"Middling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thundered and rained incessantly; so that on the Monday morning the Taro was considerably swollen. At seven o'clock the King sent for De Comines, who found him already armed and mounted on the finest horse he had ever seen. The name of this charger was Savoy. He was black, one-eyed, and of middling height; and to his great courage, as we shall see, Charles owed life upon that day. The French army, ready for the march, now took to the gravelly bed of the Taro, passing the river at a distance of about a quarter of a league from the allies. As the French left Fornovo, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... could make capital out of the death of an old lady of seventy-three, who never did harm to anybody in the world except the miscreants and peace-breakers in the romances which she writes herself, who makes middling verses which can excite nobody's envy, who will have nothing to leave except the state dresses of an old maid who sometimes went to court, and a dozen or two well-bound books with gilt edges? And then you, Martiniere,—you may describe the stranger's appearance as frightful as you like, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the happy agricultural population of Norway 'much better lodged than our labouring and middling classes, even in the south of Scotland;' and that no nation was at that period either better housed, or so well provided with fuel. The standard of living appeared to be higher in Norway than in most of our Scotch highland districts, although the materials were the same, namely, oatmeal, barley ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... 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 grace and his unconquerable pride ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... middling epigrams found entrance into the anthology—he confesses the fact so the reader will not look for excellence without flaw. The reasons were, first, that the complete perfection he was looking for is seldom or never attained. Hence, ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... 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 when ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... first, early works, which were so full of spontaneous poetry, and his latest publications I had not liked at all. Speaking generally, if I may venture to express my opinion on so delicate a subject, all these talented gentlemen of the middling sort who are sometimes in their lifetime accepted almost as geniuses, pass out of memory quite suddenly and without a trace when they die, and what's more, it often happens that even during their lifetime, as soon as a new generation grows up and takes the place of the one in which they have flourished, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... method of philosophising 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 subtle and skilful without there being any means ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... "They be both 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
... 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 ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... picked up by one of them on his return; and all I could learn from him, concerning the tree itself, was, that it stood on the border of a rivulet, as described by the old priest; that it was of a middling size; that five or six young trees of the same kind stood close by it; but that no other shrub or plant could be seen near it; and that the ground was of a brownish sand, full of stones, almost impracticable for travelling, and covered ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... 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 ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... of a middling size, and the property of a peasant in Saxony. A little boy, the peasant's son, imagined that he perceived in the dog's voice an indistinct resemblance to certain words, and was, therefore, determined to teach him to speak distinctly. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... briskness of her tongue and attracted by the comeliness of her healthful youth. She had married the first man who proposed to her—a young insurance agent. Since then they had lived in a very comfortable, middling state of harmony, apparently on about the same social scale as Marietta's parents. That this feat was accomplished on a much smaller income was due to Marietta's unrivaled instinct and trained capacity for keeping ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Ramos Arispe, now an old man, and canon of the cathedral, but formerly deputy in the Spanish Cortes, and the most zealous supporter of the cause of independence. It is said that he owed the great influence which he had over men of a middling character, rather to his energetic, some say to his domineering disposition, than to genius; that he was clear-headed, active, dexterous, remarkable for discovering hidden springs and secret motives, and always keeping his subordinates zealously employed in his affairs. C—-n also visited the bishop, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... make about two volumes like little Pompadour, that is about one middling volume. The bargain which I made with Mr. Johnson was seventy five pounds (or guineas) a volume, and twenty five pounds for the second edition. I will sell this either at that price or for sixty[2], the first edition of which he shall ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... grief made a romantic and striking picture, and Sophia thought for an instant that she had at length encountered life on a plane that would correspond to her dreams of romance. And she was impressed, with a feeling somewhat akin to that of a middling commoner when confronted with a viscount. There was, in the distance, something imposing and sensational about that prone, trembling figure. The tragic works of love were therein apparently manifest, in a sort of dignified beauty. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... me—Silas Grant. Let me take your bag. My son John will be here in a minute, and will help you in with your trunk. Needn't worry, it's all right where it is. Folks are middling honest about here," he added, with a dry laugh, and his hand closed on his guest's—a cold limp, dead-fish sort of a ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sextons, hirelings of the lowest of the populace undertook the office for the sake of gain; and accompanied by only a few priests, and often without a single taper, it was borne to the very nearest church, and lowered into the first grave that was not already too full to receive it. Among the middling classes, and especially among the poor, the misery was still greater. Poverty or negligence induced most of these to remain in their dwellings or in the immediate neighborhood; and thus they fell by thousands; and many ended their lives in the streets ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... present ideas, in such an order, as to form true propositions and opinions. The reason of the difference certainly must be, that the memory is exerted without any sensation of pleasure or pain; and in all its middling degrees serves almost equally well in business and affairs. But the least variations in the judgment are sensibly felt in their consequences; while at the same time that faculty is never exerted in any eminent degree, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... timbered with oaks of various species, poplar, beech, sugar tree, walnuts, hickory, elm, and 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 prairies. The timber ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... 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 not ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... 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 he might ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... bribery it is, in whatever guise it may appear) that upholds one of the most glaring, the most oppressive of all monopolies, in the face of common sense, common justice and common decency. Other taxes are principally felt by the higher and middling classes; but this most odious, this most galling tax, is felt even in the cottage of the labourer, who cannot return to refresh himself after his day of toil with his favourite beverage without paying twice its value out of his hard-earned ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dinner of Richard II, for example, the king, the prelates, the nobles, the knights, and the rest of the company, danced in Westminster Hall to the music of the minstrels. The example of the court was followed by the middling classes, and so down to the lowest, and the whole nation was a dancing, jovial nation. He quotes a lively city picture of the times, given by Stow, which resembles the lively scenes one may often see in the gay city of Paris; for he tells us that on holidays, after evening prayers, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the rapidity of the throws, the glitter of the blades, the curve which the handles make towards their living aim, which give an air of danger to an exhibition that has become common-place, and only requires very middling skill. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 reply ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mighty Rome, Aricia received me in but a middling inn: Heliodorus the rhetorician, most learned in the Greek language, was my fellow-traveller: thence we proceeded to Forum-Appi, stuffed with sailors and surly landlords. This stage, but one for better travellers than we, being laggard we ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... "Robinson Crusoe," "The Vicar of Wakefield," and "Gulliver's Travels"; and though the mysteries of "Middle English" were hidden from us, my impression is we ran less chance of learning to write and speak the "middling English" of popular orators and headmasters than if we had been perfect in such mysteries and ignorant of those three masterpieces. It has been the fashion to decry the eighteenth century, as young fops laugh at their fathers. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the better and middling orders of the people. Were the lower, the more industrious, spared? Alas! as their situation was far more helpless, their oppression was infinitely more sore and grievous, the exactions yet more excessive, the demand yet more vexatious, more capricious, more arbitrary. To afford your Lordships ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "Middling," said the President. "By the way," he added, "if you have any money, it is usual to offer some champagne. It keeps up a good spirit, and is one of my ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nigger 'most five months on the Duluth house—and the last three weeks running night shifts and Sundays; didn't stop to eat, half the time—and what does Brown do but—'Well,' he says, 'how're you feeling, Charlie?' 'Middling,' said I. 'Are you up to a little job to-morrow?' 'What's that?' I said. 'Seems to me if I've got to go down to the Calumet job Sunday night I might have an hour or so at home.' 'Well, Charlie,' he says, 'I'm mighty sorry, but ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... conspicuous, for his poetical talents, of the brilliant circle which graced the court of John the Second, was John de Mena, a native of fair Cordova, "the flower of science and of chivalry," [27] as he fondly styles her. Although born in a middling condition of life, with humble prospects, he was early smitten with a love of letters; and, after passing through the usual course of discipline at Salamanca, he repaired to Rome, where, in the study of those immortal masters whose writings had but recently revealed the full capacities of a modern ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... respect, the author enrolled with honor;—whereas, had he sought in poetry or philosophy, in a novel or a drama, thus to occupy and celebrate himself with literature, the failure would have been signal, the attempt ignominious. There is, indeed, no safer investment for middling literary abilities than History; for, if it fail to yield any large harvest of renown, it is comparatively secure from the assaults of ridicule, such as make pretension in other spheres of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... savages that possess most of the sinister properties of their condition, with few or none of the redeeming qualities. His eye was lowering and distrustful, bespeaking equally apprehension and revenge; his form of that middling degree of perfection which leaves as little to admire as to condemn, and his attire such is denoted him one who might be ranked among the warriors of a secondary class. Still, in the composure of his mien, the tranquillity of his step, and the self-possession of all his movements, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... for freedom and equality aforesaid, what would have happened, I think, would have been this: that a certain part of the working classes would have been so far improved in condition that they would have approached the condition of the middling rich men; but below them would have been a great class of most miserable slaves, whose slavery would have been far more hopeless than the older ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... 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 ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Hyjauje, "thou art of an unnatural 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; for from ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Mrs. Haney, I'm not displaying these to you as a salesman—not that I'm so very delicate about offering my things, but I try to wait till a second visit." He really did feel mean about it. "Don't take 'em—wait till to-morrow. They're pretty middling bad anyway. They're supposed to be mountain lions, but as a matter of fact I never saw a mountain ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... well-kept roads and smooth railways, along which the enfeebled invalid can travel far without fatigue. I had now got greatly stronger; and, if not quite up to my old thirty miles per day, nor altogether so bold a cragsman as I had been only a few years before, I was at least vigorous enough to enjoy a middling long walk, and to breast a tolerably steep hill. And so I resolved on at least glancing over, if not exploring, the fossiliferous deposits of the Orkneys, trusting that an eye somewhat practised in the formations mainly developed in these islands might enable me to make some ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... more of a prison. You forget that I know all about that. We're all imprisoned, of course—all of us middling people, who don't carry our freedom in our brains. But we've accommodated ourselves to our different cells, and if we're moved suddenly into new ones we're likely to find a stone wall where we thought there was thin air, and ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... garden attached to it. All this belonged, under 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... 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 with ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... learns the way to make his fortune, the other loses time and health and life to no avail. An undermining evil lies here. Certainly a nation does not seem threatened with immediate dissolution because an able clerk is sent away and a middling sort of man replaces him. Unfortunately for the welfare of nations individual men never seem essential to their existence. But in the long run when the belittling process is fully carried out nations will disappear. Every one who seeks instruction on this point can look ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 bad mark for each offence, the first constituting ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... not justly that," answered Rachel: "but I reckoned they'd ha' looked a bit more like wastrels [scoundrels]. Yon lad's none so bad-looking as many a man you may meet i' th' street. And th' owd un's meterly [middling], too. Happen [perhaps] they aren't any ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... "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 worth ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... He has an impression that she is very well dressed, but she has a figure on which any dress would look well, and carries herself with the unaffected distinction of a woman who has never in her life suffered from those doubts and fears as to her social position which spoil the manners of most middling people. She is tall, slender, and strong; has dark hair, dressed so as to look like hair and not like a bird's nest or a pantaloon's wig (fashion wavering just then between these two models); has unexpectedly narrow, subtle, dark-fringed eyes ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 the United States, at a less cost ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... other in 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, turned ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... and going of the promenaders, who each formally paced back and 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had seen and heard enough devils for a lifetime. It’s easy to find out what Kanakas think. Just go back to yourself any way round from ten to fifteen years old, and there’s an average Kanaka. There are some pious, just as there are pious boys; and the most of them, like the boys again, are middling honest and yet think it rather larks to steal, and are easy scared and rather like to be so. I remember a boy I was at school with at home who played the Case business. He didn’t know anything, that boy; he couldn’t do anything; he had no luminous paint and no Tyrolean harps; he just boldly ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... founded on his own observations, and are, on the whole, favorable to the natives. The English, while wooding and watering, were surprised by the visit of eight men and a boy. They were unarmed, except that one of them carried a stick, pointed at the end. They were of middling stature, slender, and naked. On different parts of their bodies were ridges, both straight and curved, raised in the skin: the hair of the head and beard was smeared with red ointment. They were indifferent to presents; they ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... over there Saturday morning and bring back as many middling-sized ones as you can carry. You other fellows cut up pieces of string about as ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... goes