertain any apprehensions of future poverty. These gallant-minded and truly enviable fellows betake themselves, on their arrival, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... inconvenient to me in 1867, in the Luxemburg question, and in 1875 and afterwards on the question whether it was desirable, as regards a war which we should probably have to face sooner or later, to bring it on antici-pando before the adversary could improve his preparations. I have always opposed the theory which says "Yes"; not only at the Luxemburg period, but likewise subsequently for twenty years, in the conviction that even victorious wars cannot be justified unless they are ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... said the fair Josephine, anticipating my hopes with all the unembarrassed straightforwardness imaginable, "I shall be delighted to improve ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... which in good sense, which must be tried by reading over the English sentence warily, and judging how the sentence will bear it, but when it cannot be altered, salvo sensu, it is a conjunction?" Cannot we, for pity's sake, to assist the learner's memory, and to improve his intellect, substitute some sentences a little more connected, and perhaps a little more ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... did not improve when, at the end of September, Bonner commenced an inquisition into the conduct and opinions of the clergy of his diocese. In every parish he appointed a person or persons to examine whether the minister was or ever had been married; whether, ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... how. And for the Duke, he may pass among men of the town for wit, and among soldiers for valour, among courtiers for manners and for form; and why, with his high rank and immense fortune, you should throw away an opportunity, which, as I could now improve it——" ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... to hear him speak so cheerfully, as it had been customary for Walter to complain of feeling worse on dreary days. Then she thought, "It must be that new medicine, for he certainly is better, and I pray God he will continue to improve." ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... her husband sometimes seemed to be depressed and overworked. She tried to cheer him up. Realising uneasily that he was still regarded as a foreigner, she hoped that by conferring upon him the title of Prince Consort (1857) she would improve his position in the country. "The Queen has a right to claim that her husband should be an Englishman," she wrote. But unfortunately, in spite of the Royal Letters Patent, Albert remained as foreign ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... to enter a hut or other dwelling. If he could pass muster anywhere during his early novitiate it would be in small inns and on the road; so to these places we confined ourselves. Yes, he certainly did the best he could, but what of that? He didn't improve a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the long-estranged father and son we will pass over in silence. Harry had not been at the Grange long before he began to improve, and soon hinted that, instead of a funeral, there would have to be a wedding for him. Master Drury too began to grow stronger, but the overthrow of his faith in King Charles was a blow he could not recover entirely; and although he confessed to his son that he believed he was right in espousing ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... that it cost him a great effort to remain deaf to the call of his people, but that if matters did not improve, he should feel it his duty to come forward and ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 40, August 12, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... A person healed by Christian Science is not only healed of his disease, but he is advanced morally and spiritually. The mortal body being but the objective state of the mortal mind, this mind must be renovated to improve the body. ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... away still protesting that he really couldn't think of it for an instant. But he thought a good deal of it during the next week and his temper did not improve. "Pettifer has rubbed off the finer edges of his nature," he said to himself. "It is a pity—a great pity. But thirty years of life in a lawyer's office must no doubt have that effect. I regret very much that Pettifer should have imagined that I would condescend ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... this element of familiar matrimony and the duplication of his resources for trotting. He had not yet asked his cousin to marry him; but he meant to do so as soon as he had taken his degree. Lizzie was serenely conscious of his intention, and she had made up her mind that he would improve. Her brother, who was very fond of this light, quick, competent little Lizzie, saw on his side no reason to interpose. It seemed to him a graceful social law that Clifford and his sister should become engaged; ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... cardinal point of financial policy. Mr. Jefferson, October 11, 1809, wrote from Monticello, "I consider the fortunes of our republic as depending in an eminent degree on the extinction of the public debt before we engage in any war; because, that done, we shall have revenue enough to improve our country in peace and defend it in war, without incurring either new taxes or new loans." And urging Gallatin to retain his post, he closed with the striking words, "I hope, then, you will abandon entirely the idea you expressed to me, and that you will consider the eight ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... almost friendly neutrality continued. Roger spent the hours in striding about his acres, planning how to improve them and curtail expenses here and there. The farm to be sure was neglected; but here and there he noted improvements, and caught himself wondering if the credit of them belonged to the old man. He left the household to his stepmother, and returned to find his meals ready and his ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... somewhat pallid face of the life-long teetotaller, and eyes that have the mingled expression of wrath and pity common among the leaders of forlorn hopes and new crusades. Mr. Wilson, the member for Middlesbrough, is restless, and moves about a good deal. He has resolved to bring in a Bill to improve the wretched condition of "Poor Jack," in whose company he spent many years of his own hard life; and there is a gleam of triumph as an Irish member, in accordance with a previous arrangement, gives notice of a Bill for that purpose when the hazard ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... discussing the remaining thirty-one. Similarly the first reason why a Hindu cannot be Europeanized is quite sufficient, and does not call for any additional ones. This reason is that by doing so a Hindu would not improve his position. Were he such an adept of science as to rival Tyndall, were he such a clever politician as to eclipse the genius of Disraeli and Bismarck, as soon as he actually had given up his caste and kinsmen, he would indubitably find himself in the position ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... possession of Mr. E.G. Squier. By him it was first published, but in a partial and incomplete manner, much of the original text and many of the mnemonic symbols being omitted, and no effort being made to improve ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... parts of England—viz., in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Somersetshire—the briony is called mandrake, and a small portion of the root is frequently given to horses among their food to make them sleek and improve their condition, and it is still also sold 'for medicinal and other purposes.' Yet in other places it is called 'Devil's Food,' because Satan is supposed to be perpetually watching over it and to jealously guard its magical properties. It is partly on this account, and partly because of its ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... matter," said she, "Irma can wait. But if we do not improve our victory, they will be back again with a whole army of men before we ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... tend to him. Nancy let me hold him purty soon. Folks often ask me if Abe was a good lookin' baby. Well, now, he looked just like any other baby, at fust—like red cherry pulp squeezed dry. An' he didn't improve none as he growed older. Abe never was much fur looks. I ricollect how Tom joked about Abe's long legs when he was toddlin' round the cabin. He growed out o' his clothes ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... quite ready to take up the challenge, but only on condition that Brock would blow the bellows for him. Loki now began to feel uneasy, for he had hoped the dwarf would decline to compete when he heard what were the gifts he had to improve upon. But Sindri only wagged his long beard at them contemptuously, and Loki's head began to tremble for the result of ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... would say to her, "Ah, if we all wore as well as you do, my dear! You've hardly changed at all since we remember you in short petticoats." So far as she did change the change was for the better. (It is to be hoped we do improve a little as we get older!) She was still liberal and economical. She still planned and hoped indefatigably. She was still tender-hearted in the sense ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... approval of every "State Socialist." Anything that can be done to elevate the health of the nation, and to increase its industrial efficiency by the teaching of trades, will pay the nation, considered as a going concern, a business undertaking of all its capitalists. It might not improve the opportunity of the wage earners to rise to better-paid positions, because it would augment competition among skilled laborers; while it would probably improve wages somewhat, it might not advance them proportionately ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... the indictments, being thirteen in number. The next morning the children came with their father to the lodgings of Sir Matthew Hale, very well, and quite restored to their usual health. Mr. Pacey, being asked at what time their health began to improve, replied, that they were quite well in half an hour after ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... an old one. It was made when we were both poor, and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... obliging the magistrates not to publish any letters they received till he had diminished the credit of them, by spreading disadvantageous reports. 19. One or two accidents, also, helped to widen the separation; namely, the death of Julia,[5] Pompey's wife, who had not a little contributed to improve the harmony that subsisted between them; and the destruction of Crassus, who had conducted the war against the Parthians with so little prudence, that he suffered them to get the advantage of him in almost every skirmish; ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... also very necessary to improve a Genius. It not only shines the more, by exerting it self, but, like the Limbs of an Humane Body, gathers Strength by frequent and vigorous Use, and becomes more pliable and ready for Action. There must indeed sometimes be a Relaxation. Our Minds will not at present bear to be continually ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... great, but I resolved to act without passion. I saw the advantage the Pretender and his council, who disposed of things better for me than I should have done for myself, had given me; but I saw likewise that I must improve this advantage with ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... got us the hand-grenades—Schenk has just started making them—and he was one of those who pitched them into the middle of the Germans. Ha! Ha! Schenk will know that they were his own grenades when he hears about it. I guess it will not improve his temper." ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... administration of stimulants. When she came down stairs, outwardly calm but looking as if she had seen a ghost, everybody, who was in the secret of past days, knew, and respected her silence. Even Mr. Douglas, who had thought to improve his distant cousinship, read there the vanity of all his hopes, and bestowed a double share of attention upon Miss Graves, charming in her genuine sorrow over her considerate employer. Nobody cared to go to church, but the good Squire pointed out that few could be of any service ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... that are in the state they come over in, not such as have been put into fresh pickle, mixed with red paint,[280-*] which some add to improve the complexion of the fish; it has been said, that others have a trick of putting anchovy liquor on pickled sprats;[280-] you will easily discover this by washing one of them, and tasting the flesh ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... efforts to promote and improve economic education in the schools are of special appeal to those who are concerned ... both with education and the progress of the free enterprise system. The Business-Education program and the numerous College-Community Research Centers it has sponsored, together with the use of CED publications ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... young Mr. Hopkins so agreeable a friend. His poetry is better than some which I see printed in the village papers, and seems generally unexceptionable in its subjects and tone. I do not believe he is a dangerous companion, though the habit of writing verse does not always improve the character. I think I have seen it make more than one of my acquaintances idle, conceited, sentimental, and frivolous,—perhaps it found them so already. Don't make too much of his talent, and particularly don't ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... persuaded himself that the time had arrived when he might resume his authority. He unexpectedly entered the council, and in a tone of dignity reproached the members with their affected delays and their breach of trust. They had been established to reform the State, improve the revenue, and discharge his debts; but they had neglected these objects, and had labored only to enrich themselves and to perpetuate their own power. He should, therefore, no longer consider them as his council, but employ such other remedies as he thought proper. He immediately ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... in God and yet to seek to improve upon His ways! what a strange and incredible contradiction! And yet what made the position a more bewildering one still was the certainty that these very inner impulses to amend, to improve, came from God as clearly as the very evils that He permitted and indeed originated. What was ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... real objection—the main objection—to the colonel's system was that it kept a large number of officers, most of whom were educated gentlemen, hammering all day long at an endless routine of trivial duties, allowing actually no time in which they could read, study, or improve their minds; but, as ill luck would have it, the three young gentlemen who decided to present to the colonel this view of the case had been devoting what spare time they could find to a lively game of poker down at "the store," and their petition for "more time to themselves" brought down ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... quarter, then, Darry," sighed Midshipman Wolgast. "Farl, help me out. Tell me some way in which I can improve my fitness for the post of honor that has been thrust upon me. I assure ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... "Dukkerin," said I, "is fortune—a man or woman's destiny; don't you like the word?" "Word! d'ye ca' that a word? a bonnie word," said he. "Perhaps you'll tell us what it is in Scotch," said I, "in order that we may improve our language by a Scotch word; a pal of mine has told me that we have taken a great many words from foreign lingos." "Why, then, if that be the case, fellow, I will tell you; it is e'en 'spaeing,'" said he very seriously. "Well, then," said I, "I'll keep my own word, which ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... same strategy was followed: first the establishment of propaganda centers to which Nazis and Nazi sympathizers could gravitate—under the cloak of bodies seeking to improve relations between the Sudeten Germans and the Czech Government; then the utilization of propaganda headquarters and branches as centers for espionage. Shortly before the Munich Pact, Standarte II again came into being, creating disorders which, when Czech police tried to ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... being under an obligation to you. It will improve my position, too, for then I shall not feel that I am ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... were, and very loudly. I don't wonder at your not liking that man: I don't. Perhaps he'll improve though. We will not judge him yet. So you're coming all ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... monopolised, so to speak, the historical genius and the historical learning of a whole generation, and left little, indeed, of either for his contemporaries. He remains the one historian of the eighteenth century whom modern research has neither set aside nor threatened to set aside. We may correct and improve from the stores which have been opened since Gibbon's time; we may write again large parts of his story from other and often truer and more wholesome points of view, but the work of Gibbon as a whole, as ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... reflected, considering the scarcity, a boy—this boy, in fact, cleaned up—Pattie Batch was all the time running the mottled infant over with sharply appraising eyes—yes, the child had possibilities, unquestionably so, which soap and water might astonishingly improve—and, in ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... Hamilton, and most of the founders of the Constitution, as also by all the great minds of history, by Aristotle, Cicero, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Leibnitz. Wasson however did not look to the past, but wished to improve in a rational manner on what we already have. He considered woman suffrage as a political monstrosity, and considered it even more dangerous ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... was very quiet. M. le Duc de Berry appeared dispirited, embarrassed, and vexed. Even after we had partaken of a splendid and delicate dinner, to which an immense number of other guests sat down, he did not improve. We were conducted to the Porte Saint- Honore with the same pomp as that in the midst, of which we had entered Paris. During the rest of the journey to Versailles M. le Duc de Berry ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... mouths that ever smiled upon enraptured mankind. Nature had given her just a little more chin than a Greek sculptor would have allowed her; but, by way of make-weight, the same careless Nature had bestowed upon her a throat which Phidias himself might have sought in vain to improve upon. And Nature had planted this young lady's head upon her shoulders with a grace so rare that it must needs be a happy accident in the workmanship of that immortal artist. Indeed it seemed as if Charlotte Halliday owed her charms to a series of happy accidents. The black eyebrows which ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... he interrupted. "She's going to improve the place—paint it, and put in a cellar and a furnace, and build a porch, and lay a ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... at present be said on this branch of the question is that the evils of the recruiting system which has been so far adopted are abundantly clear, that the Portuguese Government is endeavouring to improve that system, but that it would as yet be premature to pronounce any opinion on the results which are likely to ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... hermit plac'd Where never human footstep trac'd, Less fit to play the part; The lucky moment to improve, And just to stop, and just to move, With self-respecting art: But, ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys, Which I too keenly taste, The solitary can despise, Can want, and yet be blest! He needs not, he heeds not, Or human love or hate, Whilst I here, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... began to perceive that they were on a wild-goose chase, and getting into a country perfectly barren to the trapper. They now came to a halt, and be-thought themselves how to make up for lost time, and improve the remainder of the season. It was thought best to divide their forces and try different trapping grounds. While Dripps went in one direction, Vanderburgh, with about fifty men, proceeded in another. The latter, in his headlong march had got into the very heart of the Blackfoot country, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... thing I wanted from you is your considered opinion as to my job on the organization as a whole. And don't pull your punches. Are we in good shape or not? What can I do to improve ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it. What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verse, and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapaests and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as he is generally much in the wrong, so ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... iv shoes ye made. Th' fellow at th' shoe store puts th' money in a bank owned be ye'er boss. Ye'er boss sees ye're dhrinkin' a good deal an' be th' look iv things th' distillery business ought to improve. So he lends th' money to a distiller. Wan day th' banker obsarves that ye've taken th' pledge, an' havin' fears f'r th' distilling business, he gets his money back. I owe th' distiller money an' he comes to me. I have paid out me ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... work, is it, Joseph, me boy? Joseph wore a coat o' many colours, ye know, but he was the same old Joe all the time. You'll niver improve, I'm thinkin'." ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... advantageous to sow more or less of some other kind or kinds of grass or clover along with it. When grown for hay it is usually preferable to sow the seed without admixture. But there may be instances in which medium red or alsike clover may improve the crop the first year or two that it is mown for hay. But where red clover grows much more vigorously than alfalfa the first season, it should not be thus sown in any considerable quantities, ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... painful suspense and anxiety passed. Clara did not improve in the least. Mrs. Mears called to see her every few days, but dared not venture to tell her that her husband had written to Fisher. She was afraid to fill her mind with this hope, lest it should fail, and the shock prove too severe. ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... expression of your idea, but the advice I have given is as pertinent to any one who uses his mind as it is to the architect. To what, specifically, should the architectural student devote his attention in order to improve the quality of his work? My own answer would be that he should devote himself to the study of music, of the human figure, and to the study of Nature—"first, last, midst, and ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Signior, believe me (upon my relation) for what I tell you, the world shall not improve. I have been in the Indies, (where this herb grows) where neither myself nor a dozen gentlemen more (of my knowledge) have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the space of one and twenty weeks, but tobacco only. Therefore it cannot be but 'tis most divine. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... interest of his master his continual regard. We are given to understand, also, by the ballads of the London 'Prentice, Whittingham the Mayor, &c. that hang behind him, that he lays out his pence on things that may improve his mind, and enlighten his understanding. On the contrary, his fellow-'prentice, with worn-out coat and uncombed hair, overpowered with beer, indicated by the half-gallon pot before him, is fallen asleep; and from the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... was most depressing—and then there was much confusion prevailing around Rossville; and, this condition of things doubtless increasing my gloomy reflections, it did not seem to me that the outlook for the next day was at all auspicious, unless the enemy was slow to improve his present advantage. Exhaustion soon quieted all forebodings, though, and I fell into a sound sleep, from which I was not ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... verbal criticism and interpretation, are often least competent to carry out their own precepts. Grammarians are not poets by profession, but may be so per accidens. I do not at this moment remember two emendations on Homer, calculated to substantially improve the poetry of a passage, although a mass of remarks, from Herodotus down to Loewe, have given us the history of a thousand minute points, without which our Greek knowledge would be ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... demonstrably unpoetical. The famous senior wrangler who returned a borrowed volume of Paradise Lost with the remark that he did not see what it proved, was right—so far as he went. And conversely (as he would have said) no sensible man would think to improve Newton's Principia and Darwin's Origin of Species by casting them into blank verse; or Euclid's Elements by writing them out in ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tormented with troubled reflections, and when at last I did fall into an uneasy slumber of short duration, it was disturbed by horrid dreams. In this condition I determined to take a trip to Europe, but in spite of all the attentions of physicians and change of scene and climate, I did not improve, and so returned home with no earthly hope of ever again being able to leave ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... never write a cosmology. I shall never be able to evolve a new system of ethics. I cannot improve on Plato's ideal state. I know I am a very ignorant man, with only a few ideas worth uttering, with a hand that is very heavy, with a mind that works to little purpose save when it deals with politics and war. In short"—and Drusus's voice grew really pathetic—"all ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... who poisoned her two brothers and her own father? She was captured scarcely three weeks ago; and that very monster in human form could almost die of hunger and thirst for the sake of her rascally son, who is a common soldier in the imperial army; at last she took to concocting poisons, not to improve her own wretched condition, but to send the shameless wretch means for a fresh debauch. I have known a thousand similar cases, but I will only mention that of one of the wildest and blood-thirstiest of robbers, who had evaded the vigilance ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the souls of your neighbours if they will let you; and for that reason you must cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents that attract people to the hearing of the Word. You have got a fine voice, and it will improve with judicious use. Your father is now on the outlook for a teacher of elocution to instruct you how to make the best of it, and speak with ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... to be of better quality when artificially removed from the tree, which may be effected without injury to the tree itself. After the tree has attained twenty-five years it may be barked, and the operation is afterward repeated once in every seven years. The quality of the cork seems to improve with the increasing age of the tree, which is said to live over one hundred and fifty years. The bark is taken off during ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... and the result is that institutions become wiser and knowledge as such increases; but the young man, although more cultivated, is just as presumptuous, and not less fallible to-day than he ever was. So that absolutely there is progress, and relatively there is none. Circumstances improve, but merit remains the same. The whole is better, perhaps, but man is not positively better—he is only different. His defects and his virtues change their form, but the total balance does not show him to be the richer. A thousand things advance, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which fit into the defective portions. The bottom of the cell particularly comes in for after-touches. As the natural curve of the larger pieces is not enough to provide a cup without cracks in it, the Bee does not fail to improve the work with two or three small oval pieces ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... doubt it could not have been very pleasant to him to see a young handsome fellow paying court to his widow before his own face as it were. After I once got into the house on the transubstantiation dispute, I found a dozen more occasions to improve my intimacy, and was scarcely ever out of her Ladyship's doors. The world talked and blustered; but what cared I? The men cried fie upon the shameless Irish adventurer; but I have told my way of silencing such envious people: and my sword had by this time got such ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The country began to improve; the savage heaths were left behind, and we saw hills and dales, cork trees, and azinheiras, on the last of which trees grows that kind of sweet acorn called bolotas, which is pleasant as a chestnut, and which ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... insect was alive. Thus, in this strangely fortunate way, we may know and study the insects which, millions of years ago, fed on the flowers or bored into the bark of trees. We have found no way to improve on Nature in this respect, for to-day when we desire to mount a specimen permanently for microscopical work, we imbed it ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... cities, frame laws, bind together, beautify, exalt the elements of this world, by creeds that habitually subject them to a reference to another. The ant and the bee and the beaver congregate and construct; but they do not improve. Man improves because the future impels onward that which is not found in the ant, the bee, and the beaver,—that which was gone from the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... some Scotch failures led to a Change-Alley panic, and the downfall of Alexander Fordyce, who, for years, had been the most thriving jobber in London. He was a hosier in Aberdeen, but came to London to improve his fortunes. The money game was in his favour. He was soon able to purchase a large estate. He built a church at his private cost, and spent thousands in trying to obtain a seat in Parliament. Marrying a lady of title, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... barrels in ox-wagons to the shore to be filled, then they boil the water for twenty-four hours, in fact till it is all boiled away. They use this salt, when they have no other, for their butter, which it does not at all improve; but the butter brought to us is generally unsalted. They never make salt unless driven to it because the process involves the burning of so much wood. They also make a black-looking soap, but very rarely, as it takes days and nights to make, and requires not only much ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... domestic institution is broken up by the active social circulation of the upper classes in their own orbit, or its stagnant isolation made impossible by the overcrowding of the working classes, manners improve enormously. In the middle classes themselves the revolt of a single clever daughter (nobody has yet done justice to the modern clever Englishwoman's loathing of the very word 'home'), and her insistence ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... the other direction. But there was Neefit still confronting him. "Only stick to her, Captain, and we'll pull through. I'll put her through her facings to-night. She's thinking of that orkard lout of a fellow just because he's standing to be a Parl'ament gent." This did not improve matters, and Ralph absolutely ran away,—ran away, and escaped to his hotel. He would try again in the morning, would still make her his wife if she would have him! And then swore a solemn oath that in such case he would never ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... ASQUITH wishes to be a success in the House he must improve his powers of repartee. At present his back-answers are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... that this is not the prime intent and grand business, to torment you, as it were, before the time. There is some other more beautiful and satisfying structure to be raised out of this foundation. I would have you improve it thus, to commend the necessity, the absolute necessity, of a Redeemer, and to make him beautiful in your eyes. Do not dwell upon that, as if it were the ultimate or last work, but know that you are called in this rational way, to come out of yourselves into this glorious liberty of the sons ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Sir, pray excuse the wretched stuff I write; perhaps I may improve by being in this town, and then my letters will be less unworthy your reading. Meantime, I am, Your dutiful ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... to the Commons' amendments to the Lords' amendments to the Government of Ireland Bill were agreed to. Sir L. WORTHINGTON-EVANS thought to improve the occasion by a neat little speech expressing goodwill to Ireland, and, much to his surprise, found himself in collision with the SPEAKER, who observed that this was not the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 29, 1920 • Various
... teacher of penmanship. All boys and girls should take pride in having the pages of their journals as neat and handsome as possible. Compare one day's writing with that of the one before, and try to improve every day. Keeping a journal cultivates habits of observation, correct and concise expression, and gives capital practice in composition, spelling, punctuation, and all the little things which go ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... she's one of those people who improve on acquaintance," continued Enid. "I couldn't bear her at one time, and now I believe I'm going to like her immensely. You can't think how jolly she can make herself. I'll never be naughty in her class again, or let anybody else be, if I can help it. On my ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the mother was kept in a suspense that served to protract the boy's illness, but, at the end of this time, largely owing to Mrs Gowler's advice, he began to improve. The day that his disquieting symptoms disappeared, which was also the day on which he recovered his appetite, was signalised by the arrival of Perigal's reply to Mavis's letter from Durley Road, announcing the birth of their son. In this, he congratulated her on ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... writing the marriage invitation and other business, which the Brahman is willing to do for a consideration, so long as he does not have to enter their houses. Some of the impure castes eat beef, while others have abandoned it in order to improve their social position. At the other end of the scale are many well-educated Hindu gentlemen who have no objection to eat beef and may often have done so in England, though in India they may abstain out of deference to the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Frank and his sister were alone for a few moments she said, "I am going to do you a good turn to-day, Sir Mahomet, and have a headache," and, laughing a little, "if you are wise you will improve your opportunities and persuade your 'Sweet Alice' to go after pond lilies and leave me here. I noticed a most charming spot for a tete-a-tete on one side of that pond the other day, and I guess you can find it if you try. It's a mossy bank under a big tree, and out of sight ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... refinements, is always the creature that he is 'collecting' in them. In his wildest glades, this is still the species that he is busied with. He has brought him there to experiment on him, and that we may see the better what he is. He has brought him there to improve his arts, to reduce his conventional savageness, to re-refine his coarse refinements, not to make a wild-man of him. This is the Poet of the Woods; but he is a woodman, he carries an axe on his shoulder. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... no merit in conquering them: they must also sound forth their ignorance, or there would have been none in improving them. If the Britons were that wretched people they are represented by the Romans, they could not be worth conquering: no man subdues a people to improve them, but to profit by them. Though the Romans at that time were in their meridian of splendor, they pursued Britain a whole century before they reduced it; which indicates that they considered it as a valuable prize. Though ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... it suffice to remark that from Lisburn as a centre the linen trade in all its branches—flax growing, scutching, spinning, weaving and bleaching—spread over the whole of the Hertfort estate, giving profitable employment to the tenants, circulating money, enabling them to build and improve and work the estate into the rich and beautiful garden described by Mrs. Hall;—all this work of improvement has been carried on, all or nearly all the costly investments on the land have been made, without leases and in dependence on tenant-right. We have seen what ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... better than that by-and-by, Mellor," said the youth addressed as Murrell. "Your education was neglected as a Gargoyle. You'll improve as you go along. But, I say, Wyndham, what are you going to do with the specimen you've got? You can't stick it in the museum, you know. So turn it over to us again. We won't hurt it. We'll only give it a run to the sand-pit, and a roll down. It will do it good. Eating ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... pretty well in health, and catches a few insects; but he is very untidy, as you may imagine by his clothes being all torn to pieces by the time we arrived here. He will no doubt improve and will soon ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... police had now become so scandalously frequent that in November a Proclamation was issued suppressing Sinn Fein and kindred organisations. It did nothing to improve the state of the country, which grew worse than ever in the last few weeks of the year. On the 19th of December a carefully planned attempt on the life of the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord French, proved how complete was the impunity relied upon by the organised assassins who, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... and agriculture, were almost wholly unknown among them. They had felt the invasions of the Danes and the other northern tribes; but these inroads, which had spread barbarism in other parts of Europe, tended rather to improve the Irish; and the only towns which were to be found in the island had been planted along the coast by the freebooters of Norway and Denmark. The other inhabitants exercised pasturage in the open country; sought protection from any ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... Leicester's pride and ambition, and did not tend to improve his relations with the States. An English governor would in any case have had a difficult task, and Leicester had neither tact nor capacity as a statesman, and no pretensions as a military leader. He possessed no knowledge of the institutions of the country or the character of the people, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... my old waterproof, I sallied out and ran the gauntlet of some snipers from the German lines, then dived into my ditch, floundered up it in mud for about a quarter of a mile, perhaps more, secured some Engineers I have at last got hold of to improve the place, went on, saw Major Wright and Capt. Tee, both as deaf as possible from cold, etc. The water was steadily rising in their trenches, and had already flooded their dug-out; another one had fallen in, whilst their third was leaking badly; so, on the whole, they were not in a good way. Then ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... in a good and liberal supply of fresh water—greedy monopolists charging what they choose, and giving us the precious fluid clean or unclean, when or how they like. The Government might do much to improve this state of things by constructing aqueducts after the ancient ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... a very friendly clock; For this truth to all I tell, Life is short, improve it well; Tick-tock-tick-tock: " That is what ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... he, "my strength would become sternness. Nature gave me a despotic disposition. I have had, and have still, many times the greatest difficulty to control it; but with God's help I shall succeed! My Elise, we will improve ever. On the children's account, in order to make them happy, we will endeavour to ennoble ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... before me, and I wish to adopt the one most likely to procure me independence. I shall be in Edinburgh next week. I long to see you: your image is omnipresent to me; nay, I am convinced I would soon idolatrise it most seriously; so much do absence and memory improve the medium through which one sees the much-loved object. To-night, at the sacred hour of eight, I expect to meet you—at the Throne of Grace. I hope, as I go home tonight, to find a letter from you at the post office ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... suthin' out of their native country? Wot for? Did they ever improve? Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers, not so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they a sittin' home and smokin'. With their gold and silver candlesticks, and missions, and crucifixens, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... utilizing, and creating. Austria, as I take it, is succumbing to monetary difficulties, not because she has been extravagant, but because she has been slow at progress; because it has been the work of her rulers to repress rather than encourage the energies of her people; because she does not improve, utilize, and create. England has mastered her monetary difficulties because the genius of her government and her people has been exactly opposite to the genius of Austria. And the States of America will master their money difficulties, ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... with another deliverance, probably nearer to the heart of most of its constituency, saying: "The Negro is not a fit subject for Northern missionary effort. Northern money is not wanted to build him schools, and Northern teachers and preachers are not wanted to improve his mind nor to save his soul. He should be let alone. He is out in the water: let him swim. He should be left alone to work out his own salvation." The editor who says we must save him is an ex-Confederate officer who has always lived in the South. The editor who says he should be left alone ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... do, dear child," her father responded in tender tones. "I know my little girl wants to improve, and I shall do all I can ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... cultivated a great taste for painting, told me one evening that father had given him L150 and his blessing, and that he was going to London to improve himself in his art. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... people, whom he was one day to consider as his own. He pointed out the country which he designed for them; he caused it to be possessed by another laborious nation, who applied themselves to cultivate and adorn it; and to improve the future inheritance of the Israelites. He then fixed, in that country, the like number of families, as were to be settled in it, when the sons of Israel should, at the appointed time, take possession of it; and ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... offices in our possessions abroad, I wish to impress strongly on their minds that the only just or lawful way of governing a people—the only sure way, indeed, of maintaining authority over them—is to improve, to the utmost of our power, their religious, their moral and physical condition. Of course there may be prejudices to be overcome, and bad spirits to be dealt with; but let a people, however savage their natures, once understand ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... Kit. "Many of our best family names are from a humbler origin than that. But we must improve this chance to hunt that old chap: may not get another. And it won't do, nohow, to come clean up here to Hudson Bay and not go ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... have a word, too, about this tap-root question. From what has been said it is pretty clear that there is quite a difference of opinion. We sometimes think we can improve on nature in her ways by harsh methods and, while I know it is customary in the nurseries of the South to cut the tap-roots back pretty severely, I wonder, sometimes, whether that is ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... in those first days we made a beginning toward that object which was afterwards stated in our charter: "To provide a center for higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... improve the head station—and to think of Myra, a girl whom he had once met in Sydney, and who sent him newspapers, and, once or twice, at long intervals, had written him letters. He had answered these letters ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke
... optimism that leads to reform. Let me explain by using once more the parallel of patriotism. The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... as it concerns those transactions in which he once bore a part. In his endeavours to recall past conversations and intercourse with deceased friends, in particular, the powers of remembrance greatly improve by exercise. One revived idea produces another, till the mind is most agreeably and usefully occupied with ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... in the same manner as a particular person, may frequently not have capital sufficient both to improve and cultivate all its lands, to manufacture and prepare their whole rude produce for immediate use and consumption, and to transport the surplus part either of the rude or manufactured produce to those distant markets, where it can be exchanged for something for which ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... never attempted any of those lewder and more lascivious methods, of which you have had such delicious experience. Altogether, I cannot but say I am disappointed. My husband is loving, and very anxious that I should improve my mind in every way. You know I was rather more proficient than usual at school in Italian. My husband speaks it fluently, and as we mean to spend a winter at Rome, was anxious that I should have further instruction. He asked me if my school teacher was a good one, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... oration he had att his inauguration, and tho the Scots wer soouner preserved in France than any other strangers, yet it behooved to be extraordinary merits that adjudged the divinity chair to him befor so many candidats and rivals of their own nation. Bot being desirous to improve the talents heaven had bestowed on him in his oun countrey, he returned home, and about the year 1608 married that vertuous Gentlewoman, Mary Frazer, daughter to the Laird of Dores, and wes by Sr. Alexr. Arbuthnot of ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... open-tent style in front of a big rock. The rock reflects the fire, but now it is going out because of the rain. I think I shall let it go and close the tent till rain is over, thus keeping out wind and saving wood. To-night or to-morrow perhaps the weather will improve, so I can build fire, eat the rest of my moccasins and have some more bone broth. Then I can boil my belt and oil-tanned moccasins and a pair of cowhide mittens. They ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... adopted to improve the civil service of the Government have been adhered to as closely as has been practicable with the opposition with which they meet. The effect, I believe, has been beneficial on the whole, and has tended ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... and loved. However that may be at all events," he pursued, "I don't think, you know, that he's really playing, as you call it, any game. I believe he really wants to go back and take up a career. He's capable of one, you know, that will improve and enlarge him still more. He won't then," little Bilham continued to remark, "be my pleasant well-rubbed old-fashioned volume at all. But of course I'm beastly immoral. I'm afraid it would be a funny world altogether—a world with things the way I like them. I ought, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... are splendid people, hard working, thrifty and industrious, and make most excellent citizens. Although but few have had the opportunity to attend school, they are most intelligent farmers, ready and willing to adopt methods that will financially improve their business. The majority are, however, limited in land area and many times are obliged to crop their small farms to excess, for strawberries are the main cash crop, and very few who have more recently come here have the ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... to improve in spirits. It was the recreation from one's labor which every man needs. I surprised one or two of my former friends by throwing them a smile and a cheery word as I passed them on the streets. Several times I ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... what to me is one of the most important events of my life. Up to this time I had been a hopeless invalid. The doctors could not cure me. Under the care of some, my health would improve for a short time; but others would not undertake to do anything for me. After inquiring into my condition, they would say that it would be as easy to make a world as to restore me to health. I remember especially that this remark was made by the doctor who was attending me shortly before ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... proposed to Miss Mann to go to Helena, and act the part of the Good Samaritan to the colored people who had congregated there; to establish a hospital for the sick among them; to supply them with clothing and other necessaries, and in all possible ways to improve their condition. The offer was readily accepted by her, and in the month of January she arrived at Helena, with an ample supply of sanitary goods and clothing, and with letters commending her to the protection and aid of the commanding general, and to the chaplain of the post, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... as from a very long dream, and understood that I was better from seeing my father and mother smiling, and hearing Silvia singing softly. Oh, what a sad dream it was! Then I began to improve every day. The little mason came and made me laugh once more for the first time, with his hare's face; and how well he does it, now that his face is somewhat elongated through illness, poor fellow! And Coretti came; ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... But I can make the way down much easier. The steps are a simple matter, and I have often thought a charge of gunpowder would improve that bit where the rock hangs over. If I hadn't wanted to keep the place to myself I should have done it long ago. It certainly is dangerous now to anyone who ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... Icelander who had worked his passage down to Copenhagen and had found his stint as a wood-carver in a shipyard where it was his duty to carve out wonderful figureheads, after designs made by others. Gottschalk Thorwaldsen never thought to improve on a model, or change it in any way, or to model a figurehead himself. The cold of the North had chilled any ambition that was in his veins. Goodsooth! Such work as designing figureheads was only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... he?" remarked the mate, coming to Leslie's side as Potter and Miss Trevor vanished down the companion-way, "This is my first voyage with him, and, between you and me and the lamp-post, it'll be the last, if things don't greatly improve between now and our getting back to London. I reckon you'll be all the better for a snooze, too, so come below with me. You can use my cabin for the present, until the 'old man' ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... continues to improve, does she not? I too am better, after cramps in my stomach that made me blue, and continued with a horrible persistence. Physical suffering is a good lesson when it leaves one freedom of spirit. One learns to endure it and to ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... who on earth could have been thus trying to improve the value of real estate in Partoowye, we made inquiries; and learned that some years previous the block had been thrown up by a veritable Yankee (one might have known that), a house-carpenter by trade, and a bold, enterprising ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... at the bottom were shining like stars. It is a noteworthy specimen of the mode in which the imagination works when invention is dissociated from observation and faith. But the sort of way in which some would improve the world now, if they might, is not so very far in advance of this would-be glorification of Nature. The barest heath and sky have lovelinesses infinitely beyond the most gorgeous of such phantasmagoric idealization of her beauties; and the most wretched condition of ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... said Roche. After a moment he added: "To refer again to selling the estate you would get very little for it. It can't depreciate much more, and there is always the chance it may improve. Some of the people are quite ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... have seen whole tribes of most respectable aborigines that never bathed. And they seemed to be quite happy. It saves a lot of time. But that's another queer thing. The more time we need, the more we waste it on matters that are really unimportant. Like most of our attempts to improve on nature, it costs more than ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... laugh, but one glance into the earnest eyes of Phil Forrest told him that the boy's interest was wholly in wishing to improve the act—not for the sake ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... true—I'm not in the habit of catching house thieves," he said, drawling a little, "and I doubt if many of them are quite such accomplished liars as you appear to be; but my stroke will improve, I've no doubt, as we go on. Would you mind getting up and 'coming along with me' as they call ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... came ability to improve the systems of public schools. Throughout the South separate schools are maintained for white and for negro children; and great progress has ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... the little colony had not improved during the absence of the governing and inspiring spirit. From the force of circumstances, it did not at once improve upon Champlain's return. These first settlers of Quebec, whose food and living were easily got, and with no ambition to work or trade, idled their time away. Gambling and drinking were their common diversions, the more reckless spirits taking ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... whole evidence, most minutely and accurately, correcting himself every now and then to substitute a better word, or to improve his style. When he had ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... of a manager," she said. "But we still trust she will improve in time, if she always has her attention drawn to her forgetfulness—at least Robby does; I'm afraid I have rather [P.165] given her up. But Robby's patience is angelic." And Laura was of the same opinion, since the couple had been married for more ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... well in the oven, to be more light and spongy, and also whiter than bread in the common way. It will likewise have an excellent taste, and will keep well. The use of magnesia in bread making is well worthy of attention, for if it improves musty flour, and renders it palatable, it would much more improve bread in general, and be the interest of families to adopt it. The use of magnesia in bread, independent of its improving qualities, is as much superior to that of alum as one substance ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... household work? If they would take the matter in hand in a practical way, and familiarise the public mind with the notion of limited domestic labour, they would, we believe, do much to promote the comfort of home life in Victoria, and to improve the position ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... Dick. "I know a man what went into Tiffany's and took up a watch to look at, and carried it off, forgettin' to pay for it. That's what he told the judge the next day, and the judge sent him to the island for a few months to improve his memory. The air over to the island is very good ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of all races, and what is more discouraging they don't know how to improve their condition. This year the Christmas freeze spoiled almost all their vegetables, and they lost all their melon crop last year, and the cold two or three weeks ago froze what garden things were started; what ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various
... rose and the horizon cleared still further off, there, some five miles astern, and going quite as fast as themselves, if not faster, was the stranger; and now when she could be clearly made out, she did not improve on acquaintance. ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was one, at the time this gentleman floated in the dug-out, and charmed his ears with the music of the tom-tom, had said: "That dug-out is the best boat that ever can be built by man; the pattern of that came from on high, from the great god of storm and flood, and any man who says that he can improve it by putting a mast in it, with a sail upon it, is an infidel, and shall be burned at the stake;" what, in your judgment—honor bright—would have been the effect upon ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... Korea or Japan, he ought to be at the head of a great mission in London for converting the English to Taoism or Buddhism. There his passion for the moral beauties of paganism would have free and natural play; his style would improve; his mind would begin slowly to clear; and he would be free from all sorts of little irritating scrupulosities which must hamper even the most Conservative Christian in his full praise of sweating ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... man sprawling on the road with a bruised chin, or supine on the ice with a bashed occiput, becomes a bicyclist and a skater. The process is not continuous, as it would be if mere practice had anything to do with it; for though you may improve at each bicycling lesson during the lesson, when you begin your next lesson you do not begin at the point at which you left off: you relapse apparently to the beginning. Finally, you succeed quite suddenly, and do not relapse again. More miraculous still, you at once exercise the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... to work, good people, and improve the world, instead of finding fault with it?" said Mr. Wyllys, who was preparing for another game of chess ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... reward than this, I cannot confess that I was guilty of exaggeration when I hinted, that to him who had the gift of distinguishing between prominent events and important events, the origin of a combined effort on the part of mankind to improve natural knowledge might have loomed larger than the Plague and have outshone the glare of the Fire; as a something fraught with a wealth of beneficence to mankind, in comparison with which the damage done by those ghastly evils ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... owed by the villains has been explained on the supposition that the serfs who had survived the pestilence took advantage of the opportunity afforded by their reduction in numbers to free themselves from servile labor and thus improve their social status. The connection between the Black Death and the changes in manorial management which are usually attributed to it could be more convincingly established had not several decades elapsed after the Black Death before these changes became marked. A ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... automatic bets while the dice went around the table, he thought about the power. Funny, after all the years of work we still don't know much about psi. They can train people a bit, and improve skills ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... in my power to improve our architecture as much as they, I am e'en resolved to do like Renault of Montauban: I'll wait on the masons, set on the pot for the masons, cook for the stone-cutters; and since it was not my good luck to be cut out for one of them, I will live and die the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... engines invented to confine men to the PUBLIC road, and walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... however, obliged to submit; for Maria dreaded the effects of this warlike propensity, and kept the government in the hands of her ministers. He had continual contentions with the Empress, and urged her to improve her finances by conquest or aggression; but all the power he could obtain was the command of the troops, which he augmented to two hundred thousand men, and organized them under the counsel of his field marshal, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... about business," said she, "and I think I'll improve my opportunity by learning something. And, first, aren't men sometimes losers by the dishonesty of those who act for them—agents, they are called, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... printing the New Testament in Manchu; but he found, what was of even greater importance to him, that the old man knew no European language but Russian. Thus the frequent conversations and explanations all tended to improve Borrow's knowledge of the language of the people among ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Chemists Who Do Sell D'Auvergne Cigarettes and Chemists Who Don't. Then—Chemists Who Do and Did Yesterday, and Chemists Who Do but Didn't! But we can probably improve on the old game by ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... before you, therefore decide for us both; my only fear is, that if we retire, the whole district will break up and take to flight; and this fine country, which I have been at such cost and trouble to improve, will again ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... group of friends got together secretly and tried to organize a union, tried to get the workmen together to improve their own condition; but in some way ("they had spies everywhere," he said) the manager learned of the attempt and one morning when he reported at the mill he was handed a slip asking him to call for his wages, that his help was no ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... the time till the prodigal came back—and he was almost certain to come back, for where could he go in Barbie?—he would pass the time by trying to improve the appearance of the house. He had spent money on his house till the last, and even now had the instinct to embellish it. Not that it mattered to him now; still he could carry out a small improvement he had planned before. The kitchen was ceiled in dark timber, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... hour improve, And fill one measure duly; A health to those we truly love, And those who ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... commonplace in the folklore of many countries, attracted attention. Two contemporary troubadours attempted to improve upon it. Bertran d'Alamanon said that the heart should not be divided among the cowards, enumerated by Sordello, but given to the noble ladies of the age: Peire Bremen proposed a division of the body. The point is that Dante in the Purgatorio ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... abuse of power, of an unknown violence or ruse of long ago; and all these we set in motion again as we sit at our table, stroll idly through the town, or lie at night in a bed that our own hands have not made. Nay, what is even the leisure that enables us to improve, to grow more compassionate and gentler, to think more fraternally of the injustice others endure—what is this, in truth, but the ripest ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the Greeks and Romans form an interesting part of their national manners. The attentive study of the military operations of Xenophon or Caesar or Frederic, when they are described by the same genius which conceived and executed them, may tend to improve—if such improvement can be wished—the art of destroying the human species. But the battle of Chalons can only excite our curiosity by the magnitude of the object; since it was decided by the blind impetuosity of barbarians, and has been related by partial writers, whose civil or ecclesiastical ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... "how little did that calm, sweet-tempered, and patient girl deserve to meet such a husband. But perhaps he may yet improve. If gentleness and affection can soften a heart by time and perseverance, his ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Middle Ages were like the mountain cattle of to-day, so were the sheep like many of the sheep to be seen in the Welsh mountains; yet, unlike the cattle, an attempt seems to have been made, judging by the high price of rams, to improve the breed; but they were probably poor animals worth from 1s. to 1s. 6d. each, with a small fleece weighing about a pound and a half, worth 3d. a lb. ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... of antiquity obliges her in all her public enterprises (a thing to be hereafter studied), we, the ungracious offspring of her youth, come from our North and West and censure and criticise and carp. I have seldom conversed with any fellow-visitor in Rome who could not improve her in some phase or other, who could not usefully advise her, who, at the best, did not patronize her. I offer myself as almost the sole example of a stranger who was contented with her as she is, or as ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... arms, and make slaves of us, who are become thus easily the dupes of their ambitious pretences? Then, farewell content! farewell pleasure! farewell the well-earned fruits of industry and frugality! Our lands shall be the property of others, and we still tied down by slavish chains to cultivate and improve them. Our houses, our substance, shall be the reward of foreign robbers; our wives and our virgins shall bow down before conquerors; and we, like the beasts of the field, shall be drawn in the scorching midday to ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... with such outrages, told Jack's father that he must either cause his son to mend his manners or not permit him to go out into the street to play with the children. The father for a long time struggled to reform Jack, but perceiving that his son did not improve he resolved to turn him out of doors, and said to him: "Depart from me and go wheresoever you please. I will keep you no longer in my house, for I am much afraid lest some misfortune should happen to me ...
— The Story of Yvashka with the Bear's Ear • Anonymous
... case doesn't mean a thoroughfare for the party interested. If my memory serves me, I gave you right of way in Paris to win the affections of a certain elusive Miss Billy here in Boston, if you could. But I see you didn't seem to improve your ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... question, and in 1875 and afterwards on the question whether it was desirable, as regards a war which we should probably have to face sooner or later, to bring it on antici-pando before the adversary could improve his preparations. I have always opposed the theory which says "Yes"; not only at the Luxemburg period, but likewise subsequently for twenty years, in the conviction that even victorious wars cannot be justified unless they are forced upon one, and that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... to the enthusiastic, the amorous, the vain Eloisa! of whom Lord Lyttleton, in his curious Life of Henry II., observes, that had she not been compelled to read the fathers and the legends in a nunnery, and had been suffered to improve her genius by a continued application to polite literature, from what appears in her letters, she would have excelled any ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... most needed to be improved, or the argument strengthened. And I should have been well pleased if the book had undergone a much greater amount of attack; as in that case I should probably have been enabled to improve it still more than I believe I have ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... process of selection may be carried a step further:—As before, they must be constant and valiant, good-looking, and of noble manners, but now they must also have natural ability which education will improve; that is to say, they must be quick at learning, capable of mental toil, retentive, solid, diligent natures, who combine intellectual with moral virtues; not lame and one-sided, diligent in bodily exercise and indolent ...
— The Republic • Plato
... was traveling west in a Pullman when a group of men from Topeka, Kansas, boarded the train and began to praise their city to the Vermonter, telling him of the wide streets and beautiful avenues. Finally the Vermonter became tired and said the only thing that would improve their city would be to ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... if we would improve the intellect, first of all, we must ascend; we cannot gain real knowledge on a level; we must generalize, we must reduce to method, we must have a grasp of principles, and group and shape our acquisitions by means of them. It matters ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... with Worcestershire sauce. Cook until thoroughly heated. Arrange slices overlapping one another lengthwise of platter, pour around sauce, and garnish with toast points. A few stoned olives and mushrooms improve this sauce. ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... Karwinska had accompanied the singing on such evenings before. So I said: "I shall be delighted to sing, provided Fraulein K. will accompany me, For you gentlemen play too loud for my voice." Great laughter, but I had got what I wanted. We were introduced, and I thought to myself: You will soon improve the acquaintance. On Sunday for once in a way I got up quite early, at half past 6, for Fraulein K. can only go out walking early in the morning since she spends the whole day with her cousin. She sits near the Luisenquelle, so I went ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... shots with the bow and arrow, and they never can improve while they restrict their practice ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... or before a large audience, his words were always chosen with a marked regard for fitness and beauty. His knowledge of the minutest points of every theme which he discussed was so exhaustive and complete that any attempt to improve would have been almost like carrying light to ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... the function of the state to provide port facilities in the form of docks, piers, warehouses, grain elevators, mechanical equipment, etc. But it is the duty of the national government to improve harbors, dredge streams, dig canals for navigation and irrigation, erect levees to protect the back country, and build locks ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... weather-worn, marble triton Among the streams; And all day long I look Upon this lady's beauty As though I had found in book A pictured beauty, Pleased to have filled the eyes Or the discerning ears, Delighted to be but wise, For men improve with the years; And yet, and yet Is this my dream, or the truth? O would that we had met When I had my burning youth; But I grow old among dreams, A weather-worn, marble triton Among ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Azalea. "When I knew him first he'd never thought of singing. I only discovered his voice by accident. It needs much more work with it, of course, but it's powerful, and it has a quality that will improve with cultivation." ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... realism of De Foe in describing places he had never seen; and as the historian of a country or a period in which he felt interested he would have been unusually brilliant, for he was an adept in picturesque condensation, and knew how to improve upon his originals and use them without copying a word. He was a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... minutes later Mary Masters found her aunt half asleep. The paint had made her stupid, she said. She could understand now why painters did not improve as they grew older; it was ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... the work lies in information gathered at close range in a long association with, and effort to improve the condition of, ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... cover all the great surrounding space that once was thick forest, fair orchards, gardens, fields, and pastoral rivulet. The Neperan or Saw Mill River flows, sluggish and scummy, under streets and houses. A visit to the manor-house, now, would spoil rather than improve one's impression of what the place looked like in the old days. Yet the house itself remains well preserved, for which all honor to the town of Yonkers. There is in our spacious America so much room for the present and the future, that a little ought to be kept for the past. It ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... their motive was contemptible. They did not want to improve society, but to make self-indulgence possible without shame. I think our own ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... she ought to have got out from England to improve the shining hour on Jimmy's behalf was replaced by Dion in the eyes of ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... up, and they should never for a moment be allowed to stop boiling or simmering till they are thoroughly done. Every sort of vegetable should be cooked till tender, as if the least hard or under-done they are both unpalatable and unwholesome. The practice of putting pearl-ash in the pot to improve the colour of green vegetables should be strictly forbidden, as it destroys the flavour, and either renders them flat and insipid, or communicates a very disagreeable taste of ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... many things for which one is wholly incapacitated; for which he has no talent, and, as a rule, time spent in this direction is time lost. Goethe justly says: "We should guard against a talent which we can not hope to practice in perfection. Improve it as we may, we shall always, in the end, when the merit of the master has become apparent to us, painfully lament the loss of time and strength devoted to such botching." Sidney Smith condemns what he calls the "foppery of universality—of ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... good of the colony. Nothing is left me to do but to imitate the governor of the Holy City,—take water, and wash my hands of it." His aim now appears. He says that if Detroit were made a separate government, and he were put at the head of it, its prospects would improve. "You may well believe that the company cares for nothing but to make a profit out of it. It only wants to have a storehouse and clerks; no officers, no troops, no inhabitants. Take this business in hand, Monseigneur, and I promise that in two years your Detroit ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... An additional stern fixed on the main one, to increase the length and improve the appearance ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... at liberty to improve upon the work of his predecessors if he could, no temple was just like any other, and they form an ascending scale of excellence, culminating in the Acropolis group. Every detail was considered not only with relation ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... cent should have been exacted from all the tenants of the nation—that is, from all who occupied any portion of the soil. The rent thus raised—a vast revenue—was to be applied to the establishment of free colleges, free schools, free libraries, and other institutions calculated to improve and benefit ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... the soul recks nothing, when, radiant, it ascends towards its Creator. Yesterday, Agricola made me read an article in a newspaper, in which violent blame and bitter irony are by turns employed, to attack what they call the baneful tendencies of some of the lower orders, to improve themselves, to write, to read the poets, and sometimes to make verses. Material enjoyments are forbidden us by poverty. Is it humane to reproach us for seeking the enjoyments of the mind? What harm can it do any one ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... be inured? Could one "break it to him gently" bye and bye, by first drawing a wiggly line and then giving it a head? One might sketch a suggestion of a snake, make a sort of dissimilar clay model, improve it, show him a cast skin, stuff it, make a more life-like picture, gradually lead up to a well-stuffed one and then a live one. Might work up to having a good big picture of one on the nursery wall; one in a glass case; keep a harmless ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the shock. Then, fearing Zezdon Afthen might misinterpret his silence, he plunged on. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't realize you were polygamous—most people on Earth aren't, but some groups are. It's probably a good way to improve the race. But ... Blast it, what bothers me is that Zezdon Fentes seemed to recover from the blow so quickly! From a canine race, I'd expect more affection, ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... doctor has discharged me. In fact, a broken rib doesn't entitle a man to a lay-off. I hope your sister continues to improve?" he added, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... here a specimen of the precise sort of changes to which I would refer, as an example of the reminiscences intended to be introduced into these pages. We have in earlier editions given an account of the pains taken by Lord Gardenstone to extend and improve his rising village of Laurencekirk; amongst other devices he had brought down, as settlers, a variety of artificers and workmen from England. With these he had introduced a hatter from Newcastle; but on ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... strait lines they instantly divide, While each beholds his partner on th' opposing side, Then slow, majestick, walks the learned head, The senate follow with a solemn tread, Next Levi's tribe in reverend order move, Whilst the uniting youth the show improve. They glow in long procession till they come, Near to the portals of the sacred dome; Then on a sudden open fly the doors, The leader enters, then the croud thick pours. The temple in a moment feels its freight, And cracks ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... on a receiver, with three legs. After the leaves have bean half-dried in the drying-basket, and while they are still soft, they are taken off the fire and put into large open-worked baskets, and then put on the shelf, in order that the tea may improve in color. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... He would ask what it was good for, and what could I answer? for if it was not GOOD for something, but only beautiful, merely beautiful— So I sighed, and did not go. For it wasn't good for anything; it could not build a shack, it could not improve melons, it could not hurry a fruit crop; it was useless, it was a foolishness and a vanity; he would despise it and say cutting words. But to me it was not despicable; I said, "Oh, you fire, I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ever modest) seemed to oppose every plan she could think of, for showing Jem how much she repented her decision against him, and how dearly she had now discovered that she loved him. She came to the unusual wisdom of resolving to do nothing, but strive to be patient, and improve circumstances as they might turn up. Surely, if Jem knew of her remaining unmarried, he would try his fortune again. He would never be content with one rejection; she believed she could not in his place. She had been very wrong, but now she would endeavour to do right, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... seventeenth century, so that in the eighteenth printing was very miserably performed. In England about this time, an attempt was made (notably by Caslon, who started business in London as a type-founder in 1720) to improve the letter in form. Caslon's type is clear and neat, and fairly well designed; he seems to have taken the letter of the Elzevirs of the seventeenth century for his model: type cast from his matrices ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... his government. In reference to the disposal of lands, they provided that persons "who were adventurers," that is, subscribers to the common stock, to the amount of fifty pounds, should have two hundred acres of land, and, at that rate, more or less, "to the intent to build their houses, and to improve their labors thereon." Adventurers who carried families with them were to have fifty acres for each member of their respective families. Other provisions were made, on the same principles, to meet the case of servants taken over; for each of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... accomplish its object? The Roman attacked all these questions, solved some of them admirably, and failed with others egregiously. His successes and his failures are perhaps equally illuminating, and the fact that his attempts to improve social and economic conditions run through a period of a thousand years should make the study of them of the greater interest ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... The marriage law is too arbitrary; it allows no scope for individual action, and yet the subject is so delicate, so intricate, that none but the keenest and nicest balanced minds dare attempt to criticise, much less improve it. The misconstructions of a person's motives are so great that many who see its errors, tremble and fear to speak of them. But if we are to bring any good to the covenant, so sacred in its offices, we must point out its defects and seek to remedy ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... chance of surviving, and so be preserved or selected—provided always that they retained strength to master their prey at this or at some other period of the year, when they might be compelled to prey on other animals. I can see no more reason to doubt this than that man can improve the fleetness of his greyhounds by careful and methodical selection, or by that unconscious selection which results from each man trying to keep the best dogs without any thought of modifying ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... agony of the situation brought the little ones prematurely into the world. And equally remarkable was the fact that when all danger was over all of the mothers and the children of the catastrophe were reported to have withstood the untoward conditions and continued to improve and grow strong as if the conditions which surrounded them had been normal. This, undoubtedly, was in great part due to the care and kindness of the physicians and surgeons in the camps whose efforts were untiring and self-sacrificing for all who had been ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... bungle a little at first, but you'll improve. If you do well, when I get through with you I will try to get you a professor's ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... capable of no attachment to man, and are so savage, that {22} when hungry they will attack even their masters. According to Kane they readily become feral. Their affinity is so close with wolves that they frequently cross with them, and the Indians take the whelps of wolves "to improve the breed of their dogs." The half-bred wolves sometimes (Lamare-Picquot) cannot be tamed, "though this case is rare;" but they do not become thoroughly well broken in till the second or third generation. These facts show that there can be but little, if any, sterility between the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... cities. My coming here to-day was fortuitous, yet possibly unfortunate. Mr. Allison has a deep-rooted prejudice against anything of this kind,—against anything, I may say, that has a tendency to improve the condition of the laboring man,—and, while I have nothing to shrink from in the matter, I prefer not to offend the sensibilities, whether right or wrong, of my employer, and therefore should, on his account, ask that you make no mention, should you ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... now be found that the picture is not altogether satisfactory; it lacks both vigor and color. To improve matters ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... in heaven, Vulcan, where I hope all at Clawbonny, blacks as well as whites, will endeavour to meet her, by living in a manner that will improve the mercy ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... unlike the women, are not picturesque in appearance. The officials are well paid, so is everyone else, yet they never think of spending money to improve the looks of the village or even their own. Most of them are ragged. A few exhibit an inadequate elegance, dressed in white suits, derby hats, and very high collars. But in spite of the seeming poverty, there is not a seringueiro who could not at a moment's notice produce a handful of ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... The commissioners concluded:—"We are commanded by her majesty to assure you that when you shall be called upon to resume the discharge of your parliamentary functions, you may place entire reliance on the cordial co-operation of her majesty in your endeavours to improve the social condition and to promote the happiness and contentment of her people." Thus ended this important session—a session signalized in the addition to the statute-book of severed important measures, conceived in a safe and judicious spirit of reform, well suited ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a moment when Serbia is doing everything in her power to improve her relations with the neighboring monarchy it is absurd to think that Serbia could have directly or indirectly inspired acts of this kind. On the contrary, it was of the greatest interest to Serbia to prevent the perpetration of this outrage. Unfortunately ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... when the troubles in Poland restricted the supply of corn from that natural granary, the importance of the United States became increasingly obvious. Pitt had consistently sought to improve the relations with our kinsmen, and in 1791 sent out the first official envoy, George Hammond. The disputes resulting from the War of Independence and those arising out of the British Maritime Code during the Great War, brought about acute ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... you imagined, but you must remember in what different circumstances she has been brought up. I think she has many good qualities, and that she'll soon improve. Now let us look at the matter from her point of view. You have been writing to her constantly for two years. She has come here specially to be near you. You are her only friend in a new and strange country where she is many thousand miles away from her ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... the situation began to improve. British reinforcements arrived at the points of greatest danger, and the defense stiffened, then held the lines firmly before Amiens, and at a distance from that threatened city sufficiently great to prevent its successful ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... door and walked into the outer office. One of the younger clerks was just buttoning up his overcoat. Livingstone detected a scowl on his face. The sight did not improve Livingstone's temper. He would have liked to discharge the boy on the spot. How often had he ever called on them to wait? He knew men who required their clerks to wait always until they themselves left the office, no matter what the hour was. He himself would not do ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... she would at once have taken them out to show that they were not; and as to false hair, and frizzes, and powder, and all the many devices used, as she said, "to build a woman," she abominated them, and preferred to be just what the Lord had made her, without any attempt to improve upon his work. Once Lucy Grey had asked her why she did not call herself Elizabeth, or Lizzie, instead of Betsey, which was so old-fashioned, and she had retorted, sharply, that though of all names upon earth she thought Betsey the worst, it was given to her by her sponsors in baptism, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... all the past, save its lessons. I am just beginning to live. If anybody wants to be my best friend, let him come to me and tell me how to improve—what to do and what not to do. Tell me how ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... markets, as has already been observed, but, to extend our old markets, we must either reduce the price, improve the quality, or extend the credit, and invention is the only means by which these things can be done; and there is no possibility of knowing where to set bounds to invention, aided by capital and the division ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... He did not know that way down in the depths of his heart, calloused over as it was by worldly selfishness, there was yet a tender spot, a lingering memory of his only sister whom 'Lena so strongly resembled. If left to himself, he would undoubtedly have taken pride in seeing his niece improve, and as it was, he determined that she should at home receive the same instruction that his daughters did. Perhaps he might not send her away to school. He didn't know how that would be—his wife held the purse, and taking refuge behind ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... to Comte.[2] Of numberless passages that might be quoted from fathers and doctors of the Church, a few words from Nicholas of Cusa must suffice. He was a divine of the early fifteenth century, true to the faith, but anxious to improve the discipline of the Church. To him progress took an entirely spiritual form. 'To be able to understand more and more without end is the type of eternal wisdom.... Let a man desire to understand better what he does understand and to love ...
— Progress and History • Various
... lady in disguise. Cecilia? Which one is that? Oh, the one her sisters call Sissy! She needs disciplining sadly, Mr. Madigan, sadly. Much as he loves me, my father, the Prince, would not care to have me know her—as she is now. But she will improve, if you will be very, very strict with her. Good-by! Good-by, all! No, I shall not forget you. Be good and obey your ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... three times before I got out of town; it was as many as this at least; and outside of town, there being more room, I fell oftener. But I soon began to improve and get along better. I decided to follow the railroad grade west, as it was most of the way higher than the prairie, and the snow on it ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... studied it enough; let me turn to my communion with God; to the calm, dear recollections of my family and my true friends. I will read my Bible oftener than I have done, I will again write down my thoughts, will try to raise and improve them, and taste the pleasure of a sorrow at least innocent; a thousand fold to be preferred to vulgar and ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... stragglers. Every variety to which a species may give rise is either worse or better adapted to surrounding circumstances than its parent. If worse, it cannot maintain itself against death, and speedily vanishes again. But if better adapted, it must, sooner or later, "improve" its progenitor from the face of the earth, and take its place. If circumstances change, the victor will be similarly supplanted by its own progeny; and thus, by the operation of natural causes, unlimited modification may in the lapse of ...
— Time and Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... already fidgeted Molly into a new amount of care about the manner in which she put on her clothes, arranged her hair, and was gloved and shod. Mrs. Gibson had tried to put her through a course of rosemary washes and creams in order to improve her tanned complexion; but about that Molly was either forgetful or rebellious, and Mrs. Gibson could not well come up to the girl's bedroom every night and see that she daubed her face and neck over with the cosmetics so carefully provided for her. Still, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... should also excite the attention of those who wish to embellish their grounds, as well as to improve the quality of their mutton—obtaining, withal, a fleece of valuable wool. These are the Southdown, and the Cotswold, Leicester, or other improved breeds of long-wooled sheep. There is no more peaceful, or beautiful ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... "Roger, you improve upon acquaintance. All these years you've concealed from me a nice judgment in the use of profanity. A d——d jackass! Hardly Hegelian, but neat, Roger, and most beautifully appropriate. A jackass, I am. Also as you have remarked, an idiot. You see, there's no argument. I admit the soft impeachment. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... he saw, how he could improve his landscape, he took up his palette, and in a desultory and uncertain fashion he painted till five o'clock. "It is no use," he thought, "I can do nothing with it until I get a model, but the devil of it is, there are no models in Brighton—at least, I don't ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... oneself, hustle, get up early, be about, keep moving, steal a march, kill two birds with one stone; seize the opportunity &c 134, lose no time, not lose a moment, make the most of one's time, not suffer the grass to grow under one's feet, improve the shining hour, make short work of; dash off; make haste &c 684; do one's best take pains &c (exert oneself) 686; do wonders, work wonders. have many irons in the fire, have one's hands full, have much ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... you," said Clovis; "you would have had an early and comforting lunch before you started, and you could improve the occasion by mentioning in detail the items of the missing banquet—the lobster Newburg and the egg mayonnaise, and the curry that was to have been heated in a chafing-dish. Agnes Blaik would be delirious long before you got to the ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... these fields and in which constant and frequent comparisons will be made for purposes of emphasis, discussion, and the consideration of government issues and problems. In some cases it is undoubtedly true that emphasis should be given to foreign governments, and as the high schools improve their instruction in our local institutions, national and state, it will become increasingly necessary in colleges to turn attention to the study of foreign ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... and that his complexion was temporarily pallid. Father O'Kelley arrived at a brisk run, and was honestly glad to find that his services were not required, although I assured him that if Catholic baptism and a sprinkling of holy water would improve Toddie's character, I thought there was excuse for several applications. We rode quietly back to the house, and while I was asking Maggie to try to coax Toddie into taking a nap, I heard the ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... is considered as perfectly consistent with mercantile honour. Every trader has a morality of his own; and without any intention of depreciating the mercantile class, so far I must be allowed to say, that the merchants are not very strict in their morality. Trade may improve the wealth of a nation, but it most certainly ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... can remove that reluctance on the part of my betrothed bride, which alone clouds my happiness, and which would at once put an end to my suit, did I not ascribe it to an imperfect knowledge of myself, which I shall devote my life to improve into confidence and affection." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Surveyors cut such places on the prairies, pile up the sods inside the angle, and drive their corner stakes through them. But there must have been water here when this job was done, which accounts for its not being done better. We'll improve it. Go for the shovel. I'll get the bearings of those trees in the mean while, and see how far wrong they make us out ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... the growth of their city and its commerce. Attached to the docks is a story of integrity and fidelity worth telling. In 1735 the municipal authorities of the young city, anticipating commercial prosperity, decided to improve their harbor and build piers for the accommodation of vessels, but nobody around the place had experience in such matters and a commission was sent off to other cities of India to find a man to take charge. The commission was very much pleased with the appearance and ability of Lowji Naushirwanji, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... for the time, at the public expense.29 By this constant rotation of labor, it was intended that no one should be overburdened, and that each man should have time to provide for the demands of his own household. It was impossible—in the judgment of a high Spanish authority—to improve on the system of distribution, so carefully was it accommodated to the condition and comfort of the artisan.30 The security of the working classes seems to have been ever kept in view in the regulations ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... I could," he cried, "since from your manner I see that would improve me in your sight. But there is just sufficient truth in them to forbid me, as I am, I hope, a gentleman, from giving them a full denial. Yet in what am I worse than my fellows? Are you of those who think a husband should ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... to popular representation and freedom of speech. Canning and his {52} friend William Huskisson were leading the way in the movement towards an enlightened financial system. Huskisson had done more than any other man, with the exception of Canning himself, to improve the systems of taxation. What may perhaps be called the scientific principle in the raising of revenue was only in process of development, and to many statesmen no better idea of increasing supplies seemed to have occurred than the simple ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of Dan, and a glance forward revealed to him the desperate situation of his party. The slave-master, nearly exhausted by the shock of the collision, and his exertions in hauling himself up to the deck of the Isabel, had failed to improve the first moment that ushered him into the presence of his astonished chattels; and the loss of that opportunity was the ruin of his expectations. Dan instantly raised his rifle; but the old feeling of awe and reverence for the sacred person of his master prevented him from firing ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... say 'Yes,' as of course you will, do not fail to come up. You will find me at the 'Travellers,' or at the House. The stall will just suit you,—will give you no trouble, improve your position, and give some little assistance towards bed and board, and rack and ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... distinct expression of the interests of the capitalist, upheld his right to do all this. Yet if the workers protested; if they sought to improve their condition by joining in that community of action called a strike, the same code of laws adjudged them criminals. At once, the whole power of law, with its police, military and judges, descended upon them, and either drove them ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... 353 ff. As to the manner in which soil and climate mutually improve or injure one another, see Schwerz, Prackt. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... of work, experiment and argument, the wide eyes and quick ears of Little Mok saw and heard, while Ab, Mok and One-Ear bent over their work at arrowhead or spear point, and talked of what might be done to improve the weapons upon which so much depended. Here, when no one else remained in the weary darkness of night and the half light of stormy days Old Mok beguiled the time with stories, and sometimes in a hoarse voice even ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... conceived a vain expectation. His son Haschem was a young man gifted with good natural abilities, and endowed with a pure unsullied heart. He used every opportunity which chance threw in his way to extend his knowledge, cultivate his mind, or to improve his disposition; nor was he deficient in bodily exercises and warlike accomplishments; so that through good discipline he became powerful in body and strong in mind. He was, therefore, as was natural enough, not only the joy and pride of his father, but was loved ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... itself was but a poor affair—an attempt by an apprentice, that, to be producible, required the shaping of a master's hand. "Lamely left" it had to be set on its feet ere it could tread the stage. With what nonchalance does he throw out "unnecessary persons," and improve "unfinished!" Hector, Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites, skilless Shakspeare had but begun—artful Dryden made an end of them; Cressida, who was false as she was fair, yet left alive to deceive more men, became a paragon of truth, chastity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... and in many more particular respects her health is carefully looked after. Such legislation would possibly be impossible to enforce with our notions in America. The most interesting of all is perhaps the attempt made in the State of Connecticut within a few years to improve social conditions by providing that no married woman should be employed in factories at all. The bill was not, of course, carried, but it raises a most interesting sociological question. Ruskin probably ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... roads. The loss of ocean highways, however, stimulated road building and led to what might be regarded as the first "good-roads movement" of the new nation, except that to our eyes it would be a misuse of the word to call any of those roads good. But anything which would improve the means of transportation took on a patriotic tinge, and the building of roads and the cutting of canals were agitated until turnpike and canal companies became a favorite form of investment; and ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... well in health, and catches a few insects; but he is very untidy, as you may imagine by his clothes being all torn to pieces by the time we arrived here. He will no doubt improve and ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... and the crowd of boys waited impatiently for Saturday to come. Sam was glad to notice that Tom seemed to improve daily and was acting very much ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... Ostend. With them came Robert Cecil, youngest son of Lord-Treasurer Burghley, then twenty-five years of age.—He had no official capacity, but was sent by his father, that he might improve his diplomatic talents, and obtain some information as to the condition of the Netherlands. A slight, crooked, hump-backed young gentleman, dwarfish in stature, but with a face not irregular in feature, and thoughtful and subtle in expression, with reddish hair, a thin tawny ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Southward to give birth to their offspring; so that the "peculiar institution" might lose none of its prey. Measures for the abolition of slavery in any part of America do not arise from sympathy with the negro, and from a wish to improve his condition and promote his happiness, but from aversion to his presence, or perhaps from a conviction that the system of slavery is expensive and impolitic. Those who feel kindly towards their coloured brother, and act towards him under ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... as he was by his wife, and even by his youngest children, he, found himself beginning to improve. In the mornings and evenings he cultivated his garden and his rood of potato-ground. He also collected with a wheelbarrow, which he borrowed, from an acquaintance, compost from the neighboring road; scoured an old drain ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Rachel, there's a chance for you," said Jack. "I advise you to improve it. When it's finished, it can be hung up at the Art Rooms, and who knows but you may ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... and the southern point of view on Educated Suffrage. Mrs. Gilman, who spoke on whether it would serve the best interests of the laboring classes, was alone in objecting to it. "Will exclusion from the suffrage educate and improve the illiterate masses more quickly than the use of it?" she asked. "We shall educate them sooner if we dread their votes and this is our work in common." A great deal of sentiment was developed in favor of an educational ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... of bread with jam on them, disappeared with amazing rapidity, and Geordie had some beef-tea, which seemed to improve him almost as soon as he had taken it. For the first time for many months Mrs. Sinclair and the children went to bed with satisfied appetites; and the children's dreams were as the incidents in the life of a god, exalted ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... would visit me often!" A vine by the name of Passion, which grew near by, heard Camanchile's exclamation. Now, this vine grew fairly close to the ground, and consequently received "only a small amount of light. Thinking that this was its opportunity to improve its condition, it said, "Camanchile, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... offence to other cities, of much greater consequence in the world, that our town of Dublin doth not want its due proportion of folly, and vice, both native and imported; and as to those imported, we have the advantage to receive them last, and consequently after our happy manner to improve, and refine upon them. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... these conditions will be remedied in a day or a month nor can the colored man expect that the millennium will come to him through the action of white people alone. He can improve his chances of securing greater rights and opportunities in the United States, if he will make the most of the limited opportunities now afforded him. He who does the best he can with the tools he has at hand is bound in time to demand by his good work better tools for the performance ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... this clear. Whilst China has been from the first fully prepared to co-operate with friendly Powers in the taking of war-measures which would ultimately improve her world-position, she has not been prepared to surrender the initiative in these matters into foreign hands. The argument that the mobilization of her resources could only be effectively dealt with by specially designated foreigners, for instance, has always been ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... from the community, and the magistrate takes care that no one receives more than he deserves. Yet nothing necessary is denied to any one. Friendship is recognized among them in war, in infirmity, in the art contests, by which means they aid one another mutually by teaching. Sometimes they improve themselves mutually with praises, with conversation, with actions and out of the things they need. All those of the same age call one another brothers. They call all over twenty-two years of age, fathers; those who are less than twenty-two are named sons. Moreover, the magistrates govern ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... accompanied the psalmody of the religious brothers with beautiful touches on the organ. The superior of the convent, relaxing its discipline, permitted Augustin frequently to mix with the world, in order to teach music, and to improve himself in the art. The young monk was in the habit of familiarly visiting the house of a respectable citizen: he was frequently in the society of his daughter, and, by the express encouragement of her father, undertook to exercise her in the practice of music. Another young ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... interrupted Denham impatiently. "Well, Morley joined us. His professional information helped us to improve our business. He made me give back Lady Summersdale's jewels, so that his professional reputation might be preserved. He was highly complimented on getting the swag back," added Denham, smiling ironically, "but ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... a disputed point whether the system of breeding in-and-in or the opposite one of frequent crossing has the greater tendency to maintain or improve the character of stock. The advocates of both systems are earnest and confident of being in the right. The truth probably is, as in some other similar disputes, that both are right and both wrong—to a certain extent, or within ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... employ Brahmans for fixing auspicious days, writing the marriage invitation and other business, which the Brahman is willing to do for a consideration, so long as he does not have to enter their houses. Some of the impure castes eat beef, while others have abandoned it in order to improve their social position. At the other end of the scale are many well-educated Hindu gentlemen who have no objection to eat beef and may often have done so in England, though in India they may abstain out of deference to the prejudices of their ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... Despite sustained domestic and international efforts to improve economic and demographic prospects, Bangladesh remains one of the world's poorest, most densely populated, and least developed nations. Its economy is overwhelmingly agricultural, with the cultivation of rice the single most important activity in the economy. Major ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... we have had two deaths, and some addition to the number of cases, but generally on approaching a cold climate, all seem to improve and we have had no new cases for the last ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... the gymnastic arts of leaping and running that he was a dexterous archer, a skilful horseman, and a master of all the different weapons used in the service either of the cavalry or of the infantry. The same assiduous cultivation was bestowed, though not perhaps with equal success, to improve the minds of the sons and nephews of Constantine. The most celebrated professors of the Christian faith, of the Grecian philosophy, and of the Roman jurisprudence, were invited by the liberality of the emperor, who ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... suspecting that every one was in some way trying to slight him and grew very much ashamed of his past years in the Marshalsea, and forbade all mention of them. He hired a great number of servants, and, to improve the manners of Fanny and Little Dorrit, he employed a woman named Mrs. General, who had many silly notions ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... have said, you would see what nonsense it is. Alice and I are to be man and wife. All our interests, and all our money, and our station in life, whatever it may be, are to be joint property. And yet she is the last person in the world to whom I ought to go for money to improve her prospects as well as my own. That's what you call delicacy. I call ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... in Clay Lane, paying visits with Decima from cottage to cottage. Not possessing one of those admirable instruments—if somebody at the West End would but set up a stock of them for sale, what a lot of customers he'd have!—Sibylla was content to cherish the mental view she had conjured up, and to improve upon it. All the afternoon she kept improving upon it, until she worked herself up to that agreeable pitch of distorted excitement when the mind does not know what is real, and what fancy. It was a regular April day; ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... throughout his life he always made the best of things, and if he ever went to bed hungry, well, nobody but himself was any the wiser. Law was the study his father wished him specially to follow, but he was eager too to learn Greek, which had lately been introduced into the University, and to improve his Latin style. He also wrote verses, as was beginning to be the fashion with young men, and worked out problems in arithmetic and geometry, while, after his regular work was done, he would carry a French or Latin chronicle to his ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... a little. "It won't be necessary for some time to come. If you did the same to Fair Rosamond now and then you would marvellously improve ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... information, that this was the forester's granddaughter. Her beauty quite ravished him, and drew from him an exclamation of wonder and delight. Features regular, exquisitely moulded, and of a joyous expression, a skin dyed like a peach by the sun, but so as to improve rather than impair its hue; eyes bright, laughing, and blue as a summer sky; ripe, ruddy lips, and pearly teeth; and hair of a light and glossy brown, constituted the sum of her attractions. Her sylph-like figure was charmingly ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... as an eddicated man," went on Sol, calmly disregarding Jim. "We've got up the house without sp'ilin' the surroundin's. It jest blends with rock an' bush, an' we've helped natur' without tryin' to improve it." ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the word is often violated in such expressions as "Isn't he awful nice?" "That hat of hers is awful pretty." To say awfully nice and awfully pretty would improve the grammar, but the gross ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... see student life par excellence, you can scarcely improve upon the shop I'm in myself—the Hotel du Saint-Esprit, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... characteristics:—"The custom in our family is that the son shall hate the father; our destiny is to detest each other; from the devil we came, to the devil we shall go." And the head of this family had now come to reform the Irish, and to improve their condition—social, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... case, for, by some curious law, physicians are apt to import into professional disputes a heat and bitterness at least as marked as that of their old enemies, the theologians. It was said that Miss Martineau had begun to improve before she was mesmerised, and what was still more to the point, that she had been taking heavy doses of iodine. 'It is beyond all question or dispute,' as Voltaire said, 'that magic words and ceremonies are quite capable of most effectually destroying ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley
... great-grandfather, ma'am," answered Andy, who had never heard of the eminent orator, but thought the claim would improve his chances of obtaining the job of sawing ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... much pains to improve the sagacity of a favourite Spaniel. It was my purpose, indeed, to ascertain to what degree of improvement the principles of reasoning and imitation could be carried in a dog. There is no doubt that the animal ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... me? Heaven knows, you are welcome to such a home as I can give. The quarters are rough, I know; but we shall improve that, by-and-by." ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... that we, the Imperial Parliament, cannot act so as to bring about in Ireland contentment and tranquillity, and a solid union between Ireland and Great Britain? And that means, further, How can we improve the condition and change the minds of the people of Ireland? Some say (I have heard many who say it in England, and I am afraid there are Irishmen also who would say it), that there is some radical ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... at his pipe. "No, I am only a very tired man who has come in out of the wet to rest and smoke," he answered, with a dry smile, "but if it will add to your comfort and improve your hospitality in any way, you can send your waiter back here and I will ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it my whole delight, and in it grew To such perfection that, ere yet my age Had measured twice six years, at our great Feast 210 I went into the Temple, there to hear The teachers of our Law, and to propose What might improve my knowledge or their own, And was admired by all. Yet this not all To which my spirit aspired. Victorious deeds Flamed in my heart, heroic acts—one while To rescue Israel from the Roman yoke; Then to subdue and quell, o'er all the earth, Brute violence and proud tyrannic power, Till truth were ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... see you? Don't be absurd! Your comb's falling into the sugar basin, and I shouldn't think it would improve the taste of the coffee. Look out! Help! Saved! Mary dear, why ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... say that in a popular government legislation cannot properly standardize practice, cannot formulate a higher code of public morality than men can be depended upon to attain if unrestrained, is unwarrantably to discredit democracy. If the laws are bad, improve them. If the public is uneducated, educate it. If our system gives us poor lawmakers, change the system. But to give up the attempt at legal control, to leave things as they are or rather, to leave them to go from bad ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... using it to the best advantage, making it healthy, strong and vigorous, but still being merely a shell or covering for the real "You." Think of the body as composed of atoms and cells which are constantly changing, but which are held together by the force of your Ego, and which you can improve at Will. Realize that you are merely inhabiting the body, and using it for your convenience, just as you might use ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... misrepresents his drawings, both in style and coloring; that the arrangement of the pages is different; and that the full-page colored plates are complete travesties, and very coarse ones, of the originals." And it does not at all improve the false copy that it is to be bought for less than the true one costs. It would be bad enough merely to deprive Mr. Crane of the profits of selling an exact imitation of his book, but it is far worse to put a bad sham before the people as the work of a true artist. This not only ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... sense of the proposal, and my old friend advanced me some louis to enable me to improve my appearance. Advising me not to show myself too much, he offered me a bed at his house. I left him to procure a more decent wardrobe; and for better disguise, fitted myself with an officer's undress suit, and having purchased ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... been able to recall that single reverberating word. But he saw that the scene was spelling downfall for him, and he went still more blind and desperate of it. His despair made him burn to make matters Worse. He did not want to improve anything at all. " What?" he demanded. ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Egyptian or antediluvian, or household milk-jugs of the cavemen, Albert's uncle said. The pots were, fortunately, quite ready and dirty, because we had already buried them in mixed sand and river mud to improve the colour, and not remembered ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... who hold slaves are usually indolent, proud, and inefficient. They think it a disgrace to work by the side of the negro, and therefore will allow things to be left in a very careless, untidy way, rather than put forth their energy to alter or improve them. And as it is impossible for slaves, untaught and degraded as they are, to give a neat and thrifty appearance to their homes, we, who have been brought up at the North, accustomed to work ourselves, assisted by well-trained domestics, ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... resist the decomposition process for any length of time, it is evident that the roofing paper which contains a noticeable quantity of vegetable fibers cannot be very durable. To judge from the endeavors made to improve the coal tar, it may be concluded that this material does not fully comply with its function of making the roofing paper perfectly and durably waterproof. The coal tar, be it either crude or distilled, is not a perfect impregnating material, and the roofing paper, saturated with it, possesses ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... the connection of faith with evidence, and the nature of evidence, and the different kinds of evidence, and so on. For my part I have had a suspicion since I have been here, that a touch of this kind of thing might improve English preaching; as, also, I do think that sermons of the kind I have described would be useful, by way of alterative, among us. If I could have but one of the two manners, I should prefer our own, because I think that this habit of preaching is one of ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... father wished it, did he not? Perhaps it would have been better had you been here. However, you are here now. Frank says he begun to improve the very day you consented to assist Mr Caldwell in the ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... she pleased me much by calling me a very good girl, and saying that if I continued to take so much pains, I could not fail to improve. On hearing this, Willy laughed, and said he hoped that that was a duplicate of Margaret's last speech; and Rose looked very happy, and answered that not only Margaret, but ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... by the sole effort of a sovereign will, which appeared to improve by exercise, the power formerly distributed among obscure hands was concentrated at Paris, under the direction of a central administration suddenly organized; exactions borne with difficulty resulted in abundant resources from the conquered or annexed countries, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... inheritance from the free companies, so that Poitou and Limousin enjoyed far more prosperity and tranquillity than in the days of French ascendency. Such new taxation as Gascon custom allowed was only levied after grants from the three estates. Great pains were taken to improve the administration, the judicial system, and the coinage. Edward saw that his best policy was to rely upon the people of Gascony, and to look with suspicion on the great lords. But he did not understand how limited was the authority which tradition ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... To improve that inward condition, and arrest at their origin these causes of human degeneracy, is the object of this reform. It proposes, as before stated, not only to cure, but to prevent the diseases of the body politic; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... much attached to Mr. Rodney, and was proud of his intimate acquaintance with him. He wanted a friend not of his own order, for that would not increase or improve his ideas, but one conversant with the habits and feelings of a superior class, and yet he did not want a fine gentleman for an intimate, who would have been either an insolent patron or a designing parasite. Rodney had relations with the aristocracy, with the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... the dyke always hurls well.' The looker on," says Mr. Trench in explanation, "at a game of hurling, seated indolently on the wall, always imagines that he could improve on the strokes of the actual players, and if you will listen to him, would have played the game much better than they, a proverb of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... a truly good man, was the son of Richard, earl of Cork, and was born at Lismore, in Ireland, in the year 1627. At Eton School, where he was educated, he soon discovered a force of understanding which promised great things, and a disposition to improve it to the utmost. During his education, and before he was ten years old, he was much afflicted with an ague, which considerably depressed his spirits; and, to divert his attention, he was persuaded to read Amadis de Gaul, and other romantic books. But this kind of reading, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... You would be mixed up with rough sailors, and, after being away on a long voyage, you would forget all that you have learnt, and would be as rough as themselves. This would be a poor ending indeed to all the pains I have taken with you, and all the labour you have yourself expended in trying to improve yourself. It would be a great grief to me, I can assure you, and a cruel disappointment, to know that my hopes for you had ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... descended to the foot of the stairs, where he had told Emilia to wait for him, full of kind feelings and ready cheerful counsels; as thus: "Nothing that we possess belongs to us;—All will come round rightly in the end; Be patient, look about for amusement, and improve your mind." And more of this copper coinage of wisdom in the way of proverbs. But Emilia was nowhere visible to receive the administration of comfort. Outside the house the fog appeared to have swallowed her. With some chagrin on her behalf (partly a sense of duty unfulfilled) ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... than the Gothic, as Gothic is more beautiful and natural than the Norman. Till then we must take the best models which we have; use them; and, as it were, use them up and exhaust them. By that time we may have learnt to improve on them; and to build churches more Gothic than Gothic itself, more like grot and grove ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... them taught the common branches of an English education; they have minds and those minds, ought to be improved. So precious a talent as intellect, never was given to be wrapt in a napkin and buried in the earth. It is the duty of all, as far as they can, to improve their own mental faculties, because we are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a great sin, if we forbid or prevent that cultivation of the mind in others, which would enable them to perform this duty. Teach ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... and set as close together as they can be, and still be revolved by the power of two horses. The grinding, by means of these rollers, may add 50 cents per thousand to the cost of the tiles, but it will greatly improve their quality. ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... to pity to think of the vagueness of that rudimentary humanity in Mr. Dempster which made him dream of doing something to improve his wife's mind. What did he ever do to improve his own? It is hard to understand how horses find themselves so comfortable in their stables that, be the day ever so fine, the country ever so lovely, the air ever so exhilarating, they are always rejoiced to get back ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... failure, 1856, when the 109 bales brought $5750. During the 'fifties the current expenses ranged usually between six and ten thousand dollars, as compared with about one third as much in the 'thirties. This is explained partly by the resolution of the owners to improve the fields, now grown old, and to increase the equipment. For the crop of 1856, for example, purchases were made of forty tons of Peruvian guano at $56 per ton, and nineteen tons of Mexican guano at $25 a ton. In the following years lime, salt and dried blood were included in the ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... old and middle-aged heads of families were actuated by a simple wish, inseparable from Irishmen, to have their children educated; and the young men, by a determination to have a properly qualified person to conduct their Night Schools, and improve them in their reading, writing, and arithmetic. The circumstance I am now relating is one which actually took place: and any man acquainted with the remote parts of Ireland, may have often seen bloody and obstinate quarrels among the peasantry, in vindicating a priority of ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... the standard of moral excellence which we are to imitate, then we must admit that the copy far exceeds the imitation. If man is called upon to act like God in order to improve his character and affections, then God is better than man, and every opposing objection must, forever, fall to the ground. Perhaps it may be said, that all denominations of men allow him to be so. This is not correct. It is true, they ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... this interest and stir his readers to action by either one of two methods: by exposing existing evils, or by showing what has been done to improve bad conditions. The exposure of evils in politics, business, and society constituted the "muck-raking" to which several of the popular monthly magazines owe their rise. This crusading, "searchlight" type of journalism has been largely superseded by the constructive, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... abandoned their own. Their name of Normandy still clings to the new home; but all else that was Norse disappeared as the conquerors intermarried with the native Franks and accepted French ideals and spoke the French language. So rapidly did they adopt and improve the Roman civilization of the natives that, from a rude tribe of heathen Vikings, they had developed within a single century into the most polished and intellectual people in all Europe. The union of Norse and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... a long puff at his pipe. "No, I am only a very tired man who has come in out of the wet to rest and smoke," he answered, with a dry smile, "but if it will add to your comfort and improve your hospitality in any way, you can send your waiter back here and I will order ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the same speed, and not improve upon it, while he kept the advantage he first obtained in ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... in such cases must be to improve the process of digestion and to supply the animal with a sufficiency of sound and wholesome feed. The following should be given to the cow three times a day, a heaping tablespoonful constituting a dose: Carbonate ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... "ideal." To free that field of rocks and to drain its bogs he has mortgaged his estate, and, in the play, before the success or failure of his undertaking is proved, he mortgages almost all that remains to him to improve the land below, which the draining of the heather field has turned into a swamp. His wife, to prevent this last folly, strives to have control of his property taken away from him, but his friend, Barry Ussher, believing that restraint would make Tyrrell ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... delight in the study of human nature may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of that knowledge, by the perusal of such fictions as those before us ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... natural and essential? Can you doubt any longer, Alette? I pray you convert and improve yourself. Convert yourself ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... Governor frown, but he made no remark, while Bigot said something in his ear which did not improve his humour, for he replied curtly, and turned to his secretary. "We must have two gentlemen more," ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... grammar and, during this period, having thoroughly tested the merits of Mr. S. Kirkham's system of "English Grammar in Familiar Lectures" by using it as a text-book for my classes, I take pleasure in giving this testimonial of my cordial approbation of the work. Mr. Kirkham has attempted to improve upon this branch of science, chiefly by unfolding and explaining the principles of grammar in a manner so clear and simple, as to adapt them completely to the understanding of the young learner, and by adopting a new arrangement, which enables the pupil to commit the principles by a simultaneous ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... potent influence at the War Office. After that, her direct connection with the Army came to an end, and her energies began to turn more and more completely towards more general objects. Her work upon hospital reform assumed enormous proportions; she was able to improve the conditions in infirmaries and workhouses; and one of her most remarkable papers forestalls the recommendations of the Poor Law Commission of 1909. Her training, school for nurses, with all that it involved in initiative, control, responsibillity, and combat, would have been ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... mistook this bloom of youth and glow of health and vigor for the lambent flames which flash from the countenances of the intellectual—it seemed to me that I must be surrounded by a halo of literary sages and muses, all gifted alike with every grace and charm that nature can bestow or art improve; but when I observed the youths at work in the fields and the maidens at the garden gates, who turned for a moment from their respective tasks to see our train move along, look as happy, as gay and as beautiful as the belles of the cafes and the beaus of the cities, I concluded ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... of one Hilverdink, Jan Hilverdink, whose wines are much esteemed. Within his cellar men can have to drink The rarest cordials old monks ever schemed To coax from pulpy grapes, and with nice art Improve and spice their virgin juiciness. Here froths the amber beer of many a brew, Crowning each pewter tankard with as smart A cap as ever in his wantonness Winter set glittering on ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Assyrian models, and have accidentally varied the common forms, more or less, in the direction which was natural to them from old habits; or Assyrian artificers, acquainted with the art of Egypt, and anxious to improve their own from it, may have consciously adopted certain details from the rival country. The workmanship, subjects, and mode of treatment, are all, it is granted, "more Assyrian than Egyptian," the Assyrian character ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... bold: "The consequences of the various revolutions which have taken place are sufficiently evident in an impoverished country and a declining population; the form of government which has existed has not operated to relieve the necessities of the subjects, or to improve the resources of this extensive empire, by the encouragement of husbandry and commerce; and military life has been embraced by a large body of the people. Habits of peace and industry have been neglected for the profession ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... the advice I have to give you at present. At first you will lose half a pound a day. In the first three months you will lose from twenty to thirty pounds. In six months, forty pounds. You will constantly improve in health, get over this excessive emotion, and be much stronger. Every one knows that a very fat horse weighing 1,200 pounds, can be quickly reduced to 1,000 pounds with great improvement to activity and health. It is still easier with a human being. That you may know exactly what is being ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... I said, smiling; "but there are exceptions which prove the rule, and I hope you will find that even I will improve ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... duty or work separately. They always acted together, when possible; and might, in fact, without much inconvenience, have been born Siamese twins. Whatever Martha did, Jane attempted to do or to mend; wherever Jane went, Martha followed. Not, by any means, that one thought she could improve upon the work of the other; their conduct was simply the result of a desire to assist each other mutually. When Martha spoke, Jane echoed or corroborated; and when Jane spoke, Martha repeated her sentences word for word in a scarcely audible whisper—not ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... Columbus, could not be a perfect round, but pear-shaped. With these conclusions he hastened across to Hayti where his brother was ruling over the little colony in his absence. But treachery and mutiny had been at work. Matters had gone ill with the colony, and Columbus did not improve the situation by his presence. He was a brilliant navigator, but no statesman. Complaints reached Spain, and a Spaniard was sent out to replace Columbus. This high-handed official at once put the poor navigator in chains and placed him on board a ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... from that view. So far as Poetry attempts to improve on truth in that way, so far it abandons truth, and is false to itself. Even literal facts, exactly as they were, a great poet will prefer whenever he can get them. Shakespeare in the historical plays is studious, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... in black base companies and construction battalions. In several instances able commanding officers had availed themselves of competent black leaders to improve race relations, but in most units the racial situation was generally poor. Granger regarded the organization of the units as "badly conceived from the racial standpoint." Since base companies were composed almost entirely of nonrated men, spaces for black petty officers were ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... troubled with the nineteenth century malady of "nerves," she had lived it down since she had taken up her abode on the Saucel Ranch. Her hands were always full. Even now, her day's task done, she had set herself to "improve the shining hour" by "tidying-up" the bureau drawer, in which she had come across the photograph ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... for compensation. In fact the parish had more difficulty about that one subject of contracts for "farming" the paupers than any other thing. If they got a good man he soon found that it was not worth his while to stay; if they got one satisfied with the price he did not improve the paupers or give them much for the money. Here is an offer by the Royston Joint Committee in 1784, and a kind of dilemma not ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... a piano," returned Ida, "you are so fond of it, and improve so fast!" then after a moment she added, "I have a plan to propose, and