"Middling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rich, each individual, with or without a franchise, is of importance; the poor and the middling are no otherwise so than as they obtain some collective capacity, and can be aggregated to some corps. If legal ways are not found, illegal will be resorted to; and seditious clubs and confederacies, such as no man living holds in greater horror than I do, will grow and flourish, in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... would reserve pure vulgarity for his serial, over which he was sweating blood and water; elsewhere it should be qualified by the prime qualification, the mediocrity that attaches, that endears. Bousefield, he allowed, was proud, was difficult: nothing was really good enough for him but the middling good; but he himself was prepared for adverse comment, resolute for his noble course. Hadn't Limbert moreover in the event of a charge of laxity from headquarters the great strength of being able to point to my contributions? Therefore I must let myself go, I must abound in my ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... influential citizens in intelligence and wealth. The third was that of the ultra Democrats or Jacobins, who wished to raise the multitude from degradation, penury, and infamy, into power, by the destruction of the throne, and the subjection of the middling classes, and the entire subversion of all the distinctions of wealth and rank. The approach of the allies united both of these latter classes against the throne. A motion was immediately introduced ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... feel about that. A squire in Seat-Sandal out of the old name would have a very middling kind of time, I think. He'd have a sight ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... assistance of different sorts of dungs. I had a great tact in discovering amongst my customers the real connoisseur, and to him I gave it almost genuine. My whole profits, in fact, depended upon my discrimination of characters. To those of the middling ranks, I gave it half-mixed; to the lower sort, three-quarters; and to the lowest, almost without any tobacco at all. Whenever I thought I could perceive a wry face, I immediately exerted my ingenuity in favour of the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... a Wagon on a Hill-side.—In going down a steep hill a middling-sized tree may be felled, and its root tied to the hind axletree, while its branchy top sweeps along the ground, as is seen in the lowermost wagon in the sketch. [Sketch of horses and wagons on hill] In the south-west of France the leaders of the team are unharnessed ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... form, I venture to think, is not 'wholly serious,' of its nature, in modern days; and he did not persevere. Nor did the taste for these trifles long endure. A good ballade is almost as rare as a good sonnet, but a middling ballade is almost as easily written as the majority of sonnets. Either form readily becomes mechanical, cheap and facile. I have heard Mr. George Meredith improvise a sonnet, a Petrarchian sonnet, obedient to the rules, without pen and paper. He spoke 'and the numbers came'; he sonneted ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... were Thomas Boyd's feet, the assorted twelve feet of six FBI agents, and three pairs that belonged to Alexis Brubitsch, Ivan Borbitsch and Vasili Garbitsch. Brubitsch looked even fatter than ever, Borbitsch even thinner. Garbitsch was of an indeterminate middling shape; he had grey hair and a pair of pince-nez, and he walked a trifle unevenly, like a duck, with his hands clasped low in front of him. He was looking down at the ground as the ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... England had yet seen on the throne, we discern at once the excuse which Henry would make to himself for his severities against the nobility, and the motive of that extreme popularity of manners by which Elizabeth aimed at attaching to herself the affections of the middling and lower orders ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... have taken no heed of these details," replied the captain. "I am but a middling sailor. Like all nervous people, I hate the sea; and yet I have an idea that with ships, France being a seaport with two hundred heads, we ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... with beads No. 4, is worked in middling-size purse silk over fine silk cord of the same colour as the silk. Before beginning to work this pattern, thread the beads which take the place of purl stitches, and which are slipped in between two double stitches. ...
— Beeton's Book of Needlework • Isabella Beeton
... conveyed his guest to the parlour, where, in full possession of her activity of mind and body, though pale from the scenes of the preceding night, he found the Countess attired in the fashion of a Flemish maiden of the middling class. No other was present excepting Trudchen, who was sedulously employed in completing the Countess's dress, and instructing her how to bear herself. She extended her hand to him, which, when he had reverently kissed, she said to him, "Seignior Quentin, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... plight, bespattered with mud and blood and snow, his belt and the strap of his revolver case keeping together the torn ruins of the blue coat of a Servian artillery officer. As far as the candlelight and his unwashed, unkempt condition make it possible to judge, he is a man of middling stature and undistinguished appearance, with strong neck and shoulders, a roundish, obstinate looking head covered with short crisp bronze curls, clear quick blue eyes and good brows and mouth, a hopelessly prosaic nose like that of a strong-minded baby, trim soldierlike carriage and ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... is a mile and a half, and the banks on both sides are high, steep, and little wooded. It is crossed by a shallow, not above two or three feet deep; but on its east side the channel will admit ships of a middling size fully laden. The current was so strong against us, that it was with much exertion our rowers accomplished crossing the shallow. We landed on the left bank in order to determine the geographical position of the mouth, and found the latitude 38 deg. 2' 4", and the longitude 122 deg. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... "Miss Helen lub you. All two (both). I love Miss Helen, too. Miss Helen one nice buckra. You more rough 'long er Miss Helen. Miss Helen so softle—when him touch me I no feel 'um—me feel you—you so strong." All this with inimitable gesture and expression and a "leetle" and "middling-sized-bear" voice that was ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... were three Bears who lived in a castle in a great wood. One of them was a great big Bear, and one was a middling Bear, and one was a little Bear. And in the same wood there was a Fox who lived all alone, his name was Scrapefoot. Scrapefoot was very much afraid of the Bears, but for all that he wanted very much to know all ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... looked at the fire, and went on in a low voice: "If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, my sphere will be quite a middling one." ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... II. The middling order say to them the roads are an inconvenience, instead of being useful, as they have turned them out of their old ways; for their horses being never shod, the gravel would soon whet away their hoofs, so as to render ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... Coolidge had told. He had spoken of a widow with three children in destitute circumstances following the father's death. The boy asserted there were no children in the family. And they had just moved in, within a very few days, during which time the neighbourhood had only glimpsed a "middling old" woman. It was strange at least, adding distinctly to the puzzle of the whole affair. West grew nervous, wondering why the two should remain so long within, out of sight and hearing. If this was merely a charitable visit, it surely did not need require such a length of ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... think otherwise, and are of a lazy, or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly illuminated ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... admiring county, that the most noble Sidney, Marquess of Carabas, held public days twice a week at his grand castle. And now came the neighbouring peer, full of grace and gravity, and the mellow baronet, with his hearty laugh, and the jolly country squire, and the middling gentry, and the jobbing country attorney, and the flourishing country surveyor; some honouring by their presence, some who felt the obligation equal, and others bending before the noble host, as if paying him adoration was almost ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Rothschilds by the side of the old plug of the cabman. Fresh beef, mutton, pork are now out of the question. A little poultry yet remains at fabulous prices. In walking through the Rue St. Lazare I saw a middling-sized goose and chicken for sale in a shop-window, and I had the curiosity to step in and inquire the price (rash man that I was). The price of the goose was ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... foddering the cattle, cleaning dishes,—in fine, performing their moderate share of the labors of life, without being harassed by its cares. The sable inmates of the mansion were not excluded from the domestic affections: in families of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the circle closed round the evening hearth, its blaze glowed on their dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's children. It must have contributed to reconcile them to their lot, that they saw white men and women ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... came to his turn to charge them. "Are they guilty, or not? If the question was put to me I should say the Laird of MacLachlan, arrant Papist! should keep his men at home to Mass on the other side of the loch instead of loosing them on honest, or middling honest, Campbells, for the strict virtue of these Coillebhraid miners is what I am ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... up in the spirit of welcome and stood a moment watching the others approach. "There will be no difficulty in talking, to judge by the gentleman," he dropped; and while he remains so conspicuous our eyes may briefly rest on him. He was middling high and was visibly a representative of the nervous rather than of the phlegmatic branch of his race. He had an oval face, fine firm features, and a complexion that tended to the brown. Brown were his eyes, and women thought ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... unselfish. Our liberty—our real liberty—the liberty both of ourselves and our country—is in our own hands. England cannot crush or kill it, or even seriously injure it. England can only remain in Ireland, indeed, as long as our character is weaker than her guns. Guns are stronger than middling character. Against real character, passionate, determined, and organized, they are less availing than children's catapults. English domination feeds and thrives on weak character. When every Nationalist makes his or her character strong and self-reliant and beautiful, English domination will die ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... for ragout, Game, Poultry, Fish, &c.)—If you want gravy, put in a thick and well-tinned stewpan a thin slice of fat ham or bacon, or an ounce of butter, and a middling-sized onion; on this lay a pound of nice juicy gravy-beef (as the object in making gravy is to extract the nutritious qualities of the meat, it must be beaten so as to reduce the containing vessels, and scored to render the surface more susceptible to the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... buyer to obtain for him. The actual grades, and the terms describing them have been established by the United States Government, and are rigidly adhered to by the trade. Prices are established on the grade known as "middling" as a basis, and variation from this basis is taken up ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... the entire affection of a worthy man, whom my father and mother now entirely and heartily approve. The people where we are going, though strangers, have behaved with the greatest zeal and affection; and I think we have a fair prospect of being useful and living comfortably in that state of middling life to which I have been accustomed, and ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... fatiguing for the boy to catch fish than to look after the camp, the Supervisor sent him off to try his luck. Wilbur, delighted to have been lucky, returned in less than fifteen minutes with four middling-sized trout, and he found himself hungry enough to eat his two, almost bones and all. That night they slept under a small Baker tent that Merritt had brought along on his pack horse, the riding and pack saddles being piled beside the tent ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... that the conclusion was not flattering. Miss Ingate was a Guardian of the Poor, and the Local Representative of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Association. She had studied intimately the needy and the rich and the middling. She was charitable without illusions; and, while adhering to every social convention, she did so with a toleration pleasantly contemptuous; in her heart she had no mercy for snobs of any kind, though, unfortunately, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... nothing; those of Detroit and Michilimakinac, only furnished very little. Happily the post of the Sioux and of the Western Sea produced near to 100,000 which swelled up the receipt; otherwise it would have been very middling. ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... "Fair to middling. The Jews refused to take their shutters down this morning. I had to issue an order about it. I hear now that they're doing business about as usual, but I've ordered the number of men on duty within the ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... management of fruit trees, a reputation that was not maintained, according to the works of half a century later. The best cider apple In the county then was the White-sour, white in colour, of a middling size, and early ripe; other good ones were the 'Deux-Anns, Jersey, French Longtail, Royal Wilding, Culvering, Russet, Holland Pippin, and Cowley Crab.' In Herefordshire it was the custom to open the earth about the roots of the apple trees and lay them bare and exposed ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... from the ambassdriss, brot by the ambasdor's Shassure, and sealed with his seal of arms, would affect anybody in the middling ranx of life. It droav Lady Griffin mad with delight; and, long before my master's arrivle, she'd sent Mortimer and Fitzclarence, her two footmin, along with a polite ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was now Mrs. Donaldson, wife of Hector Donaldson, advocate. At the time, it was considered a middling sort of marriage; since his cross-examination of the co-respondent in Macpherson v. Macpherson and Tattenham-Welby, it had been considered a creditable marriage; and if his practice continued its present rate of increase, ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... there is anything particularly new or interesting. Not much is going on there. We have had a good crop of hay, the corn looks middling well; the rye is not much rusted. I think we shall not ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... middling, within doors; but I don't like the climate, Mr. John I don't the climate, Sir. There's no country like h'England, I believe, for my business. 'Ere's a fine rose, Sir if you'll step a bit this way quite a new kind I got it over last h'autumn the Palmerston it is. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... pretty middling weak," commented Fielding. "Either that, or you're yarning tremendously about its being a bore: you can ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... a county in Scotland that lies the most to the south and the nearest to Ireland. This county gives name to a particular breed of horses of a middling size, which are ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... this rice, meat, dancing, wine, and fiddling, Which turn'd the isle into a place of pleasure; The servants all were getting drunk or idling, A life which made them happy beyond measure. Her father's hospitality seem'd middling, Compared with what Haidee did with his treasure; 'T was wonderful how things went on improving, While she had not one ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... do something," she said, with a manner less cordial but more sincere than that she had previously assumed. "Leave the matter with me, and I may be able to open to you a grand house, not a plain, middling place like mine"—and she waved her hand deprecatingly toward the furnishings which seemed to Mrs. Frankland inconceivably rich—"a grand house with all the prestige of a great family. I don't know that I shall succeed with my friend, but for the sake of the cause I am willing ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... society. Among the upper classes gaming is reduced to a science and is almost exclusively the order of the day. There is little or no taste for litterature among any part of the native society. The upper classes are sensualists; the middling ignorant and superstitious. With regard to the Lazzaroni, I do not think that they at all deserve the ill name that has been given to them. They always seem good humoured and willing to work, when employment is given to them; and they do not appear at all disposed ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... dream of water pure Before the coming morn, 'Tis a sign I shall be poor, And unto wealth not born. If I dream of tasting beer, Middling, then, will be my cheer— Chequered with the good and bad, Sometimes joyful, sometimes sad; But should I dream of drinking wine, Wealth and pleasure will be mine. The stronger the drink, the better the cheer— Dreams of my destiny, appear, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... numerous, has in it the high, the fair-middling, and the humble—the good-looking, the well-dressed, the rubicund, the mildly mahogany-featured, the simply-dressed, the attenuated, and the indigent. But there is a clear halo of respectability about the place; superior habiliments are distinctly in the ascendant; and ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... short of my hero in other ways. He looked like a fat man and his fiddling was only middling, therefore, notwithstanding his prowess with the axe and the maul, he remained subordinate to David, and though they never came to a test of strength we were perfectly sure that David was the finer man. His supple ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... rest. All the true philosophers are gone, and the middling true are going. I made up my mind like the truest that ever was as soon as I heard ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the bear felt the stone, and saw him, he turns about, and comes after him, taking devilish long strides, and strolling along at a strange rate, so as he would put a horse to a middling gallop. Away runs Friday, and takes his course, as if he ran towards us for help; so we all resolved to fire at once upon the bear, and deliver my man; though I was angry at him heartily for bringing the bear back upon us, when he was going about his own business ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... high, middling tall, and about twenty-six years of age." With this specimen of humanity, Charles was very much dissatisfied, and he made up his mind not to stand the burdens of Slavery a day longer than he could safely make his way to the North. And ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... said M. Postel, that typical, provincial tradesman. "Are you pretty middling? I have just been experimenting on treacle, but it would take a man like your father to find what I am looking for. Ah! he was a famous chemist, he was! If I had only known his gout specific, you and I should be rolling along in our carriage ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... nor any thing more beautiful than these walks. As there is no underwood, the shade cools without impeding the air; and the houses, having no walls, receive the gale from whatever point it blows. I shall now give a particular description of a house of a middling size, from which, as the structure is universally the same, a perfect idea may be formed both of those that are bigger, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... system is in a relaxed state, as it is during rest, after exercise. But, while a general action is kept up, by vigorous exercise, nature itself will resist the most unfriendly vapors of the atmosphere. There is a great and growing evil in the education of ladies of the middling and higher classes, at the present day. The tender and delicate manner in which they are bred, enfeebles their constitutions, and greatly diminishes their usefulness, in every station of life. Many of them are sickly, and few of them are able to endure the slightest hardships. To show that this ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... orders about the horses, soon joined them, and from him she directly received the amends which were her due; for while he slightly and carelessly touched the hand of Isabella, on her he bestowed a whole scrape and half a short bow. He was a stout young man of middling height, who, with a plain face and ungraceful form, seemed fearful of being too handsome unless he wore the dress of a groom, and too much like a gentleman unless he were easy where he ought to be civil, and impudent where ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "Well, yes, middling; but as obstinate as a mule. When he gets his mind set on a thing, it's no use to try to budge him. I've whipped him till he was black and blue, and it didn't do a penny's ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... years past a company of Italians, settled in Lima, have given operatic performances on a small scale. One of them, Signora Pantanelli, is an excellent singer, and would be heard with pleasure even in Europe. Some other members of the company have middling talents, but the rest are decidedly bad. The operas performed are Giulietta y Romeo, Parisina, Lucia di Lammermuir, Marino Faliero, La Sonnambula, and Il Barbiere di Seviglia: these, together with a mutilated Norma, and a much curtailed ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... guardian to send me there; but there was a vis inertiae in my total want of social and scholastic ambition. I never in my life felt the faintest desire to rise in the world either by making the acquaintance of people of rank (which is the main reason why boys of middling station are sent to aristocratic schools), or by getting letters put after my name as a reward for learning what had no intrinsic charm for me. In the worldly sense I never ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... plain becomes a region of low hills. Kiel itself is prettily situated on the Baltic, which, viewed from thence, has the appearance of a lake of middling size. The harbour is said to be good; but there were not many ships there. {13} Among these was the steamer destined to carry me to Copenhagen. Little did I anticipate the good reason I should have to ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... altogether transcending the conception of man—overwhelming to such need as even that of Paul Faber, whose soul has begun to hunger after righteousness, and whose hunger must be a hunger that will not easily be satisfied." For a poor nature will for a time be satisfied with a middling God; but as the nature grows richer, the ideal of the God desired grows greater. The true man can be satisfied only with a God of magnificence, never with a