about 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, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... early life, slight as it is, yet too strikingly suggestive to be left to chances which might await a private letter. Indeed, the character thus displayed is surely equal to that of the best of the old Romans, in the middling class of life, enlightened too by a living faith of which they had no conception; and the sketch gives fair warrant for the conclusion, that, in point of manly simplicity and integrity, the traits and the trials of those elder worthies who helped to settle our republican institutions ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... one of those evenings, "eleven boys beside the stand-by Jimsy. Fair to middling popularity, ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... into the round innocent face of his son, "that's the stuff the traders used to sell the Indians. Strong? Well, you might say it was middling strong—just middling—about three drops of it would make a rabbit spit in a ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... appeared, out of Moorthorne Road, from behind the Wesleyan Chapel-keeper's house. And as it appeared it burst into music. First a purple banner, upheld on crimson poles with gilded lance-points; then a brass band in full note; and then children, children, children—little, middling, and big. As the procession curved down into Trafalgar Road, it grew in stature, until, towards the end of it, the children were as tall as the adults who walked fussily as hens, proudly as peacocks, on its flank. And last came a railway lorry on which dozens of tiny infants ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... should be read aloud. When the reader comes to the "great big bear," or to any thing he says or does, he (the reader) should read in a loud gruff voice; all about the "middling sized bear," in the ordinary voice; and all about the "tiny bit of a bear," in a high ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... operations. But though they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upward of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upward of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... 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. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... "Middling," said the boatswain grudgingly. "Might be better; might be wuss. But look here, young fellow; I don't ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... and drove out to the village of Drumalee. The land is middling good as far as the eye can judge. This neighborhood abounds with small lakes. Here for the first time I saw lads going to fish with the primitive fishing rods peculiar to country boys. The country round here is full of people and there is no appearance of extreme ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... "Middling down in the mouth, too, and plagued out of his life between the ruck of you," continued Pete; "but God forgive you ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... 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 ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... years of lamentable experience of, a vicious system of voting, the members of the Convention went calmly on their way, accepting as a matter of course the crude and haphazard methods known to them, the unscientific system of voting so dear to the heart of the "middling" politician and the party intriguer. I believe Mr. Glynn alone raised his voice in favour of proportional representation, in the Convention, as he has done consistently in every representative assembly of ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... persons could do it," replied Cyrilla—"a dull person—a plodder—and a genius. Middling people—they're the kind that fill the world, they're you and I, my dear—middling people have to fuss with the trifles that must be sacrificed if one is to do anything big. You call those trifles your freedom, but they're your slavery. And by sacrificing them the Lucia Rivis buy their ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... novels—is to exhibit the miseries of the poor; the conventionalisms, hypocrisies, and feebleness of the rich; the religious doubts of the strong, and the miserable delusions and superstitions of the weak; the mammon-worship of the middling and upper classes, and the angry humility of the masses. The story is very slight, but sufficient for the effective presentation of the author's opinions. The best characters are an Irish parson, a fox-hunting squire and his commonplace worldly wife, and a thoughtless and reckless ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... carpeted flight of steps, and a bed-room prepared for the ladies to uncloak in, and another in which the men can brush their hair and hide their hats. Some such snuggeries very possibly exist in England, among the middling classes; but I believe all over the continent of Europe style is never attempted without more suitable means to carry ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... no harm in them ones. What the sergeant said to the gentleman Patsy the smith couldn't hear but it was maybe half an hour after when the sergeant went home again and he had a look on him like a man that was middling well satisfied. Patsy the smith saw him for he was in the ditch when he passed, terrible sick, retching the way he thought the whole of his liver would be out on the road before he'd done. Well, there was no more happened last night; but it wasn't ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... right bank of the Namtoroan, is situated on an extensive open grassy plain, it is stockaded: it contains about 12 houses, the river is here navigable for middling ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... modest, and of few words; and Cooke, the writer of his life, observes that he was very reserved among those whom he did not know, but a most delightful and improving companion among his friends. John Aubrey, who knew him personally, thus describes him: 'He was of a middling stature, pretty strong set, roundish cherry-checked, hazle-eyed, brown-haired.' He was (as Wood also says) in conversation very modest, and of a very few words. He was wont to say, that he would not drink ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... intoxicating liquors among other nations, is a species of luxury which all ranks adopt according to their ability, and which, when once become habitual, it is almost impossible to shake off. Being however like other luxuries expensive, few only among the lower or middling class of people can compass the regular enjoyment of it, even where its use is not restrained, as it is among the pepper-planters, to the times of their festivals. That the practice of smoking opium must be in some degree prejudicial ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... thrown back from his face, to see if he gave any token of jeering or malice, but could see nought such: nay, his face was grave and serious, not ill-fashioned, though it were both long and broad like his body: his cheek-bones somewhat high, his eyes grey and middling great, and looking, ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... favourable circumstances, never to turn him out at all." That is to say, never give him poor food: great energy and endurance are to be obtained only by the continued use of nutritive food. So true is this that, as proved by Mr. Apperley, prolonged high-feeding enables a middling horse to equal, in his performances, a first-rate horse fed in the ordinary way. To which various evidences add the familiar fact that, when a horse is required to do double duty, it is the practice to give him beans—a food ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... being composed of chalk and pasteboard. Round it are courts of treillage, that 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 ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... was still a middling young fellow, only about a thousand years old or so, he went walking up and down the earth one night, ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... of middling height and very slenderly built, with a pair of dreamy blue eyes set in the oval of a face whose pallor was rendered more effective by a patch at the corner of his mouth. His coat, of a fine blue satin laced ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... have to be sold in order to pay his debts. When all was settled, Edwin Gurwood found himself cast upon his own resources with good health, a kind but wayward disposition, a strong handsome frame, a middling education, and between three and four hundred pounds in his pocket. He soon found that this amount of capital melted with alarming rapidity under the influence of a good appetite and expensive tastes, so he resolved at once to commence work of some kind. But what was he to turn ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... Quillan asked Balmordan. "Are we to understand that you also would be interested in the purchase of a middling plasmoid or two?" ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... wild and remote part of the country, in which there was nothing to be seen but long barren wastes, over which were studded, here and there, a few solitary huts; upon its extremity, however, there were some houses of a more comfortable description, the habitations of middling farmers, who possessed small farms at a moderate rent. As they went along, the prelate addressed Reilly in ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... passed away, and during the passage of that period March Marston's bosom became a theatre in which, unseen by the naked eye, were a legion of spirits, good, middling, and bad, among whom were hope, fear, despair, joy, fun, delight, interest, surprise, mischief, exasperation, and a military demon named General Jollity, who overbore and browbeat all the rest by turns. These scampered through his brain and tore up his heart and tumbled about ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 want for ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... "Middling, boss," the worthy fellow answered: "just keeping up, you know. And how's yourself? And the work? When shall you finish? I don't know if you know it, but these trains stopping regularly in my section give me an ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... barrister's own admission, 'he fairly kept up at saddle-skirts' even with Curran. Notwithstanding this compliment, his pretensions to wit appear to have been but slender; the best sayings attributed to him being a set of middling puns, of which the following is a favourable selection:—When Langdale's distillery was plundered, during the riots of 1780, he asked why the proprietor had not defended his property. 'He did not possess the means to do so,' was the reply. 'Not the means of defence!' exclaimed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... mountains above the level of the sea, has not yet been determined; but I should imagine that it cannot exceed four thousand feet. For the first ten or twelve miles they are tolerably well clothed with timber, and produce occasionally some middling pasture; but beyond this they are excessively barren, and are covered generally with a thick brush, interspersed here and there with a few miserable stunted gums. They bear, in fact, a striking similarity, both in respect to their soil and productions, to the barren wastes ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... she had established more definite means of communication. Gibbie, for his part, full of the holy simplicities of the cottage, had a good many things to meet which disappointed, perplexed, and shocked him. Middling good people are shocked at the wickedness of the wicked; Gibbie, who knew both so well, and what ought to be expected, was shocked only at the wickedness of the righteous. He never came quite to understand Mr. Sclater: the inconsistent never can be understood. That ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... length of time. Even bleating it seemed to me was better than acquiescence in a crime against humanity. So to get heart to bleat at Milan I snatched at ten days in the Swiss mountains en route. A tour with some taciturn guide involving a few middling climbs and glacier excursions seemed the best way of recuperating. I had never