"Capacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in this woman's presence, both to think her saintly and to have the sentiments inspired by the overearthly in her person. Her voice, her simple words of writing, her gentle resolve, all issuing of a capacity to suffer evil, and pardon it, conveyed that character to a mind not soft for receiving ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... prejudices, weaknesses, of one man, are corrected by a totally opposite form of character in another. The mind of the youth hesitates. Hesitation brings circumspection, watchfulness; watchfulness, discrimination; discrimination, choice; and a capacity to choose implies the attainment of a certain degree of deliberateness and judgment with which the youth may be permitted to go upon his way, supposed to be provided for in the difficult respect of being able henceforward to take ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... a girl or a blind boy? You are narrow—narrow as the grave: but I find that, like the grave, you are inevitable; and, like the grave, you keep what you get. For the kind of finance that was the true game of manhood to your grandfather and me, you have no capacity whatever. No, I cannot explain. Finance? Why, you haven't even a sense of it. Yet in a way you are capable. You will make the money yield interest, and will keep the race going. That is what I look to—you will keep the race going. Now I ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she only nodded curtly. She mimicked every beast and bird she could think of on the way home, to wipe him and his horse from the memory of Dorman, whose capacity for telling things best left untold was ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... papers and acquittances, which his enemies believed had had been lost; and so was justified before the Queen, to the great discontent of the Ambassador. Whitelocke said he was very glad that Woolfeldt came so well off, and that he perceived the Queen had, by the the treaty, a capacity, as well as by his residence, to examine and do ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... deity much worshiped by canoe-makers, represented as having the figure of an old man with a long beard. In the sixth verse the full form of the god's name here given as Moku-ha-li'i would be Ku-moku-hali'i, the last part being an epithet applied to Ku working in another capacity. Moku-hali'i is the one who bedecks the island. His special emblem, as here implied, was the lama, a beautiful tree, whose wood was formerly used in making certain sacred inclosures. From this comes the proper name Palama, one ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... orphanages at Beirut and Jerusalem over forty have gone out as teachers in girls' schools in Palestine and Syria. Twelve others have become deaconesses, and are ministering in this capacity to their own countrymen and to foreigners ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... instruments that I can think of; such work is exquisite and instructive in itself, it is a model of gracious writing, it is full of ideas, it breathes the happiest moods over us, and it is the most suggestive of guides, for those who have the capacity of extensive interests, to all the greater ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... great flitting figure that passed swiftly, and now, that he was the trailer and not the trailed, all of his marvelous faculties were at their zenith. He heard and saw everything, and every odor came to him. The overwhelming sense of freedom, and of a capacity to achieve the impossible, which he often felt when he was alone, fairly poured in upon him. The feeling of success, of conquest, was strong. He and his comrades, so far, had triumphed over every difficulty, and they had been many and great. ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were succeeded by the general peace and by his own promotion to a dukedom, the baton of a field-marshal having previously been conferred upon him for his victory at Salamanca. In 1814, the Duke of Wellington was appointed Ambassador to France, and proceeded in that capacity to the Congress of Vienna. While there, the return of Napoleon from Elba once more called him to the field; and on June 18, 1815, he gained his greatest triumph at Waterloo. After this Wellington served his country in the capacity of a diplomat, as Commander-in-Chief ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... never been a popular boy. He was respected for his steady persistence and his capacity for unlimited hard work, but popular he could not be said to be, even with his crew. He held himself rather aloof, and never really took them into his confidence. He seemed to think that if he did ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of the act are not always equally intended nor equally successful. Usually the movement starts from the mere sense of oppression, and people break down some established form, without any qualms about the capacity of their freed instincts to generate the new forms that may be needed. So the Reformation, in destroying the traditional order, intended to secure truth, spontaneity, and profuseness of religious forms; the danger of course being that each form might ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... offering to withdraw their forces from colonial territory on the condition that their independence would be recognised. Mr. Sauer's reply was that, in those circumstances he would, in his personal capacity, most certainly urge the acceptance of that offer, and that, although he could speak for himself only, he thought it probable you would do ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... France is set upon self-government, but her capacity for it has still to be proved. For eighty years she has confounded revolution with liberty; will she now give proof of amendment and of wisdom? Such a change is not impossible. Let us wait for it with sympathy, but ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the United States and Canada enumerates 1545 works of various kinds, of which 386 are now abandoned; 560 blast-furnaces, 389 forges, and 210 rolling-mills are now in operation; and the directory states the position, capacity, and prominent characteristics of each furnace, forge, or mill, the names of the owners or agents, and, in many cases, the date of the construction of the works, and their annual production. The great importance of the iron-manufacture, as a branch of industry, in this country, is clearly demonstrated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... I take it for her and for you. I'm not a stranger, Doctor Holiday. I am Elinor Ruth Farringdon's cousin, in her brother's absence I represent her family and in that capacity I would like to say before I am a minute older that what you and the rest of you Holidays have done for Elinor passes anything I know of for sheer fineness and generosity. I'm not a man of words. War would ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... there in the same capacity during the term of the old Confederation, and for some time after the organization of the new government under Washington. In the year 1793, Mr Short was joined with him in a commission for negotiating at Madrid a treaty between Spain and the United States. Several months ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... agree with the definition of it as the capacity for taking infinite pains," Carroll, guessing his companion's thoughts, remarked with mock sententiousness. "In Miss Hartley's case, it strikes me as the instinctive ability to evolve