God such as in his childhood and youth had been presented to Faber as the God of the Bible. That God only whom Christ reveals to the humble ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... serve for nothing, and behind it a canal, very like a horsepond, on which there are fireworks and justs. Altogether it is very pretty; but as there are few nabobs and nabobesses in this country, and as the middling and common people are not much richer than Job when he had lost every thing but his patience, the proprietors are on the point of being ruined, unless the project takes place that is talked of. It is, to oblige Corneille, Racine, and Moli'ere to hold their tongues twice a-week, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... unadventurous boys all put me down as "a queer kid." I was middling good at most of their games and would get sudden spurts when I would become almost a leader. But at other times, often right in the middle of a game, I would suddenly forget where I was and would think of Sam, of the cannibals that I had seen, of the man ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... middling size for many months. During two or three weeks I wondered how he lived, for he was never seen to eat. He used to climb to the top of the tank and slide down the slippery glass as though it were a montagne russe. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... education of our rising aristocracy, and is considered so vitally important to their proper carriage, as well in their set as out of it, that their children are as far advanced in this particular at fifteen, as the children of middling people at twenty-five. The petticoat-string by which the youth of the non-fashionable class is tied to their mother, is a ligature not in use among the fashionable world; from the earliest period professional persons are employed in their education, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... been salted down long enough after the killing: it must be hung, and he was engaged in hanging it. Several pieces lay piled inside the door suitably for the hand. He stood with his back to these beside the meat bench, scraping the saltpetre off a large middling and rubbing it with red pepper. Suddenly the light of the small doorway failed; and turning he beheld his mother, and a few feet behind her—David said that he did not believe in miracles—but a few feet behind his mother there now stood a divine ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... forth upon the planking for a certain time, and then went quietly home, giving place to the new arrivals. They were nearly all French, and they were not generally, it seemed, of the first fashion, but rather of middling condition in life; the English being represented only by a few young fellows and now and then a redfaced old gentleman with an Indian scarf trailing from his hat. There were some fair American costumes and faces in the crowd, but it was essentially ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... startle us. It is known, I fancy, that the heads of the Church are to be absent to-day, and the attendance is slim. There are no ravishingly beautiful women present, and no positively ugly ones. The men are fair to middling. They will never be slain in cold blood for their beauty, nor shut up in jail for ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Titus or the Brutus in the eye of a Parisian, but it had evidently been twisted on system; and if their drapery in general might startle Baron Stulz, it evidently cost as dexterous cutting out, and as ambitious tailoring, as the most recherche suit that ever turned a "middling man" into a figure for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... and adulterous race, whose youths are catamites, and whose old men are obstinate as asses." "But I am from Yemen," said the boy. "If so," answered the tyrant, "thou belongest to a comfortless region, where the most honourable profession is robbery, where the middling ranks tan hides, and where a wretched poor spin wool and weave coarse mantles." "But I am from Mecca," said the boy." "Then," replied Hyjauje, "thou comest from a mine of perverseness, stupidity, ignorance, and slothfulness; ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... prices, such as had flaws in them, and afterwards disposing of them at a profit of cent. per cent. Madame du Hausset relates the following anecdote on this particular:— "The King," says she, "ordered a middling-sized diamond, which had a flaw in it, to be brought to him. After having it weighed, his Majesty said to the Count, 'The value of this diamond, as it is, and with the flaw in it, is six thousand livres; without the flaw, it would be worth, at least, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the likeness be correct and the colours bright—we leave the rest to you." Such seems to have been the Royal artistic edict issued in the beginning of the present reign. In no instance has the choice fallen on a painter of talent; but the middling from every country in Europe seems to have found a ready welcome at the Court of Queen Victoria. We find there middling Germans, middling Italians, middling Frenchmen—and all receiving money and ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the name of Mademoiselle, to Madame de Mare, her governess. I sat down and chatted with them; but the impatience of the Duc d'Orleans to learn the news could not be checked. He asked me if I was very satisfied. "Middling," I replied, not to spoil his dinner; but he rose at once and took me into the garden. He was much affected to hear of the ill-success of my negotiation; and returned downcast to table. I took the first opportunity to blame his impatience, and the facility with which he allowed the impressions he ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... round middling easy, Madam," answered Charity. "Th' upholder were bidden to put th' house to rights all through, and send the bill to Mistress Joyce. She gave me lodging fro' Setterday to Monday, and bade me see to 't that yo' had ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... ladies, who take little exercise, and whose livers are not strong enough to bear stimulants, are so extremely critical about one's personal habits! And, after all, the Rev. Amos never came near the borders of a vice. His very faults were middling—he was not very ungrammatical. It was not in his nature to be superlative in anything; unless, indeed, he was superlatively middling, the quintessential extract of mediocrity. If there was any one point on which he showed an inclination to be excessive, it was confidence in ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Experiment in Syndicalism Hugh H. Lusk Labor: "True Demand" and Immigrant Supply Arthur J. Todd The Way to Flatland Fabian Franklin The Disfranchisement of Property David McGregor Means Railway Junctions Clayton Hamilton Minor Uses of the Middling Rich F.J. Mather, Jr. Lecturing at Chautauqua Clayton Hamilton Academic Leadership Paul Elmer More Hypnotism, Telepathy, and Dreams The Editor The Muses on the Hearth Mrs F.G. Allinson The Land of the Sleepless Watchdog David Starr Jordan En Casserole Special to our Readers—Philosophy ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the radiant Clementina would know how he felt; he did not dance, and he professed to have found himself at the party by a species of accident. He told her that he was out in Europe looking after a patent right that he had just taken hold of, and was having only a middling good time. He pretended surprise to hear her say that she was having a first-rate time, and he tried to reason her out of it. He confessed that from the moment he came into the room he had made up his mind to take her to supper, and had never been so disgusted in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... gaiety, and well-dressed every body amaze me. Canterbury, which on my setting out I thought deplorable, is a paradise, (236) to Modena, Reggio, Parma, etc. I had before discovered that there was nowhere but in England the distinction of middling people; I perceive now, that there is peculiar to us middling houses: how snug they are! I write to-night because I have time; to-morrow I get to London just as the post goes. Sir Robert is at Houghton. Good night till another post. You are quite well I trust, but tell ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... reaction set in and hope crept back. After all, a slump was something you had to contend with. It happened to every team some time in the season. Perhaps it was lucky it had come now instead of later. Of course, Chambers Tech was only a fair-to-middling team and Brimfield ought to have beaten her hands down, but since she hadn't, there was no use in worrying about it. By the time supper was over that evening, the stock of the Brimfield Football Team had risen to close to par, and anyone ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... epaulets, booted to the knee, and with a cloth cap upon his head; and, at first sight, you might have taken him for a corporal of dragoons, of particularly neat and soldier-like aspect, and in the prime of his age and strength. He is only of middling stature, but his build is very compact and sturdy, with broad shoulders and a look of great physical vigor, which, in fact, he is said to possess,—he and Beauregard having been rivals in that particular, and both distinguished above other men. His complexion is dark ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to cut out in Shivers as Dutch-Beef:—Take a middling leg of mutton, then take half a pound of brown sugar, and rub it hard all over your mutton, and let it lie twenty-four hours; then take an ounce and half of saltpetre, and mix it with a pound of common salt, and rub that all over the mutton ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... taking her, and she without a thought but for her beauty and to be straying the hills. OLD WOMAN. The gods help the lot of us. . . . Shouldn't she be well pleased getting the like of Conchubor, and he middling settled in his years itself? I don't know what he wanted putting her this wild place to be breaking her in, or putting myself to be roast- ing her supper and she with no patience for her food at all. [She looks out. LAVARCHAM. Is ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... he called it. As soon as the bear felt the blow, and saw him, he turns about and comes after him, taking very long strides, and shuffling on at a strange rate, so as would have put a horse to a middling gallop; away reins Friday, and takes his course as if he ran towards us for help; so we all resolved to fire at once upon the bear, and deliver my man; though I was angry at him for bringing the bear ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... at eighty-two. The Turkish bath in the hotel is very nicely fitted up, but the native masseur wasn't a pleasing experience, his weak chocolate-coloured hands gave me the sensation of the touch of a middling strong eel; his lean, lithe figure and the charms round his neck, and grey hair died brick-red I expect to see again in dreams—a crease in his teeth and venom in his ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... person says he is "gaylie," Anglice, middling, he is understood not to be so well as he would like ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... you he's not half a bad chap. Bother it," added he, picking up the cane, "I must do it, kid. Awfully sorry, but it would be low to let you off because I know you. Look alive. One, middling warm, on ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... light, but it was only a glimmering. He could understand that a man should not call his own goods middling; but he could not understand that a man is only carrying out the same principle in an advanced degree, when he proclaims with a hundred thousand voices in a hundred thousand places, that the article which he desires to sell is the best of its ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... excise of beer, ale, brandy, &c., and hearth-money will be paid in such coin, the same falling first into the hands of the poor and middling people. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... from pride or design, produce it, particularly to strangers. My wooden-house landlady indeed, was a prodigy; and it must be confessed, that no woman of the lower order in England, nor even of the middling class, have any share of that ease and urbanity which is so common among the lower order of the people of this kingdom: but the woman I now speak of, had not, you will perceive, the least design even upon my purse; I made no previous agreement with her for ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... Highgate—a ridiculous custom formerly prevailed at the public-houses in Highgate, to administer a ludicrous oath to all travellers of the middling rank who stopped there. The party was sworn on a pair of horns, fastened on a stick: the substance of the oath was, never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress, never to drink small beer when he could get strong, with many other ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... events, if not in catastrophes. I have been watchful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell as yet. You may laugh at me, and very likely think me foolishly fanciful to trouble myself about what is going on in a middling-class household like ours. Do as you like. But here is that terrible fact to begin with,—a beautiful young girl, with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to Nature's women, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... can't have you call Utica inferior. It isn't supreme—that's what's the matter with it, and I hate anything middling," said Pandora Day. She gave a light dry laugh, tossing back her head a little as she made this declaration. And looking at her askance in the dusk, as she trod the deck that vaguely swayed, he recognised something in her air and port ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... two in the London City Mission, got some similar appointment in a large manufacturing town. Of the state of things he spoke more sadly than ever. 'The rich cannot guess, sir, how high ill-feeling is rising in these days. It's not only those who are outwardly poorest who long for change; the middling people, sir, the small town shopkeepers especially, are nearly past all patience. One of the City Mission assured me that he has been watching them these several years past, and that nothing could beat their fortitude and industry, and their determination ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... whole, Plums, (green gage,) to preserve, Plum pudding, baked, Plum pudding, boiled, Poke, to boil, Pomatum, (soft,) Pork and beans, Pork cheese, Pork, (corned,) to boil, Pork, (pickled,) to boil with peas pudding, Pork cutlets, Pork, (leg of,) to roast, Pork; (loin of,) to roast, Pork, (middling piece,) to roast, Pork pie, Pork steaks, Pork, to stew, Port wine jelly, Pot pie, Pot pie, (apple,) Potatoes, to boil, Potatoes, to fry, Potatoes, roasted Potato pudding Potato snow Pound cake Prawns, to boil ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... "Middling. He's rather lumpy to ride. I shall get mother to swop him for a horse, if she can. I say, doctor, what was ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... master repeatedly said to him, "Now, George, man, let me see how soon you'll be at the foot." Schiller's negligence and lack of alertness called for repeated reproof, and his final school thesis was unsatisfactory. Hegel was a poor scholar, and at the university it was stated "that he was of middling industry and knowledge but especially deficient in philosophy." John Hunter nearly became a cabinetmaker. Lyell had excessive aversion to work. George Combe wondered why he was so inferior to other boys in arithmetic. ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... found M. Pictet's account very useful, for at every public library, and in every Ecole Centrale, the Journal Britannique is taken, and we have consequently received many civilities. It was Sunday, and when we arrived at Ghent, all the middling people of the town in their holiday clothes were assembled on the banks of the canal according to custom to see the barque arrive: they made the scene very cheerful. The old Baron de Triste, though he ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... with some sort of a garment on it. We are so used to a leaven of falsehood in all we hear and say, nowadays, that nothing is more likely to deceive us than the absolute truth. If a shopkeeper told me that his wares were simply middling, of course, I should think that they were not worth a farthing. But all that has nothing to do with my poor brother. Well, what ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... breeder of this horse must have better luck or better judgment in breeding than his neighbors, if more than one in five or six that he does breed turn out desirable horses in every respect. If he turns out but a middling sort of beast, it is but small satisfaction to know that he is sound; in fact, so little satisfaction should we feel, that, if we were compelled to keep and use him, so far from rejoicing that he was sound, we should only regret ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... which were to be applied only to the absorption of Treasury notes, was also authorized. The coupons were payable either in the currency in which interest on other bonds was paid, or in cotton certificates pledging the Government to pay the same in cotton of New Orleans middling quality, delivered at the rate of eight pence ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... which Great Britain pays the slaveholders in America thirty millions per annum. If cotton can be sold in the Liverpool market at anything less than 4-3/4d. per lb., the slaveholders in America will cease to grow what, under altered circumstances, would be unprofitable. Cotton of middling quality (which is in the greatest demand) may be obtained in West and Eastern Africa at 4d. per lb.; and, already, cotton from Western Africa (Liberia) has been sent to Liverpool, there re-shipped, and sold at Boston, in ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... devil-may-care in expression than we are accustomed to see in New England. They poured down the gangway, trailed arms, ascended the promenade-deck, ordered arms, grounded arms, and broke line. The drill struck me as middling, which may be owing to the fact that the company has lately increased to about two hundred members, thus diluting the old organization with a large number of new recruits. Military service at the South is a patrician exercise, much favored ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... instance, recited his grammar lesson without a slip, the letter B—standing for bene, well—was put in the grammar column. If he made one mistake, the entry was V B, vix bene—scarcely well; if two mistakes, Med, mediocriter—middling; and if three, M, male—badly, equivalent to not knowing it at all. The same system prevailed for all the lessons, and in a modified form for the behaviour or deportment also. As regards behaviour, the arrangement was one ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... Story to tell of myself: middling well: still here, pottering about my House, in which I expect an invalid Niece; and preparing for my Ship in June. William Airy talks of coming to me soon. I am daily expecting the Death of a Sister in law, a right good Creature, who I thought would outlive me a dozen ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... at one end of the exercising ground, a horseman rode up to the front of the reposing soldiers. He was of middling stature, but of athletic frame, and was clothed in a shirt of linked mail, his head protected by a helmet, and in full warlike equipment, and followed by five noukers. By their dusty dress, and the foam which covered their horses, it might be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... in his larger poems, he had a genius little short of perfect in his handling of shorter forms. The Arthurian story which produced only middling moralizing in the Idylls, gave us as well the supremely written Homeric episode of the Morte d'Arthur, and the sharp and defined beauty of Sir Galahad and the Lady of Shallott. Tennyson had ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... permanent difference, and one can easily learn to distinguish it at once, by the touch and with the naked eye. This is thrown out here to induce a thorough examination of the whole subject. There are three staples of wool, short, three inches long, middling, five inches, and long, eight inches. Varieties of sheep are numerous. We shall only mention a few. The question of the best breeds has been warmly controverted. We have no disposition to try to settle it. The question of the best variety ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... upon was far more dangerous than any hitherto attempted by me, needs no further proof than this:—I went and made my will at Porlock, with a middling honest lawyer there; not that I had much to leave, but that none could say how far the farm, and all the farming stock, might depend on my disposition. It makes me smile when I remember how particular I was, and how for the life of me I was puzzled to ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... requested l'Encuerado to guide us back to our bivouac. All of a sudden my friend enjoined silence; an opossum, followed by five young ones, was coming near us on our left. The animal indolently approached a tree of middling size, which it climbed, aided by its prehensile tail. Its progeny crowded busily round the foot of the tree, uttering plaintive cries. The opossum then came down again, and scarcely had it put foot to the ground before its disconsolate family rushed pell-mell into the maternal pouch. ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... leg of mutton, cut it in slices, season it with a little pepper and salt; cut three middling turnips in round pieces, and three small carrots scrap'd and cut in pieces, a handful of spinage, a little parsley, a bunch of sweet herbs, and two or three cabbage lettice; cut the herbs pretty small, lay a row of meat and a row of herbs; put the turnips and carrots ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... above their school learning they've been taught to swim, ride, dance, use tools, play on the piano, and speak fair to middling French. Yet, as you say, Fred, the most difficult part is to come, just as we fancied that we were through. And the terrible reflection is that we're not so sure now what we ought to do for them as we were ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... But, indeed, who could have done other where that sweet lady was concerned? You should see her, Sir Richard!" He was pacing the room now as he spoke, and as he spoke he warmed to his subject more and more. "She is middling tall, of a most dainty slenderness, dark-haired, with a so sweet and saintly beauty of face that it must be seen to be believed. And eyes—Lord! the glory of her eyes! They are eyes that would lead a man into hell and make him believe ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... windows somewhat too curiously for a poor man's manners, it may not be amiss if we bear him company. He had pretty well recovered of his fit of discontent, for morning air and exercise can soon chase gloom away; so he cheerily tramped along, thinking as he went, how that, after all, it is a middling happy world, and how that the raindrops, now that it had cleared up, hung like diamonds on the laurels, when of a sudden, as he turned a corner near the house, there broke upon his ear, at that quiet hour, such a storm ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... euphonious name of TIBBS, living at Hackney, near London, sorely against his will, and after warm remonstrance, finally yielded to his wife's entreaty that he would go in character to a masquerade-ball, given to the 'middling interest' by one of his old neighbors. He went accoutred as a knight, wearing his visor down. What was his surprise on entering the room, to find first one and then another member of the motley company slapping him familiarly on the back, with: 'Halloa! TIBBS! who thought to see ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... seed-cotton per acre, and the character of the fruit and the arrangement upon the stalk make it very expensive to harvest. Besides, the stalk grows too much to a tree and is not prolific proportionately, and the quality of the lint is equal to American "middling." We are trying to develop a plant that will yield 1,000 pounds of seed-cotton to the acre, with a lint equal in quality to fully good "middling" or to Allen's ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... winters do not come often at Middlemoor; not very often, at least. We had two of them during the time we lived there, 'year in and year out,' as Kezia called it. But between them we had much milder ones, one or two quite wonderfully mild, and others middling—nothing really to complain of. Still, a very tiny cottage house standing by itself is pretty cold during the best of winters, even though the walls were thick. And in wet or stormy days one does get tired of very small rooms and ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... the barking of a dog assailed their ears, and suspended the conversation. Passing onward to the den of the Bonassus, they found a dark-featured gentleman of middling stature, with his hair, whiskers, and ears, so bewhitened with powder as to form a complete contrast with his complexion and a black silk handkerchief which he wore round his neck, holding a large brown-coloured dog by the collar, in order ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... landholder will therefore have a common interest to keep the taxes on land as low as possible; and common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy. But if we even could suppose a distinction of interest between the opulent landholder and the middling farmer, what reason is there to conclude, that the first would stand a better chance of being deputed to the national legislature than the last? If we take fact as our guide, and look into our own senate and assembly, we ...
— The Federalist Papers
... be beginning to study home comforts, all the modern houses being built upon very commodious plans; still the middling classes, in the towns at least, are miserably lodged, in comparison with the same grades in England, families of apparently great respectability inhabiting places so desolate as to strike ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... who organized and led them. The veriest cowards in existence must have shown the same front under such discipline. I did not see enough of their gentry to enable me to form an opinion about them; but the middling and lower orders are extremely filthy both in their persons and in their houses, and they have all an intolerable itch for gambling. The soldiers, though fainting with fatigue on the line of march, invariably group themselves in card-parties whenever they are allowed a few ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... had done it, that man of whom he expected things so fair. He had asked in a loud voice of the middling funny gentleman (then in the middle of a song) whether he thought Joey would be long in coming, and when at last Joey did come he screamed out, "How do you do, Joey!" and ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... preoccupations of the average man. And such an age will undoubtedly succeed to ours. Few things would surprise me less, in social life, than the upspringing of some anti-luxury movement, the formation of some league or guild among the middling classes (where alone intellect is to be found in quantity), the members of which would bind themselves to stand aloof from all the great, silly, banal, ugly, and tedious luxe-activities of the time and not to spend more than a certain sum ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... followed each other in volume that grew as the twilight deepened. Along with the troops, the motors flowed up, and soon there was an unbroken roar. Limousines glided through an enormous sea of lorries, little, middling, and big. All these cleared aside, wedged themselves in, subsided in their appointed places. A vast hum of voices and mingled noises arose from the ocean of men and vehicles that beat upon the approaches to the station and began in ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... is composed of a great many very different races: unfortunately, I am unable to describe their several characteristics, as my stay in China was far too short. The people I saw in Canton, Hong-Kong, and Macao, are of middling stature. Their complexion varies with their occupation: the peasants and labourers are rather sun-burnt; rich people and ladies white. Their faces are flat, broad, and ugly; their eyes are narrow, rather obliquely placed, and ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... "Just middling," replied Wayland, reticent from weariness and with joy of their camping-place. The lake, dark as topaz and smooth as steel, lay in a frame of golden willows—as a jewel is filigreed with gold—and above it the cliffs rose three ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... her characters. She asks her readers not to grudge Amos Barton his lovely wife, that "large, fair, gentle Madonna," with an imposing mildness and the unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood. He was a man of very middling qualities and a quite stupid sort of person, but he loved his wife and made the most he could of such talents as he had. She pleads in ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... into the house, she soon found by the smell that something nice had been cooked. On going into the parlour, sure enough she saw there three jars smoking away: the first, a very large one, for Mr. Bruin; the next of middling size, for Mammy Muff; and the smallest of all was Tiny's jar; and in each of them was a wooden spoon. The little busy-body now went to work tasting the soup in each jar by turns; but she found that in the smallest jar was the nicest ...
— A Apple Pie and Other Nursery Tales • Unknown
... my youth, and I shan't begin to put on a long face because I've lost it. I didn't have your stature, Ben, but I had a pretty fair middling-size one of my own. They used to say of me that I had an eye for the big chance, and that's a thing a man's got to be born with. To see big you've got to be big, and that's what I like about you—you ain't busy looking ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... of middling stature, broad-shouldered, crooked-legged, brown-visaged, red-bearded, and had much hair on his body. He talked but little, and had a very surly aspect, although he was perfectly good-humored.—Cervantes, Don Quixote, II. i. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... always consider the quality of his grass-land, and buy cattle adapted for it. It would be very bad policy to buy fine cattle for poor or middling lands. You must always keep in view how the cattle have been kept. If they have been kept improperly for your purpose, their size, whether large or small, will not save you from loss. If the cattle are ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... show the fluctuations of the average prices of prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, in middle Georgia, and at New Orleans, aL well as the contemporary range of average prices for cotton of middling grade in the chief American market, that of New York. The range for prime slaves, it will be seen, rose from about $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South respectively in 1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803, in consequence ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... a middling-sized man, with a sharp, unwholesome-looking face, and with a flippant, reckless manner, dressed in a style of shabby smartness, eying me with a bold look, and not so overburdened with politeness as to trouble himself about ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... clothes and exquisite manners afforded unfailing material for primitive satire in the forecastle, but, as a rule, quite alone, muffled in a dark, hooded cloak, watching the sea, always with her face turned yearningly back, as if England and home lay straight out along the vessel's wake. She was middling tall, eighteen perhaps, with a thin but supple and pleasing figure, and a quiet, smileless face, that wanted only ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... a happiness to have many tastes if I were like other men," said Philip, bitterly. "I might get some power and distinction by mere mediocrity, as they do; at least I should get those middling satisfactions which make men contented to do without great ones. I might think society at St. Ogg's agreeable then. But nothing could make life worth the purchase-money of pain to me, but some faculty that would lift me ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... respectable, and that you are entitled to a certain amount of deference for your private tastes and habits. At the North, on the other hand, manners, even as taught to children, are apt to concede nothing except that you have an immortal soul and a middling chance of salvation, and to avoid anything which is likely to lead you to forget that you are simply ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... I have levied upon the wealthy rebels, and paid out nearly half a million of dollars to feed forty thousand of the starving poor of all nations assembled here, made so by this war. I saw that this rebellion was a war of the aristocrats against the middling men—of the rich against the poor; a war of the landowner against the laborer; that it was a struggle for the retention of power in the hands of the few against the many; and I found no conclusion to it, save in the subjugation of the few and the disenthralment of the many. I, therefore, felt ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... expanded by himself and his adversary. The closed fist is none, the thumb one, the thumb and forefinger two, &c. so that the chances lie between 0 and 5, as each must know the number held out by himself. The middling class of people likewise play at this game when they give entertainments where wine is served, and the loser is always obliged to drink off a cup of wine. At this childish game two persons will sometimes play to a very late hour, till he who ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... withal, Would eat her fellows, and the prey and all; And yet she cares not much for any food, Unless it be the purest harmless blood. All these are kept abroad at charge of many, They do not cost me in a year a penny. But there's two couple of a middling size, That seldom pass the sight of my own eyes. Hope, on whose head I've laid my life to pawn; Compassion, that on every one will fawn. This would, when 'twas a whelp, with rabbits play Or lambs, and let them go unhurt away: Nay, now she is of growth, she'll now and ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... but you couldn't call him short; rather more than middling high; perhaps looks a bit taller than he is, he carries himself so straight. He would have ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... numerous hotels and boarding-houses, capable of suiting the pockets and the wishes of all the middling, and even of the lower classes of society:—but there are three or four principal houses,—and especially two, reserved for the aristocracy; and here all the elite of the visitors congregate. We wealthy English may laugh at the moderate expense for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... low or middling, Mr. Sheitlis," Abe replied sadly, "there is a good deal in what you say. But silk is high this year, Mr. Sheitlis, so high you wouldn't believe me if I tell you we got to pay twicet as much this year as ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... to try and wake you up myself,' said he. 'I'm reckoned middling good at waking people up where I come ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... over him; I watched the time poverty gave him a nip, and then I settled him into the business. He never was so good a worker as Martin; he is too fond of wasting his time talking vanities. But he is middling handy, and he is always steady and civil to customers. I have no complaint worth while to be making this last twenty years against Andrew. [ANDREW ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... other varieties common to the West. There is much level, table land, between the streams. Along the Wabash, below Terre Haute, is an undulating surface, diversified with forest and prairie, with a soil of middling quality, interspersed with some very rich tracts. Along the Wabash and its tributaries above Terre Haute, the land in general is first rate,—a large proportion forest, interspersed with beautiful ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... middling good. They ain't much odds atwixt 'em. But I see most fish movin' o' mornin's in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... it in middling order," said Mrs. Patton, humbly. "Me and Mis' Dockum have done the best we knew,—opened the windows and let in the air and tried to keep it from getting damp. I fixed all the woollens with fresh camphire and tobacco the last o' the winter; you have to ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... is very convenient for those who have but middling minds, for the obscurity of the distinctions and principles which they employ enables them to speak of all things as boldly as if they had knowledge of them, and sustain all they have to say against the most ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... and Tembinatake. Tembaitake, our king's father, was short, middling stout, a poet, a good genealogist, and something of a fighter; it seems he took himself seriously, and was perhaps scarce conscious that he was in all things the creature and nursling of his brother. There was no shadow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no scarlet fever. Nobody is ever sick there. They will be better cared for than my children are when they are left to me, and they will be seven hundred miles nearer to us than if they were here. The little ones can go to the Model School, the middling ones to the Academy, and the oldest can go to college. How ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... architecture of every window and turret; and the frost-like frailness and delicacy of the whole mass, make an effect altogether upon the eye that must stand high on the list of new sensations. It is a vast structure withal, but a middling easterly breeze, one would think on looking at it, would lift it from its base, and bear it over the Atlantic like the meshes of a cobweb. Neither interior nor exterior inspire you with the feelings of awe common to other large ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... throbbed. His whole soul sprang towards these phrases, so dazzling and revealing. He awoke from his long drowsiness. Before him shone a marvellous vision.... As this dialogue is lost, we can hardly to-day account for such enthusiasm, and we hold that the Roman orator was a very middling philosopher. We know, however, through Augustin himself, that the book contained an eloquent praise of wisdom. And then, words are naught without the soul of the reader; all this, falling into Augustin's soul, rendered a prolonged ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Socialism which has been knocking at all our heads and hearts so long. That is its vexation. It is a Government for the 'bus people, the first settled and serious Government that ever attempted their case. Its action is worth all the pedantry of the doctrinaires and the middling morals of the juste milieu; and I, who am a Democrat, will stand by it as long as I can stand, which isn't very long just now, as ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