had any time for Switzerland since my first exile there years ago. I took the advice of a man in the club whose name I now forget—if ever I knew it, a dark man with a scar—and went up to the Schwarzegg ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... and flesh, which afforded relief from the pressure of hunger, "and made," say the missionaries, "all our hearts leap for joy;" and on the succeeding day, the whole party set off for the whale. When they reached it they found it of the middling size, about sixty-four feet long, but covered with ice and snow almost a fathom deep. The Esquimaux, however, crept into the mouth and cut off what they wanted from the interior to supply themselves; but the wants of the brethren were only increased, they could make little ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... George to begin his march. "I am desired to let you know," he writes to the Marquis of Tullibardine, "that there is one Kimber, an anabaptist, who came from London with a design to assassinate the Prince; he is about twenty-seven years old, black hair, of a middling stature, and talks fluently and bluntly about his travels in the West Indies." This man, it was suspected, afterwards changed his name to Geffreys. He was supposed to have even been received by the Marquis of Tullibardine at his table, and to have obtained a pass from him; but nothing more ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... of their ancestors in the next world. Medicine, as still practised in China, may be compared with the European art of a couple of centuries ago, and its exceedingly doubtful results are fully appreciated by patients at large. "No medicine," says one proverb, "is better than a middling doctor;" while another points out that "Many sons of clever ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the haughty Captain, and he hollowed for the First Lieutenant to come and put me in irons. I asked him what he was there for, and he told me that it was "none of my business." I then got pretty middling hot myself, and I told him that if he did not know his business, that it was "up to me" to "put you next," or words to that extent. I told him that he was there for the purpose of furnishing escorts for the United ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... 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 ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Billings, then, was part owner of a manufactory of metal buttons, forty years old, of middling height, ordinarily quiet and rather shy, but with a large share of latent warmth and enthusiasm in his nature. His hair was brown, slightly streaked with gray, his eyes a soft, dark hazel, forehead square, eyebrows straight, nose of no very marked ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... non Di, non concessere columnae.' 'But God and man, and letter'd post denies That poets ever are of middling size.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... were here before. Toward noon we procured horses, and rode out to the Carmel Mission, which is about a league from the town, where we got something in the way of a dinner— beef, eggs, frjoles, tortillas, and some middling wine— from the mayor-domo, who, of course, refused to make any charge, as it was the Lord's gift, yet received our present, as a gratuity, with a low bow, a touch of the hat, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... had just uttered came from a heart as generous as it was humane. "But would not your thoughts change with your fortune? Are you certain, that in an exalted station you should preserve the sentiments which now animate you in that middling state, in which it has ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... gentility as the young men. There were as many people as are usually collected at a muster, or on similar occasions, lounging about, without any apparent enjoyment; but the observation of this may serve me to make a sketch of the mode of spending the Sabbath by the majority of unmarried, young, middling-class people, near a great town. Most of the people had smart ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 taking off his hat when he came in. I had never seen him ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... voted against him, and the company gave you the position you wanted without making any fuss about it, and presented you with a splendid sword, and all those things made Randolph pretty middling mad, I can ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... glories in which Mary had no part. If the parlour furniture with its tidies and a Rogers group in the front window sometimes got on her nerves she forced herself to laugh over it and say: "It's mother's house, and all she has." She concerned herself far more with Luke, an active, fair-to-middling American boy somewhat inclined to be spoiled. Mary had taken Luke into the office after school hours to keep a weather eye on him and make him contribute a ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... placing the elementary stage first. One of the Tantras or ritual scriptures of Modern Hinduism, the Mahanirv[a]na Tantra, thus explains the three stages in the path and their respective merits: "The knowledge that Brahma alone is true is the best expedient; meditation is the middling [ the means?]; and (2) the chanting of glories and the recitation of names is the worst; and (3) the worship of idols is the worst of the worst.[128] Of the pantheist's "saving knowledge," perhaps enough has been said. But again, it is the piercing of the veil ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... of Checking 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
... 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 Prune pudding Pudding catchup Pumpkin, to boil Pumpkin ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... a flowered silk tabby sacque, on band days,' said Toole, who had an eye and a corner in his memory for female costume, 'a fine showy—I remember.' 'Well, middling: that's she.' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... she's strapp'd and muzzled too 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 ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan |
