"Unsatisfactory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of his health, Scott returned to Edinburgh, and resumed his studies in the law, which had been interrupted by illness. He states his progress to have been neither slow nor unsatisfactory, though by others he is said to have been an indolent student. He speaks of his "severe studies" occupying the greater part of his time, and amidst their dulness he seems to have underrated the incidents of his private life, which he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... implore you to write him a letter. I can't take a message, because he mustn't know I came to see you. It would spoil it all for him, I think. Write as if it were of your own accord. Don't explain in the letter. Letters are such hard, unsatisfactory things. The best one you could write wouldn't make up to him a bit for what he's suffered and what he must go on suffering, for you couldn't help studying your words, and they'd be stiff and disappointing, no matter how hard you tried ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... intense repugnance to anything like commercial dishonesty, was deeply perturbed. The idea of entertaining at his board as guest a man with whom he would not have a business transaction was exceedingly disagreeable. Leaving the unsatisfactory breakfast half-finished, he rose and paced the room in his perplexity. At last he spoke, as much to himself as to his daughter. "It shall never be said that John Walton was deficient in hospitality. They have been invited by one who had the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... harsh in it, that Mr Maguire's offer to her should, though never accepted, debar her from the possibility of marrying Mr Rubb, and thus settling all the affairs of her family in a way that would have been satisfactory to them and not altogether unsatisfactory to her; but she was aware that it did so. She felt that it was so, and then threw herself back for consolation upon the security which would still be hers, and the want of security which must attach itself to a marriage with Mr Rubb. He might make ducks, and drakes, ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... mounting fish have proven so unsatisfactory that they have been almost entirely abandoned, and, until the method to be described was devised, it was necessary to place specimens in alcohol or other preserving liquids or to make plaster casts of them. The objections ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... confusion were sufficient proof. I was on the right track at last. Yet the evidence was unsatisfactory because merely circumstantial. My piece of down might have come from an opera cloak and not from a well-broken swan, the hair might equally clearly have come from some other head than Lohengrin's, and other men have had trouble with their wives. The circumstantial evidence lying in the ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... a name," he replied; and after this rather unsatisfactory interview I left him and slowly ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... chance was, when a rabbit had been got at one place, to go off at once to another wood at some distance and lie in ambush again there. In this way two, or at most three shots might be got in the short period of dusk. Fond as he was of carrying a gun, Saurin found this sport unsatisfactory after a week or so, though it was infinitely better than not shooting anything at all. But one day when he rode over to the county town, seven miles off, for cartridges, he saw a small air-gun of a new and improved pattern in the shop, which took his fancy very much indeed. ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... "What an unsatisfactory thing is life, apart from the real work we do for God and the Salvation of souls! I want more faith, more conquering faith. I must ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... whole favourable. Only we may not in a financial point of view overlook the fact that, while the government during the two earlier thirds of this period executed splendid and magnificent buildings, it neglected to make other outlays at least as necessary. We have already indicated how unsatisfactory were its military provisions; the frontier countries and even the valley of the Po(21) were pillaged by barbarians, and bands of robbers made havoc in the interior even of Asia Minor, Sicily, and Italy. The fleet even was totally neglected; there was hardly ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... under such a theory to account for the appearance of the thinking, self-regulating life distinctly human." Thus, according to some of the best thinkers, the explanation of the moral and spiritual nature of man as a development of the animal nature, is quite insufficient and unsatisfactory. The theory of natural selection in the struggle for existence cannot explain the cause of the higher nature of man. We cannot say that a theory is complete because it explains many facts. On the contrary, if it fails to ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... appeal he inevitably contrasted with the dry, matter-of-fact reserve of his greeting at the great house, which loomed all the greater in the darkness. Unsatisfactory, from many points of view, as these evenings were, they served to keep whetted Hodder's curiosity as to the life of this extraordinary man. All of its vaster significance for the world, its tremendous machinery, was out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... America intelligence is as usual confused and unsatisfactory. By way of England we have dates from Montevideo to the 12th Oct. The war in the Banda Oriental was terminated. Oribe had retreated to his country house at Rinton. The Argentine forces were reported to have joined ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... after a startled glance at the clock, either stammered, "O mother, I forgot!" or else rattled off an unsatisfactory excuse. ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... coaxed or cajoled, for he was very grumpy indeed; and the reason was, that he had had the lawn to mow that morning, and there had been no dew, and the consequence was, the grass, instead of being easy to cut from its crispness and dampness, was very limp and wiry, so that poor Sam had a very hard and unsatisfactory job, and the effect of it all was that he was as limp and wiry as the grass had been. It was of no use to say, "Do, Sam," or "Do, please, Sam," or "That's a good old chap, now," or anything of that kind; for Sam weeded away viciously ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... have your address, and will write you all my movements. In any trouble, small or great, of your own, send to me for advice without hesitation. I can tell you already that I foresee the time when you will resign altogether the precarious and unsatisfactory life of a mere professional musician. You think no other career would be possible to you? Well, you will see! A few months will decide all. Good-bye ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... has occurred in Liverpool. In view of the magnitude of our debt to the United States it is felt that this method of collecting it in instalments is bound to prove unsatisfactory. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... the place of war in the economy of nations appears to be unsatisfactory. They think war wicked and a world where it exists out of joint. Accordingly they devote themselves to suggestions for the abolition of war and for the discovery of some substitute for it. Two theories are common; the first, that arbitration can in every case be a substitute for war, the ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... or bend under the instep when the Ski binding is tight. Heels must be low and should be slightly grooved at the back to hold the binding. I have no hesitation in saying that most of the Ski-ing boots sold in England prove to be unsatisfactory. Such firms as Lillywhite and Fortnum & Mason, which make a study of suitable equipment, may be trusted, and almost every Swiss bootmaker now sells trustworthy boots for Ski-ing. I always buy my own boots from Och, who has shops at Geneva, Montreux, ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... were wise, he would not stop at knowledge, which is, of course, unsatisfactory,—but dive beyond, as I have done, into the essence of things," said Fred to himself. "If he could pierce through the veil that covers all things, he would find amusement enough to last a lifetime. In vegetable life, the jealousies and passions of flowers,—in the quiet eventfulness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... intense grades of this malady, the best course is to give a globule of Apis 30, and to watch the result for some twenty-four hours. After the lapse of this period the improvement will either have resumed its course, or else it will continue unsatisfactory. In the latter case we should give another dose of the above-mentioned solution of Apis 3. Not unfrequently I have met with patients upon whom Apis acts too powerfully, causing pains in the bowels, interminable diarrh[oe]a, of a dysenteric character, extreme prostration and a sense of fainting. ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... conditions of familiar difficulty and limitation, the dying down of that initial brilliance and passion to succeed, into a wrestle of conscience as sensitive as it was profound, as tenacious as it was scrupulous. He had watched an unsatisfactory marriage, had realised the silent resolve of the north-countryman to stand by his own people, of the man sprung from the poor to cling to the poor: he had become familiar with the veins of melancholy by which ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Telephone system: system is unsatisfactory both for business and for personal use; 3.56 million applications for telephones had not been satisfied as of January 1991; electronic mail services have been established in Kiev, Odessa, and Luhans'k by Sprint domestic: an NMT-450 analog cellular telephone network operates ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that such a place can be found. He says (p. 59) that he thought himself 'obliged out of respect to his country and family to conceal both, it being but too common, though unjust, to censure them for the crimes of private persons.' The excuse seems unsatisfactory, for he tells enough to shew that he came from the South of France, while for his family there was no need of care. It was, he writes, 'ancient but decayed,' and he was the only surviving child. Of his father and mother he had heard ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... hard,—and very constantly. No one ever saw him anywhere but at the club. At eight o'clock he went home to dinner, let us hope to the wife of his bosom, and at eleven he returned, and remained as long as there were men to play with. A tedious and unsatisfactory life he had, and it would have been well for him could his friends have procured on his behoof the comparative ease of a stool in a counting-house. But, as no such Elysium was opened to him, the major ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified so as to acquire that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which justly excites ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... compromise must seem to a modern unsatisfactory and strained, and he turns with relief to the courageous outspokenness of the great poem of Lucretius on the Nature of Things, of which the main object was to persuade the Romans to renounce for good all the mass of superstition, in which he included the religion of the State, by which ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... them. She looked searching into my eyes, as if straining to force her blocked telepath sense through the deadness of the area. She leaned against the steel but the barrier was very effective; our lips met through the cold metal. It was a very unsatisfactory kiss because we had to purse our lips like a pair of piccolo players to make them meet. It was like making ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... carefully abstained from all indefinite eulogies, which merely serve to prove a disproportion betwixt the feeling and the capability of expressing it. To many the above observations will appear too diffuse for the object and plan of these Lectures; to others they will perhaps seem unsatisfactory. I shall be satisfied if they place those readers who are not yet familiar with the poet in the right point of view, and pave the way for a solid knowledge, and if they recall to the minds of intelligent critics some of those thoughts which have ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... preserving that unfaltering respect with which he always addressed her, and wondering whither these inquiries might be tending, or what they might mean. That she should ask him any thing about Lord Chetwynde filled him with a vague alarm, and seemed to show that the state of things was unsatisfactory, if not critical. He was longing to ask about that first meeting of hers with Lord Chetwynde, and also about the position which they at present occupied toward one another—a position most perplexing to him, and utterly inexplicable. Yet on such ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... summed up Gerald's case: "Gerald isn't satisfied to paint the thing that's before him. All he cares to paint is the soul of things, and what you finally see expressed on the canvas is his pity for everything that has the misfortune to be born into an unsatisfactory world. Gerald can't see a thing as being common: the moment he narrows his eyes to look for purposes of art, it becomes to him exceptional, unique. I asked him once, as a joke, to paint me a simple, large, bright ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... prefectures of the extreme north. The largest producers are in order: Shidzuoka, Miye, Nara, Kyoto, Kumamoto, Gifu, Kagoshima, Shiga, Saitama, Osaka and Ibariki. In 1919 Shidzuoka produced 4 million kwan, valued at nearly 13 million yen. But the statistics of tea production are unsatisfactory. Much tea is produced and sold locally which is unreported. A great deal of this is of inferior quality and produced from half-wild bushes. The 1919 figures are: area, 48,843 cho; number of factories, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... versification; and, among his friends, rather discouraged than commended poetical composition. Though long unsettled himself, he was loud in his commendations of industry; and, from the gay man of the world, he became earnest on the subject of religion. For several years, his health seems to have been unsatisfactory. In a letter to a friend, dated Edinburgh, January 30, 1813, he writes:—"Accumulating years and infirmities are beginning to operate very sensibly upon me now, and yearly do I experience their increasing ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... to copy from his slate—indeed he would urge them to do so. He meant it kindly, but inasmuch as his answers were invariably quite wrong—with a distinctive and inimitable wrongness peculiar to himself—the result to his followers was eminently unsatisfactory; and with the shallowness of youth that, ignoring motives, judges solely from results, they would wait for him ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... because of the gross impostures to which they had been made subservient, and partly because, even where the effects upon certain abnormal constitutions were genuinely produced, the effects when fairly examined and analysed, were very unsatisfactory—not to be relied upon for any systematic truthfulness or any practical purpose, and rendered very mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitions they tended to produce. Zee received my answers ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... either a scribal error or an anacoluthon), and then translate wraecna as an adjective for the sake of idiomatic fluency. For gasta weardas as an epithet for angels, though then unfallen, cf. line 12a, sup.