may as well do it now as any time. Next winter you must spend with me in Boston. Aunt Martha and I arranged it the last time I was at home, and we even selected your room, ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... late had been most trying. Not Martha's sometimes peevish, sometimes plaintive criticisms of her; these she did not mind. But Martha's way of ordering her own life. Jane, moving about in the world with a good mind eager to improve, had got a horror of a woman's going to pieces—and that ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... by a sudden influx of customers to improve the occasion; and Fisher minor, who never enjoyed ginger-beer less in his life, was allowed to depart in peace to meditate on the evil of his ways, and the possible hot water he had been ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... people's feelings. If I love people I always tell them what their worst faults are, and repeat what everybody says about them behind their back. That ought to make people say: "Thank you, Marge, for your kind words. They will help me to improve myself." It has not happened yet. It is my miraculous power of criticism that causes the trouble. Whenever I let it off the lead it seems to bite somebody; a ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... proffer you my warmest esteem and my kindest services. Your letter I regard as a flattering proof of your good opinion, which I shall be most happy to deserve and to improve, by answering every inquiry you may be pleased to make respecting one for whom I have entertained the ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... scouring pails, running numberless infinitesimal errands, doing everything that nobody else liked, hard-worked from morning to night, and called up from her hard pallet to recommence her toil before she had realised that she was asleep. Ursula's temper, too, did not improve with time; and Parnel, the associate and contemporary of Maude, was by no means to be mistaken ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... of Great Britain; Hon. George Thompson's predictions; Their failure; England's dependence on Slave labor; Blackwood's Magazine; London Economist; McCullough; Her exports of cotton goods; Neglect to improve the proper moment for Emancipation; Admission of Gerrit Smith; Cotton, its exports, its value, extent of crop, and cost of our cotton fabrics; Provissions, their value, their export, their consumption; Groceries, source of their supplies, cost of amount consumed; Our total indebtedness ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... family renders the residence of such a head still more valuable to the colony; and the half-pay officer, by thus leading the advanced guard of civilization, and bringing into these rough districts gentle and well-educated females, who soften and improve all around them by mental refinements, is serving his country as much by founding peaceful villages and pleasant homesteads in the trackless wilds, as ever he did by personal courage, or military ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... undoubtedly, the books are too intent upon expunging other forms of religious life, rather than in tracing the movements of the soul. Probably this was inseparable from the position Hugh had taken up, and there was not the slightest pose, or desire to improve the situation about his mind. The descriptions, the lightly-touched details, the naturalness and ease of the talk are wholly admirable. He must have been a very swift observer, both of nature and ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... fallen parrots," growled Soapy. "Besides, I'm the feller that learned her most of the cuss-words old Bob never heard before. I never saw a bird that was so anxious to improve. She used to set there with her ear cocked, just simply crazy to learn something new. Every time she'd see me coming she'd begin to hop up and down on her perch and call me names, figurin' I'd lose my temper and give her a tongue lashin'. Gosh, I'm glad she's ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... and ideas by the establishment of agricultural schools, the appointment of itinerant professors and inspectors, the distribution of better kinds of seeds, improved implements, &c. Efforts have been made to improve the breeds of native cattle and horses, and stallions have been introduced from Hungary and distributed throughout the country. Oxen and buffaloes are the principal animals of draught; the buffalo, which was apparently introduced from Asia in remote times, is much prized ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... difficult! For its execution must be immediate and spontaneous. The word is delivered, the action is done, and the picture is painted! Can I pause and say, "Ladies and gentlemen, that is not the way I wanted to do this, or to say that; if you will allow me to try again, I think I can improve upon it?" ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... decide whether it was more delightful to be taken aback in this way or to prepare for Jamie. Sudden excitement was bad for her according to Hendry, who got his medical knowledge second-hand from persons under treatment, but with Jamie's appearance on the threshold Jess's health began to improve. This time he kept to the appointed day, and the house was turned upside down in his honour. Such a polish did Leeby put on the flagons which hung on the kitchen wall, that, passing between them and the window, I thought once I had been struck by lightning. ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... was modest and retiring even to bashfulness, and had a very marked defect in his articulation, so that his schoolmates called him "stuttering Jack Curran." He joined a "debating club," determined to improve if possible, but there one of the first flings he received was to be called "Orator Mum," in consequence of his being so frightened when he arose to speak that he was not able to say a word. But he persevered until he became the champion of the "club," and laid the ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... time by dint of courage and firmness, in getting back all that the Count had seized by force; but other houses were in as deplorable a condition, and little could be done to improve matters. Billick appealed to the Emperor, who had taken all the Carmelite convents in Lower Germany under his protection; but the Emperor's goodwill surpassed his power to help, the whole of his money and energy being needed to oppose the Turks, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the rights of the individual which were deemed necessary in the eighteenth century. Some of these safeguards have perduring validity. Some grew out of transient experience or formulated remedies which time might well improve. The Fourteenth Amendment did not mean to imprison the States into the limited experience of the eighteenth century. It did mean to withdraw from the States the right to act in ways that are offensive to a decent respect for the dignity of man, and ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... laziness, but he does not quite know it. Look at the case of the lad who goes fresh from school to the city, and starts life at seventeen years of age. We will say that he lives in a suburb of some great town. At first he returns home at night full of quite admirable resolves; he intends to improve himself and advance himself in the world. But on one fine evening a companion suggests a stroll, and it happens that billiards are suggested. Away goes the youngster into that flash atmosphere through which sharp, prematurely-aged features loom so curiously; he hears the low ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... 'Gemeinschaft', for we are planning to work, to sow and reap, and to suffer with one another. This will be very useful, for many a man who has not understood or exerted himself, will by this means see himself and be led to improve. Others also will see from it that we love each other, and will glorify the Father in Heaven. There has been no "society" like that at Jerusalem, but at this present time it becomes necessary, for material ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... he went. People dreaded his arrival in their city; at Antioch, where he stayed for a considerable time, the sufferings were terrible. Julian ordered sacrifices to the gods. So many white oxen were slain that it was said that soon there would be none left in the empire; but still things did not improve. ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... strolled up and down, contemplating the really creditable creation of the girls with a condescending patronage that made them feel like small children in the kindergarten. He gave the art director numerous directions as to how she might improve her method of teaching, and benevolently pointed out to a number of the girls how the things they were making were ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... Maxwell did not hold out long. He had lately married a young wife, and nostalgia got hold of him, he lost all appetite, and was attacked with dysentery, so off he was sent to hospital in Columbus. There he did not improve, and he persuaded the surgeon in charge to order him to report to Tuscaloosa hospital. He soon found friends in Columbus to take him home. The most of Hood's army, that still had arms, were now rushed around by rail, ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... because of the composer's mistaken impression that it ought to be tragic, and in the "Ercles vein." When the rites begin and a swelling paean is expected, there is much making of musical faces, but no real beginning. Matters improve in the second act, where the part of Ariofarno becomes dramatically puissant. Here there are noble passages and the duet has moments of passionate intensity; but all these things pale their ineffectual fires before the "Io paean," which is as ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... subsided. He carried under his arm a casket of precious wood. After silently gazing at the young woman with such effrontery that the blush of shame again mounted to her forehead, the Roman drew from the casket a rich necklace of chased gold. He went closer to the lamp-light in order to improve its glitter in the eyes of the woman whom he wished to tempt. Then, simulating an ironical reverence, he stooped and placed the necklace at the feet of the Gaul. Rising, he questioned her with an ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... benefits are to be given, and in what manner. First let us give what is necessary, next what is useful, and then what is pleasant, provided that they be lasting. We must begin with what is necessary, for those things which support life affect the mind very differently from, those which adorn and improve it. A man may be nice, and hard to please, in things which he can easily do without, of which he can say, "Take them back; I do not want them, I am satisfied with what I have." Sometimes, we wish not only to, return what we have received, but even to throw it away. Of necessary things, the first ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... belong to one petty chief or to another; whether such a nation is divided into a greater or lesser number of tribes; or which of two neighbouring powers originally did homage to the other for its title. History is only to be prized as it tends to improve our knowledge of mankind, to which such investigations contribute in a very small degree. I have therefore attempted rather to give a comprehensive than a circumstantial description of the divisions of the country into its various governments; aiming at a more particular detail in what ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... purpose collateral to this, I wished to explain how it had become impossible for me to compose a Third Part in time to accompany this republication; for during the time of this experiment the proof-sheets of this reprint were sent to me from London, and such was my inability to expand or to improve them, that I could not even bear to read them over with attention enough to notice the press errors or to correct any verbal inaccuracies. These were my reasons for troubling my reader with any record, long or short, of experiments relating ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... Use: (a) To stiffen fabrics and thus improve their appearance. (b) To give fabrics a glazed surface, so that they will shed dust and ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... saw that Frederick's brow clouded at these words, he said, with a sly laugh: "Look you, how the office of a teacher, which your majesty forced upon me, makes me insolent and haughty! I, who would do well to correct my own works, undertake to improve the writings of a king. I remind myself of the Abbot von Milliers, who has written a book called 'Reflections on the Faults of Others.' On one occasion he went to hear a sermon of a Capuchin. The monk addressed ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... to try to induce the lender to let him have another fifty pounds, pending the investigation of title—another fifty, of which he was to get, in fact, eighteen pounds. Somehow, the racking off of this bitter vintage from one vessel into another did not seem to improve its quality. On the contrary, things were ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... called the Cours de la Reine, is a large piece of turf, where, in fine weather, and especially on Sundays, the Parisian youths amuse themselves at foot-ball, prison-bars, and long tennis. Here, too, boys and girls assemble, and improve their growth and vigour by dancing, and a variety of healthful diversions; while their relations and friends, seated on the grass, enjoy this interesting sight, and form around each group a circle which is presently increased by numbers ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... They really did improve as they went on. They were able to get better instruments and were stimulated by rival fanfares in the neighbourhood. They were very anxious to come and play at the chateau, and we promised they should whenever a fitting ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... negro was thus gathering useful knowledge, the Indians amused themselves in various ways until darkness should call them forth to the business of the hour. Some, with that amazing tendency to improve their personal appearance, which is common alike to civilised and savage, plucked out the little beard with which nature had endowed them by means of tweezers, deeming it no doubt wiser on the whole ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... under Rodney's instruction he devoted an hour and sometimes two to the task of making up the deficiencies in his early education. These were extensive, but Mike was naturally a smart boy, and after a while began to improve rapidly. ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... were any, I did not know of them—I was not asked to join. In those same pits and at that same time worked Keir Hardie, and "wee Keir" was just beginning to move the sluggish souls of his fellow labourers to improve their condition by collective effort. My ideal did not lead me in that direction. I was struggling to get into the other world for another reason. I wanted to live a religious life. I wanted to move men's souls as I had moved ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the second and little fingers, and a lock of the 'orse's mane twisted round the first. Mount! That 'orse ain't a bicycle, Mr. SNIGGERS. [Mr. S. (in an undertone.) No—worse luck!] Number off! Walk! I shall give the word to trot directly, so now's the time to improve your seats—that back a bit straighter, Mr. 'OOPER. No. 4, just fall out, and we'll let them stirrup-leathers down another 'ole or two for yer. (No. 4, who has just been congratulating himself that his stirrups were conveniently high, has to see them ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... who help themselves after the fashion most advantageous. All rules of etiquette are unceremoniously dispensed with,—he who can secure most is the best diplomatist. Many find their mouths so inadequate to the temptation of the feast, that they improve on Mr. Scranton's philosophy by making good use of their ample pockets. Believe us, reader, the entertainment is the essential part of the candidate's political virtue, which must be measured according to the extent of his cold meats and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... are of the opinion that Santos coffees are an exception to the rule that most green coffees improve with age. They argue that careful cup-testing will reveal that a new crop Santos is to be preferred to an ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... instrument transmitting power. And yet—oh paradox!—the instrument continued to improve, to grow stronger, to develop individuality and personality day by day! Life, present and hereafter, was growth, development, the opportunity for service in a cause. To ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Range Reserve, may well be a factor in increasing soil porosity and fertility; for in the course of time they probably have succeeded in plowing and cultivating the whole surface layer of the soil. They may thus be a factor in ecologic succession, tending to improve the character of the soil and ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... They have no children. That sort of stuff will die out. If the world keeps to one road, that is, if there is no turning back. An easy road to excess, convenient Euthanasia for the pleasure seekers singed in the flame, that is the way to improve ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... found as the best means of keeping Egypt in obedience. Even before the time of Homer, the island of Pharos had given shelter to the Greek traders on that coast. He gave his orders to Hinocrates the architect to improve the harbour, and to lay down the plan of his new city; and the success of the undertaking proved the wisdom both of the statesman and of the builder, for the city of Alexandria subsequently became the most famous of all the commercial ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... of love for animals. You remember his pony, and what he did to it, and the little dog that crawled upon her stomach towards him. For your sake I would have put up with him, my dear, and striven to improve his nature, which is sure to be much worse at six-and-twenty, after so many years abroad. But I confess it is a great relief to me that you wisely prefer not to have him in this house, any more at least than we can help it. But who comes here? What a hurry ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... ships crimson-prow'd the Cyclops own, Nor naval artizan is there, whose toil Might furnish them with oary barks, by which Subsists all distant commerce, and which bear Man o'er the Deep to cities far remote Who might improve the peopled isle, that seems Not steril in itself, but apt to yield, In their due season, fruits of ev'ry kind. 150 For stretch'd beside the hoary ocean lie Green meadows moist, where vines would never fail; Light is the land, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... a lover again at Katharine's feet. Not that there was anything unusual in that. She might not regard it in a providential light, however; but he, at least did so, and he had intended to improve the shining hours of what would be a long cruise, in the close association permitted by the confined limits of the ship, to make a final desperate effort to win the heart which had hitherto so entirely eluded him that he could not flatter himself ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... is one made in which the canons of good taste are not violated, and some are not compelled to smile who ought to weep. The reverend gentleman who conducted the services, was not insensible to what was expected from him, and determined "to improve" the mournful event to the benefit of the living. After alluding to the gratitude his hearers ought to feel at not being thus hurried, like poor Sill, without time for preparation, before the bar of Judgment, ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... kept it in his box for nearly half of the period during which, according to the Horatian maxim, a work of art ought to lie ripening (a maxim, the truth of which may, by the way, be questioned altogether), Mr. Pen had not buried his novel for this time, in order that the work might improve, but because he did not know where else to bestow it, or had no particular desire to see it. A man who thinks of putting away a composition for ten years before he shall give it to the world, or exercise his own maturer ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... necessary to point it out. If those who are called upon to guide the nations of our time clearly discerned from afar off these new tendencies, which will soon be irresistible, they would understand that, possessing education and freedom, men living in democratic ages cannot fail to improve the industrial part of science; and that henceforward all the efforts of the constituted authorities ought to be directed to support the highest branches of learning, and to foster the nobler passion for science itself. In the present age ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a handsome face still, for all the man was approaching fifty. It was fleshy, and its dark beard did not improve it. But the eyes were keen and fine for all there was coldness and cruelty in their hard depths. The abundant moustache was without a tinge of grey in it, but it lacked trimness, and hung over a cruel mouth like a tattered curtain. The woman knew the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... disturbing the unity. If it is a single word, on which occasionally great weight is laid, it must be permitted to stand. He is a bad author who can not, or will not try to make something as good as possible; if this is not the case petty changes will certainly not improve ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... the average daily number of unemployed in London was estimated by the Mansion House Committee at 20,000. This vast reservoir of unemployed labour is the bane of all efforts to raise the scale of living, to improve the condition of labour. Men hungering to death for lack of opportunity to earn a crust are the materials from which "blacklegs" are made, by whose aid the labourer is constantly defeated in his attempts ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... studious of laborious ease, Not slothful; happy to deceive the time, Not waste it; and aware that human life Is but a loan to be repaid with use, When He shall call His debtors to account, From whom are all our blessings; business finds Even here: while sedulous I seek to improve, At least neglect not, or leave unemployed, The mind He gave me; driving it, though slack Too oft, and much impeded in its work By causes not to be divulged in vain, To its just point—the service of mankind. He that attends to his interior ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... local governments to prepare an integrated prototype preparedness plan to respond to a catastrophic earthquake in Southern California or to a prediction of such an event. The plan's completion, in late 1981, promises to improve substantially the state of readiness to respond to the prediction and the occurrence of an earthquake in that area and to provide a model which could be applied to other earthquake-prone regions of California and ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various
... tardy attempt to improve the defences. In particular there was a large round bastion, about three times the height of the wall; but the masonry was new, and the very embrasures ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... cared for her, while she seemed to have no will for anything, yet had lost that old charming ingenuousness which had underlain her power. He had promised himself, out of his new pathetic yearning when she had begun to improve, that never again should she know an ungratified wish, yet now he feared that she would give him no opportunity of granting a request, so apathetic had she grown. But one day, when he was trying to rouse her to express a desire, she laid her hand eagerly on his, asking a thing ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... conferences when I thought proper to introduce it. The ball being ended, we went to hear vespers at the church of the Canonesses, an order of nuns of which we have none in France. These are young ladies who are entered in these communities at a tender age, in order to improve their fortunes till they are of an age to be married. They do not all sleep under the same roof, but in detached houses within an enclosure. In each of these houses are three, four, or perhaps six young girls, under the care of an old woman. ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... followed the Berlin Decree, the Orders-in-Council, and the Chesapeake affair, Jefferson wrote to Thomas Paine: 'Believing, myself; that gunboats are the only water defence which can be useful to us, and protect us from the ruinous folly of a navy, I am pleased with everything which promises to improve them.' Whether 'improved' or not, these gunboats were found worse than useless as a substitute for 'the ruinous folly of a navy.' They failed egregiously to stop Jefferson's own countrymen from breaking his Embargo Act of 1808; and their weatherly qualities were ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... last three years have been bad years—horrible years! But we have reached the crisis; things must begin to improve now! ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... them. The pack opened slightly at 6.15 p.m., and we proceeded through lanes for three hours before being forced to anchor to a floe for the night. We fired a Hjort mark harpoon, No. 171, into a blue whale on this day. The conditions did not improve during December 19. A fresh to strong northerly breeze brought haze and snow, and after proceeding for two hours the 'Endurance' was stopped again by heavy floes. It was impossible to manoeuvre the ship in the ice owing ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it. What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verse, and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapaests and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... and particularly in the diplomatic line; and of the manufactures and commerce of that empire; and point out in your correspondence how far and on what conditions the two nations can be mutually beneficial to or improve each other in commerce or policy, arts ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... free-trade policy now established with the United States. It is not only the cotton crop of America which she covets, but it is the rich market for the products of her manufacturing industry, which she finds in the United States; and this has contributed as much as any other cause to improve the condition of her operatives, and impart increased prosperity to her trade and revenue. As long as we think proper to hold to our present commercial regulations, I repeat that it will require very great provocation on our part to ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... employed to turn them over and over, and to sprinkle them with a solution of soda, so as to improve their appearance and render them more salable. A large lot of the first quality of beans was then purchased; some of the good beans were first put into barrels, then the barrels were nearly filled with the poor ones; after this the good ones ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... the salmo fario was bought by the late Rev. J. W. King, of sporting celebrity, to put into the lake at Ashby-de-la-Launde, to improve the breed of ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... was smoking on the balcony of the villa while he waited for the ladies to appear. Miss Manisty, who was already suffering from the heat, was not going. The fact did not improve Manisty's temper. Three is no ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not say that if you saw her at high tide, when the water must flow in and out of her, for her bottom is like a sieve," answered Tom. "We must not think of launching her, or of building another boat; but we may improve our craft, so as to make ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... and I certainly cannot improve upon it, and indeed I am not here tonight to argue out propositions which British citizens in every part of the world today regard as beyond the reach of controversy. I do not suppose that in the history of mankind there has ever been in such a ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... They forthwith evaded the order in a manner consistent with their characteristics—by carrying smaller guns where they could not be seen. The majority had simply sawed off a generous part of the long barrels of their Colts and Remingtons, which did not improve their accuracy. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... have no effect on an intellectual man; now he felt a tremor of pleasure, an indescribable something, as he shortened his steps to keep time with the little boots with which Miss Minorkey trod down the prairie grass, and he who had laughed at awkward boys for seeking the aid of dancing-masters to improve their gait, wished himself less awkward, and actually blushed with pleasure when this self-possessed young lady praised his conversation. He walked with her to the hotel, though he took the precaution to take his hat off his head and hang it on his finger, and twirl it round, as ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... father? She was captured scarcely three weeks ago; and that very monster in human form could almost die of hunger and thirst for the sake of her rascally son, who is a common soldier in the imperial army; at last she took to concocting poisons, not to improve her own wretched condition, but to send the shameless wretch means for a fresh debauch. I have known a thousand similar cases, but I will only mention that of one of the wildest and blood-thirstiest of robbers, who had evaded ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... instruction a little more spirituality, and to impart a more comprehensive view of religion, than the routine of former days deemed necessary, and that, by so doing, they will be better able to enlarge and satisfy the minds, improve the hearts, and generally advance the moral education ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... situation, in which, but for such a rescue, he must have been absolutely knocked down and rode over. He shook his cane at the offender; and, thanking me very heartily for my protection, observed, "these rascals improve daily in their studied insult of all good Frenchmen." The want of trottoirs is a serious and even absurd want; as it might be so readily supplied. Their carts are obviously ill-constructed, and especially in the caps of the wheels; which, in a narrow street—as those of Paris usually ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... conditions meanwhile began to improve, and he actually developed business capacities, and soon the greatest writers of the time were contributing to the monthly review Sovremenik (the Contemporary) which Nekrassov bought in 1847. Turgenieff, Herzen, Byelinsky, Dostoyevsky ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... to explain yourself, sir; and I strongly advise you to improve the opportunity, before I put you ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... of Raymond's fortunes, it was easy to see that they were not likely to improve in his hands. He detested business, both en gros and en detail. Despite his ancestry, he seemed to have been born with no faculty for money-making, and he never tried to make up his deficiency. It was all of a piece with the stone-throwing ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... operations. It was a bleak, wild place, three miles from the south mail track, and consisted only of a small slab hut or two with a wool shed and sheep yards. The owner, Mr. T. Moorhouse, had lately purchased the run, and was about to improve and reside on it. A description of our life here would not be interesting, so I will pass over three months during which we worked steadily and the buildings were nearly complete, when one day, as I was nailing ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... present-day 'establishment charges.' The repeated raising of the money allowance is convincing proof that the victualling arrangements had not been neglected, and that there was no refusal to sanction increased expenditure to improve them. It is a great thing to have Mr. Oppenheim's high authority for this, because he is not generally favourable to the Queen, though even he admits that it 'is a moot point' how far she was ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... back to Belgium her natural frontier in the North and reopened the Scheldt for a short time, the French regime did not greatly improve the economic situation. After the union with Holland (1815), the political struggle which followed prevented the people from enjoying the full benefit of the change, so that we must wait until 1830 before being able to ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... me see (the old face became quite thoughtful here)— I'd ask for a library. You see, Cranby is very badly off for books, and people cannot easily improve without reading, you know. Then I would ask for a new church, and a school room, and a town-hall where we might have lectures and concerts, and for a whole street of model-houses for the poor, and a gymnasium, and ...
— Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman • R.M. Ballantyne
... mostly of very indifferent quality: they suffered from the same climatic disabilities as their men; the heat enervated them to such an extent that they could not be induced to take the least trouble about anything, or undertake the least labour; they made no attempt to improve the quality of their men's shooting; they were lax in the enforcement of discipline—save, perhaps, in the exaction of a proper measure of respect from their subordinates; they were strangers to the island and quite ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... from the Tradeston Gas Works is converted. The trials on a working scale have only been made at both places within the past ten days; and, so far, nothing has appeared against the principle, though in certain of the details of construction some alterations are being made to improve it. The extra yield of salt from a given quantity of acid obtained in the experiments has been proved in practice, as also the absorption of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... writer has declared, socialism, like Christianity, is a term which has come to have no definite meaning. It is used by all sorts of people to cover all sorts of vague and indefinite schemes to improve or revolutionize society. [Footnote: It has been said that the word "socialism," as currently used, has four distinct meanings: (1) Utopian socialism, i.e., schemes like More's Utopia; (2) the socialist party ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... himself by reminding Pierre of the ruinous attempt which he had made to improve the artistic quality of religious prints. The remains of his fortune had been lost in that attempt, and the thought made him all the more angry, in presence of the wretched productions with which the shop was crammed. Had anyone ever seen things ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... in his private office, received the message and wrinkled his brow as he read it. Telegraphing does not always improve the legibility of a message. As the message reached the ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... about the work here that make it a most interesting one. First, it is situated in a dense black belt, where the people are anxious to improve, and are appreciative of all that is done for them. Next, Cotton Valley is quiet and retired, being forty miles from Montgomery, nine from Union Springs, and thirteen from Tuskegee; so that, while we are enabled to teach without interruptions that break into school ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 50, No. 05, May, 1896 • Various
... this extraordinary interior accessibility (so to speak) of Frank, that made him (as you and I both think) about the most lovable person we have ever known. They were very extraordinary changes that passed over him, of course—(and I suppose we cannot improve, even with all our modern psychology, upon the old mystical names for such changes—Purgation, Illumination and Union)—but, as theologians themselves tell us, that mysterious thing which Catholics call the Grace of God does not obliterate, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... such matters, though indeed my respected, and respectable, ancestor is not in all things the model of his more catholic and cosmopolitan descendant. The McDougall regimen would doubtless be a little too drastic. To improve the Music-hall Song off the face of the earth, is an attempt which could only suggest itself to puritan fanaticism in its most arbitrary administrative form. The proletariat will not "willingly let die" the only Muse whose ministrations really "come ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... have been made to improve and to imitate this book are not to be numbered. It has been done into verse: it has been done into modern English. "The Pilgrimage of Tender Conscience," "The Pilgrimage of Good Intent," "The Pilgrimage of Seek Truth," ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... give a most unqualified denial. No person conversant with many of the large provincial towns in England and Scotland, can conscientiously "throw a very large stone" at New York; for though much is doing among us to improve and sweeten—chiefly, thanks to the scourge of epidemics—I fear that in too many places we are still on this point "living in glass houses." Doubtless, New York is infinitely dirtier than London, as London at present is far ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... without representation in London, is to follow the natural channel of historical development. Ireland was virtually a Colony, and is treated still in many respects as an inferior type of Colony, in other respects as a partner in a vicious type of Union. We cannot improve the Union, and it is, admittedly, a failure. Let us, then, in broad outline, model her political system on that of a ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... with her, I determined to improve it, and mentioned to her the love I had for her; but she rose and left me very abruptly, as if she had been angry with the declaration I had made. I followed her with my eyes as long as she continued in sight; then taking leave of ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... that he only went to Oxford to improve his accent, and according to some of the older members of the Bar of his days, he only lost his Scots accent and did not learn the English. A story of his early days at the Bar is related to the effect that when pleading before Lord Newton the judge stopped him and ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... such a form as Flodoardo's; a countenance whose physiognomy seemed a passport at once to the hearts of all who examined it; features so exquisitely fashioned that the artist who wished to execute a model of manly beauty, had he imitated them, would have had nothing to supply or improve; features, every one of which spoke so clearly, "The bosom of this youth contains the heart of a hero." Ah, ladies, my dear ladies, a man like this might well make some little confusion in the head and heart of a poor young ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... abate and lessen the credit of evil and hurtful poems by setting in opposition to them the famous speeches and sentences of such worthy men as have managed public affairs, so will it be useful to us, where we find any things in them of civil and profitable import, to improve and strengthen them by testimonies and proofs taken from philosophers, withal giving these the credit of being the first inventors of them. For this is both just and profitable to be done, seeing by this means ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... plan of John Cabot? What discoveries did he make? Did his discoveries antedate those of Columbus? Where and when is it probable the American continent was discovered? What discoveries did Sebastian Cabot make? Did England improve them? ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... he had been much devoted to the property, had lived only to improve it in every possible way, and that through his concentration of interest on this one subject his life had been a very limited one, and that now he could not get away from the remembrance of his earth ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... soaked by the rain, and bruised by the flopping umbrella which Fessenden's had unhappily attempted to hold over it. And now Joe had knocked in the crown, whilst geting it down from its peg with the broom. He had thought to improve its appearance by stroking the nap the wrong way with his sleeve. Lastly, putting it on his head, he had crushed the sides together, to prevent its coming quite down over his eyes and ears and resting on his shoulders. And there he ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... riding-habits, harness, and wheeled carriages; the sight of umbrellas and flags; loaded waggons, troops, or a crowd; the sound of wheels, of drums, of musketry. There are thousands of horses that by degrees learn to bear all these things; others, under our old imperfect system, never improve, and continue nervous or vicious to the end of their lives. Every year good sound horses are drafted from the cavalry, or from hunters' barbs and carriage-horses, into omnibuses and Hansom cabs, because they cannot be made to bear the sound ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... you wax proud, I see, of your new form: I'm glad of that. Ungrateful too! That's well; You improve apace;—two changes in an instant, 490 And you are old in the World's ways already. But bear with me: indeed you'll find me useful Upon your pilgrimage. But come, pronounce Where shall ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... life I did my best to improve the style of official writing. I have written, I should think, some thousands of reports,—many of them necessarily very long; some of them dealing with subjects so absurd as to allow a touch of burlesque; some few in which a spark of indignation or a slight glow of pathos might ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... to stay there a day in order to visit in Gurzelengasse the house where Kosciuszko, the greatest of Poles, had died. He had thought of this pilgrimage for a long time. He added: "Still another useless action. Ah! when shall I improve?" ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... occasion to return, errs, in fact, through supplying no adequate motive for a widespread human energy. It is probably this lack of motive that has led other theorizers to adopt the view that art is idealization. Man with pardonable optimism desires, it is thought, to improve ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... circumstances which led to the accident to the first gun. It occurred whilst hippopotamus-shooting on the coast rivers opposite to Zanzibar; and as Bombay had a little experience in that way to relate, we had long yarns about such sport, which served to improve our Hindustani (the language I always conversed with him in), as well as to divert our useless yet unavoidable feelings of regret at the accident, and also ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... it, and it was a damned good outfit, too. I found plans in an old museum, and had the good sense not to improve on 'em. Always remember, boy, that something that really works can't be improved. That's why the submarine mechanism was adopted—not adapted—for space. The so-called 'better way' they're building 'em today is simply a disguise for ...
— No Moving Parts • Murray F. Yaco
... be perfectly harmless, and particularly as to the clergy. I do not doubt but, if he will be so good to continue steadfast in his principles and practices, he may at proper junctures contribute very much to the honour and interests of that reverend body, as well as employ and improve the wit of many young gentlemen in the city, the university, and the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... world. You ask me to save my life from these assassins by swearing away the life of another. Tell my executioner that I never saw the President of the Confederacy. I never received an order of any kind from him. I did the best I could for the men in my charge at Andersonville and tried honestly to improve their conditions. I am not a perjurer, even to save my own life. A soldier's business is to ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... subsidiary importance, as a convenient instrument for introducing to society new ideas, and for expounding divers truths, both abstract and scientific. Thus he strove to furnish Russia with models of literary productions in all classes, and to improve the language of literature and science. Nevertheless, although he rendered great services in these directions, and is known as "the Father of Russian Literature," he was far more important as a scientific than as a literary man. It is true that precisely the opposite view of him was held during ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... your thoughtful kindness toward us; and I consider your advice most excellent, especially as I intend to travel in Europe, and take out patents for my invention there. It would be desirable to have my Pet learn French, and also to improve her knowledge of music. You understand the English branches pretty well, I believe, my dear. Let me see—how long is it since ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... impatient of control by whomsoever exerted," Mrs. Travilla said, "but we will hope to see her improve in that respect, and you must set her a good ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... Patsy Kenny would permit it. Mustapha, although a beautiful creature to look at, had not yet been "whispered" by Patsy. He had still an uncommonly nasty temper, and indeed most of the tricks a horse could possess. Sir Shawn thought some hard work would improve Mustapha's temper, but Patsy remained oddly unwilling. "Give me a week or two longer to get over him," he would say when Sir Shawn ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... been battered a good deal and had received a wound upon one side of his face that did not improve his looks at all. And while he had been so lively and pugnacious up on the hillside, now he splashed about ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
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