a finished work of art from a few fripperies, without the aid of technical training. Give her two or three ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... designed in these pages to bring the reader face to face with Edison; to glance at an interesting childhood and a youthful period marked by a capacity for doing things, and by an insatiable thirst for knowledge; then to accompany him into the great creative stretch of forty years, during which he has done so much. This book shows him plunged deeply into work for which he has always had an incredible capacity, reveals ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... his work very well. He has shown great critical capacity in his selection of the stories, and his little introductions are charmingly written. It is delightful to come across a collection of purely imaginative work, and Mr. Yeats has a very quick instinct in finding out ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Kaiserswerth of developing her talent, she would not attempt to teach others what she had not thoroughly grasped herself. The post in Liverpool, of Superintendent of the Training School of Nurses for the Poor, was still open to her and, in spite of her fear that she lacked the capacity to govern, had many attractions for her, and so she said, "I determined at least to try, to come to St. Thomas's Hospital, and to see whether in so great a work as that of training true-hearted, God-fearing nurses, there were ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... and put out by an editor? Now, when I inform the discerning British Public that every advertisement that has been posted by Brown, Jones, and Robinson, during the last three years has come from my own unaided pen, I think few will doubt my capacity to write the "Memoirs of Brown, Jones, and Robinson," without ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... wines are ripening in your vaults; while you pass away the night drinking, the bankers are increasing your wealth. You have but to express a wish and your desires are gratified. You are the happiest of men. But take care lest some night of carousal you drink too much and destroy the capacity of your body for enjoyment. That would be a serious misfortune, for all the ills that afflict human flesh can be cured, except that. You ride some night through the woods with joyous companions; your horse falls and you are thrown into a ditch ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... I have said already, was dancing with Liza. Neither I nor my partner was disturbed by invitations; consequently, we had plenty of time for conversation. To tell the truth, my partner was not conspicuous for her capacity for the utterance of words in consecutive speech; she used her mouth principally for the achievement of a strange downward smile such as I had never till then beheld; while she raised her eyes upward, as though some unseen force were ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Prussia, the imperial army was obliged to return, abandon Alsatia, and hasten to the succour of the Austrian states. Trenck succeeded in covering its retreat. The history of Maria Theresa declares the damages he did the enemy, during this campaign. He gave proof of his capacity at Tabor and Budweis. With 300 men he attacked one of these towns, which was defended by the two Prussian regiments of Walrabe and Kreutz. He found the water in the moats was deeper than his spies had declared, and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... by one of those monster American tea stores in New York, I found a Chinaman sitting before it acting in the capacity of a sign. Everybody that passed by gave him a steady stare as long as their heads would twist over their shoulders without dislocating their necks, and a group had stopped to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of thumb" is the only guide that experienced cooks have heretofore given for the assistance of the novice in the (till now, in these pages explained, and rendered, we hope, perfectly intelligible to the humblest capacity) occult art of cookery. This is the first time receipts in cookery have been given accurately by ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... small squads, marched down to the boats,—large unwieldy scows, which had been hauled up against the shore,—and each boat was speedily filled to its utmost capacity. The most experienced seized the oars; three or four Marblehead fishermen armed with long poles took their stations forward and aft along the upper side of the boat, with one to steer and one to command; and ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... drives e out of business; he can no longer earn anything at all on his fixed plant. We may assume that producers a, b, and c, who have been making profits, have enlarged their productive capacity enough to supply the market fully without e's contribution. d is now in the same position in which e was at the preceding stage,—earning nothing on his fixed establishment and barely induced to ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... republic. But they were very far from being so cruel or so faithless as their enemies represented them; they were even better than they cared to represent themselves. And they had amongst them men of the highest capacity and energy, well worthy to be the founders of new nations. Alaric, Attila, and Genseric, were fierce and unmerciful it is true; but their acts are not all written in blood; they had their better moments and higher ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Even more than had been true of Shah Soojah's government forty years previously was it true of Roberts' government now that it was a government of sentry-boxes. He was firm master of the Sherpur cantonment. General Hills, his nominee, held a somewhat precarious sway in Cabul in the capacity of its Governor, maintaining his position there in virtue of the bayonets of his military guard, the support of the adjacent Sherpur, and the waiting attitude of the populace of the capital. East of Cabul the domination of Britain was represented by a series of fortified ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... undoubtedly great in a certain capacity. He resembled a Dutch galliot, especially built to contain the largest quantity of merchandise in the smallest tonnage. Of course Watty was not built to receive merchandise, but he was built to receive food, and the ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Southwest Pass and Pass a l'Outre," which proposes to appropriate a sum of money, to be expended under the superintendence of the Secretary of War, "for the opening and keeping open ship channels of sufficient capacity to accommodate the wants of commerce through the Southwest Pass and Pass a l'Outre, leading from the Mississippi River to the Gulf ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... swift of foot, though round of cheek, that the smugglers gloried in her and the good luck which sat upon her prow. They called her "the lugger," though her rig was widely different from that, and her due title was "bilander." She was very deeply laden now, and, having great capacity, appeared an unusually ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the water jugs of both the Shinumos and Zunians are in the form of canteens, usually more or less spherical, and varying in capacity from a pint to four gallons. On each side there is a small handle in the form of a loop or knob, through or around which is placed a small shawl or strip of cloth, or a cord long enough to pass over the forehead so as to suspend the vessel against ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... formative impulse, as nutrition, growth, and production, including the artistic impulse); electricity develops into irritability or excitability; the higher analogue to the chemical process as the most individual and highest stage is sensibility or the capacity of feeling. (Such at least is Schelling's doctrine after Steffens had convinced him of the higher dignity of that which is individual, whereas at first he had made sensibility parallel with magnetism, and reproduction with chemism, because the former two appear most seldom, and the latter most ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... contemplations.8 He may sadly lay upon his heart the stifling solace, There will be no baffled wants nor unhappiness, but all will be over when hic jacet is sculptured on the headstone of my grave. Or, with measureless rebound of faith, he may crowd the capacity of his soul with the mysterious presentiment, In the unchangeable fulness of an infinite bliss, all specialties will be merged and forgotten, and I shall be one of those to whom "the wearisome disease" of remembered sorrow and anticipated ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Holingsworth—such was his full name—was a man with whom no one would have cared to take the liberty of asking an explanation of his conduct. His courage and war-prowess were well known among the Texans; but it is idle to add this, since otherwise he could not have stood among them in the capacity of a leader. Men like them, who have the election of their own officers, do not trust their lives to the guidance of ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... to any right to interfere with its men. But Mr. Kennedy never acted much from reason; impulse was generally his guiding-star. He had, moreover, been an absolute monarch, and a commander of men, for many years past in his capacity of fur-trader. Being, as we have said, a powerful, fiery man, he had ruled very much by means of brute force—a species of suasion, by the way, which is too common among many of the gentlemen (?) in the employment of the Hudson's Bay Company. On hearing, therefore, that the men were fighting ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the other hand Joseph Yates—the puisne judge whom Mansfield's jeers and merciless oppressions drove from the King's Bench to the Common Pleas, where he died within four months of his retreat—was the finest of fine gentlemen. Before he had demonstrated his professional capacity, the habitual costliness and delicacy of his attire roused the distrust of attorneys, and on more than one occasion wrought him injury. An awkward, crusty, hard-featured attorney entered the foppish ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... that was in me. He got, as it were, upon the trail. Once he even struck into the truth. Then he went away to Marcus Harding. I remained in London. When I knew that those two were together I felt a sort of jealous fear of Malling. For there was pity in him. Despite his intense curiosity he had a capacity for pity. I realized that it might possibly interfere with—with something that I was doing. And I recalled Marcus Harding to London. From that moment I have avoided Malling. I could never tell him. But you, hard searcher after truth as you are—you could ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... are shorter and their bodies longer than the white man's, and this probably is one reason why they have such wonderful capacity for physical endurance. In this respect they are the superior of the Indian. With plenty of food and a bush to lie under at night the Indian will doubtless travel farther in a given time than the Eskimo. But turn them both loose with only food enough for ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... which was now parked at Wilcox's Landing. His steady, unflinching determination to gain time for the wagons to get beyond the point of danger was characteristic of the man, and this was the third occasion on which he had exhibited a high order of capacity and sound judgment since coming under my command. The firmness and coolness with which he always met the responsibilities of a dangerous place were particularly strong points in Gregg's make-up, and he possessed so much professional ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... these uplands they formed a compact and homogeneous population, spread over towns and country alike, and were occupied in the main with agrarian and pastoral pursuits. But they had in addition much of the versatility and business capacity of the Jews, as well as a strong liberal-mindedness towards progress and education, and thus, while they still continued up to the present day their pastoral life in the countryside, others gravitated towards towns, and by degrees ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... great deal more," said Godefroid; "inasmuch as this family is the first that has shown me the pleasures of charity, I should like to obtain for that splendid old man a full return for his great book. I don't know if you have confidence enough in my capacity to give me the means of undertaking such an affair. From information I have obtained, it will cost nine thousand francs to manufacture an edition of fifteen hundred copies, and their selling value will be twenty-four thousand francs. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... in her capacity of adviser, Nancy was able to keep back the words that came to the tip of her tongue:—"I knew it. Anybody might have seen the upshot. To put a lassie like that to do the work of a strong woman! What could ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... said Serpuhovskoy, smiling again. "I won't say life wouldn't be worth living without it, but it would be dull. Of course I may be mistaken, but I fancy I have a certain capacity for the line I've chosen, and that power of any sort in my hands, if it is to be, will be better than in the hands of a good many people I know," said Serpuhovskoy, with beaming consciousness of success; "and so the nearer I get to it, the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... fearfully, you may believe. She said it was risking murder if we were caught, but I saw she wanted to show me. Also, I thought of many things, and it looked important—for one in my capacity not to miss. So I asked again.... 'You see, I can refuse you nothing,' she said. 'I love you for coming to me. I am a woman again—even young and glad. Before you came, I was a snake crushed at midday—that could ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... poor afflicted neighbours, quickly, after they become infected and infested with these demons, arrive to a capacity of discerning those which they conceive the shapes of their troubles; and notwithstanding the great and just suspicion that the demons might impose the shape of innocent persons in their spectral exhibitions of the sufferers, (which may perhaps ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... words you use. The scenes had all died away in incompleteness, and there had been no end. To many a gentle life such as that of Chatty might be, this is all that ever happens beyond the level of the ordinary and common. It was with a touch of insight altogether beyond her usual intellectual capacity that she realised this as she travelled very quietly with her mother from London to Highcombe, not a very long way. Mrs. Warrender was very silent too. She had meant the visit to town to be one of pleasure merely,—pleasure for herself, change after the long monotony, and pleasure to her child ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... also made other needed improvements throughout the boat to adapt her especially for carrying lobsters alive. The changes I made in her proved so successful in keeping lobsters alive, while it increased the capacity for carrying, that I have since adapted the same principles on all my boats. The well I had put into the Grace Morgan is what is termed a "box well," that is, without any well deck. The well is built from the sides of the steamer directly to the hatch on the main deck, with bulkheads forward ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... of any dispute between relatives on such a little matter as this appointment. I appreciate your business capacity. Swear to forget the nonsense you have hinted at, and you shall be ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... must embrace nothing but harmless principles. A Christian's business, as a Christian, is to believe in Jesus Christ, and in God the Father by him; and to seek the good of all about him, according as his place, state and capacity in this world will admit, not meddling with other men's matters, but ever following that which is good. A Christian is a child of the kingdom of God, and that kingdom, take it as it begins in grace, or as it is perfected in glory, is not of this world but of that which is to come: and though men ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... both of us. On hearing of the proposal, Miss Ellen, though she became alternately crimson and pale, at once exclaimed that she would rather die than marry me. 'Would not those arrogant men who deny us women any sense of the ideal, any capacity for real effort, and look upon us as the slaves of our egoistic impulses—would they not triumphantly assert that my pretended enthusiasm for our social undertaking was merely passion for a man; that it was ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... boy, then, with the capacity for suffering of his single-minded type, had fallen the mantle of trouble. It puzzled him. He did not exactly know what to do about it. And it hurt. It ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... or your language exalts your woes,—you shall always find in me a true friend, to aid or to counsel, though my youth, and the folly I committed in assuming this garb, cry aloud that I am little to be relied on in this capacity. I will try, however, to prove that such a conclusion is unfounded; and though you do not desire either counsel or help, I will not the more desist from doing what your case requires, just as people give a sick man not what ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Blake entered on the pay-roll. Either by chance or by design, Mr. Taggett had appeared but seldom on the streets of Stillwater; the few persons who had had anything like familiar intercourse with him in his professional capacity were precisely the persons with whom his present movements were not likely to bring him into juxtaposition, and he ran slight risk of recognition by others. With his hair closely cropped, and the overhanging brown mustache removed, the man was not so much disguised as transformed. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of an army is the person designated by the law of the land to take charge of the organized military forces of the state. In this country the President, through his Secretary of War, exercises this general command. In England, Wellington acts in the capacity of commander-in-chief of all the British military forces. In France, the Minister of War, under the king, has this general direction. In other European services, some prince of the blood, or distinguished general, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... in Robert's thoughts, and still less was mischief. For the latter, whatever his grandmother might think, he had no capacity. The world was already too serious, and was soon to be too beautiful for mischief. After that, it would be too sad, and then, finally, until death, too solemn glad. The moment he heard of his grandmother's intended visit, one wild hope and desire and intent ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... happy, Ludovic, till you have got a horse properly suited for her," said Lady Lufton. And then, also, came the affair of her wedding garments, of her trousseau—as to which I cannot boast that she showed capacity or steadiness at all equal to that of Lady Dumbello. Lady Lufton, however, thought it a very serious matter; and as, in her opinion, Mrs. Robarts did not go about it with sufficient energy, she took the matter mainly ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Buenos Ayres. His conduct during this expedition became the subject of a court-martial; he was found guilty, sentenced to be cashiered, and declared to be "totally unfit to serve his Majesty in any military capacity whatever." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... justly observed, 'I do not exactly know what is meant by civilizing the people of India. In the theory and practice of good government they may be deficient; but if a good system of agriculture—if unrivalled manufactures—if a capacity to produce what convenience or luxury demands—if the establishment of schools for reading and writing—if the general practice of kindness and hospitality—and above all, if a scrupulous respect and delicacy toward the female sex ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... Luis de Leon,[178] and this perhaps decided the tribunal in giving judgement. We may think that the court unconsciously allowed itself to be swayed by personal prejudice against a prisoner who was at no great pains to conceal his estimate of its capacity. However that may be, it must be admitted that the decision of the Court had behind it a great body of what may be called expert opinion. The question of the authority due to the Vulgate was skilfully kept in the foreground; and ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... from want of capacity that so many children are deficient in arithmetical skill; and it is absurd to say, "such a child has no genius for arithmetic. Such a child cannot be made to comprehend any thing about numbers." These assertions prove nothing, ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... character, both as a churchman and a man of letters, deserve attention and respect from every student of our early history and literature. In the former capacity he showed himself diligent, honest, and anxious, at a time when these qualities seemed to have been so entirely lost to the church as to form only a subject for clerical ridicule. In the latter, the same qualities ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... home I don't think I had an idea what was wrong with me. But, George, I think I know now. I was a rich man's son—spoiled, dependent, absolutely ignorant of the value of money. I haven't yet discovered any earning capacity in me. I seem to be unable to do anything with my hands. That's the trouble. But I'm at the end of my tether now. And I'm going to punch cattle or be a miner, or do some real ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... large, five-story, corner building, built by the Army for the purpose. In this institution the social environment is especially emphasized. There is a reading room, a smoking room, one or more social parlors, a gymnasium with a swimming tank, and an auditorium with a seating capacity of 600. The whole building, with its 287 single rooms, besides the above advantages, is equipped with steam heat, electric service and other modern conveniences. A special fee of 25c is charged for the use of the ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... commander, with the gracious intimation that, in appreciation of his valued services, an appointment would be at his disposal whenever he felt himself sufficiently recovered to ask for it, which he did after a six months' sojourn at home with his young wife. I sailed with him in the capacity of midshipman, and in the West Indies and elsewhere we passed through several stirring adventures together, the record of which may possibly be given ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... woman has a capacity to judge of moral character which man has not. Before you invite into your business partnership any man, you ought to introduce him to your wife, and get her judgment as to his capacity and his integrity. After five minutes' conversation she will tell ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... be mentioned here, took place in the early part of the day on which we expected the visit of the two oculists. I have all the will to relate them—but the capacity to do ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... had, at least, made no great success of farming; but that occupation, as practised on the prairie, demands a good deal more than quickness and what some call brilliancy from the man who undertakes it. He must, as they say out there, possess the capacity for staying with it; the grim courage to hold fast the tighter under each crushing blow, when his teams die, or the grain shrivels under the harvest frost, or ragged ice hurtling before a roaring blast does the reaping. It was, however, evident that this girl had ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... their capacity, energy and steadfastness was at the battle of Brooklin, where they fully met the expectations of their commander. They displayed great eagerness to push the Americans to extremities, and to compel them to abandon their strong position. General ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... there was an almost constant warfare of humorous badinage in connection with their several weaknesses. Josh would twit the fat boy on his enormous capacity for stowing "grub" away; and on the other hand, Nick generally came back with sarcastic remarks about "shadows," and "living skeletons," and such ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... to make rights something more than interests under juridical protection can not be accepted in the form he made it, the underlying purpose remains. A State, that is to say, which aims at giving to men the full capacity their trained initiative would permit is compelled to regard certain things as beyond the action of an ordinary legislature. What Stammler calls a "natural law with changing content"[4]—a content which changes with our increasing power to satisfy demand—is essential if the state is to live the ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... a silver tub of the capacity of four gallons, holding a pyramid of pancakes powdered ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be admitted that some men have a natural faculty of expressing themselves clearly and forcibly, the fact remains that letter writing is an art that may be acquired. It necessitates a capacity to understand the reader's attitude; it requires careful study and analysis of talking points, arguments and methods of presentation, but there is no copyright on good letters and any house can secure a high standard and be assured that distant customers are handled tactfully and ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... by dissolving four ounces of white sugar in one gallon of skimmed milk, and placing in bottles of the capacity of one quart; add two ounces of baker's yeast or a cake of compressed yeast to each bottle. Cork and tie securely, set in a warm place until fermentation is well under way, and lay the bottles on their sides in a cool cellar. In three days, fermentation ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... hand. The other has influence; no matter what it is, or how it works, he has it, and it operates distinctly in his favour. A few years after, and the latter has far out distanced the former in position, salary, and outlook. And the reason is not the capacity of either; it is the arbitrary advantage, the piece of luck that one has had over the other from the start. "He has not much ability," I heard it remarked lately of a young fellow who, just having been licensed to preach, had also received a "call" to an influential church, and the ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... ignorance did this thing which proves the death of the birds. You would not have done it, William, because you have already learnt there is such a thing as a necessary prudence to deal out your morsels with wisdom, and in a measure suited to the age and the capacity of the birds, and also that their food should be of a wholesome kind suitable to their nature. Nothing of this did Frances know, and it seems she had not learnt wisdom from the circumstances she had herself ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... appearance, and even of his age; but Cubitt was to insert her long advertisement in the Australian papers, and he was promised a handsome reward. Cubitt, in reply, amused the poor lady with vague reports of her son being found in the capacity of a private soldier in New Zealand; and as there was war there at that time the poor lady wrote back in an agony of terror to entreat that he might be bought out of the regiment. Mr. Cubitt soon perceived ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... extracting the ore, separating the metal, etc., were conducted with remarkable silence, but they showed a knowledge of metallurgy that would have amazed us if we had not already seen so much of the capacity of this people. Yet similarly to the scene in the library, ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... breeding, it would ill become me to set down the homely truths I thus learned. The conversations of the vulgar are little suited to a nobleman's memoirs. But in this I distinguish between the Duke of Sully and the King's minister; and it is in the latter capacity that I relate what passed on these diverting occasions. "Ho! Simon," I would say, encouraging the poor man as he came bowing before me. "How ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... breed have often the greatest degree of sagacity in trifling and useless matters. An exceedingly good sheep-dog attends to nothing else but that particular branch of business to which he is bred. His whole capacity is exerted and exhausted on it, and he is of little avail in miscellaneous matters; whereas, a very indifferent cur, bred about the house, and accustomed to assist in every thing, will often put the more noble breed to disgrace in those paltry services. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the annual two weeks' vacation offered him by his firm, and, conspire as he would against it, Sunday continued to represent to him a hebdomadal vacuity of morning paper, afternoon nap and walk, unsatisfactory cold supper, and early to bed. His very capacity for monotony seemed to engender it. He could sit in Forest Park the whole of a Sunday afternoon, poring over a chance railroad time-table picked up on the bench; paring his straight, clean finger nails with a penknife; observing the carriages go by; or sit beside ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... during the minority of Louis XIII had not been revoked or diminished. On his accession to office Mazarin found that the revenues of the next three years had been spent. Moreover, on Richelieu's death few men of marked capacity were to be found in France. Like Frederick the Great in the next century, Richelieu was jealous of any initiative on the part of his colleagues. He gradually concentrated in his own hands all the threads of the administration and controlled the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Christian interest in the family, and one of them, a gentleman of considerable wealth, and an earnest, diligent worker for righteousness, made it his special care to befriend the girl. He took her into his office, treating her almost as one of his own daughters. She served him in the capacity of stenographer, receiving therefor the wage of $7.00 a week, a godsend to that lowly household. How truly, indeed, it has been said: "Verily, there is a reward for the ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... Dinornis giganteus, and which has been described under the name of AEpiornis maximus. With the bones have been found eggs measuring from thirteen to fourteen inches in diameter, and computed to have the capacity of three Ostrich eggs. At least two other smaller species of AEpiornis have been described by Grandidier and Milne-Edwards as occurring in Madagascar; and they consider the genus to be so closely allied to the Dinornis of New ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... excessive intellectual activity when it disturbs sleep and exhausts the brain. We may thus cultivate modesty, obedience, prudence, industry, application, imagination, refinement, truthfulness, faith, spirituality, originality, invention, literary capacity, patience, perseverance, fortitude, hardihood, health, temperance, and, in short, every good quality that we desire to see developed, if we understand cerebral science; and if we understand only its general-outlines we can at least improve the character by giving a predominance ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... robustness of frame, although not so tall, as well as in vigour of intellect and decision of character, the bailiff strongly resembled his brother, Sir Isaac Brock; and when a friend of the latter, Sir James Kempt, visited Guernsey, in his official capacity as master-general of the ordnance, he was struck with the personal resemblance, notwithstanding that Mr. Brock was then in ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... and that vigor and manliness in man are so attractive to women, leads us to infer that among the lower animals, although of course in a vastly less degree, vigor and beauty are also attractive. The weakest point of the position lies in the fact that it probably presupposes a higher degree of capacity for appreciation on the part of lower animals than they possess. Those who deny the truth of the theory laugh at the idea that a butterfly can see clearly enough and care enough for what it sees to notice ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... in many old churchwardens' account-books. Thus in the accounts of Barton-on-Humber there is an entry for the year 1740: "Paid Brocklebank for waking sleepers 2 s. 0." At Castleton the officer in 1722 received 10 s. 0[79]. The clerk in his capacity of dog-whipper had often arduous duties to perform in the old dale churches of Yorkshire when farmers and shepherds frequently brought their dogs to church. The animals usually lay very quietly beneath their masters' seat, but occasionally there would be a scrimmage and fight, and the clerk's ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... wife gets after him about the drink (Mrs. Willing is an able-bodied lady of Irish descent, with a will and a tongue of her own, to say nothing of an arm a blacksmith might envy) and when he has a duty to perform in his official capacity. It is in the latter instance that he rises magnificently to the dignity of his position. The majesty of the law in his hands becomes at once a bludgeon and a pandemonium. No one has ever been arrested in Radville, since Pete became sheriff, without the ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... reason of his unfailing success lay in the fact that, in the game of love, he shrank from no artifice, no duplicity, no falsehood that might further his cause. A great portion of his strength lay in his capacity ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... a faith to inspire action, based on a belief in an essential goodness of human nature and in its capacity for improvement. Unless such a belief were well founded, democracy would be a thing to be dreaded and resisted by every means in our power. As ground for his belief in a better day, Bright speaks—and his language is prophetic—of the people "sublime in their resolution." ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... because it was unconscious there or because of befitting modesty it is unostentatious here. There was yet a courage unequaled by the most momentous dangers which were met by those now marked with fame and a capacity in the others which would have matched equal events with equal fortitude. In the most grateful recognition of all this, to the living and the dead, by their Alma Mater the Commonwealth of ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... square; and in MS. C.A., fol. 87 to 98 form a whole series of patterns done with the same intention.] The results of some of these problems are perhaps not quite satisfactory; still they cannot be considered to give evidence of a want of taste or of any other defect in Leonardo s architectural capacity. They were no doubt intended exclusively for his own instruction, and, before all, as it seems, to illustrate the features or consequences resulting from a ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... and ten to one he becomes a blatant creature, without a thought of his own, ready for any evil to which contagion prompts him. It is because nations tend to stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... too, that Geoffrey reaped the fruits of the arduous legal studies which he had followed without cessation from the time when he found himself thrown upon his own resources, and which had made a sound lawyer of him as well as a brilliant and effective advocate. Soon, even with his great capacity for work, he had as much business as he could attend to. When fortune gives good gifts, she generally does so with ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... where he was well known at the court of Espana and afterwards at that of Roma. The three who were left behind did not remain idle. Father Antonio Sedeno, in addition to his ordinary occupation of preaching—in which he was so effective that he could move stones by his eloquence—in his capacity as superior attended to the temporal affairs of the residence and to the construction of buildings. He was all the more busy in this latter occupation, from the scarcity, at that time, of architects and builders in Manila; for there were none at all. First he taught ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. "It took a good deal of argument to convince you that we could ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... in the same ponderous style, about the probability of its being advisable to put private inclinations on one side and attend the funeral of the deceased in his public capacity of postmaster. This mark of respect would be expected from him, and people would wonder if he did not pay it. Then he left the parlor, and ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Minister-Plenipotentiary at Denmark, but that it was also well known that he had neither been received nor acknowledged in that quality'. And as late as February, 1796, when the same Minister was at length, for the first time, received in his official capacity, Count Bernstorff, in a public note, assigned this reason for that change of conduct—'So long as no other than a revolutionary Government existed in France, His Majesty could not acknowledge the Minister of that Government; but now that the French Constitution is completely organized, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... remains for us, then, to decide whether we shall carry on the war in our national capacity—one united people against a common enemy—or whether some champion, famous in former fights, shall be selected to defy the slayer of our brother Antaeus to single combat. In the latter case, though not unconscious that there may be taller men among you, I hereby offer myself for that enviable ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Margrave of Bruges was their head, and the chief man among them; but he that was esteemed the wisest, and that spoke for the rest, was George Temse, the Provost of Casselsee: both art and nature had concurred to make him eloquent: he was very learned in the law; and, as he had a great capacity, so, by a long practice in affairs, he was very dexterous at unravelling them. After we had several times met, without coming to an agreement, they went to Brussels for some days, to know the Prince's pleasure; and, since our business ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... said the yard-man, with alacrity; and he went off shaking his head, as if all this was a puzzle beyond his capacity to comprehend. ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... Leath a wonderful woman; not wonderful for her looks certainly—no one could call her a beautiful woman—and not wonderful for her intelligence; the Archdeacon had frequently been compelled to admit to himself that she was a little on the stupid side—but wonderful for her capacity for staying where she was like a rock and allowing nothing whatever to move her. In these dangerous days—and what dangerous days they were!—the safety of the country simply depended on a few such figures as the Countess. Queen Victoria ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... combustion chambers, and this fact made the carrying of the great weight of armour under the waterline possible. The speed of the Ithuriel was forty-five knots ahead when all four screws were driving and pulling, and thirty knots astern when they were reversed. Her total capacity was five thousand ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... the bearer of "the news of Victory and Peace"), either by promotion in the Army or by any other distinction. He is a very intelligent and well-informed officer, and has been employed in China both in a Civil and Military capacity, and has made, and is going to make again, a long journey at a very bad time of the year, though suffering severely at this moment ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... President has any such prospect; but the ministers of the President have that chance. It is no uncommon thing at present for a minister under one President to reappear as a minister under another; but a statesman has no assurance that he will do so because he has shown ministerial capacity. We know intimately the names of all our possible ministers—too intimately as some of us think—and would be taken much by surprise if a gentleman without an official reputation were placed at the head of a high office. If something of this feeling prevailed ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... demonstrate to them, by the force of actions, the purity and stability of the Christian faith, the importance of education, and the practical benefits of social organization. If it be necessary, as no doubt it is, to send out Europeans to serve in the African Corps, they should be sent in the capacity of officers, or non-commissioned officers: privates of good character might be selected, who would volunteer to go out on certain conditions, perhaps on some such terms as these: to serve as corporal for a limited period, after which time, if their conduct had been unimpeachable, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... colonel of an English regiment which was retained in the service of France. He had already shown some of the qualities of a great soldier, an unruffled courage, a temper naturally bold and venturesome but held in check by a cool and serene judgement, a vigilance and capacity for enduring fatigue which never forsook him. In later years he was known to spend a whole day in reconnoitring, and at Blenheim he remained on horseback for fifteen hours. But courage and skill in arms did less for Churchill on his return to the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... to Moses how or in what capacity he should always stand banker to the whole wealth of love that there was in Mara's heart, and what provision he should make on his part for returning this incalculable debt. But the interview of this ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... needs of young men, not knowing how they should be treated or what appealed to them. Amid her haziness, one fact only stood out clear. To deal with a young man, you wanted a man of the world. In this capacity Mr. Vansittart had now been sent for to the Court, the object of his visit being nothing less than the arrangement and ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... Mark's lion on the other, with the arms of the podestas who ruled in those years. On the base of the Venetian standard the measures of length then in use are engraved. The standards for measures of capacity were three hollows sunk in a stone which once stood at the foot of the stair of the communal palace. This palace was demolished in 1877. It was a building erected in 1291, outside the circuit of the walls as it then existed, "to show that ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... to his enemies in their cabins along the creek. He did not want them to know he had found the body. His first instinct was to work in the dark, to achieve his ends by stealth and cunning! It was strange what capacity for cunning had come upon him. Oh, he would be ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... tendency may impel the savage and the child to ascribe mind to the lower animals. The fact that language, in its earlier stage, was charged with personal life and activity, is itself the work of the personifying instinct. When nature is thus personified, where there is no sense of its unity and no capacity to rise in faith to a living God above nature, the result is a multitude of divinities of higher and lower rank. Myths respecting them are the spontaneous invention of unreflecting and uncritical, but imaginative, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... fish-plates and put on the screw nuts. Then, for those who bore the heavy burden of rails and sleepers and carried material for the road bed, there were licensed fools, mummers, and droll mimics, who by their antics revived the lagging spirits of the gangs. There is an unsuspected capacity for mimicry in what are called savage men. I have seen Red Indians give excellent pantomimic entertainments, and aborigines in other lands exhibit high mumming talent. In the railroad battalion there was ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... Grounds for it) they had received for unquestionable Truths of Religion, they are ordinarily more likely to continue Scepticks, or to proceed to an intire disbelief of this Religion, than to take occasion from hence to make a just search after its Verity: The want either of Capacity, Leisure or Inclination for such an inquiry, disposing Men, very generally, to neglect it; and easily to satisfy themselves in so doing, from a perswasion that the Christian Religion is indeed self condemn'd: Those whom they imagine to have understood ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man of the most remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish me. . . . In no one have I found united so much ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... started up the river. In one canoe the Chief and I sat on jaguar skins, while two men paddled. In another canoe were four men armed with bows and arrows and blow-guns, and a fifth who acted in the capacity of "Wireless Operator." The system of signalling which he employed was by far the most ingenious device I saw while in Brazil, and considering their resources and their low state of culture the affair was ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... talking. Their conversation is merely an exercise of the tongue: no other human faculty has any share in it. It is strange these persons can help reflecting, that unless they have in truth a superior capacity, and are in an extraordinary manner furnished for conversation if they are entertaining, it is at their own expense. Is it possible that it should never come into people's thoughts to suspect whether or no it be to their advantage to show so very much of themselves? "O that you would ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... are propagated through it. The rapidity with which the discharges follow one another, and their travelling power, depends on the strength of the induction coil, the length of the air-gap, and the capacity of the wires.[14] ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... as a statesman, a soldier, a geometrician, a philosopher, and a man; a Pythagorean in philosophy, and influential in that capacity over the minds of Plato, his contemporary, and Aristotle; was drowned in the Adriatic Sea, 4th century B.C.; his body lay unburied on the shore till a sailor humanely cast a handful of sand on it, otherwise he would have had to wander on this side the Styx for a hundred years, such the virtue ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... was John Robinson, a man of great estate, foremost among all the landed aristocracy of Virginia. He had then been speaker for about twenty-five years; for a long time, also, he had been treasurer of the colony; and in the latter capacity he had been accustomed for many years to lend the public money, on his own private account, to his personal and political friends, and particularly to those of them who were members of the House. This profligate business ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... from whom she means, later, to exact a heavy toll, Fate smiled upon the good-looking young man who faced her so gaily. He got one post after another: secretary, mechanic, groom—for he was equally clever with hands and head. In this or that capacity he travelled quite extensively for some years, and finally, having a natural bent for languages, came to Rome in the position of courier to a rich American family. It happened that the daughter of the house had an Italian maid, a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... sleep that night. Perhaps no one at Ingleside did except Jims. The body grows slowly and steadily, but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour. From that night Rilla Blythe's soul was the soul of a woman in its capacity for suffering, for strength, ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... many a dismal scene Had he a witness, not inactive, been; Had leagued with petty pilferers, and had crept Where of each sex degraded numbers slept: With such associates he was long allied, Where his capacity for ill was tried, And that once lost, the wretch was cast aside, For now, though willing with the worst to act, He wanted powers for an important fact; And while he felt as lawless spirits feel, His hand was palsied, and he couldn't steal. By ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... before him; he must fight or starve, and in a fighting age no youngster was likely to be backward in taking to the life of wild excitement led by his elders. Unless following in the train of one of the leaders, such as Barbarossa, the Moslems were apt to take to the sea in a private capacity; a certain number of them joining together to man a small craft which was known as a brigantine. As has been said in a previous chapter, this word must not be understood in the light of the terminology of the modern seaman: the brigantines ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... equipments exhibited a singular mixture of splendour and effeminacy, and enabled the experienced spectators to ascertain his nation, and the capacity in which he served. We have already mentioned the fanciful and crested helmet, which was a distinction of the foreigner, to which the reader must add in his imagination a small cuirass, or breastplate of silver, so sparingly ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... from the Saunders farm was the main highway to Flame City, and Bob, who in his capacity of guardian felt his responsibility keenly, saw no harm in Betty's riding it alone. It was morning, and she would have lunch with the Watterbys and come back in the early afternoon. Everything looked all right, and he bade her a ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... her daughter, Madame Thuillier, and went to live with her father at Auteuil until he died from an accident in 1817. Alarmed at the prospect of having to manage or lease the market-garden and the farm of her father, Madame Lemprun entreated Brigitte, whose honesty and capacity astonished her, to wind up old Galard's affairs, and to settle the property in such a way that her daughter should take possession of everything, securing to her mother fifteen hundred francs a year and the house at Auteuil. The ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... profound attention, not comprehending a single syllable he said, but concluding he would finish his speech by proposing the health of Squire Headlong. The gentlemen accordingly tossed off their heeltaps, and Mr Cranium proceeded: "Ardently desirous, to the extent of my feeble capacity, of disseminating as much as possible, the inexhaustible treasures to which this golden key admits the humblest votary of philosophical truth, I invite you, when you have sufficiently restored, replenished, refreshed, and exhilarated that osteosarchaematosplanchnochondroneuromuelous, ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... armourer or smith, and two apprentices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow). We had three boats; the Long-boat, capable of carrying twenty-five men; the Cutter, capable of carrying fifteen; and the Surf-boat, capable of carrying ten. I put down the capacity of these boats according to the numbers they were ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... inquire, in what portion of the globe man might enjoy the largest portion of physical happiness; or if a politician were to search for a new seat of empire, combining the capacity of sustaining the largest population and the most direct action on the great adjoining continent; or if the merchant were to examine the Asiatic hemisphere, with a mere view to the richness and variety ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various |