—The passage has given scholars much trouble and is unsatisfactory, ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... good man, dear Margaret, will give you a fairly satisfactory idea of a very unsatisfactory state of affairs except that I am not quite sure about Chinon. Walter looked so mischievous, when he added that bit of information, that I am inclined to think he made it up, on the spur of the moment, just to give me ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... over-conciliatory, expression of face." Brand was in no conciliatory mood. He held that his country had been robbed of land which the British Government renounced in 1854, and only resumed now because diamonds had been discovered on it. The interview, however, was neither unimportant nor unsatisfactory. It was followed by an invitation to dinner, and frank discussion of the whole subject. So firmly convinced was Froude of the President's good faith and of the injustice done him that he pleaded the cause of the Free State ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... occurred in the fifth measure, where the Composer called insistently for a double sharp (x). The editor ventured to object, and the passage was tried on the piano, at the Composer's request. The double sharp was felt by him to be unsatisfactory, and was sacrificed. "It won't make much difference, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... age when human passion is supposed to be extinct, and her counsel was attempting to prove that fact to relieve her from the charge. The testimony of the aged Countess, who was herself over seventy-five years of age, was very unsatisfactory, and the court put this question to her demanding ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... specially discussed by me in a short chapter of my treatise on the "Soul," to which alone it is possible for my critic to refer. In that chapter assuredly I do not say what he pretends; what I do say is, (after rejecting, as unsatisfactory to me, the popular arguments from metaphysics, and from the supposed need of a future state to redress the inequalities of this life;) p. 232: "But do I then deny a future life, or seek to undermine ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... European powers, and offering a suspension of arms, that plenipotentiaries might meet at Dunkirk or elsewhere, as might be agreed upon, for the purpose of making a treaty of peace. The reply to this communication was equally unsatisfactory as that made to the letter of the first consul. His majesty expressed his concern that the unprovoked aggressions of France were defended by her present ruler; and refused to enter into a refutation of allegations universally exploded, and, as far as his own conduct was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... were then picked and the feathers weighed, after which the body was laid open longitudinally by cutting alongside the sternum and through the back bone. When all had been thus prepared, they were hung up in groups to be photographed, but the photographs were quite unsatisfactory so far as showing the relative proportions of fat and lean. The accompanying drawing made from the photograph shows the relative development of an average pair of chickens. Attention is particularly called ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... the dreary suggestion of it all as he walked up and down, trying to evolve some plan. Lund's mysterious hints were unsatisfactory. He could not believe them without some basis, but the giant would never go further than vague talk of a "joker" or a card up his sleeve. And they would need more than ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... number of protests were made. In especial, a delegation of twelve to fifteen citizens called upon the general to request the removal of the alcalde, on the ground that he had been an officer in the Spanish volunteer army, and was unsatisfactory because of his former connections. The gentleman, however, had gracefully accepted the new condition of affairs and was performing the duties of his office earnestly and faithfully. These facts General Ernst ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... this portrait is highly unsatisfactory, and is adduced by some as a reason for condemning it. Yet the spirit of the master seems still to breathe through the ruin, and to justify Morelli's ascription, if not the enthusiastic ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... made. Often enough they are wits, more frequently satirists. They can make, we are told, but they cannot take, a joke; at any rate, they are usually out of their element in the comic arena. Moreover, as butts for the caricaturist they are unsatisfactory, for in proportion as his efforts are successful, his sense of chivalry is outraged; and we have seen how Keene and others recoiled from the idea. Only on one occasion did Mr. Furniss make the attempt, and that indirectly and in a sense unintentionally—and ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... which is known in the Italian version as 'Masaniello,' was written for the Grand Opera. Here Auber vainly endeavoured to suit his style to its more august surroundings. The result is entirely unsatisfactory; the more serious parts of the work are pretentious and dull, and the pretty little tunes, which the composer could not keep out of his head, sound absurdly out of place in a serious drama. Fenella, the dumb girl of Portici, has been seduced by Alfonso, the son of the Spanish Viceroy of Naples. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... severe epigram, occurring in the Holy Scriptures, goes to show the impossibility—even though the somewhat unsatisfactory argument of the pestle and mortar be resorted to—of separating the same class of people from their rather confused ideas of the fitness of things. However, when the Mussulman, careering over Sahara, finds himself, by a stumble of his horse, rolling in the sand, with his yataghan, pistols, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... the Lord kens what wad hae come o' you an' me, Gibbie, my man!—Gang to yer bed, noo, an' lea' me to my ain thouchts; no' 'at they're aye the best o' company, laddie.—But whiles they're no that ill," he concluded, with a weak smile, as some reflex of himself not quite unsatisfactory gloomed faintly in the besmeared mirror of ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the nearer purposes, stand out distinct and obtrusive, and force themselves, as it were, upon our eyeballs, and the solemn white Throne of the Eternal away across the marshy levels, is often hid, and it needs an effort for us to keep it clear before us. One of the main reasons for much that is unsatisfactory in the spiritual condition of the average Christian of this day is precisely that he has not burning ever before him there, the great aim to which he ought to be tending. So he gets loose and diffused, and vague and uncertain. That is what Paul tells you when he proposes himself as an example: 'So ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... so complacently listened, and which had induced their recent return to Court, had merely been intended to lure them thither at a period when their presence was more than ever essential to the interests of the Regency; and while M. de Conde found his position in the Government as undefined and unsatisfactory as ever, and that his vanity had been flattered at the expense of his interests, the Count on his side saw the possession of Quilleboeuf more remote than ever, and openly declared that ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... myth of the Ygg-drasill, or the great Ash-tree. With this I shall not weary the reader; especially since large systems have been built on very small premises, and the erudition employed has been equally ingenious and unsatisfactory: I content myself with stating the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... upon me of either journeying to England or entering into a long correspondence with those philosophers of that country whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable use to me in my present undertaking. The latter method of obtaining the desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory; besides, I had an insurmountable aversion to the idea of engaging myself in my loathsome task in my father's house while in habits of familiar intercourse with those I loved. I knew that a thousand fearful accidents might occur, the slightest of which would disclose a tale ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... if she married, were thought extremely small. But she considered that she had won the day, and was now ready to face the Commons; the House had chafed at the delay: they had talked largely of their intentions; if the queen's answer was unsatisfactory, they would dissolve themselves, they said, and return to their counties. On the 16th of November a message was brought that the Speaker would at last be admitted to the presence. The interview which followed, Mary ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... most infusions; but that if you fill the vessel with boiled milk, and then stop the neck with cotton-wool, you 'will' have infusoria. So that you see there were two experiments that brought you to one kind of conclusion, and three to another; which was a most unsatisfactory state of things to arrive at in a ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... preceded him to Winnipeg, agreed with him in this. Also, Mr. Gaddes denounced the Survey Board at that time as unsatisfactory in its composition, open to suspicion in its findings and in practice—so far as outsiders' wheat was concerned—simply a machine to register confirmation of ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... that Herodotus makes no mention of anything like a vague, mysterious sensation of unsatisfied desire to fill the mouth with smoke in those early ages, which he would certainly have done had the taste for smoke been a natural craving, and thumb-twirling an unsatisfactory occupation. This absolute silence of the "Father of History," we think, almost proves our point. "Nonsense!" repeated little Maikar. "The youth of the man who told you about the serpent accounts for his wild description, for youth is prone ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... moderate sum being devoted to the expenses of your education. I regret that the investment of the small property accruing to yourselves has been less successful than could have been wished. As you probably know, the conduct of your brother has been from first to last unsatisfactory—most unsatisfactory.' ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... to this invitation, and the coroner then directed the jury to retire to find a verdict. The six men passed into another room, and I think no one who awaited their return apprehended any other result than the somewhat unsatisfactory one of ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... hazard of the Czar's arbitration"; and he informed the Russian ambassador, Count Vorontzoff, that the aim of the French had obviously been merely to gain time, that their explanations were loose and unsatisfactory, and their demands inadmissible, and that Great Britain could not acknowledge the present territories of the French Republic as permanent while Malta was placed in arbitration. In fact, our Government feared that, when Malta ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... so good, are but unsatisfactory things; drag runs are, beyond all measure, unsatisfactory. After the best-managed bag fox-hunt, there is always a sort of suppressed joy, a deadly liveliness in the field. Those in the secret are afraid of ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... our relations remain in an unsatisfactory condition. In my message of December last I informed you that our envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Madrid had asked for his recall, and it was my purpose to send out a new minister to that Court with ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... ma'am," was the unsatisfactory answer, given just before the closet door closed; "we'll do the way the poor relation did when he got word his uncle had willed him one of his suits of clothes—we'll hope for ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... barely to enunciate the leading doctrine of the fathers is, in the ear of any chronologist, to overthrow it. But, though successful enough in its functions of destruction, on the other hand, as an affirmative or constructive work, the long treatise of Van Dale is most unsatisfactory. It leaves us with a hollow sound ringing in the ear, of malicious laughter from gnomes and imps grinning over the weaknesses of man—his paralytic facility in believing—his fraudulent villany in abusing this facility—but in no point accounting for those real ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Years' Act substituted a four-year tenure of office, in place of a term at the pleasure of the President, for most of the federal appointments. The principal argument urged in favor of the law was that unsatisfactory civil servants could easily be dropped without reflection on their character. Defalcations had been discovered to the amount of nearly a million dollars, due mainly to carelessness and gross inefficiency. It was further argued that ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... on a stool with various councillors about him. In front of the altar was a stout wooden table, on which lay what looked like the body of a goat or a sheep. A fantastically dressed man, assisted by other men, appeared to be engaged in inspecting the inside of this animal with, we gathered, unsatisfactory results, for presently he raised his arms and uttered a loud wail. Then the creature's viscera were removed from it and thrown upon the fire, while the rest of the carcass was ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... other states were asked by telegraph to declare their intentions. The replies being unsatisfactory, Bismarck, with supreme daring worthy of Frederick the Great, orders von Roon and Moltke's iron men forward. They poured like fiends into the surprised territories, overran them in a night, compelling the flight ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... the tragical. On the other hand, Champfleury (who, no doubt partly for a bibliographical memory,[453] prefixed the Champ- to his actual surname) occupies, as has been said, a curious, but in part far from unsatisfactory, position in regard to our subject, and one blessed by the Comic Spirit. His confessed fictions are, indeed, not very successful. To take one volume only, Madame Eugenio, the title-story, not the first in order, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... but erratic Earl of Peterborough, had been engaged for two years, after the unsatisfactory inquiry into his conduct in Spain by the House of Lords in 1708, in preparing an account of the money he had received and expended. The change of Government brought him relief from his troubles; in November he was made Captain-General of Marines, and in December ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... unsatisfactory and discouraging. My friend, Mr. Thomas A. Watson, who assisted me in this first experiment, declared that he heard a faint sound proceed from the telephone at his end of the circuit, but I was unable to verify his assertion. After many experiments, attended ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... years—the precise date I purposely omit—I I was ordered by my physician, my health being in an unsatisfactory state, to change my residence to one upon the sea-coast; and accordingly, I took a house for a year in a fashionable watering-place, at a moderate distance from the city in which I had previously resided, and connected with it by ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... more: He was delirious, and his life being in danger, no one was suffered to approach him. Flora was informed that He was incapable of attending to Letters, and that probably a few hours would decide his fate. With this unsatisfactory answer She was obliged to return to her Mistress, who now found herself plunged into greater difficulties ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... that "a ticker at the present time (1901) would be considered as impracticable and unsalable if it were not provided with a unison device," and he goes on to remark: "The first unison on stock tickers was one used on the Laws printer. [2] It was a crude and unsatisfactory piece of mechanism and necessitated doubling of the battery in order to bring it into action. It was short-lived. The Edison unison comprised a lever with a free end travelling in a spiral or worm on the type-wheel shaft until it met a pin at the end of the worm, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... that can be accomplished by deaconesses working together with ministers in behalf of the manifold interests of the Church is incalculable. The most faithful pastor can make only short and unsatisfactory visits. Many sorrows which he overlooks the deaconess can discern and assuage. She knows best how to reach the heart of a sorrowing woman, to care for her needs, to discern her wants, and to bring solace to the sorrowing and succor to the needy. Deaconesses ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... one species of Peripatus in the whole of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand (the latter being joined to Australia by way of New Britain in Cretaceous times but not later) puts the genus back into this epoch, no unsatisfactory assumption to the morphologist. The apparent absence of Peripatus in Madagascar indicates that it did not come from the east into Africa, that it was neither Afro-Indian, nor Afro-Australian; nor can it have started ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... that fifty young persons owed their conversion to Louisa's books; it was written some years ago. His mother spent Saturday here. She is very bright and cheerful and full of sly humor; he did everything to amuse her and she enjoyed her visit amazingly. I long to see you. Letters are more and more unsatisfactory, delusive things. M. is going to have a "party" this afternoon, and is going to one this forenoon. The others are bright and busy as ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... harangued by squatting chiefs on a question of a road; or more privately holding an inquiry into some dispute among our familiars, myself on my bed, the boys on the floor—for when it comes to the judicial I play dignity—or else going down to Apia on some more or less unsatisfactory errand. Altogether it is a life that suits me, but it absorbs me like an ocean. That is what I have always envied and admired in Scott; with all that immensity of work and study, his mind kept flexible, glancing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... youth, and yet it seldom forms a part of early instruction. Every body talks of the lever, the wedge, and the pulley, but most people perceive, that the notions which they have of their respective uses, are unsatisfactory, and indistinct; and many endeavour, at a late period of life, to acquire a scientific and exact knowledge of the effects that are produced by implements which are in every body's hands, or that are absolutely necessary in the daily ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... matters in connection with any one of a dozen couples among his friends whose matrimonial enterprises had gone smash? It was said that nowadays girls went to the altar thinking that if the husbands they were taking proved unsatisfactory they would soon be free again, the better off by the title of Mrs. and a good stiff alimony and some invaluable experience. "I must keep my head," thought he. "I must consider how I'd feel after ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... my boy," said his father, "we shall not be brought to the—er—scaffold by any mistake of that kind. If that occurred, it would be most un—" he caught his wife's eye and substituted "unsatisfactory. I'm not sure," he added, "but I fancy I hear shouting. Seems to come ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... soothed the disappointment of his men at the brief and unsatisfactory visit and sudden departure of Escobar he endeavored to turn the event to some advantage with the rebels. He knew them to be disheartened by the inevitable miseries attending a lawless and dissolute life; that many longed to return to the safe and quiet path of duty; and that the most malignant, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Still, this was an unsatisfactory way of carrying on an affair of the sort, especially when it was the first really serious one he had ever had. Clean out of Van's mind had faded the memory of a Montana cow-girl, a San Francisco actress, a senior in the Lambda Mu sorority, a——but ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... doubtless best left in the hands of the factory worker. But, under present conditions, buying ready made all the garments needed for a family may be an expensive and unsatisfactory method if the elements of worth, wear, finish, and individuality are worthy of consideration, just as buying practically all foodstuffs "ready made" presents a complex and disturbing problem to the fastidious and conscientious housewife. There is at least a possibility that it would be ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... fifteen-minute call followed by the flying exit is at best only a niggling and unsatisfactory solution; it is next door to always staying at home. Then certainly you would never be a bore (except to the family); but neither by any possibility could you ever be that most desirable factor in life, ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... and France growing out of the same debt have been for some time past in an unsatisfactory state, and this Government, as the neighbor and one of the largest creditors of Venezuela, has interposed its influence with the French Government with the view of producing a friendly ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... scarcely large enough for a post. They expect to receive their money long before the dishonest character of their work can be discovered. The number of trees which this class of men have dwarfed or killed outright would make a forest. The result of a well-meaning yet ignorant man's work might be equally unsatisfactory. Therefore, the purchaser of the acre should know how a tree should be planted, and see to it himself; or he should by careful inquiry select a man for the task who could bring testimonials from those to whom he had rendered ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... to her amazement that the officer who had been charged with preparing the report of the Sixteenth National Suffrage Convention, a woman of great literary ability, had given it up in despair, declaring that it would be utterly impossible to make anything creditable out of such a mass of unsatisfactory material, most of which would have to be entirely re-written. Miss Anthony did not stop to sit down and weep, but wrote her at once to send to Rochester every document she had in her possession. Then, taking all of them to Mrs. Stanton, who had gone to her old paternal home at Johnstown, they arranged, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow of the Manchus? The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply: "Young China." This is unsatisfactory. What do we mean by Young China? In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn, association with the whole of that movement; and assuming that the name were not an assumed one, he clearly can have been no ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... went, for a most unsatisfactory tea. Miss Fox, it appeared, had been to Japan,—"with Dolly Ripley, Peter," said she, carelessly mentioning the greatest of California's heiresses, and she delighted the little bowing, smiling tea-woman ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... point of view the two following days were very unsatisfactory. Not an ounce of tobacco nor a drop of drink was sold, in spite of the fact that several fishing-boats were met. Growing reckless, the skipper determined to approach the English coast, so as to meet the boats coming out of ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... last re-engaged by her old employers, her supplanter having proved unsatisfactory, and as the work lay in a distant street, she usually took the kid with her, thus leaving no one to spy on Tammy's movements. Reddy's reward for not playing him false, however, did not reach her as soon as doubtless she would have liked, because the first two or three ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... his committee, Adams passed through a lane of people on his way to the Old South. "Both regiments or none!" he said right and left as he passed, and every one took up the word. "Both regiments or none!" cried the meeting. Voting his report unsatisfactory, it sent him back to the governor to ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... to make it up when she said good-night was repulsed with energy. Anna was for ever doing aggravating things, and then wanting to make it up; but makings up without having given in an inch seemed to Susie singularly unsatisfactory ceremonies. Oh, these Estcourts and their obstinacy! She marched off to bed in high indignation, an indignation not by any means allowed to cool by Hilton during the process of undressing; and Anna, worn out, fell asleep the ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... Eusebius, l. iv. c. 6. Sulpicius Severus, ii. 31. By comparing their unsatisfactory accounts, Mosheim (p. 327, &c.) has drawn out a very distinct representation of the circumstances and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... round shoulders and flat chests, are directly the result of the improper sitting posture in the schools which is enforced upon the children because of the unsuitable character of their seating arrangements. Thus we practically begin life hampered by an unsatisfactory environment, so far as our sitting posture ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... first cutter's crew were three of the runaways, who had taken the opportunity to communicate with Adler, Phillips, and other of the runaways in the consort. After each party had related to the other its experience in rebellion, and commented on its unsatisfactory results, they touched upon the old topic—how to get to Paris, where remittances from their friends were waiting ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... in earnest—as a true artist should be—that she excites your curiosity to discover what on earth she is taking all this trouble about; and thus she compels your attention. That the result is eminently unsatisfactory is no fault of hers. The piece itself is stuff and nonsense; poor stuff and "pernicious nonsense." It is as if the author had studied the weakest of the Robertsonian Comedies, and had thought he could do something like ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... see Thorn's Heinrich Heines Beziehungen zu Clemens Brentano. pp. 88-90. His study is especially unsatisfactory in view of the fact that he says (p. 88) in this connection: "Wirklich Neues zu bringen ist uns nicht vergOennt, denn selbstverstAendlich haben die Forscher dieses dankbare und interessante Objekt schon in der eingehendsten Weise untersucht." ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... brute or the thing, the difficulty at once presents itself that he can only guess at the mental processes of the one, and that the other is incapable of thought; so that in either case the result is unsatisfactory. One exception to this statement must be made: Kipling, in his "Jungle Book" stories, seems to have achieved the impossible and read for us the very thoughts of the brute creation. Unfortunately it is not given us to know how ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... plans independently of my family. How this was ever to be done, I did not yet see; though I had a good opportunity to learn, from life and from the papers, what I had to expect here. But this mode of instruction, though useful to one seeking to become a philosopher, was very unsatisfactory to me. The chief thing that I learned was, that I must acquire English before I could undertake any thing. And this was the most difficult point to overcome. I am not a linguist by nature: all that I learn of languages must be obtained by the greatest perseverance ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... not to the quarrel and rupture between you. So those ties which have been broken will be restored, and ours which have been so religiously preserved will retain all their old inviolability. At Rome I find politics in a shaky condition; everything is unsatisfactory and foreboding change. For I have no doubt you have been told that our friends, the equites, are all but alienated from the senate. Their first grievance was the promulgation of a bill on the authority of the senate for the trial of such as ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... be done by Him. I take some pleasure in the thought, and wonder why it has all this time been hidden from me, especially after what Dr. C. said in his letter. But I get hold of this idea in a misty, unsatisfactory way. If Christ is to do all, what am I to do? And have I not been told, over and over again, that the Christian life is one of conflict, and that I am to fight ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... and snatch a fearful joy, as, whilst lying on their bellies, they poke their heads over its sides worn by age, without parapet to prevent them from falling into the horrid gulf below. But from the steps in the hollow the view of the Devil's Bridge, and likewise of the cleft, is very slight and unsatisfactory. To view it properly, and the wonders connected with it, you must pass over the bridge above it, and descend a precipitous dingle on the eastern side till you come to a small platform in a crag. Below you now is a frightful cavity, at the bottom of which ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... recollections, pressed upon Mm, and his heart was once or twice upon the point of falling back into the fresh impulses of its early humanity, when the trial of tomorrow threw him once more into a gloom, that settled him down into a resentful but unsatisfactory determination to discharge the duty he ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... wearisome to give the examination in detail, so we will only say, that at its close, Rose Lincoln heard with shame and confusion, that she could only be admitted into the Junior Class, her examination having proved a very unsatisfactory one. Poor Jenny, too, who had stumbled over almost every thing, shared the same fate, while Mary, expecting nothing, and hoping nothing, burst into tears when told that she had acquitted herself creditably, in all the branches requisite for an admission ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... quiet in the Baliol dining room that evening which one might expect to find after an unsatisfactory time-trial. Nations might be falling, cities burning, important men dying; to these boys such events would be as nothing in the face of the fact that the crew of a traditional rival was to be met within the week—and that they were not ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... 7th rose up, shouldered their burdens, and strode backwards. "What are we going back for? What does it all mean? We held up Jerry yesterday—why retire?" It all seemed very unsatisfactory and we were very tired. Food had naturally been scanty and only obtained in snatches, but much energy was being consumed. It was a disappointed battalion that straggled wearily through Logeast Wood. We were only just in time, however, for advance parties of the enemy were already ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... his head lower. "You must be patient with me," he said. "I am an unsatisfactory sort of brother to have, I'm afraid; but if you only knew—— I have been nearly mad this last week. It has been like South America again. And somehow the devil gets into me ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... the New England towns a tendency to retain good men in office, such as we have seen is the case in Switzerland. "The annual election affords an easy means of dropping an unsatisfactory officer. But in practice nothing has been more common than for the same persons to be re-elected as selectmen or constables or town-clerks for year after year, as long as they are willing or able to serve. The notion that there is ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... the shadow of Morrison's death. Naturally, it was Davidson who had given him a lift out of his forsaken island. There were no other opportunities, unless some native craft were passing by—a very remote and unsatisfactory chance to wait for. Yes, he came out with Davidson, to whom he volunteered the statement that it was only for a short time—a few days, no more. He meant to ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... nutrients,—fats, carbohydrates, and proteids.[36] Milk alone is capable of sustaining life for comparatively long periods, and it is the chief article of food during many diseases. An exclusive milk diet for a healthy adult, however, would be unsatisfactory; in the case of young children, milk is essential, because the digestive tract has not become functionally developed for the ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... will demand a closer and closer companionship as its justification and excuse. A marriage that does not ripen into a close personal friendship between two equals will be regarded with increasing definiteness as an unsatisfactory marriage. ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... it is usually as unwise to patronise a restaurant which professedly caters for "gents" as to buy one's leg-coverings of a tailor who knows them only as "pants." Probably the "adult gents' bible-class," which Professor Freeman encountered, was equally unsatisfactory. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... clothes, I went out into the second-story hall. I carried no light. Before I had reached the bottom of the back stairs I heard David, my man, coming down. To be sure it was he and not a burglar I spoke to him in a low voice, my pistol raised in case of an unsatisfactory reply. ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... now more than time that I should return to town; but I could not leave affairs in this unsatisfactory state. I therefore lingered on to see what ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... Vocabulary of East Anglia, calls this production "a sort of cross bun," but no cross is placed upon it, though its composition is not dissimilar. My inquiries, and, I may add, my reading, have not led me to the origin of either of the customs now detailed (with the exception of a few unsatisfactory words given by Forby on cook-eels), and I should be glad to find these brief notices leading by your means to more extended information on both subjects, not only as regards this part of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... fall of man, his redemption, his ingratitude, his lapse, and again his restoration. The chief figures are the same, the action is the same, though more varied and complicated, and the general effect is unsatisfactory from the same cause. Prose is less ambitious than poetry. There is an absence of attempts at grand effects. There is no effort after sublimity, and there is consequently a lighter sense of incongruity in the failure to reach it. On the other hand, there is the greater ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... appears to be favourable for Black, as all his minor pieces are in play, whilst White's development is somewhat restricted by Black's strong pawns at QB5 and Q5. For a long time this opening has not been played in tournaments, being considered unsatisfactory for White. With the present game, and his new move of 15. B-R6, Marshall has reopened the question as to whether White's attack on the K file plus the pawn ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... detail respecting which Mrs. Starling chose to be communicative; responded with details of her own. How it was impossible to get good butter made, unless you made it yourself. How servants were unsatisfactory, even in Pleasant Valley; and how delightful it was to be able to do without them, as Mrs. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... Vienna, at Lintz. The next morning (Sunday) we started betimes to breakfast at Efferding. Our route lay chiefly along the banks of the Danube ... under hanging woods on one side, with villages and villas on the other. The fog hung heavily about us; and we could catch but partial and unsatisfactory glimpses of that scenery, which, when lightened by a warm sunshine, must be perfectly romantic. At Efferding our carriage and luggage were examined, while we breakfasted. The day now brightened ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... summary of such a difficult subject is unsatisfactory and subject to challenge. We shall try here simply to outline Poe's aim and method, leaving the student to supply from his own reading most of the details ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... more to lash the earl with his personal disgust and partly to parade his contempt of a lucrative dependency—than he had felt for the countess. No wonder his diction was poor. It was a sample of limp thinness; a sort of tongue of a Master Slender:—flavourless, unsatisfactory, considering its object: measured to be condemned by its poor achievement. He had nevertheless a heart to feel for the dear lady, and heat the pleading for her, especially when it ran to its ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which have been offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world are widely divergent, and most of them are, in our judgment, eminently inadequate and unsatisfactory. The following enumeration may be regarded as embracing all that are ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... responsibility. We should be acutely alert to catch every word of the superintendent's reply. If he were dealing with such a concrete problem as Milo and the calf, his response would probably be satisfactory; but when such an abstract quality as responsibility is presented to him his reply might be vague and unsatisfactory. His thinking may have had to do with concrete problems so long that an abstract quality presents a real difficulty to his mental operations. Yet the question which the teacher propounds is altogether pertinent and reasonable and, if he fails to give a satisfactory ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... said Andre. "Bonne Maman knows all my secrets; but we have not yet ventured to say anything to the father. My position is too unsatisfactory. Ah, when I shall ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... understand, was severed at one blow from his body. I understand also that later on, within the gloomy solitudes of the snow-laden woods, when, in a sheltering hollow, a fire had been lit by the party, the condition of the quarry was discovered to be distinctly unsatisfactory. It was not thin—on the contrary, it seemed unhealthily obese; its skin showed bare patches of an unpleasant character. However, they had not killed that dog for the sake of the pelt. He was large. . . . He was eaten. . . . The rest ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... wanted something to eat. However, let no one think, who may read these lines, that I favor the use of whisky as a medicine, for I don't. But the situation in those Helena hospitals was unusual and abnormal. The water was bad, our food was no good and very unsatisfactory, and the conditions generally were simply wretched. I am not blaming the military authorities. They doubtless did the best they could. It seemed to me that I was getting weaker every day. It looked as if something had to be done, and acting on the maxim that ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the Red Sea appears to have been upraised within a modern period; nevertheless I have been compelled (though on unsatisfactory evidence, as given in the Appendix) to class the reefs in the middle part, as barrier-reefs; should, however, the statements prove accurate to the less height of the tertiary bed in this middle part, compared with the northern and southern districts, we might well suspect that it had subsided subsequently ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... to his mother's petitions—while every other soul on board was drowned; but these narratives, once irresistible in the impression they created, are to-day received with somewhat mixed feelings. The view of God's character which they inculcate is apt to strike us as unsatisfactory; that He should avert a great and presumedly unmerited physical calamity from one individual simply and solely because He has been asked to do so by some other individual, while allowing the same calamity to overtake numerous others no more deserving of affliction, does not fit in with our ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... given some fifteen hours start and the use of modern railroad facilities, any thought of pursuit would have been folly, even had there been any conclusive data upon which to found proceedings for their apprehension. And with such meagre and unsatisfactory results closed that portion of the supposed secession mystery—at least for the time. After events showed that the "red woman" disappeared from Prince Street on the same night, whether in company with her former ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... were being made by Congress to improve the unsatisfactory ordinance for the government of the West. Committees were appointed, reports were made, and at intervals of weeks or months the subject was considered. Some amendments were actually adopted, but ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... is unsatisfactory. The hero's surrender to the lust of the flesh, undoubtedly suggested by Goethe's Faust and consistent in Goethe's poem, is foreign to the conflict of this play, which, not being human, as is that of Faust, but an abstract antagonism of general historic principles, should ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... thirty-five pages by Burgkmair, Altdorfer, Baldung Grien, and Hans Duerer. Marvellously deft and light-handed as are Duerer's freehand arabesques, embellished by racy sketches of which these borders consist, they are nevertheless touched with a like unsatisfactory character with the other works undertaken for Maximilian, and are almost as far removed from the spirit and performance of the best period for this kind of work, as is the Triumphal Arch from ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... exuberance of his imagination, and partly from an apparent want of method (though, in truth, he had a method of his own, by which he marshalled his thoughts in an order perfectly intelligible to himself), a first perusal will, to many readers, prove unsatisfactory, unless they are prepared for it by an introduction of a more popular character. This purpose, therefore, I shall endeavour to accomplish; it being to be understood that I by no means make myself responsible either for Mr. Coleridge's speculations, or for the manner in which they ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Yet unsatisfactory as these brief interviews were, they revived in Miss Keene the sympathizing curiosity and interest she had always felt for this singular man, and which had been only held in abeyance at the beginning of their exile; in fact, she found herself thinking ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... "While lamenting the unsatisfactory condition, present and prospective, of the colored population, it is gratifying to consider the energetic measures that have been adopted by the African Colonization Society, to transplant, with their own consent, free negroes from America to Liberia. Viewing these endeavors as, at all events, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... points of view these observations are of high interest. Not only do they contain the earliest known attempt to get away from the unsatisfactory method of engaging in parallel lines ship to ship, but in seeking a substitute for it they seem to foreshadow the transition from the Elizabethan idea of throwing the enemy into confusion to the eighteenth century ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... shivering, to appease their pangs by slow whiffs of a Caporal, and while they supped in this unsatisfactory fashion, there came an impetuous ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... advanced in life must feel that, comparing its beginning and its close, he has witnessed two epochs, and that in advanced life he looks on a different world from one which he can remember. To elucidate this fact has been my present object, and in attempting this task I cannot but feel how trifling and unsatisfactory my remarks must seem to many who have a more enlarged and minute acquaintance with Scottish life and manners than I have. But I shall be encouraged to hope for a favourable, or at least an indulgent, sentence upon ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... several times repeated. At last he declared he would visit the strangers on the morrow, and directed them to occupy the buildings in the public square, and none other until he came to make arrangements. His demeanor was cold and forbidding to the last degree. The results of the embassy were highly unsatisfactory. One incident connected with the ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... indispensable to the grantee of 2000, 1500, or 1000 acres? Richardson variously describes the term as almost any kind of dwelling, or "an enclosure of walls to keep cattle from being stolen at night;" in fact, a court-yard. This, however, conveys a very unsatisfactory idea, unless I am justified in supposing that a court-yard was insisted upon, even when a house could not be built, as insuring a future residential settlement, and thereby warding off ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... lately read Mr. Goodall,S(1043) book. There is certainly ingenuity in parts 'of his defence: but I believe one seldom thinks a defence ingenious without meaning that it is unsatisfactory. His work left me fully convinced of what he endeavoured to disprove; and showed me, that the piece you mention is not the only one that he has ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... adoption. Almost the entire South, with Virginia, the Mother of States, in the advance, tells you that these resolutions will be an acceptable measure of pacification, and yet you will not give us a vote upon them; you will scarcely consent to consider them. Even the committee, whose report is so unsatisfactory to the North (and a portion of the South also), does not appear to ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... be able to give them some information about the old records of the company; perhaps there might have been a list of the passengers by the "Cynthia," and the baby might have been registered with his family or with the persons who had charge of him. But their investigations proved very unsatisfactory. The solicitor who had formerly had the books in his possession as the receiver of the company about ten years before; did not know what had become of Mr. Churchill. For a moment Dr. Schwaryencrona consoled himself with ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... for Ricardo Guzman's murder was not lacking, for it was generally known that President Potosi had long resented Yankee enmity, particularly as that enmity was directed at him personally. A succession of irritating diplomatic skirmishes, an unsatisfactory series of verbal sparring matches, had roused the old Indian's anger, and it was considered likely that he had adopted this means of permanently severing ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... with very nice discernment; his imagination, as the Dacian Battle proves, was vigorous and active, and the stores of knowledge were large by which his fancy was to be supplied. His ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious. But his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... night on which it was taken, his promise to Meg Merrilies came to his mind, and he replied that he must refuse to answer the question. He was then pressed to account for his having worn a smuggler's cutlass; but he also declined to explain that matter. And his answers were equally unsatisfactory when questioned on the subject of the purse which the gipsy had ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... settlements on the St. Lawrence. For twenty-four years he had held the position of Deputy-Postmaster General for the English colonies, Quebec being regarded as in some sense within his jurisdiction; and the unsatisfactory monthly service between Quebec and Montreal as well as the absence of intermediate post-offices, had made him unpopular along the Canadian river. It is not surprising, therefore, that he failed to arouse the enthusiasm of the French, especially for a cause which their strong ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... vague consciousness that these of Jasper might properly be enumerated in the class. With a readiness that belonged to her sex, therefore, she preferred changing the discourse to permitting it to proceed any further in a manner so awkward and so unsatisfactory. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... proved a most unsatisfactory affair. She had not made the sensation she expected to make. Harney had scarcely noticed her at all, having neither eyes nor ears for any one save Ellen Tiffton, who surely must have told that Hugh was not invited, for, in no other way could 'Lina account for the remark she overheard touching her ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... distribution (of which I had had glimpses while collecting them), I would not attempt to publish my travels. Indeed, I could have printed my notes and journals at once, leaving all reference to questions of natural history for a future work; but, I felt that this would be as unsatisfactory to myself as it would be disappointing to my friends, and uninstructive ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Western development, and loss of a third of its tonnage by destruction or shift to foreign register during the Civil War. At the outbreak of that war 72 per cent of American exports were carried in American bottoms; only 9 per cent in 1913. Thus the United States had reached the unsatisfactory condition of a nation with a large and rapidly growing foreign commerce and an ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... this statement of the case—and it was certainly a masterly statement—would end any attempt to get what he regarded as an unsatisfactory and dangerous peace. But President Wilson could not be deterred from pressing the issue. His conviction was firm that this winter of 1914-1915 represented the most opportune time to bring the warring nations to terms, and it was a conviction from ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference, as Edmund Gurney says, between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.[365] But all these statements are unsatisfactory from their brevity, and I can only say that I hope to return to the same questions ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... was no one in either party who was so thoroughly bewildered by the incident which had just transpired as Captain Somers. The mystery of his companion's antecedents was in a fair way to be cleared up, though in a very unsatisfactory manner to those most intimately concerned. The conversation, and the verification of the rebel officer's statements, showed that De Banyan was not De Banyan; that the brave and brilliant Federal officer was not a Federal officer; that, of ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... contagious disease Never to despise the good opinion of the nonentities One seed of a piece of folly will lurk and sprout to confound us Secrets throw on the outsiders the onus of raising a scandal She did not detest the Countess because she could not like her Thus does Love avenge himself on the unsatisfactory Past Touching a nerve Unfeminine of any woman to speak continuously anywhere Vulgarity in others ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger |
