"Makeshift" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blank little studio which he had lent to a comrade for the term of his elegant absence. The comrade was another ingenuous compatriot, to whom he had wired that tea was to await them "regardless," and this reckless repast, and the second ingenuous compatriot, and the faraway makeshift life, with its jokes and its gaps, its delicate daubs and its three or four chairs, its overflow of taste and conviction and its lack of nearly all else—these things wove round the occasion a spell to which our hero ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... nevertheless, was very small, and he fretted at its inconveniences, not in a disagreeable way, but desiring to have a house and home of his own among more familiar scenes and within reach of the sea; he regarded the new move as a makeshift, and settled in West Newton, a suburb of Boston, where his wife's family lived, until he should purchase a place of his own. The change from the winter picturesqueness of Berkshire was marked, but the village was of the usual New England type and his surroundings ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... of the next day I got together driftwood and bound it together in shape of a rough raft with fallen creepers. Then, with a makeshift paddle, I set forth for Nan-Tauach. Slowly, painfully, I crept up to it. It was late afternoon before I grounded my shaky craft on the little beach between the ruined sea-gates and, creeping up the giant steps, made my way to the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... of the blessed St. Nicholas to an utter falsehood in order to screen her lover and to aid his cause.... The scenes are laid among that curious mixture of Oriental magnificence and barbaric discomfort, of lavish expenditure and shabby makeshift, to be found in a Russian castle, with its splendid vastness, the immensity of its grounds, the immensity of the forests on all sides of it, and the general scale of immensity on which everything about it, and within it, is invariably conducted. Add to these Russian prisons, Paris salons, French ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... be objected to this view, that, if intent is only a makeshift which from a practical necessity takes the place of actual deprivation, it ought not to be required where the actual deprivation is wholly accomplished, provided the same criminal act produces the whole effect. Suppose, for instance, that by one ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... doan youse depreciate yourself to all dem. Jus' youse put on de pootiest dress youse hab an' do ole Sukey proud." Then, as she helped Janice to bedeck herself she poured out the story of their makeshift life, telling how, with what had been left of the poultry, and with the products of the small patch of the garden they had been able to till, the two slaves had managed to live the year through, taking the best care they could of their master's property, and hoping and praying ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... with a crew of four men and a pilot, provided with oars, sails, and iron-shod poles for pushing. They continued to carry, in cargoes of five tons, all the merchandise that passed to Upper Canada. Sometimes these boats were provided with a makeshift upper cabin, which consisted of an awning of oilcloth, supported on hoops like the roof of an American, Quaker, or gipsy waggon. If further provided with half a dozen chairs and a table, this cabin was deemed the height of primitive luxury. The batteaux went in brigades, which generally consisted ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... Skirting a makeshift village of tiny tents and shanties they issued to a torch-lit clearing in the wood whose central object was the greater tent, which, frayed, weathered, and patched as it was, yet stood to these zealots of an iron creed as the chosen tabernacle of a very God. Its rough benches were empty now, but ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... their paper The Anglo-American, but on second thought changed it to the Victoria Gazette, as more appropriate. The editors and proprietors were Williston & Bartlett, and the paper was a semi-weekly. To show the primitive and makeshift nature of things in early Victoria I will quote the first local item: "It is cheering to note the increase in frame and canvas buildings ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... representation was less their object than beauty; with us it is exactly the reverse. On this principle, the use of masks, which appears astonishing to us, was not only justifiable, but absolutely essential; far from considering them as a makeshift, the Greeks would certainly, and with justice too, have looked upon it as a makeshift to be obliged to allow a player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly marked features, to represent an Apollo or ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... men in dust-grayed khaki, bent under a burden of field equipment, stepping swiftly along the narrow, stone-paved street, heads down, unheeding the jagged ruin of small shops and dwellings that flanked the way. Reaching the square, they turned to cross a makeshift bridge—beside one of stone that had spanned the little river but now lay broken in its shallow bed. Beyond this stream they followed a white road that wound gently up a sere hill between rows of blasted poplars. At the top of the rise two shining ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... of knowledge that dances before the eye, that bewilders, eludes, evades. Group-systems and electives seem like a makeshift for the real thing. We cannot tie a fact to a pupil, because to the tail of the fact is tied history itself. Until a pupil gets a glimpse of that relation, that dependence of which we have just heard, with all that has yet happened ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... Still, he had reasoned, the Doctor had been willing instantly to abandon this nostrum when the harm done by it was concretely brought home to him. Though this argument had fallen far short of reconciling Hal to the Surtaine standards, nevertheless it had served as a makeshift to justify in part his abandonment of the hard-won principles of the "Clarion," a surrender necessary for the saving of a loved and honored father in whose essential goodness ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... out on Saturday about two miles from here found dung of horses or mules, of some considerable age, and on my return to the camp one of the men a short distance from the camp picked up part of a hobble-strap with black buckle, much worn and had been patched, or rather sewn, by someone as a makeshift; the leather was perfectly rotten. No traces on any of the trees round here of anyone having been encamped. The flies all along have been a thorough plague; fortunately, and strange to say, we have had no mosquitoes, but thousands of small gnats take their ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... only in the presence of abstractions. This pragmatist talk about truths in the plural, about their utility and satisfactoriness, about the success with which they 'work,' etc., suggests to the typical intellectualist mind a sort of coarse lame second-rate makeshift article of truth. Such truths are not real truth. Such tests are merely subjective. As against this, objective truth must be something non-utilitarian, haughty, refined, remote, august, exalted. It must be an absolute ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... twenty years of systematic development. When the war broke out between the United States and Spain over the Cuban question several of the new cruisers and battleships were available, but many older ships were still in the service, and a number of armed liners and other makeshift auxiliaries were ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... quarters that the exclusion of cotton would make but little difference so far as clothing was concerned. Not only does the universal introduction of clothing tickets falsify this boast, but the cloth is found to be a mere makeshift when tested. Blouses and stockings wear out with discouraging rapidity when made of ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... quick, into the human, and you winced a little; but this was rarely, for you were very nearly, oh, very nearly an animal: your temperament and intelligence was just that of a dog that has picked up a master, not a real master, but a makeshift master who may turn it out at any moment. Dickens would sentimentalise or laugh over you; I do neither. I merely recognise you as one of the facts of civilisation. You looked—well, to be candid,—you looked neither young nor old; hard work had obliterated the delicate markings of the years, and ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... find a ford, a makeshift boat was constructed by the aid of the useful tarpaulin, and the passage of the Hume safely accomplished. Still passing through good available country watered by fine flowing streams, on the 24th they crossed the Ovens River, and on the 3rd of December they came to ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... for makeshifts. Honesty is a makeshift. A makeshift for saving time. Whoever wants to save time is not fit for the society ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... opponent was about to disappear from the political scenes for the present, and in the future to be converted into an ally. When the great seal was entrusted to commissioners, Brougham had affected to regard the arrangement as a temporary makeshift to propitiate William IV., and hoped that he would inherit the reversion of the chancellorship. With this expectation he not only patronised but warmly supported the whig ministry in 1835. But his wayward and petulant ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... meeting, and a prayer meeting on Thursday afternoon. This last is in the hands of the natives. No native takes any part in the preaching on the station, except in extreme cases, when it is regarded as a makeshift. My father and I share the preaching between us. Occasionally, say once in three weeks, one of us rides to two villages to the north-west, holding services at each; they are respectively eight and twelve miles distant. My custom at home, in the regular ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... Foulis—L80, and kirklands—had readers at Foulis, Madertie, Trinite-Gask, and Findo-Gask. Tullichettil—L100, and kirk-lands—had readers at Tullichettil, Cumrie, Monivaird, Monzie, and Crieff. The system of readers was a beggarly makeshift for the Christian ministry, and shows the sore straits to which the Reformed Church was reduced after what was supposed to be the grand victory of 1560. Then Tullichettle was more than Comrie, as Strageath ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... Makeshift answers must never be given to a child. Awkward questions require truthful answers, even though ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... referred to was a makeshift arrangement used by the later emperors. Nadir Shah in 1738 cleared the palace of the peacock throne and almost everything portable of value. The little that was left the Marathas took. Their chief prize was the silver filagree ceiling of the Diwan-i-Khas. This hall was, 'if not the most beautiful, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... through innumerable cobweb veils, and detect what fact or no-fact lies at heart of them,—how invaluable these! For, alas, it is long since such eyes were much in the habit of looking steadfastly at any department of our affairs; and poor commonplace creatures, helping themselves along, in the way of makeshift, from year to year, in such an element, do wonderful works indeed. Such creatures, like moles, are safe only underground, and their engineerings there become very daedalean. In fact, such unfortunate persons have no resource but to become what we call ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... occupied a large unfinished room, obviously makeshift, that had previously been used for the storage of stage properties. There were two flat-topped desks, placed so that their swivel chairs faced across a considerable expanse of surface, two bookkeepers' perches also rigged up to meet the exigencies ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... wasted. I could name you many farms that have been an ornament to the neighborhood as long as they have been handed down from man to man in the same family, but once they have passed into other hands, they have been tended in a makeshift way or left to go to rack and ruin altogether. You have seen those old forlorn places, where the site is overgrown with grass, and the heather has been allowed to spread all over the yard. They remind me of graves. I tell you the truth: if such a fate were ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... pertinacity, the dexterity, of a man. There was a moment, while watching Brennan's car, when one had to summon an effort of reason to do away with this sense of life; it answered each movement of the men on board and each inequality in the makeshift track with an adjustment of balance irresistibly suggestive of consciousness. It was an illustration of that troublous theorem which advances that consciousness is no more than the co-relation of the parts of the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... Confederation.—The Articles of Confederation established a framework of government for the confederated colonies, which government was to control those matters that experience had shown could be executed only by united action. As a scheme of government it was no better than a makeshift. It was an effort to form a federal power without diminishing the powers of the States—an effort "to pare off slices of state government without diminishing the loaf." That such a union could be perpetual, as ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... finishing, and 'those modest hues which the native appearance of the stone so pleasantly bestows.'[859] Everywhere else the dauber's brush had been at work. He spoke of it with indignation. 'I make little scruple in declaring that this job work, which is carried on in every part of the kingdom, is a mean makeshift to give a delusive appearance of repair and cleanliness to the walls, when in general this wash is resorted to to hide neglected or perpetrated fractures.'[860] The stone fretwork of the Lady Chapel at Hereford,[861] the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... found the Spray refitted even to a wonderful makeshift stove which was contrived from a large iron drum of some sort punched full of holes to give it a draft; the pipe reached straight up through the top of the forecastle. Now, this was not a stove ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... flexible back are difficult to hold in an upright position when copying from them. A makeshift combination of paperweights and other books is often ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... indubitably to the former; that hers was a life led chiefly for and in her children. Now she knew that it was not so. Her work for them, her absorption in their welfare, their property and education and character—what were these but so much makeshift to fill the empty years until Jacques came ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... era from the day those whimsical pantomimers set their wholesome and humane talent at the service of the arc light and the lens. Aubrey felt a serene and intimate pleasure in watching them from a seat beside Titania. He knew that the breakfast table scene shadowed before them was only a makeshift section of lath propped up in some barnlike motion picture studio; yet his rocketing fancy imagined it as some arcadian suburb where he and Titania, by a jugglery of benign fate, were bungalowed together. Young men ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... hamlet seemed to the casual eye, it was at present a vacation-resort—and a decidedly welcome one—to no less than three thousand tired men. The wrecked church was an impromptu hospital beneath whose shattered roof dozens of these men lay helpless on makeshift cots. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... justification, extenuation, defense, vindication, amende honorable; makeshift, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... consumption. Lentils and haricots are not merely insipid; frequent use of them causes something like nausea. Preach and tabulate as you will, the English palate—which is the supreme judge—rejects this farinaceous makeshift. Even as it rejects vegetables without the natural concomitant of meat; as it rejects oatmeal-porridge and griddle-cakes for a mid-day meal; as it rejects lemonade and ginger-ale offered as substitutes ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... life in a lighthouse is that aboard the lightships, of which the United States Government now has forty-five in commission. The lightship is regarded by the Government as merely a makeshift, though some of them have been in use for more than a quarter of a century. They are used to mark shoals and reefs where it has thus far been impossible to construct a lighthouse, or obstructions to navigation which may be but temporary. While ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... problems of the relations between men and women. He is considerably interested in questions of 'matrimonial divergence.' He recognizes that most obvious of all obvious truths, that marriage is not always a success; nay, more than this, that it is often a makeshift, an apology, a pretense. But he professes to undertake nothing beyond a statement of the facts. It rests with the public to lay his statement beside their experience and observation, and thus take measure of ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... consisted of a long bazaar, or market street, beautifully situated on the bank of a lovely lake, some two miles in length. From the main street, with its quaint little shops sheltered from the sun by makeshift verandahs of tattered sacking, weather-stained shingles, or rotting bamboo mats, various little lanes and alleys diverged, leading one into a collection of tumble-down and ruinous huts, set up apparently ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... a foreign commerce in decay and an empire in disorder, if the grand justification for the senate's authority—its government of the foreign dependencies of Rome—were first questioned, then tossed aside? Would not the Individual makeshift have in such a case as this to be invested with military authority? Might not his power be defended and perpetuated by a weapon mightier than the voting tablet? Might not his supporters be a class of men, to whom the charms of civil life are few, whose habits have trained ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... they labor at their self-imposed task of undermining society. Mr. M. G. Cunniff, who lately made an intimate study of trade-unionism, says: "All through the unions socialism filters. Almost every other man is a socialist, preaching that unionism is but a makeshift." "Malthus be damned," they told him, "for the good time was coming when every man should be able to rear his family in comfort." In one union, with two thousand members, Mr. Cunniff found every man a socialist, and from his experiences Mr. Cunniff ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... packet was sluggishly butting waves with her blunt bows in the lower harbor, Cap'n Sproul hanging to the weather-worn wheel, and roaring perfectly awful profanity at the clumsy attempts of his makeshift crew. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... emigrants from all parts of the Eastern States, and many countries of Europe, often toiled painfully on foot over these execrable highways, with their bundles on their backs, or following scrawny cattle harnessed to makeshift vehicles; and now and then came a well-to-do equestrian with his pack-horses,—generally an Englishman,—who was out to see the country, and upon his return to write ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... watch the gale suddenly broke, the sky cleared, and the wind moderated so rapidly that just before noon, by carefully watching our opportunity, we were at length able to round-to and once more ride to our makeshift sea anchor. Then, the boat riding dry—that is to say, shipping no water—we baled her out, and next proceeded to overhaul our stock of provisions, with the object of ascertaining what damage, if ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... again with frightful rapidity; and half-an-hour after the first stroke of the hurricane the schooner was pitching bows under, and shipping increasing quantities of water at every plunge. And now, as we once more bestirred ourselves, we were confronted with a fresh calamity. For our makeshift protection of the damaged companion and skylight, as well as the fore-scuttle, had been swept away, probably at the first stroke of the hurricane, although not one of us had observed it, and already ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... me. For choice I had rather have been killed by a volley from a platoon of soldiers, but I recognized the fact that the general had a perfect right to kill me. In fact I wanted him to shoot me. I was trimming the limbs off a sapling for a makeshift flag staff, when I saw the crowd open, and the general walked towards me. His face was a trifle pale, except where the red clay from the road covered it, and I felt that the next moment or two would decide in what manner I was to meet my doom. ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... on the makeshift bed, her eyes closed. She looked more beautiful and defenseless than ever, and Malone wanted to do something big and terrible to all the Russians who had tried to take her away or dope her. With difficulty, he restrained himself. "How ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... continued, to be interrupted presently by a whoop from out of the fog. It was Mr. Gibney. He did not possess a megaphone so he had gone below and appropriated a section of stove-pipe from the galley range, formed a mouthpiece of cardboard and produced a makeshift that suited ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... would be without workers in his mill. As a consequence Owen found himself in the position of education authority, privy purse and organiser, and he did not flinch from the situation; he imposed no cheap makeshift, because he believed in education as an end and not as an economic means; a twofold institution was therefore established by him in 1816, one part for the children of recognised school age, presumably over six, and one for ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... climbed, the more foolhardy it got, till the down-look grew unpleasant. Then it took to coquetting with the gulf on its right until, as I knew would happen, it lost its head completely and fell over the edge. The gap had been spanned by a few loose boards. Over the makeshift we all, one after the other, gingerly crawled, each waiting his turn, with the abyss gaping on his side, for the one in ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... around your waist would do as much good as some of these makeshift trusses and "appliances"; and not be so apt to ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... British held Newport; and all the country south of the Delaware was free from them. The perplexities and discouragements of Washington were great indeed, while he stubbornly held the field with a beggarly makeshift for an army and sturdily continued his appeals to Congress and to the country for men, arms, and clothing; yet only New York City and New Jersey were really in the possession of the enemy. It was one thing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... too obvious to be specified. He claimed to be constructing a science, comparable to the physical sciences. The attempt was obviously chimerical if we are to take it seriously. The makeshift doctrine which he substitutes for psychology would be a sufficient proof of the incapacity for his task. He had probably not read such writers as Hartley or Condillac, who might have suggested some ostensibly ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of the election of the President and Vice-President of the United States was contested in 1877, Congress, as a temporary makeshift, bridged over the difficulty by creating a commission of fifteen, five from each house and five from the Supreme Court, to decide upon the returns. Four of the justices were especially selected by the act passed for this purpose, two of them being Republicans and two Democrats, and they ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... work is the appendage of some man, and therefore, partially at least, supported. Other facts bias the employer against the payment of the same wage. The girl's education is usually less practical than the boy's; and as most, at least among the less intelligent class, regard a trade as a makeshift to be used as a crutch till a husband appears, the work involved is often done carelessly and with little or no interest. With unintelligent labor wastage is greater, and wages proportionately lower; and here we have one chief reason for the difference. Others will ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... suggested that he had met autocrats before but never such a thorough autocrat as I. For the rest of my time there I pressed my trousers in the usual way, well knowing that he would regard the process not as the makeshift of a valetless pauper but as the eccentricity of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... Carboniferous or Devonian period such as existed on earth, though, if consistent with its size, it should be on a vastly larger scale," said the doctor. "I never believed in the theory," he continued, "that the larger the planet the smaller should be its inhabitants, and always considered it a makeshift, put forward in the absence of definite knowledge, the idea being apparently that the weight of very large creatures would be too great for their strength. Of the fact that mastodons and creatures ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... in our currency. You all know that the straight road is the retirement of the greenback and the Treasury note, and the withdrawal of the Government from the banking business, and you will naturally distrust any makeshift measures. The greenback is a war debt, and a debt that is now troublesome. We are funding and refunding it in gold daily, and are still paying it out as currency to come back after gold. Any scheme to sequestrate, to hide it under a bushel, or to put it under lock and key, is a shallow ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... circumnavigator's gate of entrance to the Pacific, but also it is the temple of the god Terminus for all the Americas. So that, in relation to such dignities, it seemed to me, in the drawing, a makeshift, put up by a carpenter, until the true Cape Horn should be ready; or, perhaps, a drop scene from the opera house. This was one case of disproportion: the others were—the final and ceremonial valediction of Garrick, on retiring from his profession; and the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... for this can hardly be explained better than by pointing out the long-standing lack of a suitable medium which would permit the making of finer paintings, other than wall and decorative paintings. The old tempera medium was hardly suited to finer work, since it was a makeshift of very inadequate working qualities. Briefly, the method consisted of mixing any pigment or paint in powder form with any suitable sticky substance which would make it adhere to a surface. Sticky substances frequently used were the tree gums collected ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... and the deficiency of food became the chief facts of the Siege. More than three-score horses were sacrificed daily to provide a meat ration for the garrison. The men slaked their thirst with the turbid water of the Klip River, and munched a makeshift biscuit made of Indian corn and starch. "Chevril" soup and potted horse were luxuries. At Intombi nearly 2,000 sick and wounded were lying ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the agency of gradual heat in rendering clay fit for use in cookery and preferable to any previous makeshift. The modern Zuni name for a parching-pan, which is a shallow bowl of black-ware, is thle mon ne, the name for a basket-tray being thlae' lin ne. The latter name signifies a shallow vessel of twigs, or thla we; the ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... April 20,1768, "Young ladies met at the house of the Rev. Mr. Parsons, who preached to them a sermon from Proverbs 31-19. They spun and presented to Mrs. Parsons two hundred and seventy skeins of good yarn." They drank "liberty tea." This makeshift of a beverage was made of the four-leaved loosestrife. The herb was pulled up like flax, its stalks were stripped of the leaves and were boiled. The leaves were put in a kettle and basted with the liquor distilled from the stalks. After this the leaves were dried in ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... neither designed nor adapted for their needs, so wasteful of labour and so devoid of beauty as this was, and it is only now as I describe this that I find myself thinking of the essential absurdity of an intelligent community living in such makeshift homes. It strikes me now as the next thing ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... matter of looks. A compost of four parts rotted turf to one of manure is laid on a sloping cement bottom outside the house, making a border 12 feet wide and 2 feet deep. The cement may be replaced with rubble on well-drained soils, but it is a poor makeshift. Every three years the upper 6 inches of the border should be renewed with manure. The border inside the house is prepared likewise. Two-year-old potted vines are planted about 4 feet apart in a ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... His makeshift tests confirmed his opinion. Bud started out next day with three different samples for the assayer, and an air castle or two to keep him company. He would like to find himself half owner of a mine worth about a million, he mused. Maybe Marie would wish ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... cost so many lives exploded within the hull of the La Provence, killing a good part of the engineroom crew, it was seen that only a few of her large company could escape. Lifeboats, rafts, and the makeshift straws to safety that could be seized upon in emergency accommodated a bare 700 and odd men. The troops gathered on the upper decks and sang the "Marseillaise" as the great hull settled in the water. Officers embraced their men, some indulged ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... friends, that you, who have recognised in exploitation and servitude the causes of misery, should still believe in that strange natural law which Malthus invented for the purpose of constructing out of it the above-mentioned makeshift. This means that, though you have torn the veil in pieces, your mind and your senses are still enveloped in its tatters. You have released yourselves sufficiently to see why the fellah and the Irish peasant ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... operated than in a general history of the state. It is sufficient to say that nearly all, if not all, of them succumbed to the financial disasters in 1857-58, and there was no banking worthy of the name until the passage of the banking law of July 26, 1858. But this act was a mere makeshift to meet a financial emergency, and it was not based upon sound financial principles. It allowed the organization of banks and the issue of circulating bank notes upon securities that were capable of being fraudulently overvalued by misrepresentation, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... was not one case without its complication, either in the shape of argument for increased liability or claim for compensation. It was makeshift everywhere, and Dick could not but ask himself whether any tenant on the estate really knew how far he was hopelessly in debt or a solvent man? It only needed Peter Gill's peculiar mode of collecting the moneys due, and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... that, but this person will not stay there very long—it's only a makeshift for a night, a mere lock-up house till further examination. There is a small room through which it opens, you may light a fire for yourselves there, and I'll send you plenty of stuff to make you comfortable. But be sure you lock the door upon the prisoner; and, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Inverness-shire, Skye, and the Outer Islands. Many of them had been gamekeepers and hence were accustomed to outdoor life and the handling of guns, all of which aided them in saving the remnant of their command. They had been ordered to take some cottages, occupied by German soldiers as a makeshift fortification. The Cameronians on the way to the attack fell into a ditch which was both deep and wide. It was necessary for them to swim to get across the ditch in some places. In the meantime Highlanders were being slain by German shells and the rifle ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... organic ties with their own country, no roots in the Russian soil. They hardly knew the Russian people, who appeared to them as nothing more than an historic abstraction. They were really cosmopolitan, as a poor makeshift for something better, and Turgenev, in making his hero die on a French barricade, was true to life as well ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... the box lunch presents a serious problem, when we consider the large number of children who must depend upon it for their noon-day meal. This meal should be so constituted as to make it a real meal and not a makeshift. The same principles which govern the preparation of the meal should govern the preparation of the lunch box. It is said that the school lunch should consist of "something starchy and something meaty, something fat and something fibrous, something sweet ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... land I knew the customs of the Mother Church. So I could see the priest in cassock, alb and stole as he would stand before some makeshift altar lit with candles. And as he stands they come to kneel before him; my winsome Margery in all her royal beauty, a child to love, and yet an empress peerless in her woman's realm; and at her side, with his knee touching hers, this ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... eagerly, and before long they were hard at work trying to rig up a makeshift mast and sail out of such material as they could find. It was hardly likely to pass muster so far as looks went, but both boys believed they could make it useful, given half ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... impressive advice to refrain from raising a cry on behalf of the Jews, under pain of administrative penalties. In these circumstances, the plan of a public protest had to be abandoned. Instead, the following device was resorted to as a makeshift. Solovyov's teacher of Jewish literature, F. Goetz, was publishing an apology of Judaism under the title "A Word from the Prisoner at the Bar." Solovyov wrote a preface to this little volume, and turned ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... (Drayton), 'curryfavor', 'pinchfist', 'suckfist', 'hatepeace' (Sylvester), 'hategood' (Bunyan), 'clutchfist', 'sharkgull' (both in Middleton), 'makesport' (Fuller), 'hangdog' ("Herod's hangdogs in the tapestry", Pope), 'catchpoll', 'makeshift' (used not impersonally as now), 'pickgoose' ("the bookworm was never but a pickgoose"){162}, 'killcow' (these three last in Gabriel Harvey), 'rakeshame' (Milton, prose), with others which it will be convenient to omit. 'Rakehell', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... make up her arrears of scrubbing and dusting. Her luxurious mood changed to one of dull irritation, and she looked sullenly at the enormous wardrobe and dressing-table with their speckled mirrors. These had delighted her at first, but in her heart she preferred the battered, makeshift furniture of Cardigan Street. A few licks with the duster and her work was done; but here the least speck of dust showed on the polished surface. Jonah, too, had got into a nasty habit of writing insulting words on the dusty surface ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... of the hills, they had frequently observed parties of roughly dressed men, some with muskets and some without, making their way, by boat and on foot, toward the mountain. Those on the water were in rude, makeshift boats, of which there seemed to be an insufficient quantity at hand, groups waiting on the shore for the return of conveyances in order that they might in ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... detailed explanations. He was prepared, it came to be understood, to put the best face on a bad matter. He remained, however, a loyal subject of the Queen, and prayed for as speedy a sight of Boxton Park, Witham, Essex, as fortune would permit. And in the meantime he enjoyed such makeshift pleasures as ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... among such conditions of life there are few incentives to make the laborer become a better farmer. If he is ambitious, he moves to town or tries other labor; as a tenant-farmer his outlook is almost hopeless, and following it as a makeshift, he takes the house that is ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... very curious data from these makeshift appliances, which may be used with and as a substitute for the cages of wire gauze, although the latter are preferable. We shall return to the point presently. For the moment let us watch the process of breeding, taking care that the critical hour ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... cavalry; and, the command being well rested, such progress was made that the advance-guard reached the western side of San German by noon—a good ten miles. The main body halted at the same hour just outside the eastern entrance to the town, preparing a makeshift meal; and at this point the sick, both on their own account and to make room in the already crowded ambulances, were ...
— From Yauco to Las Marias • Karl Stephen Herrman
... Messrs. Beardmore of Dalmuir, but when the war came no such ship was in existence. The light cruiser H.M.S. Hermes had been adapted for seaplane carrying and had operated with the fleet during the naval manoeuvres of July 1913, but this was no more than a makeshift. The Hermes was refitted and re-commissioned in October 1914 to carry three seaplanes, and at the end of that month was sunk by a torpedo from an enemy submarine on her passage from ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... was at this minute doubled up in a large box that was stowed away under a sort of makeshift counter. He had hurriedly concealed himself in this manner during the absence of ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... apology, plea, exoneration, palliation, extenuation, pardon; subterfuge, evasion, pretext, makeshift. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... troop-room, which was an old railroad car (of fond memory) down by the river. Here, in the cosy warmth of the old cylinder stove, the troop played checkers and read and jollied Pee-wee, which was about all there was to do on winter nights. The visitors, unimpressed with these makeshift diversions of the off season, did not return, and so the good old springtime found Pee-wee still a scout indeed (with something left over) but a scout without ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... States of the Union, as the revolutionary party came into power, slightly different methods were adopted for meeting this emergency. The crude and wasteful makeshift of indiscriminate employment on public works, which had been previously adopted by governments in dealing with similar emergencies, would not stand the criticism of the new economic science. A more intelligent method ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... has a story of its own, as has the family. In primitive days there was little necessity of a dwelling-place, except as a nest for young or a cache for provisions. A cave or a rough shelter of boughs was a makeshift for a home. Thither the hunter brought the game that he had killed, and there slept the glutton's sleep or went supperless to bed. When the hunter became a herdsman and shepherd and moved from place to place in search of pasture, he found it convenient ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... to say nothing," he said; and drawing some makeshift of comfort from the words, repeated them, "I promised faithfully in the ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... divine measures for converting sinners are the preaching of the pure Gospel and the administering of the unadulterated Sacraments. "New-measurism," then, as the very term indicates, is a human makeshift. Indeed, the Lutheran Church approves of all methods, also new measures, which merely serve to bring the divine means of grace into motion and men in contact with them. But it condemns all methods and measures, new or old, which hinder or corrupt or eliminate ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... inspection and to a rigid "lock-up rule" at twelve o'clock, are absent in Dublin not only at Trinity, but at the University College, where one can only suppose its absence to be due to the unorganised condition of a small and temporary makeshift. Not only, however, for the exercise of disciplinary control, but also because of the close association of men with each other which residence ensures, is this to be regarded as the best means of getting the heart out of a ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... flag at the gaff-end wore a makeshift, slovenly air. It was a square section of the bark's foreroyal, painted black around the skull-and-cross-bones design, which had been left the original hue of the canvas. The port-holes were equally slovenly in appearance, being cut through between ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... "This rather makeshift plan I proceeded to execute. Transporting the material to the middle of the weed-grown space, I covered it lightly with twigs and various articles of loose rubbish. It was now quite invisible, and I was turning away to go when suddenly ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... in the terrible drought, climbing she-oaks and apple-trees by a makeshift ladder, and awkwardly lopping off boughs to feed ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... income. A job of some kind to keep the kettle boiling was very necessary, so Jimmie reluctantly applied for his old job and became once more a $14 a week shipping clerk. This however was a temporary makeshift, he protested. He was chock full of good ideas, and now he was rid of Stafford, who he claimed, had really paralyzed his efforts, he would be able to give free rein to his inventive genius. Fanny listened patiently. By this time she had few illusions left concerning her husband's ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... comfortable sort of word; but Doggie's cultivated mind disliked it. It was a slovenly word, a makeshift for the hard broom of clean thought. This infernal "practically" begged the whole question. Jeanne would not have sentimentalized to Mo Shendish about ships passing in the night. No, she wouldn't, in ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... that this place is only a makeshift; we're powerful lucky that Jim got sober in time to find it for us. This is the safest spot, and here the women and children ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... Brothers put a light out yonder by the Gunnel Rocks, it was just a trifling makeshift affair for the time—none of your proper lightships with a crew of twelve or fourteen hands; and my father and I used to tend it, taking turn and turn with two other fellows from the Islands. I'm talking of old days. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Chapel, the long boards on which the hungry multitude lined up at supper-time, every chair from Council Shack and Main Pavilion, and many a trunk and cedar chest from tents and cabins and a dozen other sorts of makeshift seating accommodations were laid under contribution for the gala occasion. And even these were not enough, for the whole neighboring village turned out in a body, and gaping summer boarders strolled into the camp in little groups, thankful for ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... dissimilar to theirs. He had the aquiline nose found among many of the higher tribes, the prominent cheek bones, and black hair and eyes, but his mouth and lips were better molded. All in all, Ja was an impressive and handsome creature, and he talked well too, even in the miserable makeshift language we ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... space, past the point of no return, all the doubts that I had dismissed fought for attention. The plan that had seemed so clear and logical now began to look like a patched and crazy makeshift. ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... sorry, antediluvian makeshift of a building, you may think it,—what was of much more importance, a fine litter of newborn pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East from the remotest periods ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Definitions, Information on Raising and Keeping Troops, Actual Service, including Makeshift and Improved Material, and Law, Government, Regulation, and Administration relating to Land Forces. By Colonel H.L. Scott, Inspector General U.S.A. New York. D. Van Nostrand. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various |
