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More "Improve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and heinous sin of card-playing hath contaminated our borders, as hath been of late brought to light in the cases of Jerubbabel Galpin and Zedekiah Armstrong, who were taken in the act, and are even now in the stocks. And thereby am I reminded that I had purposed to improve this occasion for the reproof and admonition of ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... it must be said, did not improve. His stock of liquor was ample, and he continued to indulge himself. Generally he kept within safe bounds, but at times he allowed his appetite to get the better of him. Whenever that happened, it was fortunate if he drank himself into a state of stupefaction, ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... 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
... expansion in the life to come; and she had wisdom enough to know that every intellectual acquirement was adding to the talent intrusted to her, and thus honoring the gracious Giver. So she determined to strive earnestly to improve her new privileges, and thus repay her benefactor as well ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... guidance of his Order, not only because he did not think himself able to look to it in person, on account of the multitude of religious now belonging to it, and on account of his infirmity, but in order to improve himself in the virtue of humility, to which he ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... end. Such, at least, were the tactics by which he came triumphant out of the struggle with Spain. He made no conquests at first, gained no striking victories; but he compensated for his apparent want of success by perseverance, by taking advantage of defeat to improve the army, and by laboring to transfer to the crown the financial and other resources which had been previously absorbed by the aristocracy. Thus the war, though little brilliant at first, produced at last these very important results. Arras in the north, Turin in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... is a child, Mrs. Orange, ma'am, who is always at play. She can't be kept at home a single day together; always gadding about and spoiling her clothes. Play, play, play, play, from morning to night, and to morning again. How can she expect to improve?' ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... son,) and it's you was ever the good boy of a son to me, only I never could make you understand the coorse of the world's doin's as well as I could wish; but never heed! you'll improve yet—so take courage and do as I desire you; but mind, if you don't, never call the Gubbaun Seare your father more, the longest day you have to live! Do you see that skin?' 'I do, father—I see it,' says he, innocent as a child. 'Well, Boofun, you must take to the road now at once, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... bark, are stored away in large receptacles hollowed in the earth, from whence they are drawn as occasion may require. In this condition the Tutao sometimes remains for years, and even is thought to improve by age. Before it is fit to be eaten, however, it has to undergo an additional process. A primitive oven is scooped in the ground, and its bottom being loosely covered with stones, a large fire is kindled within it. As soon as the requisite degree of heat is attained, the embers ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... cause me to reflect, and appeal to my imagination. Outside of these works, I write Aunt Vera to send me those of different poets and celebrated novelists, and to send them as much as possible in chronological order, so that I may improve my knowledge of literature. This simple desire is in opposition to Colonel P——'s system. Fortunately, he does not know foreign languages, and such books are sent for approval to Mr. N——, who, more intelligent than his colleague, does not need to read a book through to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... I did it," Paul went on; "and when Mr. Gordon comes we'll find out if he understood my letter, or thought it meant something else. I'm only a beginner in this business, you know, and expect to improve, for I see where we can have lots of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... as on 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 adapt it to ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... Oh! 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
... over, and have come to a firm resolution to turn over a new leaf on our return to the mission. If Mrs. Fisher were not so peevish and Mrs. Dodd so distressingly particular, we could get along better in the kitchen; the native girls would do better, and improve. If you were to oversee that department, I think there would be a change greatly for the better. The truth is, I believe those women are afraid of being poisoned. They ought to give their time in the school. If they tried ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... believed, are rendered especially mischievous in this country by the nature of our institutions, and by the spirit of the times. Here, the path to eminence being open to every one—but too many are morbidly anxious to improve their condition; and by means, too, which in the wisdom of Providence were never intended to command success. A mad desire for wealth pervades all classes—it feeds all minds with fantastic hope; it is hostile to ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... To improve your property, the vile cascade Your thrift invites—to make a higher level. In vain: with tons of garbage overlaid, Your baseless bog sinks ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... see it in due time does not diminish for him the queer joy of seeing it; nay, this emotion would be far less without that foreknowledge. Some things are best at first sight. Others—and here is one of them—do ever improve by recognition. I remember that when first I beheld this steady strip of light, shed forth over a threshold level with the road, it seemed to me conceivably sinister. It brought Stevenson to my mind: the chink of doubloons and ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... alter the fact, any more than it will change the colour of his eyes or hair. It is bound to come out sooner or later. You will probably think me a brute, if I suggest that a little discipline and knowledge of the world might improve the ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... requires to get on in this country. He is a good hand at shooting and fishing, understands all sorts of farm work, and is as good a rider as any boy of his age. He will forget all these accomplishments if we go eastward; whereas if we move westward, he will improve still more. And as he is as sharp as a Yankee, he will do well enough in ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... whisper into their ears the plausible reasons of dissatisfaction, envy, and complaining, to which the uninformed of all classes but too eagerly listen? I have ever found the religious and the political propagandist united in the same individual. The man who proposes to the simple to improve his creed, is ready to point out the way to better his condition. He succeeds in rendering him unhappy in both, and there he leaves him. So would this man, and I would rather die for my people, than tamely give them ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... his habit of returning to them at intervals long after their composition. A good fourth of the Codex Vaticanus consists of repetitions and rifacimenti. He was also wont to submit what he wrote to the judgment of his friends, requesting them to alter and improve. He often had recourse to Luigi del Riccio's assistance in such matters. I may here adduce an inedited letter from two friends in Rome, Giovanni Francesco Bini and Giovanni Francesco Stella, who returned ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... was simply staggering... The 7th of June cost us dear, and, owing to the success of the enemy attack, the price we paid was very heavy. Here, too, it was many days before the front was again secure. The British army did not press its advantage; apparently it only intended to improve its position for the launching of the great Flanders offensive. It thereupon resumed operations between the old Arras battlefield and also between La Bassee and Lens. The object of the enemy was to wear us down and ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... bicameral council, the extension of the term for which members of the council were elected and the veto power of the mayor may be attributed to the influence of the Constitution rather than to any intelligent and carefully planned effort to improve the machinery of ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... culture. The ground has to be prepared, to be broken up by ploughing, to be mellowed by harrowing, all the stones removed, the roots of all natural growth dug up, for the good things we are seeking are not natural growths and will not grow in our soil. We all start on the old basis and try to improve the old nature, but that is not God's way. His way is to get self out of the way entirely, and let Him create anew out of nothing, so that all shall be of Him; and we must find ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... was signed, providing for an interoceanic canal across the territory of that State. An able and learned discussion of this proposition will be found among his papers. This treaty was pending when he retired from office, and was promptly withdrawn by President Cleveland. The act to regulate and improve the civil service of the United States was approved by President Arthur, and he put into operation rules and regulations wide in their scope and far-reaching for the enforcement of the measure. In his papers will be found frequent and interesting discussions of this question. His vetoes ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VIII.: James A. Garfield • James D. Richardson
... this day of holy rest, We would improve the calm repose; And, in thy service truly blest, Forget the world, ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... narrow well, or to portray the splendor of the risen sun and the starry heavens with ink. No picture of the Saviour, though drawn by the master hand of a Raphael or Duerer or Rubens—no epic, though conceived by the genius of a Dante or Milton or Klopstock, can improve on the artless narrative of the gospel, whose only but all-powerful charm is truth. In this case certainly truth is stranger and stronger than fiction, and speaks best itself without comment, explanation, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... On this topic, and on the question generally as applicable to England at the present date, I have, in a pamphlet on Parliamentary Reform, expressed myself in terms which, as I do not feel that I can improve upon, I will venture here ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... Government allows every man, or single woman of mature age, widow or unmarried, to go upon a plot of land, not more than one hundred and sixty acres nor less than forty acres, and to improve it, and live upon it. If he stays there, or 'maintains a continuous residence,' as the lawyers say, for a certain length of time, the Government gives him a title-deed at the end of that time, and he owns ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... deep discouragement and I went back to my reading in the library with a despairing resolution to improve every moment, for my stay in the east could not last many weeks. At the rate my money was going May ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... musket bores was extensively practiced. Probably, rifling evolved from the early observation of the feathers on an arrow—and from the practical results of cutting channels in a musket, originally to reduce fouling, then because it was found to improve accuracy of the shot. Rifled small-arm efficiency was clearly shown at Kings ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... faculties, that he can not possess himself of wealth that will enrich his whole life, and enable him to converse and mingle with the most cultured people. No one is so poor but that it is possible for him to lay hold of that which will broaden his mind, which will inform and improve him, and lift him out of the brute stage of existence into ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the Danes had done, they promptly 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 French (i.e. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... catalogue of 1839, the Dresden gallery contained eighteen hundred and fifty-seven. At Munich, the present king has erected a spacious building, into which he has draughted a selection, from among several thousands, of about fifteen hundred. And what have we done to improve the national taste? And strange, indeed, does it appear, that whenever such a subject is brought before the public mind in Parliament, it is solely with a view to the connexion of art with manufactures. There must be in the nature of things a certain connexion; but unnecessarily ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Tarbell's warnings; and Mrs. Tarbell found that in every conversation which took place on the subject Mrs. Tarbell began as a philosopher and ended as a disputant. All that could be done was to give Miss Stiles her own way and try to improve her taste in dress if possible. It was practically understood between them, though Mrs. Tarbell had as yet refused to commit herself, that as soon as the trial was over and the damages had been pocketed, Miss Celandine should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... employed to interpret nature, and to improve and perfect common sense and experience, is, for the most part, a building without a foundation. The criticism exercised by reason, then, on common sense may be as severe as it pleases, but it must be ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... in the drawings of the artist Frederic de Waldeck, who visited Palenque before Stephens, but whose researches were published later. "His drawings," says Mr. Winsor, "are exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to improve and restore, where the conditions gave a hint, and so as we have them in the final publication they have not been accepted as wholly trustworthy." Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 194. M. de Charnay puts it more strongly. Upon his ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... to the modern standard, many of them not having been increased for years. Then the tenants were in effect ordered to farm to the highest pitch, and to improve the soil itself by liberal investment. Buildings, drains, and so forth were provided for them; they only had to pay a small percentage upon the money expended in construction. In this there was nothing that could be complained of; but the hard, mechanical, unbending spirit in which it was done—the ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... outpouring, the prologue, mere thundering in the index, 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 ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... decidedly the best thing to do. To go away and improve himself, and study up all those painters and cathedrals with which she was ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... 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; ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... 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 ...
— 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
... sorry you cannot do this for me," he said; but he issued the order. Merrifield and Sylvane themselves carried it to the offending superintendent. Matthews was furious; but he moved the cattle at dawn. The whole affair did not serve to improve the relations between the groups which the killing of ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... especially for filling-in purposes, and by using them the operation of splitting is avoided. After the box is trimmed, the rustic work should be varnished, in order to thoroughly preserve it, as well as improve ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... country it has been imported to some extent; and during the last year considerable quantities have been brought from Spain, and the importations will undoubtedly increase very largely as the means of transport improve in that country. ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... and another, for the morning, if persistently performed day by day, will in time awaken the spiritual vision as they improve life. This matter has, however, been so thoroughly treated in number 11 of the lecture series: "Spiritual Sight and Insight; its safe culture and control," that it is unnecessary to dwell upon the matter further in ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... a matter of fact, I don't believe he'll ever think about it at all, and if he did he wouldn't have any real right to feel offended at me: the process I'm going to use is one I expect to change and improve a lot different from the one Campbell and I worked on ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... carefully upon the beach, and John was despatched for his mother. While he is absent, we will improve the opportunity to give our young readers a better idea of the new boat than they have yet obtained. She was about eighteen feet long, and very broad for her length. Her bow was very sharp, and her build combined the ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... question for an objector to the bill to consider is not one of abstract principle, but this: "Is the restraint proposed so great as really to diminish the average productiveness of woman's labor, or, by increasing its efficacy, to maintain its level, or even improve it in spite of the hours lost? What is the length of labor beyond which an average woman's constitution is overtaxed and deteriorated, and within which, therefore, the law ought to keep them in spite of their ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... face; then, some words have a national timbre so expressive of race characteristics that the best of translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German "Gemueth" signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words verbally so closely allied as the English gentleman and ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... that we should proceed as far to the westward before nightfall as we could, and as the bay to the South-East of Sims' Island had not been sufficiently seen by us, we steered off so as to reconnoitre the proas, and improve the survey at the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... "You must not get it into your mind that it is to improve his own honor that he does it now. I know that for certain. It is to give his ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... second only to Cicero in eloquence. As a historian, he wrote in a style that was clear, vigorous, and also simple. Most of his writings are lost; but of those that remain Cicero said that fools might try to improve on them, but no wise man would ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... On several occasions he produced revelations to warrant a step in this connection which he felt to require justification, and the modern reader is forced to wonder how his credit survived some of those proceedings. While it is undoubtedly the case that he did much to improve the position of women in Arabia, the absence of any high ideal in this matter is ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... number of men. Above all, the system is based on the fact that results are most truly measured not by the number of fires extinguished but by the absence of fire at all. Settlers, campers and lumbermen are visited, cautioned and converted. In short, the patrolman has a certain area in which to improve public sentiment. His success in this is worth more than efficiency in fighting fires due to lack of such success. A system devoted to mere fire fighting to be adequate must grow larger as time goes on. One devoted to preventing ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... blood apply Till faith to sight improve, Till hope in full fruition die, And all my ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz
... and followed from afar by the pallid damsels, he beat the wood. The only thing forthcoming was a German pig, one of a pair that the count had to improve the breed. The female had died, and the male wandered about sad and alone in the depths of the wood whilst his companion was metamorphosed into black puddings and chops. There were strong suspicions that the author of the attack was this widowed hog, but the young ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... thickets, I finally reach Miller Station for the night. This place is enough to give one the yellow-edged blues: nothing but swamps, sand, sad-eyed turtles, and ruthless, relentless mosquitoes. At Chesterton the roads improve, but still enough sand remains to break the force of headers, which, notwithstanding my long experience on the road, I still manage to execute with undesirable frequency. To-day I take one, and while unravelling ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... said Dorothy; "I have good news for you, not bad. Freda is really better—she is less feverish, and her throat does not hurt her so badly. I don't pretend that she is yet out of danger, but if she continues to improve as she has done during the last seven or eight hours, she will be out of danger before long. Now I want you to take care of yourself and to trust ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... recurled the corners of the Heth cards, which did not improve their appearance. He gazed down at the work of his hands, and there seemed to be no color ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... theatre of Shakspeare and Garrick with more exquisite feeling and discernment. The consciousness of his own strength, and the assurance of my aid, emboldened him to imitate the example of Dr. Maty, whose Journal Britannique was esteemed and regretted; and to improve his model, by uniting with the transactions of literature a philosophic view of the arts and manners of the British nation. Our journal for the year 1767, under the title of Memoires Literaires de la Grand Bretagne, was soon finished, and sent to the press. For the first ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... until he arrived at Kara; but he found that in the dense atmosphere of the prison room it was almost necessary, and therefore took to it. Besides smoking being allowed as useful to ward off fevers and improve the health of the prisoners, it also had the effect of adding to their contentment, rendering them more easy of management, as the fear of the smoking being cut off did more to ensure ready obedience than even the fear of the stick. Tea was not among ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... study.(5) His Meditations are written in Greek. He continued his literary studies throughout his life, and after he became emperor we still find him asking his adviser for copies of Cicero's Letters, by which he hopes to improve his vocabulary.(6) Pronto Helps him with a supply of similes, which, it seems, he did not think of readily. It is to be feared that the fount of Marcus's eloquence was pumped up by ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... a fine sunshiny day; Mrs. Lewson's spirits began to improve. "I have always held the belief," the worthy old woman confessed, "that bright weather brings good luck—of course provided the day is not a Friday. This is Wednesday. ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... Bob, "all this has a good sound enough, but it's quite impossible. It's true, I verily believe, that such a kind of servant in our family would really prolong Marianne's life years,—that it would improve her health, and be an unspeakable blessing to her, to me, and the children,—and I would almost go down on my knees to a really well-educated, good, American woman who would come into our family, and take that place; but I know it's perfectly vain and useless to expect it. You know we have tried ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... are not bound, of course—as those old Rechabites considered themselves bound—to do in everything exactly what our forefathers did. For we are not under the law, but under grace; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty—liberty to change, improve, and develop as the world grows older, and (we may hope) wiser. But we are bound to do, not exactly what our forefathers did, but what we may reasonably suppose that they would have done, had they lived now, and were they ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... quantities of the qua-mash in the bottoms through which we passed this evening now in blume. there is much appearance of beaver and otter along these creeks. saw two deer at a distance; also observed many sandhill crains Curloos and other fowls common to the plains. the soil appears to improve as we advance on this road. our hunters killed a duck only. the three young men of the Wollahwollah nation continued with us. in the course of the day I observed them eat the inner part of the young and succulent stem of a large ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... which they now enjoy. Your achievements in Egypt are well known throughout the civilised world. I see often in the papers of your noble works on the upper Nile. You are a man of ample resources, with which you suit yourself to any kind of emergency. My hope is that you may long be spared to improve the condition of the people among whom your lot is cast. I am striving hard to advance my people to a higher state of development, and to unite both this and all other nations within the four seas under one ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... by scientists the extreme slowness with which races have improved. But do we know how fast races or families can improve if brought in contact with the most helpful influences of other races or families? Has that experiment ever been fairly tried? Do not results with hardened convicts, with Indian and negro pupils, suggest that there may be an immense ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... to blind herself to the inference that marriage with her had not benefited him. Matters might improve in the future; but to take upon herself the whole liability of Swithin's life, as she would do by depriving him of the help his uncle had offered, was a fearful responsibility. How could she, an unendowed woman, replace such ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... absolute perfection. Any architect of our time, who should build an edifice in different proportions than those which were recognized in the great cities of antiquity, would make a mistake. Who can improve upon the Doric columns of the Parthenon, or the Corinthian capitals of the Temple of Jupiter? Indeed, it is in proportion as we accurately copy the faultless models of the age of Pericles that excellence with us is attained. When ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... decay. If the tragic actor declaim not daily, the resonance of his voice is dulled and its channels grow hoarse. Wherefore he purges his huskiness by loud and repeated recitation. However, it is vain toil and useless labour[59] for a man to attempt to improve the natural quality of the human voice. There are many sounds that surpass it. The trumpet's blare is louder, the music of the lyre more varied, the plaint of the flute more pleasing, the murmurs of the pipe sweeter, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... annual visitor has been received by us. It seems to improve with age, for this is the best number yet issued. The illustrations, matter, printing and binding, are all excellent. We refer the reader to the advertisement for a description of its varied and excellent contents. The price is only 25 cents. Every subscriber to our ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... FORM OR SHAPE OF FLYING MACHINES The Theory of Copying Nature. Hulls of Vessels. Man Does not Copy Nature. Principles Essential, not Forms. Nature not the Guide as to Forms. The Propeller Type. Why Specially-designed Forms Improve Natural Structures. Mechanism Devoid of Intelligence. A Machine Must Have a Substitute for Intelligence. Study of Bird Flight Useless. Shape of Supporting Surface. The Trouble Arising From Outstretched Wings. Density of the Atmosphere. Elasticity of the Air. "Air Holes." ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... nerve element will ever understand 'the connective tissue' of civilisation. We have here the continuous force which binds age to age, which enables each to begin with some improvement on the last, if the last did itself improve; which makes each civilisation not a set of detached dots, but a line of colour, surely enhancing shade by shade. There is, by this doctrine, a physical cause of improvement from generation to generation: and no imagination which has apprehended it can forget it; but unless ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... 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, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... hold no further novelty for me, and I begin to weary of them. Now and then comes a stranger who is going across the fjeld, but things are no longer, I am told, as they were in other years, when visitors came in droves. And things will not improve until we, too, get ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... life. When she lost her sight, he used to read to her every evening. He was a poor reader; and, perceiving that she was sensitive to this defect, he secretly took lessons, at the age of sixty-four, to improve his elocution. Junot and Bernadotte were her ardent, lasting friends, and always delighted to serve her. Her rare graces, and her generous goodness to Madame Desbordes-Valmore, disarmed the prejudices and won the heart of the gifted but misanthropic Latouche. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... following and searching her averted eyes; "am I right? would you do thus? Can you help me to improve my girl? I wish you knew the bewitching little creature. How would that heart overflow with affection and with gratitude towards you! She should be your daughter. No—you are too nearly of an age for that. A sister; her elder sister, you should be. That, when there is no other relation, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... revert for the moment to the environmental factor. The first most pressing and immediate practical duty of the Government and the community is to spare no pains to improve the status and environment of the family so as to promote the highest attainable standard of physical, mental, and moral health for the new generation—already in our midst or bound to arrive in the course of the next ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... very pretty thing on the Kaiser's part. In 1824, the tree, I suppose, being gone to a stump, certain subscribing Prussian Officers had it rooted out, and a modest Pyramid of red-veined marble built in its room. Which latter the then King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm III., determined to improve upon; and so, in 1839, built a second Pyramid close by, bigger, finer, and of Prussian iron, this one;—purchasing also, from the Austrian Government, a rood or two of ground for site; and appointing some perpetual Peculium, or increase of Pension to an Austrian Veteran of merit ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... haven't 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, which is next to mine, and opposite ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... group, and in twenty minutes from the time of my arrival on the scene there must have been a good dozen of us. Every paper in town was represented. It was a first-class news story, and the men who were paid by space were already working hard to improve its value by getting new details, such as the animal's history and pedigree, names of previous victims, human or otherwise, the description and family history of its favourite keeper, and every other ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... a sincere interest in the public good, are possible, though in unequal degrees, to every rightly brought-up human being. In a world in which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy, and so much also to correct and improve, every one who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual requisites is capable of an existence which may be called enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws, or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty to use the sources of happiness within his ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... walk in life the sending of such lines to a gentleman who had not declared himself would be considered almost indelicate. However, I wrote out the absurd lines for the girl without comment, and rescued Henry's volume of Byron, which I felt would not improve in appearance by contact with the meat chopper, knife-board and other miscellaneous objects which she keeps in the kitchen drawer. It is a pity Netta does not exercise stricter supervision over Elizabeth. The girl seems ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... was a most unlucky step at this juncture. There were two parties in the provinces, but one was far the most powerful upon the great point of the Spanish soldiery. A vast majority were in favor of a declaration of outlawry against the whole army, and it was thought desirable to improve the opportunity by getting rid of them altogether. If the people could rise en masse, now that the royal government was in abeyance, and, as it were, in the nation's hands, the incubus might be cast off for ever. If any of the Spanish officers ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... become indeed more complex, but the answer, when found, is more prolific in results. Wealth, then, is treated only as one of the forces of civilization. Other interests than purely material ones occupy the first place. This matter-of-fact philosophy which, according to Bacon's precept, seeks to improve the conditions of life, bears in mind, that the most fruitful source of material development lies in intellectual development. It humbly recognizes that it is not the first-born of the family, and draws new strength from this avowal. From the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... long-range farming. He needs crops that turn his money over quickly. With that in sight, he works hard and faithfully. The Yankee, as a rule, welcomes him. He has the sagacity to see that his coming will improve economic conditions, now none too good. As shrewd traders, the two are well matched. The public school brings the children together on equal terms, levelling out any ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Giusto Cielo! But impossible!" reiterated the old man. "Mees Quentin, you cannot haf understood. Perhaps, in my anxiety that you should strain every nerve to improve, I haf not praised you enough—and so you haf not understood. Leesten, then. You haf a voice than which there is not one so good in the whole of Europe. It is superb—marvellous—the voice of the century. With that voice you will haf the whole world at ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... her lips quickly and did not speak. But the five per cent. certainly did seem to improve ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... a state of things, it was an obvious step to improve upon the natural conditions by artificial means; dykes, and canals, and flood-gates, with other hydraulic apparatus, would, even in the beginning of society, unavoidably be suggested, that in one locality the water might be detained longer; ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... corner, the one large undeveloped bit of land still left, nearly in the center of the whole tract. This was plastered with the signs of the realty company, seductively offering to lease it for a term of years or improve it with a ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... complexion. The many of her nominal friends and admirers who at heart dislike her, prophesy that in a few years she will be coarse, and say that she is already too masculine; but the few who love her, think that she will improve both in person and mind, as she rubs off the pride and self-opinionativeness of twenty years of country life against the wholesome iron of society and the world. But we ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... marble, that my Lord Northumberland [Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland.] had given the King. To White Hall with Mr. Moore, where I met with a letter from Mr. Turner, offering me 150l. to be joined with me in my patent, and to advise me how to improve the advantage of my place, and to keep off Barlow. This day come Will, my boy, to me: the maid continuing lame. [William Hewer, respecting whose origin I can only make out, that he was a nephew to Mr. Blackburne, so often mentioned in these pages, where ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... a man of Wagner's power and originality exercises upon his contemporaries. There is little in it which cannot be traced more or less directly to a prototype in the works of Wagner, and it need scarcely be said that Goldmark does not improve upon his model In 'Das Heimchen am Herd' (1896), the libretto of which is founded upon Dickens's famous story 'The Cricket on the Hearth,' Goldmark seems to have tried to emulate the success of Humperdinck's 'Haensel und Gretel,' There are suggestions in it, too, of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... be carried out, we had still to spend a time of dreadful and acute anxiety, which I shall never forget, within the walls of Magdeburg. It is true I made one more personal attempt in Leipzig to improve my position, on which occasion I entered into the transactions mentioned above with the director of the theatre regarding my new opera. But I soon realised that it was out of the question for me to ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... name, I don't much like the smell of it; but perhaps 'twill improve when it's well rubbed in. It does not somehow smack of ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... "I'm awfully glad I've got you here to advise me. I want to do things well about the place, and keep square with the tenants, and improve a great many things. I noticed a whole lot of cottages to-day that want rebuilding. And I think I ought to build a club-room for the young fellows in the village, and give a new lifeboat to replace the 'Vega,' What ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... is to be found the delicate child, and everywhere anxious mothers are putting forth every effort to improve the condition of their puny boys and girls. In carefully looking over the puny child, we see an underweight little creature with pale skin, and as he comes to the table everybody notes that he refuses more ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... telling Christian people to GO FORWARDS—to grow—to become wiser and stronger, better and better day by day; that they ought to become better, and better, because they can, if they choose, improve. This text tells us so; it says that we shall bring forth more fruit in our old age. Another text tells us that "those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;" another tells us that we "shall go from strength to strength." Not one of St. Paul's Epistles ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... write his own Narrative, in his own style, and according to the best of his ability, rather than to employ some one else. It is, therefore, entirely his own production; and, considering how long and dark was the career he had to run as a slave,—how few have been his opportunities to improve his mind since he broke his iron fetters,—it is, in my judgment, highly creditable to his head and heart. He who can peruse it without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit,—without being filled with an unutterable abhorrence of slavery and all its abettors, and animated ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... first place, it proves too much. The same argument could be adduced for the abandonment of effort of all kind whatever to improve upon Nature and her processes. "You can walk and run and swim. Don't bother to invent boats and bicycles, trains and aeroplanes, that will bring you more into touch with other peoples. Let Nature evolve the best form ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... the door. "I'm sure there's nothing I am not ready to do to make it up with you. Perhaps you have not got the cheese downstairs? I'm ready to go out and buy it for you. I could show you how to keep eggs sweet and fresh for weeks together. Your gown doesn't fit very well; I shall be glad to improve it, if you will leave it out for me after you have gone to bed. There!" cried Miss Jillgall, as the cook majestically left the room, without even looking at her, "I have done my best to make it up, and you see how my advances are received. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... legitimate social agency. During the Christmas season of 1911 the following film story was set forth to vast audiences of people with telling effect: In a wretched hovel you see a lame mother with three pale children. The rich young landlord comes to collect rent and is implored to improve the place. This he refuses to do because of his small returns on the property. He departs. The father of the family returns from work. They eat the ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... landlord's Hebrew note, and surveyed the suitor disapprovingly. And disapproval did not improve his face—a face in whose grotesque features David read a possible explanation of his surplus stock ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the close of the reign of Henry VII. In elegancy of manners he has the advantage of all his predecessors, as is particularly remarkable in his address to Sir Giles Alington, his patron. The poet was now grown old, and the knight desiring him to abridge and improve Gower's Confessio Amantis, he declines it in the politest manner, on account of his age, profession, and infirmities; 'but tho' love is an improper subject, 'says he, I am still an admirer of the sex, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... Nothing is more favourable to the reputation of a writer than to be succeeded by a race inferior to himself; and it is an advantage, from obvious causes, much more frequently enjoyed by those who corrupt the national taste than by those who improve it. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and public instruction, he added familiar visits and Personal application, and was careful to improve the opportunities which conversation offered of diffusing and increasing the influence ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... accustomed to our New England hills, it was much too flat to merit the appellation of beautiful, though Art had done what it could to improve upon Nature; so I assented to his encomiums upon the landscape, but, desirous of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... he said, in a tone of satisfaction. "It don't improve my beauty, but then I ain't vain. I care more for my liberty. If it hadn't been for that cussed boy there wouldn't have ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... was right. It's a lying world. It does not improve with age either. The habit has become chronic, and the worst of all is, that the world has told some lies so often, that it actually now believes them itself. The wretched family propagates, too, at a terrible rate. Lies breed, like other vermin, rapidly, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... on his mission after Peters. Bart's countenance brightened when he saw the savage officer depart, for he believed the absence of the latter would greatly increase his chances of escape; and in spite of all the threats he had received of being shot, he resolved to improve that absence in making the attempt, though the manner of doing so yet remained to be decided, by ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... rate of Two Pounds sterling for each Ewe. As I do not consider it an Object for Government to interfere in this pursuit, Seeing that the greatest exertions will be made by Mr. MacArthur, And notwithstanding every attention has been paid to improve the Fleeces of Government Sheep, Yet that Stock will always be a reserve for supplying present and future Settlers with proportions thereof, which will at once save the Necessity of purchasing to Supply New Settlers ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... water. There was nothing in the appearance of the place to indicate unhealthiness; but eight Spanish and Swedish workmen, being brought hither for the purpose of instructing the natives in the art of smelting iron, soon fell victims to disease and "irregularities". The effort of the marquis to improve the mode of manufacturing iron was thus rendered abortive. Labor and subsistence are, however, so very cheap that almost any amount of work can be executed, at a cost that ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... occupy, if possible, all the islands and plantations heretofore occupied by the Government, and secure and harvest the crops, and cultivate and improve the plantations. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... general has the good sense not to make the defense passive: he must not remain in his positions to receive whatever blows may be given by his adversary; he must, on the contrary, redouble his activity, and be constantly upon the alert to improve all opportunities of assailing the weak points of the enemy. This plan of war may be called the defensive-offensive, and may have strategical as well as tactical advantages.. It combines the advantages of both systems; for one who awaits his adversary upon a ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... to proceed? We knew very well that a deliberately planned attempt to "read something" to Snarley was sure to fail. He would suspect that we were "interested in him" in the way he always resented, or that we wanted to improve his mind, which was also a thing he could not bear. Still, we might practice a little artful deception. We might meet him together by accident in the quarry, as we had done before; and Mrs. Abel, after due preliminaries and a little leading-on about nightingales, might produce the volume from ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... undertaker, Henry, but I fancy a doctor could improve you. What do you reckon is the ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... days Stanton was engaged as a clerk in a store. He was honest, industrious, and greatly beloved by those with whom he came in contact. His early education was limited, but during his employment as clerk he used every possible endeavor to improve his mind. During his journey across the plains, he was regarded as somewhat of a savant, on account of his knowledge of botany, geology, and other branches of natural science. His disposition was generous to a fault. He never was happier than when bestowing assistance upon ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... you have, Kathleen, for a winter day. It strikes me you should take a dose of your own medicine." Inspecting her keenly. "Late hours do not improve your appearance, young lady." ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... is, and they are exploiting it with enterprise. They will continue to do so more and more, if pulpit and press are ignorant or cowardly, and sworn officers of the law make void the law. Both native and foreign exploiters of vice immediately improve the facilities afforded by every wicked or deluded executive who proclaims a segregation district. These shrewd, diabolical men quickly stock the red light districts with their victims. The traders are organized, capitalized, ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... perform an exercise on the manuscript, which Mr. Bentham practised on all his own writings, making what he called "marginal contents"; a short abstract of every paragraph, to enable the writer more easily to judge of, and improve, the order of the ideas, and the general character of the exposition. Soon after, my father put into my hands Condillac's Traite des Sensations, and the logical and metaphysical volumes of his Cours d'Etudes; the first (notwithstanding the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... as wounds this heart Come frae that heart again, And teach for aye the kindly ray To blink on me alane. Thy modest cheek aye mantling glows Whene'er I talk o' love, As rainbow rays upon the rose Its native sweets improve; Yet when the sunbeams leave yon tower, And gloamin' vails the glen, Will ye gang to the birken bower When nane on earth can ken? Oh, scenes delighting, smiles inviting, Heartfelt pleasures len', And oh! how fain to meet alane, When nane on earth ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... presajxo. Impression impreso. Impressionable impresebla. Impressive impresa. Imprison malliberigi. Improbable neversxajna. Improper nedeca. Impropriety nedececo. Impromptu senprepara. Improve plibonigi. Improvement plibonigo. Improvident malspxarema. Improvise improvizi. Imprudent nesingardema. Impudent senhonta. Impulse pusxo. Impure malpura. Impurity malpureco. Impute alkalkuli. In en. In front antauxe. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... husband are settled at Davos, and he is beginning to improve. She writes sweet little letters, and I'm sure this illness has arrived at a providential moment. The shock of realising that her Jacky's life was in danger was like a lightning flash lighting up a dark landscape. In its blaze she saw revealed ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Improve your privileges by getting ready beforehand for the work of life. If the paint brush teaches you this lesson, you may be glad that you had to ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... thickened out a good bit, sir, since I saw you strip. Before another four years, if you keep on at it, you will be as big a man as I am. I am about eight years too old, and you are four years too young. You will improve every day, and I shan't. Now, sir, let us see what you can do. Jack tells me that you are wonderfully quick on your feet; there is the advantage you have of me. I am as strong as ever I was, I think, but I find that I cannot get ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country; in the second place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer; in the third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which was a benefit ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... by visions of wealth from the El Dorados of the West, or of profit from commercial enterprises which appealed to the cupidity of capitalists and led to investments that promised speedy and ample returns. A desire to improve social conditions and to solve the problem of the poor and the vagrant, which had become acute since the dissolution of the monasteries, was arousing the authorities to deal with the pauper and to dispose of the criminal in such a ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... of the Bredows and other feudal people for a long while, had good solid masonry in it, and around it orchards, potherb gardens; which Friedrich Wilhelm's Architects took good care to extend and improve, not to throw away: the result of their art is what we see, a beautiful Country-House, what might be called a Country-Palace with all its adjuncts;—and at a rate of expense which would fill English ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... of having a school established with a competent master, a fully-equipped graduate from Hampton Institute was no small acquisition. When the school was established the classes were soon crowded by those who, on account of their anxiety to improve, deserved to be distinguished as the most diligent and persevering of learners. There were a host of others also who, through having to attend to their daily labour were unable to attend school by day, were still not content to remain uninstructed in such good times as had dawned ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... Beech Glen, and north and south for considerable distances. The probable capacity of this reservoir has been estimated, and it is fairly certain that it is considerably more than would be sufficient for flood catchment. Its construction would, moreover, improve the entire valley and be of advantage ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... had decided to improve the opportunity afforded by her geographical position, and under her supervision "The Valley Grove ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... in them. But have the masters really only this one way of disposing of the surplus—can they really make no other use of it? In the modern world they do as a matter of fact make no other use of it. As a rule, their desire is to increase or improve the agencies engaged in labour—that is, to capitalise their profits—without inquiring whether such an increase or improvement is needed; and since no such increase is needed, so over-production—that is, the non-disposal of the produce—is ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... new 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 ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... three people to crowd into six or seven months. And even then there was so much left over which we wanted to do that we fairly groaned as we saw opportunity after opportunity slip by which we simply didn't have the time to improve. ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... answer. "It would seem that the Being that gave them power to improve His gifts so well, would not deny them voices to ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... them a lesson in gentleness to dumb animals which they never afterwards forgot, and which some of my boy readers would do well to remember. With a laudable effort to improve the occasion, Mrs McTougall carefully printed in huge letters, and elaborately illuminated the sentence, "Be kind to Doggie," and hung it up in the nursery. Thereupon cardboard, pencils, paints, and scissors were in immediate demand, and soon after there appeared on the walls in hideously ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... I'll go down and see what's wrong with him." So the farmer strode off across the ploughed field. The delay annoyed him, and he felt unreasonably cross with Travers. As he plodded on through the heavy soil his temper did not improve, and he was talking to himself by the time he came upon Travers, giving his team their wind at the top of the hill leading up ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... they declared had taken bribes from the fallen Empire, being probably one of Bismarck's paid agents. Thus the enterprise speedily collapsed without even being put to the proof. However, the public was successfully exploited by various individuals who attempted to improve on Villemessant's idea, undertaking to send letters out of Paris for a fixed charge, half of which was to be returned to the sender if his letter were not delivered. As none of the letters handed in on ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... the Filipinas Islands come to be the ones that suffer the penalty, without being implicated in the guilt. And although their commerce is in the lowest condition that it has ever experienced or suffered, yet even in this condition they are not allowed or permitted [to improve] it, and there are some who propose its destruction as a remedy, so that it may share in the universal destruction of all trade; and this is in so far as it touches the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... young, is that of cheerful working. Cheerfulness gives elasticity to the spirit. Spectres fly before it; difficulties cause no despair, for they are encountered with hope, and the mind acquires that happy disposition to improve opportunities which rarely fails of success. The fervent spirit is always a healthy and happy spirit; working cheerfully itself, and stimulating others to work. It confers a dignity on even the most ordinary occupations. The most effective work, also, is usually the full-hearted work—that which ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... but yet it is more imposing on paper. There is something more impressive in it; I shall be better able to criticise myself and improve my style. Besides, I shall perhaps obtain actual relief from writing. Today, for instance, I am particularly oppressed by one memory of a distant past. It came back vividly to my mind a few days ago, and has ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... but the youngest was styled the Little Beauty, and hence she was, when grown up, called by the name of Beauty, which made her sisters jealous,—who were proud of their riches, kept only the grandest company, and laughed at their youngest sister, whose study was to improve her mind. They would only marry to a duke or an earl, while Beauty declined every offer, thinking herself too young to be ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... never improve him in that respect," said Lucy dryly, and rejoined the gentlemen in time to hear Random mention the name of Don ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... tainted by it, is a question which every thoughtful man will ask himself, with a shudder, and look sadly around, to answer. If the sentimental objectors rally again to the charge, and declare that, if we wish to improve the world, its virtuous ambition must be piqued and stimulated by making the shining heights of "the ideal" more radiant; we reply, that none shall surpass us in honoring the men whose creations of beauty inspire and instruct ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... themes elaborated by the painters of the school of Giotto were not merely as good, in a way, as any pictorial themes could be: simple, straightforward, often very grand, so that the immediately following generations could only spoil, but not improve upon them; they were also, if we consider the matter, the only pictorial representations of Scripture histories possible until art had acquired those new powers of foreshortening, and light and shade and perspective, which were sought for only after the complete attainment of the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... 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; when, incapable of extricating himself, he fell a sacrifice to his own rashness ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... his father, and all of our family I have ever known, we've all had something in us so that we've been driven to improve the soil, without thinking of our own comfort. But it certainly never entered the mind of one of us that we should ever hear it ill spoken of—and by one of our own people too!" Lasse spoke with his face turned away—as did the Almighty when He was wroth with His people; and Pelle ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... legs out of the bunk and sat up. He was feeling very tottery, and the painfulness of his head did not improve his temper. "Look here," he said, "I've had enough of your airs and graces. I've paid for my passage on this rubbishy old water-pusher of yours, and I'll trouble you to keep a civil tongue in your head, or I'll report you to your owners. You are like a railway guard, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... life, she begged for a little whisky. This was promptly brought her, and Mrs. Edwards, who now appeared upon the scene, invited the poor gentlewoman to rest upon her bed. Whilst she complied with this kind request, the clergyman and Edwards had time to improve their acquaintance, which indeed bade fair towards speedily ripening ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the shack. She'd escaped the squalor, the horrid cold and the hardships, common to the women of the Silent City. She lived more comfortably and decently than the fishermen's wives. She'd learned many things, but all her efforts to improve herself had been centered in her ambitions for Boy. Now it was all wasted! She'd won for him nothing but Waldstricker's enmity. Her aspirations for him and for herself were buried in the little grave on ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... run for the incorruptible prize of effort in the fashion in which others and yourselves run for the corruptible, your whole lives would be changed. Why! if Christian people in general really took half—half? ay! a tenth part of—the honest, persistent pains to improve their Christian character, and become more like Jesus Christ, which a violinist will take to master his instrument, there would be a new life for most of our Christian communities. Hours and hours of patient practice are not too much ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... state of the class struggle as well as their own surroundings cause Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favored. Hence they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class; nay, by preference to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... satire may be distinguished: personal satire, which is directed against individuals, and usually springs from malignant or unworthy motives; partisan satire, which aims to make an opposing party or sect odious; and social satire, which seeks to improve the manners or morals of society. Dryden, himself a master of the ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... or two would improve my appearance considerably," he added, "but then bruises hurt and are apt to turn awkward; I think I might safely spare myself the pain; but I might, at all events, break my whip-stock and carry the end of it back;" and having settled these points ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... quarters with his heels on a table. He is not a doctor, yet he read a book on surgery, and when he went over to the club he carried the book under his arm and continued to read it there. He is considered a rotten conversationalist, and he did nothing at the club to improve his reputation. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... time and labour must be given to the one purpose of hewing out the new path. We cannot stop to repair our faults and failures. For us that would be a waste of energy and of time. It is for those who inherit the commencement we have made to do that; not for us, the pioneers. They will improve our beginnings; we must continue onward. Never mend anything, except your manners, boys! Put up with discomforts and hardships, as ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... yourself for in hot water? It don't improve you a bit, only shows white streaks on your dirty face. Look here, if you don't stop that noise, I'll tell the captain when we take to the boats that you're not worth saving, and ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... endoorance, my dear, but you take a straight tip from me. When you feel the symptoms coming on, don't you go trying to be sweet and forbearing, and bottling up all the froth; it's not a mite of use, for it's bound to rise to the top, and keeping don't improve it. Just let yourself go, and be right-down ugly to somebody—anyone will do, the first that comes handy—and you'll feel a heap better!" She sighed, and turned a roguish glance towards the shrouded windows of The Nook. "I was ugly to Aunt Soph ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... us,—to opinions which the next generation may find to have been utterly mistaken,—to a circle of acquaintances who must in a few years be lying silent and solitary, each in his grave? Why, in short, set our affections on anything in this earth, or struggle to improve or settle aught in a world where all seems so temporary, changeful, and uncertain, that "nought ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Sir George's narrative on this proceeded, 'had come to South Australia, seeking to improve their condition. Labour being scarce and highly paid, the German girls went out and did shearing. They moved from farm to farm, accompanied by some of the older women, and at night they would be housed by the settler who happened ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... prisoners watched, powerless, the ravages committed on their unhappy country by the army with which they travelled. The contents of mansion, shop, hut, were alike stolen. Even children's toys swelled the booty. Although the wound on Kosciuszko's head began to improve, he had lost the use of his legs and could not move without being carried; yet a Russian guard watched him incessantly. The rumour had gone round the Polish countryside that he had escaped from Maciejowice, and that the Russians had some feigned captive in his place. In ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... may, in his practice, discover defective mechanical action and by his ingenuity be able to improve it; he may likewise see where an improvement can be made in acoustic construction; where a better scale can be drawn; or where different and perhaps new materials may be used for the component parts ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... Frank Merriwell, Mr. Bearover. We were speaking of horses. Now I'll admit that Pansy yonder hasn't been properly educated. In time I hope to improve her greatly. In time I hope to teach her to perform a few simple mathematical problems, although I doubt if she'll ever be ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... if anything more literally true. The Chinese are a nation of liars. If innate ideas were possible, the idea of lying would form the foundation of the Chinese mind. They lie by instinct; at any rate, they lie from imitation, and improve their powers in this respect by the most assiduous practice. They seem to prefer lying to speaking the truth, even when there is no stake at issue; and as for shame at being found out, the very feeling is unfamiliar to them. The gravest and ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... thing that Prometheus, who is a hero to us, should have been regarded so differently his contemporaries. Some thought of him as merely a sort of social settlement-worker, living among men to improve them, in a sleek, earnest spirit. Some thought him a common adventurer. Others ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... down up to the neck, at least. Well, there was none of that danger now, for her husband was dead-poor chap! It would be nice, in these dismal days, when nobody spent any time whatever except in the service of the country, to improve his powers of service by a few hours' recreation in her society. 'What humbugs we are!' he thought: 'To read the newspapers and the speeches you'd believe everybody thought of nothing but how to get killed for the sake of the future. Drunk on verbiage! What heads and mouths we shall all have when ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... right, nevertheless, Rosy, and so are you, for the two things go together, and in helping seven lads you are unconsciously doing much to improve one lass," said Dr. Alec, stopping to nod and smile at the bright-faced figure resting on the old bamboo chair, after a lively game of battledore and shuttlecock, in place of a run ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... happiness, in the ineffable, truculent assurance of German journalists and manufacturers of novels, tragedies, poems, and histories (for it must be clear that these people belong to one category), who seem to have conspired to improve the leisure and ruminative hours—that is to say, "the intellectual lapses"—of the modern man, by bewildering him with their printed paper. Since the war, all is gladness, dignity, and self-consciousness ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... is rarely attained—a thoro knowledge of language—a great benefit will result to the community; children will save months and years to engage in other useful attainments, and the high aspirations of the mind for truth and knowledge will not be curbed in its first efforts to improve by a set of technical and arbitrary rules. They will acquire a habit of thinking, of deep reflection; and never adopt, for fact, what appears unreasonable or inconsistent, merely because great or good ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... who hast continued my life to this day, grant that, by the assistance of thy Holy Spirit, I may improve the time which thou shall grant me, to my eternal salvation. Make me to remember, to thy glory, thy judgements and thy mercies. Make me so to consider the loss of my wife, whom thou hast taken from me, that it may dispose me, by thy grace, to lead ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... with reptiles, and everyone recognises the high level of excellence that has been attained by their vocal powers. How these great cerebral advances came about we do not know, but it has been one of the main trends of animal evolution to improve the nervous system. Two suggestions may be made. First, the prolongation of the period of ante-natal life, in intimate physiological partnership with the mother, may have made it practicable to start the higher mammal with a much better brain than in the lower orders, like Insectivores and Rodents, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... different studios, you will, if the play suits that particular market, naturally offer your material first to the company that has paid you best. But just as soon as a script comes back from one company—so long as you feel certain that it is not in your power to improve it before letting it go out again—send it out to another, and then to another, until it is either accepted or so worn or soiled that it is politic to recopy it. And don't wait too long to do this ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... as a different colour each increase of about one-tenth in these multitudinous frequencies; and it is principally by means of this Sense of Sight that we gain a knowledge of what is happening around us. And yet what strides we have made in the last two hundred years to improve upon that instrument! With all its wonderful capabilities, we shall see later on that the eye is a very imperfect instrument for seeing very small objects, or even large objects when at a great distance. With the present compound ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... which could only be dispelled by the final deliverance or destruction of the Roman empire. The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skilful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion nor shall I strive, at the distance of three centuries, and a thousand ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... sweethearts to vote for me, but I was so homely-looking that the men refused! The ladies said that if I would only grow whiskers (what were called "weepers," or the Lord Dundreary mode, was popular) it would improve my appearance, and I would get four more votes! I ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... his girdle a handkerchief with cakes and fruit, and during this short repast he exhorted his nephew to leave off bad company, and to seek that of wise and prudent men, to improve by their conversation; "for," said he, "you will soon be at man's estate, and you cannot too early begin to imitate their example." When they had eaten as much as they liked, they got up, and pursued their walk ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... pinched, dragged on the ground, or deprived for long periods of sleep. Then, amid jeers and yells, he was marched from village to village, so that all might be entertained with his sufferings. Yet, amid each torture, he never failed to improve an opportunity favorable for escaping, and in one instance would have effected it, but for some Indians whom he accidentally met returning to the village. Finally it was resolved to burn him at Lower Sandusky. The procession, ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... person, and untiring in his efforts to improve himself. Both he and his wife study whenever they have a spare moment, and there is a tradition that she stirs her puddings with one hand and holds a Latin grammar in the other, the grammar, of course, getting the greater share of her attention. To most German Hausfraus the ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... attachment of the people. The studious temper and retirement of Constantine disarmed the jealousy of power: his books and music, his pen and his pencil, were a constant source of amusement; and if he could improve a scanty allowance by the sale of his pictures, if their price was not enhanced by the name of the artist, he was endowed with a personal talent, which few princes could employ ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... that a level bed of live coals makes an excellent cooking fire, though I will show you a better. Yesterday you cooked the worst meal I ever saw in the woods. Today you get up a really good, plain dinner; you have learned that much in one day. Oh, you improve some. And I think you have taken a lesson ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... hard-hearted and indifferent to human suffering. I am willing to own that there is often a professional hardness in surgeons, just as there is in theologians,—only much less in degree than in these last. It does not commonly improve the sympathies of a man to be in the habit of thrusting knives into his fellow-creatures and burning them with red-hot irons, any more than it improves them to hold the blinding-white cantery of Gehenna by its cool handle and score and crisp young souls with it until they are scorched ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... most shapely, both in face and figure, that has yet appeared. American children are far less crude, and lumpy, and awkward-looking than the European children. One generation in this country suffices vastly to improve the looks of the offspring of the Irish or German or Norwegian emigrant. There is surely something in our climate or conditions that speedily refines and sharpens—and, shall I add, hardens?—the human features. The face loses something, but it comes into shape; and of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... goes to a lodging near the bridge; but returns in the morning, to cheer me with her smiles, and bless me by her duteous affection. A lady once offered her an asylum in her family; but she would not leave me. 'We are all the world to each other,' said she. 'I thank God, I have health and spirits to improve the talents with which nature has endowed me; and I trust if I employ them in the support of a beloved parent, I shall not be thought an unprofitable servant. While he lives, I pray for strength to pursue my employment; and when it pleases heaven to take one of us, may it give the survivor ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... another matter, can I approve his favourite mixture of rum and curacao as a liqueur. I gave it a patient trial once, thinking it might be critically inspiring. But the rum muddles the curacao, and the curacao does not really improve the rum. It is a pity he did not know the excellent Cape liqueur called Vanderhum, which is not a mixture but a true hybrid ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... others' virtues for own ends as readily as their vices. She recognized the necessity of yielding to Tess's compunctions, more than suspecting that Dick Blaine would color his own views pretty much to suit his wife's in any case. And with a lightning ability peculiar to her she saw how to improve her own plan ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Here we made Camp 80, with plenty of food, water, and wood, and all were comfortable by a fine fire; all but Steward, who, feeling very sick, was lying on the bed we had prepared for him. He had another bad night, but after this his condition seemed gradually to improve. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... English politician expects the present war greatly to improve the position of England as against the United States. Any injury that England may conceivably inflict on its best customer, Germany ... will be as nothing in comparison with the direct and indirect losses the war must inflict ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... knife under it in a semicircular direction to 3. The nearer the knuckle the drier the meat, but the under side contains the most finely grained meat, from which slices may be cut lengthwise. When sent to the table a frill of paper around the knuckle will improve ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... continued my mentor, 'that anything as dry and practical as figures is a very good exercise for an imaginative turn of mind, by supplying a sort of balancing principle; and, if you would like to improve yourself in this branch, I should take great pleasure ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... in England. Of this I know nothing, but I know that it struck me as full of genius, and I longed for you and Margaret when we looked at a portfolio full of Michael Angelo's sketches, drawings, and studies. It is admirable to see the pains that a really great man takes to improve a first idea. Turning from these drawings to a room full of Fuseli's horribly distorted figures, I could not help feeling astonishment, not only at the bad taste, but at the infinite conceit and presumption of Fuseli. How could this ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... thirst from a crystal cup; and the artist who gave the glass its shape, impressed as in a mould of bronze by the simple means of a second's breath and yet more cheaply than the fashioning of the wooden bowl, has done more to ennoble and improve his neighbour than any inventor of a system: in his work he gives him the use and the enjoyment of things for which orators can only create ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... which has strewn Europe o'er with cathedrals, and otherwise shown That it knew what was what, could by chance not have known (Spending, too, its chief time with its buff on, no doubt) Which beast 'twould improve the world most to thin out. I divide bores myself, in the manner of rifles, Into two great divisions, regardless of trifles:— 1230 There's your smooth-bore and screw-bore, who do not much vary In the weight of cold lead they respectively carry. The smooth-bore is one in whose essence ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... continues to improve like this, Miss Beaver," he joked, "we'll have him playing football within a month." He lowered his voice for her ear only. "Has anything particular come under your notice that might ...
— Old Mr. Wiley • Fanny Greye La Spina
... self-abasement. The thorn in the flesh may remain and yet the grace of God through Christ prove sufficient for thee. Only cling to Christ, and do thy best. In all love and well-doing gird thyself up to improve and use aright what remains free in thee, and if thou doest ought aright, say and thankfully believe that Christ hath done it for thee." O what a miserable despairing wretch should I become, if I believed the doctrines of Bishop Jeremy Taylor in ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... just it. Improve your privileges by getting ready beforehand for the work of life. If the paint brush teaches you this lesson, you may be glad that you had to stop to ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... put his trust in the intelligence of professional artists. Daniel Granger had done this. He had said to an accomplished architect, "I give you the house of my choice; make it what it was in its best days. Improve wherever you can, but alter as little as possible; and, above ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... pack your patient early enough and often enough to keep the inflammation down, to keep a wet compress on his throat and chest, and, in general, treat him as I have prescribed. The condition of the throat will improve in proportion to ...
— Hydriatic treatment of Scarlet Fever in its Different Forms • Charles Munde
... be easy, and some of our children will not be able to meet them at first. The point is not to put our children down, but to lift them up. Good tests will show us who needs help, what changes in teaching to make, and which schools need to improve. They can help us end social promotion, for no child should move from grade school to junior high or junior high to high school until ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and the smile changed to a savage frown, which did not improve a pair of terribly black eyes and a ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... extend on every side, but the late additions to the city do not much improve its beauty. Its nucleus of well-built streets does not seem to have grown much broader within the last five years, but the suburbs are rapidly spreading—small wooden houses, scattered or in clusters, built hastily for emigrants along unpaved and powdery streets. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... I be free? Yes, I shall be free, rightly free, free to aid the country, and to got aid from the country, I shall be part of the country and can enjoy my will, because I will to be part of my country and to help build up her greatness and sustain and improve her institutions. ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... one genial hour improve, And fill one measure duly; A health to those we truly love, And those who ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... elevated, and therefore out of character. This takes away from their effect. I think it would be very advisable that Mr Borrow should go over them with reference to this point, simplifying a few of the turns of expression and introducing a few contractions—don'ts, can'ts, etc. This would improve them greatly." ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... did improve fast enough. And the sea-kale, Mr. Graham. Laws! the row I had with John Gardener about that! And, Mr. Graham, do you remember how a certain friend used to come and ask after you at the door? Dear, dear, dear! I nearly ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... and from which even the most' faultless are so rarely acquitted, Miss Belfield sustained with honour. Cecilia found her artless, ingenuous, and affectionate; her understanding was good, though no pains had been taken to improve it; her disposition though ardent was soft, and her mind seemed ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... suitable for the Greek colony which he proposed to 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 and intellectual ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... been as anxious as any one to improve our bathing facilities, but it is not an easy job to add a bathroom to a farmhouse. He walked about at the back of the house for hours, and made several excursions to a hollow at a distance in the rear of the place, and also climbed to the attic, ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... good in peace as he was great and good in war, King Alfred never rested from his labors to improve his people. He loved to talk with clever men and with travelers from foreign countries, and to write down what they told him for his people to read. He had studied Latin after learning to read English, and now another ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... that the committee on commerce be instructed to inquire into the present state of the trade and intercourse between the United States and the Island of Haiti, and report what measures would be necessary to improve the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... 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 ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... by one. The combatants walked round one another, back to back, making feints in the air. Then the Prince got a blow in, which Afrid pretended to feel. But suddenly, with a hoarse laugh, he rushed again upon the foe, seized him by the throat or the arm, and (I cannot improve on the phrase) "threw him away." After all four princes were thus disposed of I left, being assured of a happy ending by the account of the concluding scene: "The Prince then took the Moon Princess to his father's kingdom, ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... nature does not introduce into vegetables, the natural food of all animal life,—directly of herbivorous, indirectly of carnivorous animals,—are to be regarded with suspicion. Arsenic-eating may seem to improve the condition of horses for a time,—and even of human beings, if Tschudi's stories can be trusted,—but it soon appears that its alien qualities are at war with the animal organization. So of copper, antimony, and other non-alimentary simple substances; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... of a 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
... bitter moment for the hunted secretary. It is true that his terror enabled him once more to improve his pace, and gain with every step on his pursuers; but he was well aware that he was near the end of his resources, and should he meet any one coming the other way, his predicament in the narrow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and where the mother's weakness is the occasion of the failure to nourish the child, half-measures are of no avail, for so long as she does not entirely give up the attempt to do that to which her health is unequal, her own state will grow worse, that of the child will not improve. When errors of diet or inattention to general rules of health incapacitate the mother from the performance of her duty, there may be hope from the adoption of a wiser course; while when the supply simply fails from its inadequacy, much may be hoped for from a wise ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... right and left, two wild ducks, the second on the wing; and now, when so much depended on it, I could not hit a thing as big as a donkey. The fact is, I was the worse for illness. I had constant returns of fever, with bad shivering fits, which did not improve the steadiness of one's hand. However, we managed to get a supper. While we were examining the spot where the antelope had stood, a leveret jumped up, and I knocked him over with my remaining barrel. We fried him in the one tin plate we had brought with us, and thought ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... first night that I have ever had! I was familiar with the part, and two of the cast, Terriss and Norman Forbes, were the same as at the Court, which made me feel all the more at home. Henry left a great deal of the stage-management to us, for he knew that he could not improve on Mr. Hare's production. Only he insisted on altering the last act, and made a bad matter worse. The division into two scenes wasted time, and nothing was gained by it. Never obstinate, Henry saw his mistake and restored the original ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... everything, a mark of feverishness and haste and transition. The revolution gave Italy a chance for new life, but this was the most the revolution could do. It was a great gift, not a perfect one; and as it remained for the Italians to improve the opportunity, they did it partially, fitfully, as men ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... silent for a few moments. She knew, to her sorrow, one man who did not improve the more one saw of him, and that was the man she had tacitly agreed to marry. She could not tell why she had done so—she had somehow drifted into it. Interest, family associations, a feeling that could best be described as liking, even pity, ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... passenger continued to steadily improve bodily, under the skill and kind care of Doctor Dick, but his mind was a wreck, and no one believed that he ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
... the banana grows," some observer has remarked. He meant that since the banana gave food without any culture or call on human energy, the people in banana-growing countries would be lazy, and would not have the stimulus to improve themselves that is necessary for progress. To get a good type of man he must have the ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... charwoman did, but there could be no mistaking her for the charwoman. Niepce looked older in bed than when dressed. He had a rather ridiculous, undignified appearance, common among old men before their morning toilette is achieved; and a nightcap did not improve it. His rotund paunch lifted the bedclothes, upon which, for the sake of extra warmth, he had spread unmajestic garments. Sophia smiled to herself; but the contempt implied by that secret smile was softened by the thought: "Poor old man!" She told him briefly ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... in my life I refused, and the way those idiots looked back at me and grinned tempted me to break a club over their heads. There is no law to compel a man to play golf if he does not wish to. I figured that a rest for half a day would improve my game. The fact is, and the best golfers are coming to realise it, that a man can play so much that he ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... anything like so disagreeable at home as they are in traveling, and we stayed there two years,—and I did in France, and I did in Germany. And now, Italian. Here we are in Italy, and I think we ought to improve the time. Florida knows a good deal of Italian already, for her music teacher in France was an Italian, and he taught her the language as well as music. What she wants now, I should say, is to perfect her accent and get facility. I think she ought to have ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... the regular automobile torpedo," remarked Captain Shirley, coming ubiquitously up behind me. "I improve on that. I can discharge the telautomobile torpedo, and guide it either from the boat, as we are now, or from the land station where we were ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... third is never drawn off, except to be changed for a clean one. In England, we pride ourselves upon the fine mahogany of which our dinner-tables are made; we endeavour to obtain, in the first instance, an excellent piece of wood, and to improve it by assiduous rubbing and polishing. In France, it matters not of what material the table is framed; a cloth is always upon it; and I have seen the hospitable board of many families of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... militia evinced a good spirit, but fired without much effect. The enemy, however, must have lost some men; and it is only wonderful, that in a contest of a whole day no life was lost on our side. The fire of the enemy was incessant, but badly directed, till the close of the day, when it began to improve. Lieutenant Rolette, who commanded the Detroit, had, and I believe deservedly, the character of a brave, attentive officer. His vessel must, however, have been surprised—an easy operation where she lay at anchor; ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... not itself be important, one at least of the other effects of the factors that represent these characters is significant. It is, of course, hardly to be expected that any random change in as complex a mechanism as an insect would improve the mechanism, and as a matter of fact it is doubtful whether any of the mutant types so far discovered are better adapted to those conditions to which a fly of this structure and habits is already adjusted. But ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... public station in the former times, lived a private and retired life in London, and, having lost his sight, kept always a man to read for him, which usually was the son of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom, in kindness, he took to improve ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and his followers had been relieved of their full dress they renewed the conversation in which they had been interrupted on the sands, Elliot first endeavouring to improve the occasion into an argument against the king's ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... out to "improve herself," as her father had told her she must. Ardessa had easy way with her. It was one of those rare relationships from which both persons profit. The more Becky could learn from Ardessa, the happier she was; and the more Ardessa ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... to this arrangement, finding there was not much time to spare, was anxious to improve it in the pursuit of such lively and interesting amusements as chance and accident might throw in their way. "Come," said he, a few mornings after the masquerade, "it must not be said that you have been so long in London ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Larry. If it wasn't for this awfully hot weather, the wound wouldn't bother me at all. The doctor says that if I continue to improve as I have, I can rejoin my company by ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... or the other; hence the constant switching which appears so causeless. When one observes Nature carefully, one readily comes to the conclusion that she does nothing that is unnecessary, and that one ought to be very careful in attempting to improve upon her. ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... friends; assure them from me of my docility; assure them that, however they conceive of my deficiencies, they cannot suppose me more unfit to be a ruler than I do myself. I am one of the worst princes in Europe; will they improve on that?" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... about by a scale of very natural degrees, that he found himself by and by, not a little to his satisfaction, in the relation to her of a pupil to a teacher. Hester in truth gave herself a good deal of trouble with him, in the endeavor, by no means an unsuccessful one, to improve the quality of his singing—his style, his expression, and even his way of modeling his tones. The relation between them became therefore one which, had it then lasted, might have soon led to something like genuine intimacy—at least to some ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos became flesh, and lived among us, and we saw his glory, a glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth?" Why not take the facts just as they are, and why wish to improve that which requires no human improvement? The Christian doctrine is and remains what it is; it rests on an indestructible arch, supported on one side by the Old Testament and on the other by Greek philosophy, each as indispensable as the other. ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... portion of the two first classes remain stationary amidst the general movement, improve their habits and condition, and rise in the scale ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... variable proportion. The more resinous kinds resist the dissolving action of wine better than those that are but slightly resinous. The latter soon become corroded and spoiled by wine. An attempt has often been made, but without success, to improve poor corks by impregnating them with the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... instructions in regard to the sheep, we decided our working hours to be—rise at 7 a.m., breakfast at 7.30, start work at 8. The sheep remained in the yard until the last-mentioned hour. This did not improve their condition. One morning my uncle arrived before we had turned out, and expressed himself strongly upon the laziness of new chums in general. Excusing ourselves by the fact that it was not yet ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... cause and not the result of a high birth-rate. The Malthusian doctrine has been and is to-day a barrier to social reform, because it implies that humane legislation, by encouraging population, will of necessity defeat the aim of those who desire to improve the conditions of the poor by methods other than the practice of artificial birth control. To a very great extent Malthusian teaching was responsible for the Poor Law of 1834, the most severe in Europe, ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... your convicts to work in them, and if, as is to be hoped, you succeed in diminishing the supply of that sort of labourer, consider what means there may be, first, of growing forest where its growth will improve climate; secondly, of splintering the forests which now make continents of fruitful land pathless and poisonous, into fagots for fire;—so gaining at once dominion icewards and sunwards. Your steam power has been given (you will find ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... was not expert with the tool and the foreman's most pointed remarks were generally addressed to him, but he had a humorous manner which gained him friends. Once or twice, to his comrades' admiration, he engaged his persecutor in a wordy contest and badly routed him, which did not improve matters. Indeed, his last victory proved a costly one, because afterward when there was anything particularly unpleasant or dangerous to be done, Kermode was selected. As it happened, the risks that ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... have money," his comrade said, "can buy herbs and condiments of the little traders, and greatly improve their mess." ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... you would! Mr. Young has told me how anxious you are to learn and to improve your ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the right place, and at the right time," said the old lady. "Here was this Hans Memling with me to-day; he is going to Italy, girl, no later than next week, 'to improve his hand,' he says. Not before 'twas ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... at all times desirable, however, as it is best to let the heads get as large as they will before becoming loose and warty. The gain in size not only increases their selling price, but the flavor also appears to improve as the heads approach maturity. Immature heads, though mild and tender, have less flavor than those which are full grown. It is better, however, to cut a head too soon than to leave it too long, for a small solid head will sell for more than a large loose one. To judge when a head has reached ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... what the old Greeks called a tyranny; in which—as in the Spanish republics of America, and in France more than once—all have become the voluntary slaves of one man, because each man fancies that the one man can improve his circumstances ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... subjects of literature and taste; and, upon the whole, I venture to pronounce that his mind is well-informed, enjoyment of books exceedingly great, his imagination lively, his observation just and correct, and his taste delicate and pure. His abilities in every respect improve as much upon acquaintance as his manners and person. At first sight, his address is certainly not striking; and his person can hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which are uncommonly ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... subject, let us add (and our young readers will come to know it if they are spared to see many years) that civilization alone will never improve the heart. Let history speak, and it will tell you that deeds of darkest hue have been perpetrated in so-called civilized though pagan lands. Civilization is like the polish that beautifies inferior furniture, which water will wash off if it be but hot enough. Christianity resembles dye, which ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... 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 he has always much to say; for error ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Consideration for others? Who on earth ever dreamt of considering him—when to do so would cost them anything, that is? Unselfishness? Everybody was selfish—everything even. What had he ever gained by striving to improve upon the universal law? Nothing—nothing good; everything bad—bad and ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... improve his invention, adding additional cylinders as increased, speed was desired, and at length brought it to the degree of perfection exhibited in the splendid ten-cylinder press now in use in the offices of our leading ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... rocky arches which flood and fire have excavated or penned up in many picturesque regions,—the segments of caverns, or the ribs of strata,—so that, without the instinctive suggestion of the mind itself, Nature furnishes complete models of a bridge whereon neither Art nor Science can improve. Herein the most advanced and the most rude peoples own a common skill; bridges, of some kind, and all adapted to their respective countries, being the familiar invention of savage necessity and architectural genius. The explorer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... phrases into the lapidary style of ancient Rome, I confess it is often hard to improve on the brevity of the vernacular, though the admonition "to keep your end up" can be condensed from four words to two in "sursum cauda." Again the familiar eulogy, "Stout fellow," can be rendered in a single word by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... conditions which love imposes. Religion does not propose to improve the world by a more skilful application of the principles of worldliness. It does not propose to turn stones into bread at the demand of any devils whatsoever. It does not say, "If you will support me and give me a certain ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... formerly called Marylebone, is an improve-ment of this nature. It was originally a park, and had a royal palace in it, where, I believe, Queen Elizabeth occasionally resided. It was disbarked by Oliver Cromwell, who settled it on Colonel Thomas Harrison's regiment of dragoons for their ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... brightened, the people began to send into the capital troops of a different sort, and the general we had put our faith in went to work making an army—the grand old Army of the Potomac. Now, my son, it was no small job to make an army, and when you have made it to so improve its drill and discipline that it will stand firm and fight well. It is just as necessary, my son, to harden the constitution of a new army as it is to so sharpen its digestion that it will relish the coarsest of fare. And you can do neither of these things in a day. You must also cultivate and ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... on an errand, when I remarked that the lamp, which had been recently lit, and stood on a stool in the middle of the room, was burning low and needed snuffing. I went to it softly, and while stooping over it, trying to improve the light, heard a slow, heavy step ascending the stairs. The house was quiet, and the sound attracted my full attention. I raised myself and stood listening, hoping that this might be the doctor, who had ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... time," said Napoleon, significantly. "Go, my friends, and tell your countrymen so. The time for weeping is past—that for action has come. Improve it, and be wise. Return home as fast as you can, for I should like to be with you before the present ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... to say, pulling its military goatee vigorously, and clearing its dear old throat for a passage at arms: "'Y gory man, there's always been a working class and they've always had to work like sixty and get the worst of it, I guess, and they always will—what say? You can't improve on the way the world is made. And when she's made, she's made—what say? I tell you now, you're wasting your time on that class ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... iron which was made magnetical by the touch of a magnet became itself a magnet, many attempts were made to improve these artificial magnets, but without much success till Servingdon Savary, Esq. made them of hardened steel bars, which were so powerful that one of them weighing three pounds averdupois would lift another of the same weight. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Every day Vere seems to improve. It is simply wonderful how she has bounded ahead after the first start. Hope and happiness have a great deal to do with it, the doctor says, and the expectation of being better, which has taken the place of the old despair. She looks deliciously happy, and satisfied, and at ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... VIII. came to the throne, the idea of Italy as the goal of scholars persisted. Rich churchmen, patrons of letters, launched promising students on to the Continent to give them a complete education; as Richard Fox, Founder of Corpus Christi, sent Edward Wotton to Padua, "to improve his learning and chiefly to learn Greek,"[16] or Thomas Langton, Bishop of Winchester, supported Richard Pace at the same university.[17] To Reginald Pole, the scholar's life in Italy made so strong ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... appeared to improve the trade relations between England and this country Canada sought in vain to make commercial bargains with the United States. They would have none of us or our produce; they kept their wall just as high against us as against ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... how her mistress had been failing, had noticed it long ago, in fact almost at the time when she had begun the X-ray treatment. She had seemed to improve once when she went away for a few days, but that was at the start, and directly after her return she grew worse again, until she was ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... would be essentially formed by the time I reached my twentieth year, and left it to me to say if I wished to be as a woman what I was now as a girl. I felt sulky, and would not answer. I was shocked to think I had got only four years in which to improve, but after all a good deal could be done in that time. Of course I don't want to be always exactly what I ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... Pelle came to Stone Farm, the older cottagers still remembered the farmer of their childhood, Janus Koller, the one who did more to improve things than any one else. In his youth he once, at midnight, fought with the devil up in the church-tower, and overcame him; and after that everything succeeded with him. Whatever might or might not have been the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... and circumfused in speechless love, Their full divinity inadequate That feeling to express, or to improve, The gods become as mortals, and man's fate Has moments like their brightest! but the weight Of earth recoils upon us;—let it go! We can recall such visions, and create From what has been, or might be, things which grow, Into thy statue's form, and look ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... districts, but to its strictly elemental teaching must be added moral instructions, and training in industries and in habits of industry. Only by such rudimentary and industrial training can the mass of the negro race in the United States be expected to improve in character and position. A top-dressing of culture on a field with no depth of soil may for a moment stimulate the promise of vegetation, but no fruit will be produced. It is a gigantic task, and generations may elapse before it can in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... better than Mr. Pickwick sliding, or the awful punishment of Stiggins at the hands of the long-suffering Weller? We might wish that the young lady in fur-topped boots was prettier, and indeed more of a lady. But Mr. Browne never had much success, we think, in drawing pretty faces. He tried to improve in this respect, but either his girls had little character, or the standard of female beauty has altered. As to this latter change, there can be no doubt at all. Leech's girls are not like Thackeray's early pictures of women; and Mr. Du Maurier's are sometimes sicklied o'er with the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... and the chocolate-pot the cat had walked in. Ellen immediately endeavoured to improve his acquaintance; that was not so easy. The Captain chose the corner of the rug furthest from her, in spite of all her calling and coaxing, paying her no more attention than if he had not heard her. Ellen crossed over to him, and began most tenderly and respectfully ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... tell monsieur that I may have misjudged the young woman a little. It seems a question of bringing up, more than real badness of heart. It is her tongue that is in fault; and I am not even sure that with good influences she might not improve. I have been talking to her, Monsieur, of religion. She is black Catholic, and I Protestant, but I think that some of my arguments made a certain impression ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... it is not meet, Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar, Should outlive Caesar: we shall find of him A shrewd contriver; and you know his means, If he improve them, may well stretch so far As to annoy us all: which to prevent, Let Antony and ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... of his powers, has to practise moderation to the point of abstinence if he wants to remain on top. Does anybody suppose that a loose life is compatible with those startlingly bold feats that an acrobat does every day and tries to improve upon every day? Damn it! It's something to make your ordinary mortal marvel at. Why, to do any one of the many things we do, we have to practise asceticism and chastity, and patiently peg away day after day at hard, dangerous work. Your plain business ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... heads, and talk of the "Lange Brucke," but let them remember that in no part does the Spree exceed two hundred feet in width. Moreover, the manner in which it is jammed up between locks, like a mere canal—one is puzzled sometimes to know which is canal and which river—does not improve its appearance, while the use to which some of its bridges are appropriated does not increase its purity. Passing onwards we come upon the Schloss Platz, which is itself half a garden, and find ourselves ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... 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 ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... they worked out by means of machines and their revolutions, others by means of engines, and so, whatever they found to be useful for investigations, for the arts, and for established practices, they took care to improve step by ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... Depend on it, we were not placed here by our merciful and all-loving Maker without an object, though we may never discover it. I do not for a moment mean to say that we are to sit down idly and not to endeavour to improve our condition. We are sent into this world to struggle—that we may in a variety of ways be tried—that all our trials may tend to our improvement. What I wish to impress on you, my lads, is, that we should be contented in every condition ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... she will creep under the body of a strong camel, believing that the act of passing between the fore and hind legs will endue her child with the strength of the animal. Young infants are scored with a razor longitudinally down the back and abdomen, to improve their constitutions. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... comment. But Isabel's boasted, perfect nerves were shattered beyond such control. She moped all day in her own room, rejecting Flavia's companionship, and fled from Corrie with unconcealed avoidance. Nor did she improve, as the days passed, but rather grew worse ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... happy, always taken up with her adopted child. She bought books for him to improve his mind, and he devoted himself ardently ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... embarked to abandon the country altogether, when they were stopped by succour from home. The remembrance of the difficulties of the first settlers should make their descendants contented with their present advantages, and instead of wishing to change, to use their own exertions to improve the country, and duly to appreciate the many blessings ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... parlor that fitted us to a dot. They were seldom if ever dusted, unless they were accidentally turned over and then some would fall off, but no one ever disturbed them and ruffled them into hard knots just to improve their appearance. We sat on the chairs, not on their appearance. During our talks Jim did the listening. This constituted a de facto conversation. His knowledge of Gorley and up-State affairs, after an absence of ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... own private use and without any consideration for the puny race of mankind that was destined to follow them. I am a tall man and gifted with a considerable length of understanding but the strides I was obliged to take—sometimes almost bounds—if calculated to improve my muscles, were certainly very trying to my wind. However all things have an end, and so had that long flight of steps, and at the summit I had leisure to recover my breath and enjoy the magnificent view. I took care ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... upright, and stiff likewise, and among them a few other evergreens; and that is all the shelter the lawn and flower-beds have from the east wind, blowing for miles over open country, or from the glowing sun of August. This garden belongs to a gentleman who would certainly spare no moderate expense to improve it, and yet there it remains, the blankest, barest, most miserable-looking square of ground the eye can find; the only piece of ground from which the eye turns away; for even the potato-field close by, the ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... be to die, and it might not. But whether he were to live or die, home he must go. He had something to do which could only be done there. The doctors had owned that their skill could do nothing more for him. His cure, if he were to be cured, must be left to time. He would never improve in the dreary dullness of the place, and there were many reasons why he should be determined to go—reasons which would affect other folk as well as himself; go he must, and the sooner the better. He said it all quietly enough, ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... we would willingly draw the veil, but at the present moment I firmly believe that the planters of Behar—and I speak as an observant student of what has been going on in India—have done more to elevate the peasantry, to rouse them into vitality, and to improve them in every way, than all the other agencies that have been at work with the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... man study and labour to cultivate and improve his abilities in the eye of his Maker, and with the prospect of his approbation; let him attentively reflect on the infinite value of that approbation, and the highest encomiums that men can bestow will vanish into nothing at the comparison. When we live ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... science have made immense progress; but all has been built upon the foundation which they laid. In the same way, before Jesus, religious thought had passed through many revolutions; since Jesus, it has made great conquests: but no one has improved, and no one will improve upon the essential principle Jesus has created; he has fixed forever the idea of pure worship. The religion of Jesus in this sense is not limited. The Church has had its epochs and its phases; it has shut itself up in creeds which are, or will be but temporary: but Jesus has ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... interrupting the conversation; all the company are in a hypnotic trance, and—a remarkable effect of levitation—are literally hanging upon the Imperial lips. Suddenly the august nose is silent, and Leonard Astier, who has made a show of resistance in order to improve the effect of his opponent's victory, throws up his arms like broken foils and says with an air of surrender, 'Ah, Your Highness has mated me!' The charm is broken, the company feel the ground under them again, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... as he had said to Tristram, he wanted to see the mysterious, satisfying BEST, he had not the Grand Tour in the least on his conscience, and was not given to cross-questioning the amusement of the hour. He believed that Europe was made for him, and not he for Europe. He had said that he wanted to improve his mind, but he would have felt a certain embarrassment, a certain shame, even—a false shame, possibly—if he had caught himself looking intellectually into the mirror. Neither in this nor in any other respect had Newman a high sense of responsibility; it was his prime conviction ...
— The American • Henry James
... oughter have 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, priests and graven ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... found it sweet; Made 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 ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... after this Eugene spent his days in peace and tranquillity, endeavoring to raise up a spirit of commerce among the Germans, and to improve the finances of his sovereign, by whom he was appreciated and loved. His greatest efforts were in favor of Trieste, which he changed from a petty town to a great commercial city, and which remains to the present day ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... now—if mademoiselle is agreeable—suppose we adjourn to the skipper's quarters, where we can improve one another's acquaintance without some snooping steward getting an unwelcome earful. We need to know many things you alone can tell us—and I'll wager you could ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... who had commanded us since August, 1916, left the Battalion. He shortly afterwards succeeded to the command of the 2nd Royal Sussex, his former regiment. A man of tact and ripe experience, he had done much to improve the Battalion during his stay. He lacked few, if any, of the best qualities of a Regular officer. His steady discipline, sure purpose, and soldierly outlook, had made him at once Commanding Officer, counsellor ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... I know; but I shall improve with years and wisdom. What say you, Maltravers?" and Ferrers passed his arm ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him first to a post of high command, and eventually to the vacant Zulu chieftainship. On the death in battle of Dingiswayo, Chaka assumed the command of both tribes, to which he gave his name. The already excellent army he proceeded to improve till it became one of the most efficient military organisations ever originated in an uncivilised country. The whole kingdom was ordered on a military footing, and expanded so wondrously that the original two tribes at first ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... here, the animals did not seem to improve on the grama and buffalo grass. It was rather perplexing to note that they grew weaker and weaker. The grass of the sierra, which was now gray, did not seem to contain much nourishment, and it became evident that the sooner we proceeded on our journey, the better. To save them as much as ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... of Education has for some years past been endeavoring to improve the designs used as well as the workmanship of Philippine mats, in order that the article produced shall be typical of the country, artistic in design, and of real commercial value. It is expected that this end will be ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... statement, Browning was not a really fine pianist. As a very young man, he used to play several instruments, and once he had been able to play all of Beethoven's sonatas on the piano. In later life he became ambitious to improve his skill with this instrument, and had much trouble, for his fingers were clumsy and stiff. He therefore used to rise at six, and ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... with a distinct impression that he had not told me the whole truth. That cicatrice did not improve his personal appearance. He had left his certificates on board, he said, but if I wished he would bring them to me on ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... Sarah Jane allowed this insolence to pass unheeded. It is in moments of deep distress that the mind of man, naturally reverting to solemn things, seeks to improve the occasion by a lecture. The skipper, chastened by suffering and disappointment, stuck his right hand in his pocket, after a lengthened search for it, and gently bidding the blanketed urchin in front of ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... may be the circumstances under which the letter was written and may be necessary for the identification of the letter, they are no less discourtesies to the reader. And it cannot improve the situation to call them to the ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... there was room enough for three, but the money would not run to it. In the Trades we tried to make up for the deficiency by rigging a studding-sail alongside the foresail and a sky-sail above the topsail. I will not assert that these improvised sails contributed to improve the vessel's appearance, but they got her along, and that is a great deal more important. We made very fair progress southward during these September days, and before the month was half over we had come a good ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... with news which did not improve his temper. "The tailor has been here," she said, "and wanted the money for your uniform, which you have owed for a month. He will come ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... "Civilization is impossible where the banana grows," some observer has remarked. He meant that since the banana gave food without any culture or call on human energy, the people in banana-growing countries would be lazy, and would not have the stimulus to improve themselves that is necessary for progress. To get a good type of man he must have ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Australia • Frank Fox
... really been suggested to Mr. Failing by a talk with his brother-in-law. It also touched Ansell. He looked at the man who had thrown the clod, and was now pacing with obvious youth and impudence upon the lawn. "Shall I improve my soul at his expense?" he thought. "I suppose I had better." In friendly tones he remarked, "Were ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... foggy night that her voice had degenerated into an appealing whine. She was smudgy-looking, but undoubtedly clean; only life in underground kitchens, and the ingraining of London blacks with the baking process of cookery, had given her skin an unwholesome tinge, which her reddened eyes did not improve. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... spent in the South did a great deal to improve Mr. Crow's health, as well as his state of mind. When he came back to Pleasant Valley the following March he told his cousin Jasper Jay that he really felt he would be able ...
— The Tale of Old Mr. Crow • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 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 ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... man that had thus far scandalized and adorned Athenian society. The only redeeming feature in his character was his friendship for Socrates, who, it seems, fascinated him by his talk, and sought to improve his morals. He had those brilliant qualities, and luxurious habits, and ostentatious prodigality, which so often dazzle superficial people, especially young men of fashion and wealth, but more even than they, the idolatrous rabble. So ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... a turn and a sight was revealed that did not tend to improve his already irritable mood. Just here the roadway was bordered by a deep bank covered with trees which sloped down to the valley of the Ell, at this time of the year looking its loveliest in the soft autumn lights. And here, seated on a bank of turf beneath the ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... possess energy of character and the capacity to appreciate the many blessings bestowed upon them. What nation in Europe possesses a future at all, much less such a future as that which lies before us? Russia may improve and prosper to a certain extent; beyond that, no human eye can discern the glimmerings of a higher and more enlarged civilization. England has reached her culminating point. The States of Germany—what future ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... first, and then 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 ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... nose thrust suddenly into Mrs. Forest's face could hardly improve a temper already ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... advocates of the Italian cause is unknown; but Caius Gracchus, against whom an indictment was directed, cleared his name of all complicity in the movement.[491] The effect of these measures of suppression was not to improve matters for the future. The allies were burdened with a new and bitter memory; their friends at Rome were furnished with a new cause for resentment. If the Roman people continued selfish and apathetic, a leader ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... head brought him little sympathy—in fact, the general opinion seemed to be that Mulligan had not hit him quite hard enough to do the community any good. Certainly the scantling did not improve his temper, and Pitkin made life a burden to old Gabe and the two black stable hands. Gabe swallowed the abuse with a patient smile, but the two roustabouts muttered to themselves and eyed their employer with malevolence. They had also been missing ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... Park, but it is very doubtful in nine cases out of ten if he can find a friend who could positively swear as to having seen him there. No! no! Mr. Errington was in a tight corner, and he knew it. You see, there were—besides the evidence—two or three circumstances which did not improve matters for him. His hobby in the direction of toxicology, to begin with. The police had found in his room every description of poisonous ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... 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
... him. "If the critics don't encourage youthful talent, who will? But they never do." Her voice took on flat tones: "I wonder, Cal, that you are not easier as you grow older, for you certainly do not improve with age, yourself. Do you know what time ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... unsettled estate, and was much run down, as little had been done to improve its fertility, and much to deplete it. There were two sets of buildings, including a house of goodly proportions, a cottage of no particular value, and some dilapidated barns. The property could be bought at a bargain. It ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... had a keener eye than the majority of young men, and occasionally exercised the old man's privilege of saying outright things which, despite theory, are better left unsaid. Moreover, the situation was ill-defined, and an ill-defined situation does not improve in the keeping. Sir John said sharp things—too sharp even for Millicent—and, in addition to the original grudge begotten of his quarrel with Jack and its result, the girl nourished an ever-present feeling of resentment at a persistency in misunderstanding her of which she shrewdly suspected ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... Chantilly in a style of unwonted magnificence; and being passionately fond of horses, he erected a range of stables, which were long renowned throughout Europe, and imported a hundred and fifty of the finest racers from England to improve the breed in France. He bought a large extent of country in Picardy, and became possessed of nearly all the valuable lands lying between the Oise ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... employer, closed up his affairs at the opening of a new year. I could find nothing to do in the winter; but when I fretted over my inactivity, my father told me to improve my handwriting, which, as a carpenter, had been rather stiff. I took lessons of him, and as he was a practical business man, I escaped the vicious habit of flourishing in my writing. He insisted that I should write a plain, simple, ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... devoted his life to the refinement of the French language, and contributed by his "Letters" to the classic form it assumed under Louis XIV.; "he deliberately wrote," says Prof. Saintsbury, "for the sake of writing, and not because he had anything particular to say," but in this way did much to improve the language; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... conspiracy. It is no use your getting angry, Mrs. Clear, for it won't improve your position. We—that is, this lady and myself—wish to know, firstly, how your husband came to be masquerading as Mr. Vrain; secondly, where we can find the man called Wrent, who employed your husband; and thirdly, Mrs. Clear, we wish to know, and the law wishes ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... changed and that Trustees in future should be elected by some other body of men.... The College was formed for the PUBLIC good, not for the benefit or emolument of its Trustees; and the right to amend and improve acts of incorporation of this nature has been exercised by all ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... excellent flashes of fancy and youth; besides, the public then had grown tired of interminable adventures and novels in fifty volumes. So Henry Murger's first work, "La Vie de Boheme," was very popular; but it did not swell his purse or improve his wardrobe. He was introduced to me, and I shall never forget the low bow he made me. I was afraid for one moment that his bald head would fall between his legs. This precocious baldness gave to his delicate and sad face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... orphan school in Michigan. By order of the State Freedmen's Aid Commission, they will be sent to school until good homes can be secured for them, where they will be taught habits of industry, as well as to improve their intellects. We of the North think they can learn, if ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... across and was taken blindfolded to Headquarters, where an armistice for internment purposes was agreed upon. Very considerate it was of Abdul to put the proposition, Mac thought, for the condition of the atmosphere in the neighbourhood was not conducive to his peace of mind, nor did it improve his inclination to eat to know that those flies which nothing could keep out of his food, had come from ——. And his internals ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... modifies them to suit his purposes, so also the scientific philosopher must not think of existing human nature as immutable, but must try to modify it for the advantage of mankind. As bread is the chief article in the human food, attempts to improve cereals have been made for a very long time, but in order to obtain results much knowledge is necessary. To modify the nature of plants, it is necessary to understand them well, and it is necessary to have an ideal to be aimed at. In the case of mankind the ideal of ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... saw how painfully red Ethelyn was getting, "but it is quite natural there should be, living West as he does. You cannot expect prairie people to be as refined as Bostonians are; but you must polish him, dear. You know how; you have had Frank for a model so long; and even if he does not improve, people overlook a great deal in a member of Congress, and will overlook more in a governor, so don't feel badly, darling," and Mrs. Van Buren kissed tenderly the poor girl, before whom all the dreary loneliness of the future had arisen like a mountain, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... is still more difficult. What is written has a certain convincing power, not only on others but on the writer, and much as we may be willing to doubt and to improve what has been written immediately or at most a short time ago, a manuscript of some age has always a kind of authority and we give it correctness cheaply when that is in question. In any event there regularly arises in such a case the problem whether the written description is quite correct, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... or Morse—time will only determine this. America is a nation of inventors—the leaders in this mechanical age. Study, close application, the not too stringent adherence to formulae and old methods are bound to win. Inspiration, vision, the seizing of opportunities to improve, the wish to gain something desired—these are the keynotes to success in the field of mechanical endeavor and scientific discovery. In the words of one of the greatest Americans who had visions and did ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... Columbus,) the song of Prince Hoel attached itself to my thoughts, and has been (involuntarily) put into rhyme. This song may be found in the first part of the poem mentioned. The lyric metre in which it now appears must rather injure than improve the belle nature of the original. Still I wish it to be published, as coming from my hand; because it gives me an opportunity of expressing, in some degree, my unqualified admiration of its composer. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... new timbre. And as he talked he began to interlard his English with bits of German, the language to which his tongue had accustomed itself in the past ten years. His sentences, too, took on a German construction, from time to time. He was plainly excited now. "My playing began to improve. There would be a ghastly scene with Olga—sickening—degrading. Then I would go to my work, and I would play, but magnificently! I tell you, it would be playing. I know. To fool myself I know better. One morning, after a dreadful quarrel I got the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Further, by taking note of the past we can provide for the future. Now unless human laws had been changed when it was found possible to improve them, considerable inconvenience would have ensued; because the laws of old were crude in many points. Therefore it seems that laws should be changed, whenever anything better ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... did it," Paul went on; "and when Mr. Gordon comes we'll find out if he understood my letter, or thought it meant something else. I'm only a beginner in this business, you know, and expect to improve, for I see where we can have lots of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... references to the painful plight of men whose duty it was to preach content here and hereafter will no doubt be reflected in the administration of his not inconsiderable patronage. Fortunately or unfortunately the clergy cannot or will not "down surplices" to improve their condition. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... d'excellentes resultats." The average yearly receipts have been eighteen thousand nine hundred francs; average disbursements, eighteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-four francs. Possibly these facts and figures may be of service to some of our chiefs of industry who are studying to improve the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... this purpose. Let our own money be applied to it. The proceeds of the Woods and Forests in this country are, he said, L74,000 a year; money, which instead of being applied to Irish purposes, had gone to improve Windsor and Trafalgar Square—two millions of Irish money having been already expended in this manner. This is no time to be bungling at trivial remedies; let a loan of a million and a half be raised ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... there; by which means they know how much each Ship will carry. But for what reason this Custom is used either by the Chinese, or Mindanao Men, I could never learn; unless the Mindanaians design by this means to improve their skill in Shipping, against ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... day; Mrs. Lewson's spirits began to improve. "I have always held the belief," the worthy old woman confessed, "that bright weather brings good luck—of course provided the day is not a Friday. This ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... Mr. Turnbull. "That's just the bare idea I've given you. It's for you to improve upon it. You've got two days to think ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... commanding Lowell's attention at this time and quickening his native feelings into purposeful utterance gives to the poem a much deeper significance. In 1844, when the discussion over the annexation of Texas was going on, he wrote The Present Crisis, a noble appeal to his countrymen to improve and elevate their principles. During the next four years he was writing editorially for the Standard, the official organ of the Anti-Slavery Society, at the same time he was bringing out the Biglow Papers. In all these forms of expression he voiced constantly the sentiment ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... "You can't improve it anywhere," replied Lester, who was rather proud of the production. "Do you want me to abuse Don and the rest? That would be poor policy, for the man would say right away that we were jealous of them and trying to injure them. I have told him that he will get no birds from David, and if he does, ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... all the keys, once each day. I then play some of my concert numbers, continually trying to note if there is any place that requires attention. If there is, I at once spend a little time trying to improve the passage. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... need to improve a military machine so perfect at all its points. But the fastidious eye of Colonel Blythe, who commanded the Royal Picts, saw many blemishes in his regiment, and he was determined to make the most of the time still intervening before embarkation. Parades were ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... were to "improve" the roads and ponds on my property on the principle on which France has been "improving" her railway systems and her ports, I should bring up in bankruptcy. Where else can the country bring up? Nothing, so far, has saved us but the woollen stocking of the peasants. Come to my place in Picardy, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... her voice and wept; she also lifted up her petticoat and showed me a scratch on her knee that an English baby would not have cried for. Sometimes women would come and ask me for medicine to make them young again, others wished me to improve their complexions, and many wanted me to make them like Sarai of old. I gently reminded them of their ages, and said that I thought that at such a time of life no medicines or doctors could avail. "My age!" screamed one: "why, what age do you take me for?" "Well," I answered politely, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... important feature of the port of Buenos Aires is the "Madero docks," constructed to enlarge and improve its shipping facilities. Improvements had been, begun in 1872 at the "Boca," as the port on the Riachuelo is called, and nearly L1,500,000 was spent there in landing facilities and dredging a channel 12 m. in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... to him the 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 read ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... fellow; what you yourself proposed, as I learn from Haredale; and what I predicted—with no great exercise of sagacity—she would do. She supposed you to be rich, or at least quite rich enough; and found you poor. Marriage is a civil contract; people marry to better their worldly condition and improve appearances; it is an affair of house and furniture, of liveries, servants, equipage, and so forth. The lady being poor and you poor also, there is an end of the matter. You cannot enter upon these considerations, and have no manner of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... loss we are only at present very imperfectly able to appreciate the consequences, one of which, we fear will be a mischievous re-formation of the Protectionist party, and, if we read the auspices aright, his death will not improve the Ministerial Whigs. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... recommended on other than commercial lines, the 25 per cent. reduction in rates and fares suggested by Nationalist witnesses would involve a loss of more than half a million a year. We see, therefore, immediately, that if anything is to be done at all to improve Irish transport it must be done by a Government that has the confidence of the money market. The railway director who contributes the principal article on this subject in the book calculates that a public grant of two millions, and a guaranteed ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... because I was angry at him for stopping my horse. It was mean in me, especially as that De Vezin was the person he would pitch on. You see, I had made a good deal of De Vezin while in Paris, but it was only to improve my French accent—a fact which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... result in withdrawing you from the situation you find so bad. Madame Graslin, the owner of the forests of Montegnac and of a barren plateau extending from the base of a chain of mountains on which are the forests, wishes to improve this vast domain, to clear her timber properly, and cultivate the ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... "I'm trying to improve," said her husband. "O' course, it's no use dressing up and behaving wrong, and yesterday I bought a book what tells you all ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... years of the Terror went by, and the Marquis, whose character had won the respect of the whole country, decided that he and his sister ought to return to the castle and improve the property which Maitre Chesnel—for he was now a notary—had contrived to save for them out of the wreck. Alas! was not the plundered and dismantled castle all too vast for a lord of the manor shorn of all his ancient rights; ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... for industrial supremacy, between England and Germany particularly, was a prominent factor leading up to the establishment of technical schools in the latter country. Germany saw the necessity for heroic action, and her people, anxious to improve from the standpoint of her industries at home not only, but that they might rival and surpass their neighbors across the "Silver Streak" readily took up the cry for advanced scientific training. This then was the ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... money over to th' shoe store an' buy wan iv th' pairs 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 money f'r th' shoes an' th' shoe-store man has ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... this modest demand will mean much study for the preacher and a careful preparation of the sermon. Surely, however, the end is worth the labour. In no work is proficiency gained without some taking of pains. That preacher who is afraid of a little toil in order that he may thereby improve his usefulness, and increase his success, should find proof in this fear of effort that his commission—if ever he had one—has expired. One thing is sure:—That a sermon which fails to satisfy the intellect—we do not say of the atheist or ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... Kendal, 'it will be better to have the affair open and avowed than to have all this secret plotting going on without being able to prevent it. I can always withhold my consent if he should not improve, and Dusautoy declares nothing would be ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Whenever we improve, it is right to leave room for a further improvement. It is right to consider, to look about us, to examine the effect of what we have done. Then we can proceed with confidence, because we can proceed with intelligence. Whereas ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... children, warm and tepid bathing is of great value. In such cases, a course of warm sea bathing, with active friction over the whole surface after each bath, will at once relieve that abdominal fulness which is generally present, improve the functions of the skin, and give tone and vigour to the whole system. Towards the termination of such a course of baths, their temperature must be gradually reduced till they become tepid ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... the landlord's Hebrew note, and surveyed the suitor disapprovingly. And disapproval did not improve his face—a face in whose grotesque features David read a possible explanation of his surplus ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... I didn't forget to tell you his name! I'm as bad as the Man. And he is dirty, too, isn't he?—I mean, the boy is—just like Fluffy and Buffy were when you took them in. But I reckon he'll improve all right by washing, just as they did, and—Oh, I 'most forgot again," she broke off with a laugh. "This is Jimmy Bean, ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... he felt that he was master of his life he breathed more freely. From that moment his condition, so long desperate, began to improve. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... and turf. The Pastor had a sort of turbary right, which supplied him with the latter. The shrubbery in front of the main building was planted with poplars, lilacs, and laburnum. The grass on the lawn was coarse and rough, and an occasional cow was tethered on it, which did not improve the ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... history and in the French and Spanish languages, to a considerable degree. On a voyage his habit was to study late at night, and on shore, instead of carousing with his associates, to hunt out the most distinguished person he could find, or otherwise to improve his condition. His passion for acquisition was enormous, but his early education was so deficient that his handwriting always remained that of a schoolboy. He dictated many of his innumerable letters, particularly those in French, which language ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... Aelia Sentia on the footing of enemies surrendered at discretion. This last and lowest class, however, has long ceased to exist, and the title of Latin also had become rare: and so in our goodness, which desires to raise and improve in every matter, we have amended this in two constitutions, and reintroduced the earlier usage; for in the earliest infancy of Rome there was but one simple type of liberty, namely that possessed by the manumitter, the only distinction possible being that the latter was free born, while ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... 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 settlement of ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... though already rather old, I fancied, for commencing a university career. I, however, through Mr Hooker, found a first-rate tutor, and during the time my sister and Grace were at school, I read hard every day with him. I found also his advice of great assistance in my efforts to improve the condition of the people ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hulot d'Ervy, hearing no more of the dreadful Madame Nourrisson, seeing his father-in-law married, having brought back his brother-in-law to the family fold, suffering from no importunity on the part of his new stepmother, and seeing his mother's health improve daily, gave himself up to his political and judicial duties, swept along by the tide of Paris life, in which the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... time, when Apollo was going over the world doing good to all mankind. He taught the nations, where he came, to be more [872]gentle and humane in their manners; and to abstain from their wild fruits, and foul banquets: affording them instructions how to improve themselves by cultivation. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... nothing serious in it," answered Miss Brewer, with some hesitation. "One is so apt to take alarm about trifles which a doctor would laugh at. I dare say Mr. Dale only requires change of air. A London life is not calculated to improve ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a 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 were ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... only in meaningless noises, raps, the tumbling of books or dishes from shelves or the aimless movement of furniture. Annoyance is sometimes caused also by intention, on the part of those who think it is humorous to play pranks. It must be remembered that passing on to the astral life does not improve one's common sense. If while living here, he thought it amusing to astonish or delude somebody, or trick a friend into seriously accepting some absurd assertion as a fact, he still regards the same course as entertaining. This accounts for many ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... it should be impressed upon his Majesty's Government that the present condition of American trade with the neutral European countries is such that, if it does not improve, it may arouse a feeling contrary to that which has so long existed between the American and British people. Already it is becoming more and more the subject of public criticism and complaint. There is an increasing belief, doubtless not entirely unjustified, that ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... session, saying they had gone far to vindicate the policy, justify the experiment, and realize the expectations of those who had clothed themselves with the right. The bar, the bench, and the intelligent men of the country had long felt that something was needed to improve and justify our jury system; something to lift it above prejudice and passion, and imbue it with a higher regard for law, justice, oath, and conscience. His Honor then expressed the opinion that the introduction of the new element furnished good reason to expect that to women we should ultimately ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "dangerous to the public peace, and inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, keeping alive discord and ill-will among his Majesty's subjects, and one which must, if permitted to continue, effectually obstruct every effort permanently to improve the condition of Ireland." And the ministers naturally regarded it as their first duty to suppress a body which could deserve to be so described. They felt, too, that the large measure of concession and conciliation which they were about to announce would lose half its grace, and more than ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... winter quarters as the boarding-house does to a happy and comfortable home. During the occupancy of these, and while the work of building was progressing, the Confederate soldier wrote many letters home. He saw an opportunity for enjoyment ahead, and tried to improve it. His letters were somewhat after ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... contrast, certainly," said Vane, glancing back at the gloomy, bent form of the sexton, as he stood looking up sidewise at the big, squarely-built, wholesome-looking miller. "But I couldn't improve him. I say, what shall we do ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... have attempted this Translation, in hopes of doing service to my pretty Country-Women.—And, certainly, it must have a double efficacy, under the Patronage of one who is so bright an Example of the contrary fine Accomplishments, which a large Fortune makes her not the less careful to improve. ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... first was your choice, let the second be your ambition; that the company in which you will improve most, will be least expensive to you; and yet I am not such a stoic as to suppose that you will, or think it right that you should always be in company with senators and philosophers; but of the young and the juvenile kind let me advise you to be choice. It is easy to make acquaintances, but very ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... avoided these places, and got the few drugs he needed at a well-known pharmacy in the city. He had an idea that matters would improve when people returned from the country or the seashore. But these people did not take long vacations. He had had but one case, the wife of a Swedish janitor in a flat-building, and he had reason to believe that his services had not pleased. Every morning, as Alves hurried to reach the Everglade ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... is better than I hoped for," chuckled the guide. "With three we can reasonably look forward to finding the others somewhere on the desert, but we can't do much to improve our situation until daylight. No use to search for our equipment before then. I will look into the water question, however, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... darling. Of gold," quoth he, "I have thee brought a ring, My mother gave it me, so God me save! Full fine it is, and thereto well y-grave*: *engraved This will I give to thee, if thou me kiss." Now Nicholas was risen up to piss, And thought he would *amenden all the jape*; *improve the joke* He shoulde kiss his erse ere that he scape: And up the window did he hastily, And out his erse he put full privily Over the buttock, to the haunche bone. And therewith spake this clerk, this Absolon, "Speak, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... enterprises. James Crow, Kentucky pioneer, (c. 1800-1859), born in Scotland and graduated as a physician from Edinburgh University. In 1822 went from Philadelphia to Woodford County, Kentucky, where his knowledge of chemistry enabled him vastly to improve the methods of distilling whiskey, and he became the founder of the great distilling industry of that state. Walter Callender, born in Stirling in 1834, was founder of the firm of Callender, McAuslan, and Troup, of Providence. ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... the case of the twins as desperate—in fact, about hopeless. For he argued that if a confederate was not found, an enlightened Missouri jury would hang them; sure; if a confederate was found, that would not improve the matter, but simply furnish one more person for the sheriff to hang. Nothing could save the twins but the discovery of a person who did the murder on his sole personal account—an undertaking which had all the aspect of the impossible. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not the hardihood to suggest to Dora's father that possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work; but I confessed that I thought we might improve the Commons. Mr. Spenlow replied that he would particularly advise me to dismiss that idea from my mind, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... do mischief. Yet I shall go on, and notwithstanding all these buffets of fortune, try who will carry the day. Celia has no aversion to him, and looks upon her departure with great regret. I must endeavour to improve this opportunity. But here they come; let me consider how I shall execute my plan. Yonder furnished house is at my disposal, and I can do what I like with it; if fortune but favours us, all will go well; nobody lives there but ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... temperament told me what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is the case of the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one. Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be mistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom he is an ass yet, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exercise of hunting in moderation was very good for the Emperor's health; for I never saw him in better condition than during the very time the English journals took pleasure in describing him as ill, and perhaps by these false statements were contributing to still further improve ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... While those who have connected great classes of ideas of causation, are furnished with the powers of producing effects. These are the men of active wisdom, who lead armies to victory, and kingdoms to prosperity; or discover and improve the sciences, which meliorate and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... off link by link the chains of ignorance which the servitude of some and the humility of all imposed upon them. If the past is the story of an oppressed race, the future will reveal that of one uprisen to great opportunities, which they will improve from generation to generation, and guard with the same vigilance that they will the liberties ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... given his nose to have 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
... be done this very night! We must improve the moment, for only the moment is ours. Every hour of delay but brings us nearer to our destruction. Yet one night of hesitation, and they will already have rendered our success impossible. Ah, the Regent Anna has ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... against the united forces of England and Austria, with a defeated army, an exhausted treasury, and a disunited people, was the difficult task of Bonaparte. His first object was to improve the finances; his second, to tranquillize La Vendee; his third, to detach Russia from the allies; his fourth, to raise armies equal to the crisis; and all these measures he rapidly accomplished. One hundred and twenty thousand men were raised by conscription, without any exemption ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... 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, nine hundred and ninety-eight fall back, this is ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the names everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by learning Walker's "Gazetteer," or getting by heart a fifty-years-old edition of the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which leads truth to triumph must pass over martyrs; that is the doom of humanity. Mankind, though advanced in intellectual skill, is pretty much the same in heart as it was thousands of years ago—if not worse; for wealth and prosperity do not always improve the heart. It is sorrowful to see that not even such a cause as that which I plead, can escape from being dragged down insultingly into the mud. With the ancient Greeks, the head of an unfortunate was held sacred even to the gods. Now-a-days, with some,—but let us be thankful! only with some ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... feeble, Middleton, who was no great proficient in polemics, submitted to its effects with the patience and humility of a martyr; but the moment the good father, who felt such concern in his future happiness, was tempted to improve his vantage ground by calling in the aid of some of the peculiar subtilties of his own creed, the young man was too good a soldier not to make head against the hot attack. He came to the contest, it is true, with no weapons more formidable than common sense, and some ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... attentively mind, and deeply consider the six following observations; they are just; they are daily confirmed to us in the different conduct of professors. Study, and pray to improve them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... worse than you found it; and never mar, cut, or slash any part of a watch. In other words, don't undertake a job that you have doubts as to whether you can do it correctly. One of my old masters told me never to undertake to improve on the maker's work, and this, while not true in every case (particularly cheap watches), yet is a safe rule to go by. Never allow your file, screwdriver, pliers, tweezers, or any tool to deface any part of a watch. I shall speak of this as I proceed. First, be careful ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... well, John,' he returned, with the distraught air of a man who was casting about for the Philosopher's stone, at least. 'Pretty much so. There's rather a run on Noah's Arks at present. I could have wished to improve upon the Family, but I don't see how it's to be done at the price. It would be a satisfaction to one's mind, to make it clearer which was Shems and Hams, and which was Wives. Flies an't on that scale neither, as compared with elephants you know! Ah! well! Have you got anything in the parcel ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... for five years there had never been two successive good visual bombing days over Tokyo, indicating what might be expected over other targets in the home islands. The worst month of the year for visual bombing was believed to be June, after which the weather should improve slightly during July and August and then become worse again during September. Since good bombing conditions would occur rarely, the most intense plans and preparations were necessary in order to secure accurate weather forecasts and to arrange for full utilization of whatever good weather might ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... one could contrive To cure him of a theory that two and two made five And, when they taught him how to spell, he show'd his wicked whims By mutilating Pinnock and mislaying Watts's Hymns. Instead of all such pretty books, (which must improve the mind,) He cultivated volumes of a most improper kind; Directories and almanacks he studied on the sly, And gloated over Bradshaw's Guide when nobody ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... said Tudor quietly. "And, Piers, before you go—since I am your ally in spite of myself—let me warn you to keep your head! There's no sense in murdering another man. It won't improve your case. There's no sense in running amok. Sit down for Heaven's sake, and review ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... slink home overwhelmed with shame. To avenge himself he applied to the ecclesiastical court, but was told that the Dissenters could not be put down by the present ecclesiastical law. He found the Church of England, to use his own expression, a poor, powerless, restricted Church. He now thought to improve his consequence by marriage, and made up to a rich and beautiful young lady in the neighbourhood; the damsel measured him from head to foot with a pair of very sharp eyes, dropped a curtsey, and refused him. Mr. Platitude, finding England ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... looked out dreamily over the fields flooded with moonlight—fields bought by her grandfather Knight from her grandfather Buck, inherited by him from his father, who had inherited from his father. Each generation had done what it could to impoverish the land and never to improve it. Now it was up to her, nothing but a slip of a girl nineteen years old, to buy guano and bring the land back to ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... that Prometheus, who is a hero to us, should have been regarded so differently his contemporaries. Some thought of him as merely a sort of social settlement-worker, living among men to improve them, in a sleek, earnest spirit. Some thought him a common ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... you improve. It only needed this insult to make the thing complete. You may carry a message to the king from any adventuress, from any decayed governess"—she laughed shrilly at her description of her rival—"but none from Francoise ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... if Mr. John Morley were to strive to shine in the fashion of Uncle Remus, or if Mr. Rider Haggard were to be allured into imitation by the example, so admirable in itself, of the Master of Balliol. It is ourselves we must try to improve, our attentiveness, our interest in life, our seriousness of purpose, and then the style will improve with the self. Or perhaps, to be perfectly frank, we shall thus convert ourselves into prigs, throw ourselves out of our stride, lapse into self- consciousness, lose all that is natural, ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... invited to respond to a toast, he passes through a similar experience. He may find the outline of a speech on that very topic; he either uses it as it is printed or makes an effort to improve it by abridgment or enlargement. Next he looks through the treasury of anecdotes, selects one, or calls to mind one he has read elsewhere which he considers better. He then studies both of them in their bearings on the subject upon which ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... reason, although it be a piece of prudence, as well as good manners, to put men upon talking on subjects they are best versed in, yet that is a liberty a wise man could hardly take; {56} because, beside the imputation of pedantry, it is what he would never improve by. ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... be never so big."—"You must know, friend Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "that it has been the constant practice of knights-errant in former ages to make their squires governors of the islands or kingdoms they conquered. Now I am not only resolved to keep up that laudable custom, but even to improve it, and outdo my predecessors in generosity; for whereas sometimes, or rather most commonly, other knights delayed rewarding their squires till they were grown old, and worn out with services, bad days, worse nights, and all manner of hard duty, and then put them off with some title, either ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... 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 ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... The great advantage of any rational theory is, that it forces us to look upon the industrial mechanism as a whole, and to trace out the correlative changes involved in any particular operation. It disposes of the theories which virtually propose to improve our supply of water by pouring a cup out of one vessel into another; and such theories have had considerable success in economy. So far, in short, as a protectionist really maintains that the advantage consists in accumulating money, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the wisdom of Congress to correct, improve, or enforce this plan of procedure; and it will probably be found expedient to extend the legal code and the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States to many cases which, though dependent on principles already recognized, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "it's quite different with us; we don't want to rob him or Ollypybus, or to annex their land. All we want to do is to improve it, and have the fun of running it for them and meddling in their affairs of state. Well, Stedman," he ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... of dried buffalo meat, was eaten cold. In order to enable the captives to feed themselves, their hands had been loosed and refastened in front instead of behind them, but this did not in any degree improve their chance of escape, for they were guarded with ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... to admit that the farmer is earnestly endeavouring to improve his art, and that he is willing, nay anxious, to obtain the co-operation of scientific men, in order to increase his knowledge of the theory as well as the practice of his ancient calling. Indeed, he not only admits the utility of science in agriculture, but often ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... 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 a few other ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... villa, to the west, was planted by the Honorable Louis Panet, about 1830; also the grounds tastefully laid out in meadows, plantations and gardens, symmetrically divided off by neat spruce, thorn, and snowball hedges, which improve very much their aspect. One fir hedge, in particular, is of uncommon beauty. To the west an ancient pine, a veritable monarch of the forest, rears his hoary trunk, and amidst most luxuriant foliage looks down proudly on the young plantation beneath him, lending ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... small pieces, 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 applied ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... or persons to be seen, or other signs of life, in its precincts. The grass grew high and green all around the hillock, and there was no road, not even a foot-path, visible on its side. Nevertheless, I dismounted, left my horse to improve the opportunity of snatching a light repast on the abundant herbage, and forced my way up to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... discovered it yet. But I do believe that we've got to do better by each other than we're doing now if we're ever going to make a success of living. Whether it's got to come by individual reform or by some new system of government, I don't know, but things have got to improve, and, by gum, I believe they will! We're too good, all of us, to be wasted the way most ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... you what 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 time. I ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... his stay in Madrid, Rizal had come across a second-hand copy, in two volumes, of a French novel, which he bought to improve his knowledge of that language. It was Eugene Sue's "The Wandering Jew," that work which transformed the France of the nineteenth century. However one may agree or disagree with its teachings and concede or dispute its literary merits, it cannot ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... was at first a painful shock to me to realise that the time had come when it was necessary for us to take any heed of the uneducated rabble who seem born into the world discontented with their station in life, and instead of making honest attempts to improve it waste their time railing against us who are more fortunately placed, and in endeavours to mislead in every possible way the electorate ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as ascetics fleeing from the world, but also as philanthropists, prepared to sacrifice their lives for the good of humanity. Their mission was to drain and to cultivate this most unhealthy part of the Double, and to improve the condition of the peasants who eked out a miserable existence there. With what success the monks have applied themselves to their task of changing the climate by drainage, and assisting the peasants in their struggle, is proved by the sentiments of the people towards them. When, under the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... to France, next spring, when the Stanburys go over, just to see what strides medicine is making across the waters, and to rest myself a little, improve my Gallic pronunciation, and get the fashions, and I will take you as my interpreter, if you promise to be very good and obedient ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... energy of Arjuna's shafts, the steeds of Drona's son thereupon ran away. Then a loud noise arose from thy troops, O Bharata! Meanwhile the Pandavas, having obtained the victory, and desiring to improve it, rushed against thy troops, shooting from all sides sharp arrows at them. The vast Dhartarashtra host, then, O king, was repeatedly broken by the heroic Pandavas inspired with desire of victory, in the very sight, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... only to make allowances when pronouncing an opinion on the character or the crimes of the Aborigines; but what is of far greater and more vital importance, as far as they are concerned, to endeavour to revise and improve such parts of our system and policy towards them as are defective, and by better adapting these to the peculiar circumstances of this people, at once place them upon juster and more equal terms, and thus excite a reasonable hope that some eventual ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... invariable mark of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned nor simulated. But the just and dexterous use of what qualities we have, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I wish Monsieur du Vallon to sup well, more especially as I have news to give him that will improve ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at the World Bank. Privatization of the economy proceeded at an accelerated pace in 2002-04. Despite lackluster performance in Europe in 2001-04, Slovenia maintained moderate growth. Structural reforms to improve the business environment have allowed for greater foreign participation in Slovenia's economy and have helped to lower unemployment. Further measures to curb inflation are still needed. Corruption and the high ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... the mouth by way of ornament. My method is to dive to the bottom of a sore before I pretend to apply a remedy. For this reason, I sat by an eminent story-teller and politician who takes half an ounce in five seconds, and has mortgaged a pretty tenement near the town, merely to improve and dung his brains with this prolific powder. I observed this gentleman the other day in the midst of a story diverted from it by looking at something at a distance, and I softly hid his box. But he returns to his tale, and looking for his box, he cries, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Social Forces, a topical outline with bibliography, published this year by the Education Committee, Mrs. A. S. Quackenbush, chairman, was especially designed for the instruction of women, first, in existing conditions, and second, in the various movements made to improve them. Copies were purchased by universities, organizations and individuals all over the United States. Wisconsin Legislators and the Home was a valuable pamphlet compiled by Miss James following the legislative ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... after a silence which drew out into awkwardness, she made some remark on the flowers. But Raymond was not interested about the flowers. He had looked forward to this occasion as an opportunity of exceptional value and now strove to improve ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... daily, the resonance of his voice is dulled and its channels grow hoarse. Wherefore he purges his huskiness by loud and repeated recitation. However, it is vain toil and useless labour[59] for a man to attempt to improve the natural quality of the human voice. There are many sounds that surpass it. The trumpet's blare is louder, the music of the lyre more varied, the plaint of the flute more pleasing, the murmurs of the pipe ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... for, or are likely to care for," he said brutally. "I know I might as well let the estate go to the dogs as try and improve it. Once my father and I are dead, you'll turn it into a damned garden for your ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... generally for the hundred and one purposes playing a part in the development of lands hitherto out of step in the march of enterprise, and where strife has until recently stifled the usual manifestations of man's desire to improve his surroundings. The Japanese government in 1906 purchased six railways, which were profit earners, paying for them $125,000,000 in five per cent. bonds that may be redeemed in five years. There ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... thickening will improve it more," she continued serenely. "And if you had cut the rabbits a little smaller, it would ha' been better, Jerry. Still, I daresay I can make it eatable, so go an' talk to Peregrine and leave ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... would have great weight, in any discussion as to what is good, useful, expedient, or what is in accordance with the cultivated reason or intelligence of mankind; because civilization consists in the exercise of men's intellectual faculties to improve their condition. But in a controversy as to what is given us by nature,—what we possess independently of intelligent search and experience,—the appeal to civilization does not apply. What civilized men agree upon among themselves, as opposed to savages, is likely to be the reverse ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... 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
... to do. He tells Norman to say to me that if he puts the fellow in prison there'll be a riot, for they'll make a martyr of him. If he fines him it won't improve matters. So he asks me to name a punishment which'll suit our case. He promises to give it 'his most ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... British representative, Sir Rutherford Alcock, in a despatch written to his Government, at the close of 1859, penned some very caustic comments on the conduct of his countrymen, and did not hesitate to declare that "in estimating the difficulties to be overcome in any attempt to improve the aspect of affairs, if the ill-disguised enmity of the governing classes and the indisposition of the Executive Government to give partial effect to the treaties be classed among the first and principal of these, the unscrupulous character and dealings of foreigners who frequent ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... great indeed. Every one followed the example set by my system of irrigation; cattle were multiplied; the area of meadow land and every kind of out-turn increased. I had nothing to fear after that. I could continue my efforts to improve this, as yet, untilled corner of the earth; and to civilize those who dwelt in it, whose ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... steadfast adherence to what he regards as basic principles, he might rightly be termed an opportunist. For he is prone to temporize, anxious to prevent an issue from approaching a crisis, evidently in the hope that something may "turn up" to improve the situation and obviate the necessity of conflict. "Watchful waiting" in the Mexican crises and his attitude towards the belligerents during the first two years of the European war are cases in point. There are instances of impulsive action ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... would soon follow the example of the lady dingo. Though I had frequently tried to make her ride on one of the packs, she preferred to trot along at the heels of Czar, receiving from him occasional kicks if by chance she touched him, which did not tend to improve the pups so soon to see the light. Tying her on was no better; she only struggled and nearly hanged herself. She had therefore to walk as she desired. Having made camp, and unrolled our blankets ready to turn into them when the time came, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Islands come to be the ones that suffer the penalty, without being implicated in the guilt. And although their commerce is in the lowest condition that it has ever experienced or suffered, yet even in this condition they are not allowed or permitted [to improve] it, and there are some who propose its destruction as a remedy, so that it may share in the universal destruction of all trade; and this is in so far as it touches the commerce ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... entirely for the good of humanity,' and that sort of nonsense. This coffee ice is excellent. Let me get you another," after which the subject would be dropped, and the speakers would return to the ball room to improve upon Raeburn's life, which they presumed so severely to criticize, by a trois temps enlivened by ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... shall find relief, 'When the dark shades of melancholy lower: 'For solitude has many a dreary hour, 'Even when exempt from grief, remorse, and pain: 'Come often then; for, haply, in my bower, 'Amusement, knowledge, wisdom, thou may'st gain: 'If I one soul improve, I ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... librarian. Were he of the mind, he might write a history of Constantinople by original data without leaving his library. Fortunately the mere keepers of books seldom write books.... My father's office is in the Monastery, and I frequently find myself in his company there. He never fails to improve the opportunity to lecture me, for he is a good man. One day, by invitation, I accompanied the librarian to his place of keeping, and saw it, and wondered how he could be willing to give his days—he is now an ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... gave us pleasure, but it added to our cow knowledge, and of the country over which we might at any time be called on to drive cattle, and in such cases a knowledge of the country was most valuable to us. Then a cow boy's life contains many things in which he is continually trying to improve and excel, such as roping, shooting, riding and branding and many other things connected with the cattle business. We, in common with other trades, did not know it all, and we were always ready to learn ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... world. The wheel of Anschuetz had been widespread too; yet it was considered only as a half-scientific apparatus. With Edison's kinetoscope the moving pictures had become a means for popular amusement and entertainment, and the appetite of commercialism was whetted. At once efforts to improve on the Edison machine were starting everywhere, and the adjustment to the needs of the wide public was ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... the question troubled his Aunt Hannah, and so he said no more on the subject, but thought that when he was a man, and had means of his own, he would improve and beautify the old farm-house, which, though scrupulously neat and clean, was in its furnishing plain in the extreme. Not a superfluous article, except what had been sent from Boston, had been bought since he could remember, and the carpet, and chairs, ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... Slight and fragile, her figure was of such just proportion that every movement and gesture had an indescribable charm. The most courtly dame might have envied her fine and taper fingers, and fancied she could improve them by protecting them against the sun, or by rendering them snowy white with paste or cosmetic, but this was questionable; nothing certainly could improve the small foot and finely-turned ankle, so well ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... 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
... hour of early evening, snatched on the run back to Rome, that remains with me as one of those felicities we are wise to leave for ever, just as they are, just, that is, where they fell, never attempting to renew or improve them. So happy a chance was it that ensured me at the afternoon's end a solitary stroll through the Villa d' Este, where the day's invasion, whatever it might have been, had left no traces and where I met nobody in the great rococo passages and chambers, and in the prodigious alleys ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... "If the wine improve in this manner, thy father should be heavy-hearted at the sight of the lees. 'Twould be no more than charity to bring him and ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sometimes has one or two European Assistants. He is also aided by well-paid Inspectors, who are for the most part natives of India. Measures have recently been taken, especially in the United Provinces, to improve the pay, training, and position of the police force, European ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... as the centres of Taira strength lay in the south and west of the empire, the province of Settsu would be a more convenient citadel than Kyoto. Hence he built at Fukuhara a spacious villa and took various steps to improve the harbour—then called Muko—as well as to provide maritime facilities, among which may be mentioned the opening of the strait, Ondo no Seto. But Fukuhara is fifty miles from Kyoto, and to reach the latter quickly ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... hinted that he would like as well to stay where he was. But his wife said that for Daisy's sake they must quit Melbourne, and try what new scenes, and lessons, and dancing school would do for her. "Not improve the colour in her cheeks, I am afraid," said Mr. Randolph; but, however, he did not oppose, and Mrs. ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... NA international: satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Pacific Ocean) note: Kiribati is being linked to the Pacific Ocean Cooperative Telecommunications Network, which should improve ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the sociableness of music, it conforms itself to all companies both in mirth and mourning; complying to improve that passion with which it finds the auditors most affected. In a word, it is an invention which might have beseemed a son of Seth to have been the father thereof: though better it was that Cain's great-grandchild should have the credit first to find it, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... mean art to improve a language, and find out words that are not only removed from common use, but rich in consonants, the nerves and sinews of speech; to raise a soft and feeble language like ours to the pitch of High-Dutch, as he did ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... oracular. The two stood and looked at one another. Christopher explained himself no further; however, Mrs. Blumenfeld's understanding appeared to improve. She looked first inquisitive, ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... 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' ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... constantly being seized by different intruders. It was not till the time of Alfred the Great, who came to the throne in 871, that the invasions of the Danes were finally checked, and tranquillity restored to the kingdom. Security being assured, the people began again to improve their public buildings and the religious houses. Crowland was the first in the neighbourhood to be restored. This restoration was effected by Thurketyl. Instigated probably by his example, Ethelwold, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Mr. Carleton, smiling to himself. "Nothing but that could improve the beauty of all this, ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... be wrong, of course: but I do think the chances improve with every hour that he does not get worse; and he is certainly not worse. I have a strong presentiment that he ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... the East India Company, with interest at five per cent up to May 1, 1707. That grievance of the shareholders was thus healed, what public debt Scotland owed was to be paid (the Equivalent was about 400,000 pounds), and any part of the money unspent was to be given to improve fisheries ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... prejudice: and since the Oxford Dictionary has done more fully for English what Littr['e] did for French, our task is comparatively easy. But experts cannot be expected, all of them, to have the self-denying zeal of ['E]mile Littr['e], and the worth of our tracts will probably improve with the ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... of the adjacent districts consulted together about obviating their mischief, saying: If they are in this way left to improve their fortune, any opposition to them may prove impracticable. The tree that has just taken root, the strength of one man may be able to extract; but leave it to remain thus for a time, and the machinery ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... 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; and Garoffi came to present me with two tickets in his new lottery of "a penknife ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... in a clay country in autumn or early winter you will find some of the fields dotted with white heaps of chalk or lime, and you will be told that these things "improve" the soil. We will make a few experiments to find out what lime does to clay. Put some clay on to a perforated tin disk in a funnel just as you did on p. 14, press it down so that no water can pass through. Then ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell
... me honor in admitting me to a participation in your new and sacred duties, dear madam," replied the clergyman, "be assured, I shall most gladly improve every opportunity offered me for the welfare of your little Jennie. Bella used often to walk with me," continued he, taking the hand of the little girl, "will you sometimes join me as I ramble about these woods and hills? Perhaps we can find some pleasant things to tell each other ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... she said. "But I have tried to improve; I have worked very hard, I thought it would please you, and that you would be glad to find me different—and I am different," she added, with a sudden pathetic change in her voice. "I understand a great deal now that I never ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... 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, to the ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... itself,—when the initial stroke of the tempest came upon the Josephine. His "stove-pipe" hat, as non-nautical as anything could be, which he persisted in wearing, was tipped from his head, and borne over the rail into the sea. This accident did not improve his temper, and he was on the point of asking the captain to send a boat to pick up his lost tile, when the full force of the squall began to be expended upon the vessel. He found himself unable to stand up; and ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... generally affable, courteous, and very assistant to Strangers (for what but plenty makes hospitality and good neighbourhood) and no sooner are they settled, but they will be visiting, presenting and advising the strangers how to improve what they have, how to better ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Poppy, you must go to the places which improve your mind; now, I do hope you are not going to be giddy, running just after pretty things; but I suppose your aunt, who is so wise, and who keeps the boarding-house, will see to that. Well, first of all you had better go to Westminster Abbey. Oh, Poppy! I have read such ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... peers of Iredell, Davie and Archibald Henderson of former days. It is impossible to overestimate the influence for good or evil which has been and ever will be exerted by the lawyers in a free land. They are the sentinels and conservators of public liberty, and, next to the clergy, improve or impair the morality ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... lost no time in following up his blow, well aware that it is quite as difficult to improve a victory as to win one. The French had rushed into battle with too much precipitation to agree on any plan of operations, or any point on which to rally in case of defeat. They accordingly scattered ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Anne had no metropolitan distinction to speak of, she was not in the least provincial. She was something by herself, superior and rare. A little inclined to take herself too seriously, perhaps; but her husband's admirable levity would, no doubt, improve her. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... means of measuring temperature it was a very crude affair, because the tube that contained the measuring liquid was exposed to the air, hence barometric changes of pressure vitiated the experiment. It remained for Galileo's Italian successors of the Accademia del Cimento of Florence to improve upon the apparatus, after the experiments of Torricelli—to which we shall refer in a moment—had thrown new light on the question of atmospheric pressure. Still later the celebrated Huygens hit upon the idea of using the melting and the boiling point of water as fixed points in a scale ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Constitution and be unjust to other interests; when it takes no steps to impair their usefulness, but so manages its own affairs as to make it the interest of those institutions to strengthen and improve their condition for the security and welfare of the community at large. They have no right to insist on a connection with the Federal Government, nor on the use of the public money for their own benefit. The object of the measure under consideration is to avoid for the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... had been completed we began preparations for the main advance in the following spring. We had to improve our equipment and make it lighter. We discarded all our sleds, for they were too heavy and unwieldy for the smooth surface of the Ice Barrier. Our sleds weighed 165 pounds each. Bjaaland, our ski and sledmaker, took the sleds in hand, and when spring arrived he had entirely made over our sledge ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... under the guidance of M. de Saci, and to have felt an unwonted measure of happiness in his triumph over the world and in the possession of his own quiet thoughts. We have seen how he spoke of being treated “like a prince,” and even his health seemed to improve, notwithstanding the regularity and severity of his religious devotions. He communicated his feelings of elation to his sister, who replied (19th January 1655) that she was delighted to find him “gay in his solitude,” as she never was at his happiness in the world. “Notwithstanding,” ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... noise made by the instruments used to mill and prepare it in the water. Many other ingredients were subsequently added; but with the exception of Vanilla, in the opinions of most persons, they spoil, rather than improve it. Chocolate, as used in Mexico, is thus prepared: —The kernels are roasted in an iron pot pierced with holes; they are then pounded in a mortar, and afterwards ground between two stones, generally of marble, till it is brought to a paste, to which sugar is added, according to the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... coast of the Mediterranean. In numbers and in spirit they were fully equal to the Athenians, but far inferior to them in military and naval discipline. When the probability of an Athenian invasion was first publicly discussed at Syracuse, and efforts were made by some of the wiser citizens to improve the state of the national defences and prepare for the impending danger, the rumors of coming war and the proposal for preparation were received by the mass of the Syracusans with scornful incredulity. The speech of one of their popular ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... hand, much land which only by thorough-draining can be rendered profitable for cultivation, or healthful for residence, and very much more, described as "ordinarily dry land," which draining would greatly improve in both productive value ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... you really need mercury vapor? Will some other metallic vapor do? What about temperature variations in making the polyester? How long a cure time? How much ultraviolet? Will the fibers be better if you draw them more? Can you get those tacky fiber ends in any other way? Can you improve them? What about the sheet-making conditions? Does oxygen in ...
— The Professional Approach • Charles Leonard Harness
... leave to assure your excellency, that I receive with no small degree of pride the praise bestowed on my endeavours to improve the militia system of this province; and as the bill underwent some alterations after the departure of Colonel M'Donnell, particularly in limiting its operation to the end of the ensuing session, I shall have the honor to forward for your excellency's ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... and, as the English ship sailed somewhat heavily, being too much by the head, they hung a quantity of botijas, or Spanish earthen pots which had contained oil, and now filled with water, over the stern of their ship, to give her a better trim and to improve her sailing. The treasure ship, thinking the English vessel had been one of those which usually sail upon that coast, made towards her, and when near, the English captain hailed her to surrender: As the Spanish captain refused, the English fired ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... particularly effective and imposing. It consisted of an old citadel which, it is true, had been improved considerably; but even then its outworks extended hardly farther than a mile beyond its own range. As soon as General Russky assumed command he began feverishly to improve these conditions. In this undertaking he was greatly assisted by the nature of the countryside surrounding Dvinsk. Immediately to the northwest, west, south, and southeast the River Dvina formed a strong line of natural defense. Beyond that was a region thickly covered with small and big lakes, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... his hand shook, and his temper was "awful." Before he was dressed, ominous knocks came to the door; and all feverish and troubled as he was, you may imagine that the prospect of the day's work before him did not improve his feelings, and that self-reproach, direst of tormentors, did not mend the matter. Two ladies were waiting for him, he was told when he went down-stairs—not to say sundry notes and messages in the ordinary way ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... for the hunted secretary. It is true that his terror enabled him once more to improve his pace, and gain with every step on his pursuers; but he was well aware that he was near the end of his resources, and should he meet any one coming the other way, his predicament in the narrow lane would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... overrated, and gives them credit for the ability to make a good bargain. In fact, she saw nothing of that disinterestedness which Dr. Henderson and other travellers have ascribed to them. They are intolerably addicted to brandy-drinking,—indeed, their circumstances would greatly improve if they drank less and worked more. They are scarcely less passionately addicted to snuff-taking, as well as to tobacco-chewing. Their mode of taking snuff is peculiar, and certainly not one to be imitated. Most of the peasants, and even many of the priests, have no snuff-boxes, but make use instead ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... 5.9, lit in the midst of the British working party. It did the Germans little good. It did not stop the deluge of shells that was breaking up their guns and was driving misery down like a wedge into their spirits. It did not improve the temper of the officer commanding the battery, so that the men suffered as acutely as ever under the Sergeant-Major. But it stopped the road for ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... their first great triumph, to complete the conquest so well begun, Grant and his generals were attempting to organize resistance out of defeat, to establish their lines, to connect the divisions with each other, and improve the situation of the different commands by seizing the most favorable ground. Sherman and McClernand, with what remained of their divisions, were on the extreme right; W. H. L. Wallace, whose division had not yet come into action, on their left, ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... clearing its dear old throat for a passage at arms: "'Y gory man, there's always been a working class and they've always had to work like sixty and get the worst of it, I guess, and they always will—what say? You can't improve on the way the world is made. And when she's made, she's made—what say? I tell you now, you're wasting your time on that ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... good does it do you?" He is a great lender of books, especially of Carlyle and Ruskin, which authors for some absolutely inscrutable reason he considers provocative of Bagarrowism, and he goes to the County Council lectures on dairy-work, because it encourages others to improve themselves. But I have said enough to display him, and of Bagarrow at least—as I can well testify—it is easy to have more than enough. Indeed, after whole days with him I have gone home to dream of the realisation of his ideals, a sort of Bagarrow millennium, a world of Bagarrows. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... could not discover the slightest trace of any attempt to profit by this intercourse, nor have they hitherto copied after us in any one thing. We are not, therefore, to expert that Omai will be able to introduce many of our arts and customs amongst them, or much improve those to which they have been long habituated. I am confident, however, that he will endeavour to bring to perfection the various fruits and vegetables we planted, which will be no small acquisition. But the greatest benefit these islands are likely ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... after George Durant settled on Little River, the religious condition of Albemarle began to improve. In the spring of that year, William Edmundson, a faithful friend and follower of George Fox, the founder of the Quaker Church, came into Albemarle and held the first public religious service ever heard in the colony ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a national timbre so expressive of race characteristics that the best of translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German "Gemueth" signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words verbally so closely allied as the English gentleman ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... those among us who, by the sweat and labor of their hands, through many long years and at great expense, have endeavored to improve their land. Others have come with ships freighted with a large quantity of cattle. They have cleared away the forest, enclosed their plantations, and brought them under the plough, so as to be an ornament ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... after their habit, were content with the tactical victory at Noitgedacht and refrained from endeavouring to improve upon it. French and Clements took the field without delay, and although they failed in their plan to pin Delarey and Beyers on to the wall of the Magaliesberg, the Boer leaders were compelled to separate. Their brilliant and brief co-operation did ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... it, but to make any future Parliament impossible. The police do their best for the shoplifters; the engine-drivers, to help the police, prevent them from going home to bed. Sir Edward Carson, a staunch Unionist, makes union out of the question. The bakers, to improve the prospects of their trade, teach people to make their own bread. The colliers—well, the colliers do not yet seem to have found out that unless they provide people with coal, people won't provide them with many things they are ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... Put your fish in boiling water, well salted, boil a minute to a pound, and when done serve it with some of the water it was boiled in for sauce. You can't improve a fresh-caught salmon with Worcestershire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... and morose, others making the best of matters and trying to establish some speaking acquaintance with their guards, who evidently regarded the march as a sort of holiday after the dull routine of life in a garrison town. Will, who had during his imprisonment at Toulon studied to improve his French to the best of his ability by the aid of some books he had obtained and by chatting with his jailer, worked his hardest to add to his knowledge of the language, and as the French soldiers ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... 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 were again ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... said Robert, 'if he grows up in the usual way, there'll be plenty of time to correct him as he goes along. The awful thing to-day was his growing up so suddenly. There was no time to improve him at all.' ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... us, and say our old Bible is worn out, and out of style, and tell us to have our measure taken for a new one every fall and spring, as we do for our clothes. If this revision is a good thing, why won't another one be better? The woods are full of preachers who think they could go to work and improve the Bible, and if we don't shut down on this thing, they will take a hand in it. If a man hauls down the American flag, we shoot him on the spot; and now we suggest that if any man mutilates the Bible, we run an umbrella ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... have political or social, economic or moral character, are always the products of both physical and psychical causes. The public thinks first of all of the physical ones. There are railroad accidents: therefore improve the physical technique of the signal system; there is drunkenness: therefore remove the whiskey bottle. The psychical element is by no means ignored. Yet it is treated as if mere insight into the cause, mere good will and understanding, are sufficient to take care of the mental factors involved. ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... arguments about a horse with a docked tail being stronger-backed, like a short-tailed sheep, but I don't believe a word of it. The horse was made strong enough to do the work he's got to do, and man can't improve on him. Docking is a cruel, wicked thing. Now, there's a ghost of an argument in favor of check-reins, on certain occasions. A fiery, young horse can't run away, with an overdrawn check, and in speeding horses a tight check-rein will make them hold their heads up, and keep ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... did not materially improve the condition of the negro, save in the matter of physical treatment. As a slave the black man received no compensation for his labor. As a free man, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... seven years of married life at Bournemouth he again, in 1887, tried a visit to America. His health, however, did not improve, and, during the winter of 1887 and 1888, when he was at Saranac Lake, he speaks of himself, in The Vailima Letters, as having been—in the graphic Scots words—'far through'; and the idea occurred to him of chartering a yacht and going for a voyage in the South Seas. His mother on this occasion ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... a family named Eldon, the estate including the greater part of the valley below. But an Eldon who came into possession when William IV. was King brought the fortunes of his house to a low ebb, and his son, seeking to improve matters by abandoning his prejudices and entering upon commercial speculation, in the end left a widow and two boys with little more to live upon than the income which arose from Mrs. Eldon's settlements. The Manor was shortly after this purchased by a Mr. Mutimer, a Belwick ironmaster; ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... than before, that's just throwing your money to the winds. Once in the tavern, you're no longer master of yourself; the old companionship, the old habit will carry you along, and you'll spend two or three weeks' pay again. Then the after-thirst will come and you'll have to improve other evenings, and more and more you'll lose all belief that you could ever help yourself up, you'll become slacker every day, and you'll despair of yourself more and more. Besides, it's not so dreadful as the face you makeup. See how many people never take a glass the year round, or go into a tavern. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... for the miserable time gone by; to take again the place in the world I had forfeited, bearing ever in my breast the beautiful maxims of the German poet and philosopher, Schiller: 'Look not sorrowfully into the past; it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present; it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear, and ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... here begins to improve in appearance — more trees and cultivation on all sides; and the natives appear finer specimens than their more southern relations. The irrigation, too, seems to be carried on with more systematic appliances than further south — the water being raised by the Persian wheel, and ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... tentative and rude, and he divined in it all sorts of dangers, and especially, that of inducing embolism, if the liquor was not perfectly pure. Then he suspected that the strength of his patients came in part from the fever his treatment produced in them. But he was only a pioneer; the method would improve later. Was it not already a miracle to make the ataxic walk, to bring consumptives back to life, as it were; even to give hours of lucidity to the insane? And at the thought of this discovery of the alchemy ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... who brought a second actor upon the scene; whence arose the increased prominence of the dialogue, and the limitation and subsidiary character of the chorus. AEschylus also added more expressive masks, and various machinery and scenes calculated to improve and enlarge dramatic representation. Of the effect of this new creation upon all kinds of poetical genius we have the following fine illustration ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of their party was not likely to improve the good feeling of the crew toward the Spanish ship which was two miles to leeward of them, and which must be fought with, or fled from, before a quarter of an hour was past. So, kneeling down upon the deck, as many ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... condition that he engaged to return within a reasonable time" (Mainwaring). What period was to be considered reasonable we do not know. Handel had certainly been planning this London visit for some time, as he was corresponding with friends in England, and was also taking some trouble to improve his knowledge of the English language. It is not surprising that he hankered after London, for London offered him a society which bore more resemblance to the world which he had known at Rome. The tradition of Italian culture had for generations been more firmly implanted ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... it all by nightfall, the news having been brought to the store by old Luke Basset, who had gotten it from Margaret Bean's husband. In a day or two they knew more from the same source. Lot Gordon had engaged his cousin to improve the Gordon acres which had been lying fallow for the last ten years. He had offered him a good salary. He wanted to carry out some new-fangled schemes which he had got out of books. Burr was going right to work; he had hired a man from ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... general prejudices—if he was Irish, he was boyishly Irish, not like his inscrutable brother; a better, or hopefuller edition of Captain Con; one with whom something could be done to steady him, direct him, improve him. He might be taught to appreciate Beethoven and work for his fellows. 'Now does not that touch you more deeply than the Italian?' said she, delicately mouthing: 'I, mio ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was blowing carried grains of it, which filled one's mouth and tasted hot and gritty; again, impalpable atoms of sand were blown into the corners of one's eyes, and, besides, this injury inflicted on the organ of vision was calculated by no means to improve one's temper. However, Omar told me that a beautiful and fruitful land lay beyond, therefore we made light of these discomforts, and, after a march of three days, during which time we were baked by day by the merciless sun and chilled at night by the heavy dews, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... most famous of whom was Banting, have advanced theories to reduce corpulency and to improve slenderness; but they have been uniformly unreliable, and the whole subject of stature-development presents an almost unexplored field for investigation. Recently, Leichtenstein, observing in a case of myxedema treated with the thyroid ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... reverted to former days, again lived those hours, fraught with a mournful and bitter charm, which he had often spent beside her, when he called at the sorry lodging to keep her company. M. de Guersaint had finally ruined himself by trying to improve the artistic quality of the religious prints so widely sold in France, the faulty execution of which quite irritated him. His last resources had been swallowed up in the failure of a colour-printing firm; and, heedless as he was, deficient in foresight, ever trusting in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... white race. Those 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 ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... cramps in his legs, leg-aches and cold hands and feet from an imperfect systemic circulation. In this condition if tobacco is entirely stopped, and the patient put on digitalis and given the usual careful advice as to eating, drinking, exertion, exercise and rest, such a heart will generally improve, acquire its normal tone, and the mitral valve become again sufficient, and to all intents and ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... Montespan "interfered with" the king. He gave the new dauphiness Madame de Maintenon as her mistress of the robes. "I am told," writes Madame de Sevigne, "that the king's conversations do nothing but increase and improve, that they last from six to ten o'clock, that the daughter-in-law goes occasionally to pay them a shortish visit, that they are found each in a big chair, and that, when the visit is over, the talk is resumed. The lady is no longer accosted without awe and respect, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... ending of British rule in India. Equal divergencies occurred in Indian public opinion. An Extremist gathering in Madras declared roundly that "the scheme is so radically wrong in principle and in detail that in our opinion it is impossible to modify or improve it." In vain had Mrs. Besant been released from her modern oubliette before Mr. Montagu started for India. "The scheme," she wrote in her haste, on the very day of its publication, "is unworthy to be offered by England or to be accepted by India." In vain had ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... it wasn't for this awfully hot weather, the wound wouldn't bother me at all. The doctor says that if I continue to improve as I have, I can rejoin my company by the middle ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... time in trying to improve matters. It was a fundamental maxim with him that, in a neglected estate like this, no improvement was more sensible, or paid better, than the construction of good roads. These occupied his attention for several years, and gave most beneficial employment to the tenants. The cost in some instances ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... settled down to wait for the weather to improve or the night to pass. Some of them fell into a doze, but Claude felt wide awake. He was wondering about the flat in Chelsea; whether the heavy-eyed beauty had been very sorry, or whether she was playing "Roses of Picardy" for other young officers. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... employers who wish to improve the condition of their employs can render them no better service than to make each of them a Christmas present of a year's subscription to this paper. Send in the names early, so that we may know how large an edition to print to supply ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... she spent most of the time knitting ascension-robes for the saints of the twelve tribes of the house of Judah. These were long garments, coming nearly to the feet, each of a single color, royal purple and blue being her favorites. She said that she must improve every moment, lest the great and dreadful day of the Lord should come, and she should not be ready, i. e., would not have a robe prepared for each of the saints to ascend in. When her son, a boy of twelve, died, she had him buried by the front doorstep, so, when the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... was done. That, at least, is my impression of Renoir's latest style. Examples of it abound in Paris, notably M. Maurice Gangnat's collection; and it is said that the artist intends these pictures to improve ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... must improve your brain power; and nothing helps the brain more than a healthy body. The race of to-day is only to be won by those who will study to keep their bodies in such good condition that their minds are able and ready to sustain that high pressure on ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... of the conduct of the Spanish settlers of Hispaniola, he could scarcely speak more disparagingly of them than he does in regard to a people that alone has so treated the negro race as to enable it to increase in numbers, and improve in its physical, moral, and intellectual condition. Had he been more fully informed in relation to the proceedings in the British colonies, and in these colonies and states, he could scarcely have ventured to assert that ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... mathook, for they will not go. But there is really no cause for alarm, for discontent is not necessarily wicked. There is such a thing as divine discontent just as there is criminal contentment. Discontent may mean the stirring of ambition, the desire to spread out, to improve and grow. Discontent is a sign of life, corresponding to growing pains in a healthy child. The poor woman who is making a brave struggle for existence is not saying much, though she is thinking all the time. In the old days ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... vast benefit in a multitude of cases, more particularly those in which the lymphatic system and the glands were diseased, as in scrofula, tumid abdomen, and harsh skin, with deficient appetite, and indisposition to take exercise. It does mischief if it does not at once improve power. In such cases, however, great care is required to avoid too long a chill, which always aggravates the glandular congestion. Salt stimulates the skin, but a certain degree of cold, and, perhaps, of shock, is necessary for the beneficial effects, a warm bath very often increasing the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... interest the stranger, excepting the diversity of wood and water. The ground rises in some places, though with little variety, till you pass the junction of the Ohio, 1253 miles from the sea. Shortly after entering the Ohio, the country begins to improve; you perceive the ground beginning to rise in the distance, and the bank occasionally to rear into small hills, which show their strata of stone, and rise into bluffs, projecting into the bends of the river, shutting it in, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... his former position, and Mr. Furze's business began to improve. Arrangements were made for the removal from the Terrace, and they were eagerly pressed forward by Catharine. Her mother pleaded that they could not leave till June; that even in June they would sacrifice a quarter's rent, but Catharine's reply was that they would pay no more if they ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... cozen is a metaphor of quite another kind. Every young noble who did the grand tour in the 16th and 17th centuries spent some time at Naples, "where he may improve his knowledge in horsemanship" (Howell, Instructions for Forreine Travell, 1642). Now the Italian horse-dealers were so notorious that Dekker, writing about 1600, describes a swindling "horse-courser" as a "meere jadish Non-politane," a play ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... most refined and delicate, is a mystery to me. If I once know that my wife or my friend will tell me only what they think will be agreeable to me, then I am at once lost, my way is a pathless quicksand. But all this being premised, I still say that we Anglo-Saxons might improve our domestic life, if we would graft upon the strong stock of its homely sincerity the courteous graces of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... that I can afford it, don't it? but, puss, I was thinking just now about your staying here where you really do improve." ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... fall of 1858 the farm was sold. Grant embarked in the real estate agency business in St. Louis, and made sundry unsuccessful efforts to get a salaried place under the city government. But his fortunes did not improve. Finally in desperation he went in 1860 to his father for assistance. His father had established two younger sons in a hide and leather business in Galena, Ill. Upon consultation they agreed to employ Ulysses as a clerk and helper, ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... this schip was not as we have schowin, latt him pas to the place of Tullibardyne quhair he will find the breadth and length of hir sett with hawthorne."[3] Three of these thorn trees were standing in 1837; none of them exist now. A farmer, to improve his field, rooted them out, and did his best to fill up the hollow representing the hull; but spite of these obliterations, the plan of the great ship may ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... old Dutchman was plainly convinced that the end justified the means, and cousin Serena felt that any further discussion of the question was useless, and that it would not tend to improve Matty's moral views or those of her brother Tony, who had just come in, as both were sure to side with their ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... recommend that all promotions in the Navy above the rank of captain be by selection instead of by seniority. This course will secure in the higher grades greater efficiency and hold out an incentive to young officers to improve themselves in the knowledge of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... butter and flour, and other suchlike articles. The flour looked brown, and the butter was running away in an oily stream; but that was no reason why a shower of broken glass should be added to improve their excellences. Mr. Peckaby, with white gills and hair raised up on end, stood, the picture of fear, gazing at the damage, but too much afraid to start out and prevent it. Those big men are sometimes physical cowards. Another pane smashed! the weapon used being a hard piece of flint coal, ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Malbranc, who came every morning in a specially hired steam-launch to make that examination which always ended in his saying to me: "You must humour him. Heart-patients are apt to be irritable." Irritable was a mild term for this particular patient. His appetite, meanwhile, began to improve. ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... anxious, and the members of the faculty were visibly affected. Even the servants about the place felt concern for the young secretary and whispered many exaggerated stories concerning the case. But the crisis had been passed, and Carl began to improve. After a slow recovery he took up his accustomed duties, and church and school work fell back into its old routine. But six weeks of typhoid fever had greatly emaciated the young secretary. The buoyancy and brightness seemed to have ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... various changes in the plan of campaign. The fresh troops consisted of Colonel Fanning's free corps, the Georgia battalion under Major Ward, and the Red Rovers, from Alabama, under Doctor Shackleford. Fanning's and Ward's men, and the Greys, retired to Goliad, and set actively to work to improve and strengthen the fortifications; whilst Colonel Grant, whose chief failing appears to have been over-confidence, continued with a handful of followers his advance to the Rio Grande, promising at least to bring back a supply of horses for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... of smoke which could only be dispelled by the final deliverance or destruction of the Roman empire. The single combats of the heroes of history or fable amuse our fancy and engage our affections: the skilful evolutions of war may inform the mind, and improve a necessary, though pernicious, science. But in the uniform and odious pictures of a general assault, all is blood, and horror, and confusion nor shall I strive, at the distance of three centuries, and a thousand miles, to delineate a scene of which there could be no spectators, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... You mustn't be so literal about everything. I mean let's not become baggy-minded. Take Flora again. Flora was her class poetess and I don't believe she has a literary thought or a book in her head now except her account book. Let us improve ourselves, Albert. Read evenings and subscribe to the Symphony and the Rubinstein ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to talk to! He hoped that, when I had set up my model farm—for a model it would be, in every way, he felt quite sure of that, from my appearance and my conversation—I would not limit my attention solely to the work of agriculture, but would go on to improve the native breeds of sheep and oxen. He heard that splendid strains of both were found in England. He wished me to import a lot of English bulls and rams, assuring me of the assistance of the Government in all that I might do in that direction, since ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... 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, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... give more than one for you. No more of your jokes! Zametov is no more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one must draw him not repel him. You'll never improve a man by repelling him, especially a boy. One has to be twice as careful with a boy. Oh, you progressive dullards! You don't understand. You harm yourselves running another man down.... But if you want to know, we really have something ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and of certain memoirs of good authority written by Lorenzo Ghiberti and by Domenico del Ghirlandajo, hold it as true that he was rather the son of Stefano than of Giotto. Be this as it may, returning to Stefano, it can be credited to him that he did more than anyone after Giotto to improve painting, for, besides being more varied in invention, he was also more harmonious, more mellow, and better blended in colouring than all the others; and above all he had no peer in diligence. And as for ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... can be no better doctrine, indeed, than He gives forth. Now, He teaches fully what we should do if we wish to perform truly good works, and by commanding them, He shows that they please Him. If, then, it is God who commands this, and who knows not how to appoint anything better, I will never improve upon ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... yet——Ah well, you are, as I understand, a clerk, so I must think of you as one step further in orders, and make you my father-confessor. Know then that this man has been a suitor for my hand, less as I think for my own sweet sake than because he hath ambition and had it on his mind that he might improve his fortunes by dipping into my father's strong box—though the Virgin knows that he would have found little enough therein. My father, however, is a proud man, a gallant knight and tried soldier of the oldest blood, to whom this man's churlish birth and low descent——Oh, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but a "gentleman," or clerk— unless he intends reversing the whole training of his life, which he will find an extremely difficult thing to do—had far better go and break stones on the highways at home, than think to improve his condition by emigrating ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... spoke bitterly of the manner in which influential persons in Madrid had openly abominated the cruel form of amnesty which had been decreed. His authority in the Netherlands was already sufficiently weakened, he said, and such censure upon his actions from head-quarters did not tend to improve it. "In truth," he added, almost pathetically, "it is not wonderful that the whole nation should be ill-disposed towards me, for I certainly have done nothing to make them love me. At the same time, such language transmitted from Madrid does not ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... frequent ebbs and flows, the tide of Mrs. Deborah's favour continued to set towards Mr. Adolphus Lynfield. Once or twice indeed, report had said that he was fairly discarded, but the very appearance of the good miller, anxious to improve the opportunity for his protege, had been sufficient to determine his cousin to reinstate Mr. Adolphus in her good graces. Whether she really liked him is doubtful. He entertained too good an opinion of himself to be very successful in ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... and very profitable methods be found out to improve the stock beyond the settled interest of 7 per cent., which perhaps may not always be to be had, for the Exchequer is not always borrowing money; but a bank of 80,000 pounds, employed by faithful hands, need not want opportunities of great, and very ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... right, the peace which he had recalled, and the power of resignation that had returned, had a better effect on her than all her mother's precautions; she began to improve, and in a few days more was able to leave her bed, and lie on the sofa in the dressing-room, though she was still so weak and languid that this was as much as she could attempt. Any exertion was to be carefully guarded against, and her ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... if anybody in the world could improve on Mr. Dayne." Suddenly a new thought struck her, and she made a faint grimace. "There's nothing so very fine about my present work—oh me! I'll give you that if you ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Professor Putnam. Whether in the privacy of his home, in the recitation room, 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 ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... and rammed him into the pocket of his dressing-gown, where he quivered into silence like a struck gong. While the girl was laying his breakfast, Lancelot, who was looking moodily at the pattern of the carpet as if anxious to improve upon it, was vaguely conscious of relief in being spared his landlady's conversation. For Mrs. Leadbatter was a garrulous body, who suffered from the delusion that small-talk is a form of politeness, and that her conversation was a part of the "all inclusive" her lodgers stipulated for. ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... selection has been the presiding power. Fanciers can act by selection on excessively slight individual differences, as well as on those greater differences which are called sports. Selection is followed methodically when the fancier tries to improve and modify a breed according to a prefixed standard of excellence; or he acts unmethodically and unconsciously, by merely trying to rear as good birds as he can, without any wish or intention to ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... fill his belly. Then he dreams away the remainder of the day, smoking the eternal cigarette; perhaps rousing himself sufficiently to pick the strings of a guitar in the cool of the evening—and this, at least, the beggar does well. He is not at all ambitious to improve his condition, and he will never be any better than he is to-day. Probably he will be much worse. He will cut throats and burn haciendas all the gay year round if he is not allowed to gang his ain gait. We are going to reform ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... professional reverence for precedents, they were at liberty to benefit by example, to reject those errors which have been long sanctioned by their antiquity, and are still permitted to exist, through our dread of innovation. The French, however, made an attempt to improve on the trial by jury, which I think only evinces that the institution as adopted in England is not to be excelled. The decision is here given by ballot—unanimity is not required—and three white balls are sufficient to acquit the prisoner. This deviation ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... this; or else nothing. Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit. It is in the perfect state: an ideal country. The Ablest Man; he means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man: what he tells us to do must be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere or anyhow learn;—the thing ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... psychological observations of children grow wiser, more sympathetic, and more subtle, we shall see cause to make radical changes in the objects which are Froebel's legacy to the kindergarten. This we may do, but we can never improve upon the motherly tenderness of spirit with which they were devised by the great pioneer of child-study, nor upon the philosophic insight which based them on the universal ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
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