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Construct   /kənstrˈəkt/  /kˈɑnstrəkt/   Listen
Construct

noun
1.
An abstract or general idea inferred or derived from specific instances.  Synonyms: concept, conception.



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"Construct" Quotes from Famous Books



... said Challenger. "For some days I have exerted my whole brain force upon the problem of how we shall descend from these cliffs. We have satisfied ourselves that we cannot climb down and that there is no tunnel. We are also unable to construct any kind of bridge which may take us back to the pinnacle from which we came. How then shall I find a means to convey us? Some little time ago I had remarked to our young friend here that free hydrogen was evolved from the geyser. The idea of a balloon naturally ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... could not hope that the brig could swim many hours longer, and should she go down, they had nothing on which to float; the boats were gone, not a spar remained. There were the hatches, certainly; but there would scarcely be time to construct a ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... Blenheim resounded through every part of Europe: it at once destroyed the vast fabric of power which it had taken Louis XIV., aided by the talents of Turenne, and the genius of Vauban, so long to construct."—ALISON. ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... reason why the sailors fought even in the presence of death by drowning. It seems that Don Alonso had been warned by a deserting negro that the buccaneers were building a fire ship, but he deemed it impossible that they should construct one that would menace the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... sketch of anemology wishes it may incite some person of greater leizure and ability to attend to this subject, and by comparing the various meteorological journals and observations already published, to construct a more accurate and methodical treatise on this interesting ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... in 1893 the Russians obtained a concession to construct a carriage-road from Piri-Bazaar via Resht to Kasvin, an extension to Hamadan, and the purchase of the road from Kasvin to Teheran, which was already in existence. Nominally the concession was ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... exceptionally inviting cushions, and employ it to inculcate modesty and diffidence. I defy any human being to get out of that chair, feeling as important as when he got into it. What the dear boy has done has been to construct an automatic exponent of the transitory nature of human greatness. As a moral agency that chair should ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... constant assumption that the history of Greek sculpture is a continuous evolution. Even when the development is checked, as by the Dorian invasion, the element of continuity is emphasized. The Dorians construct new forms out of the elements which they find already established in Greece. Thus the connecting links evincing the continuous flow, are not lost sight of when he comes to treat of the different schools. This regard for the general ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... of the recorders we can compute their fields of force, and from that point it is only a step to their method of liberating the energy. We shall build robots. They shall build other robots, who shall in turn construct another planetoid; one this time that, wielding the theoretical maximum of power, will ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... movement too, as this by Virchow. Only inquiry is to be free and not teaching! And where in the whole history of science is there one single scientific inquirer to be found who would not have felt himself quite justified in teaching his own subjective convictions with as much right as he had to construct them from inquiry into objective facts. And where, generally speaking, is the limit to be found between objective and subjective knowledge? Is there, in ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... story to a reasonable conclusion. Failing in this, I was going to try and discover what style of man it was she admired most, what might be her ideas of the romance in which she would most like to figure, and all that, so that I could give Harley a few points which would enable him so to construct his romance that his heroine would walk through it as easily and as docilely as one could wish. Finally, all other things failing, I was going to throw Harley on her generosity, call attention to the ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs

... I had suffered much discomfort from the illustrated record of their adventures in the comic papers. "Is there really," I had often asked myself, "a body of men so gifted that they can construct the impossible details of the lives of nonexistent types purely from imagination? If such creative genius as theirs is unrecognized and ignored, what hope of recognition is there for one's own work?" The thought had frequently ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... respectful thing. We know him elsewhere capable of essaying heights, yet we seem to look down upon the drama of his heart. It may be well to remember that the level is not everything in love. He who carefully adjusts an intellectual machine may descry a higher mark; he can construct nothing in a mistress; he is, therefore, able to see the facts and to discriminate the desirable. But Lorne loved with all his imagination. This way dares the imitation of the gods by which it improves the quality of the passion, so that such a love stands ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... moral revolt, and it was led by a man who knew in his own experience that not only the ethical but the emotional life of the spirit was possible without dependence on the church of Rome. But neither Luther nor any of the reformers were men of spiritual originality. Driven to construct a new creed, they simply worked over the old dogmas, divesting them of the keys of priestly power—the Mass, the confessional, absolution, Purgatory, and the like; and giving infallible authority to the Bible only. A war of creeds ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... bringing pressure to bear on Japan with a view of obtaining trading facilities and the opening up of the country generally. The Japanese statesmen of those days were wise enough to see that unless Japan was to be permanently under the tutelage of the European Powers, it was necessary for her to construct a fleet and army on European lines. Soon afterwards a naval school, under Dutch instructors, was established at Nagasaki, and a certain number of selected officers and men were sent to Europe to undergo a course of instruction, and several war-vessels were ordered from Holland. ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... to construct a sentence for the priest, who was standing nodding by them: "Are there any pretty walks in ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor

... their agents, from the lowest to the highest, are there indicated and classed according to their prerogatives and relations. Nor have we there a mere empty nomenclature, a phantom of theory; things go on actually as they are described—the book is the reflex of the reality. It were easy to construct, for the empire of Charlemagne, a similar list of officers; there might be set down in it dukes, counts, vicars, centeniers, and sheriffs (seabini), and they might be distributed, in regular gradation, over the whole territory; but it would ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... being for use, and not show. Mr. Gladstone knew what books he had and was familiar with their contents. Some books were in frequent use, but others were not forgotten. He could put his hand on any one he wanted to refer to. At the end of a volume read he would construct an index of his own by which he could find passages to which ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... copied the name, for it was indelibly photographed upon my brain. As I walked along the street I tried to construct the personality of Mrs. Egerton Purvis from her card. But I was able to make no rational deductions, except that the name sounded aristocratic, and was quite in keeping with the general effect of the ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... victims, these morally distorted patients bear about their deformities in the most conspicuous manner, as if they were rare beauties. So pagan nations, when they embody their ideas of superhuman attributes, often construct figures having several heads or hands, or enormously enlarge some particular member of the frame, fancying that they thus express ideas of wisdom or power more perfectly than they could by forming a figure whose parts should all present a ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... imperceptible rise from both sides to the middle, without any appearance of mountains or hills.) and it receives, near the Indian village of San Fernando, the waters of the Rio Juanillo. It has been several times proposed to the government, but without success, to construct a dyke at the first ipure, in order to form artificial irrigations in the plain of Charas; for, notwithstanding its apparent sterility, the soil is extremely productive, wherever humidity is combined with the heat of the climate. The cultivators were gradually to refund the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... admitted by Owen in his most interesting work on the 'Nature of Limbs.' On the ordinary view of the independent creation of each being, we can only say that so it is;—that it has so pleased the Creator to construct each ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... objected to this, that it is an admission of the power which is claimed for flunkeyism, we can only meet the charge by saying that there is much of the flunkey in man, and that whoso shall endeavor to construct a government without recognizing a truth which is universal, though not great, will find that his structure can better be compared to the Syrian flower than to the Syrian cedar. The age of Model Republics has passed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... all the rain water, or it should be graded to drain the surface water off the farm. The mound is best when constructed close adjoining the ditch, or else it should be steep so that it will be difficult to scale. It is customary to construct this kind of fence along the public roads or along streams. In the district of Crustumeria one can see in many places along the via Salaria ditches and mounds constructed as dikes against damage by the river (Tiber).[70] Mounds are some times built without ditches and are called ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... children to write, we should begin by collecting and comparing all the careless and hasty handwritings of the middle class and deduce from them the prevalent forms of the letters in that state of degradation. From this we should construct in our 'style B' the alphabet which we should contend to be the genuine natural product of inevitable law, and hallowed by 'general use', and this we should give to our children to copy and learn, relegating the ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... should act is Nature's principle—saving the children through their mothers. Expectant motherhood must be taken care of; we must feed, not the child, but the nursing mother, and the child through her. If we rightly take care of her, she will construct a perfect food for the child. There is no other path of racial safety. It is not our present concern to deal with the problems of infancy and childhood as they require, and surely we need not wait to prove ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... I have understood you aright, you will construct your aerial ship of your new metal, and apply your new power to give motion to her ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... apparel but not bedizened with finery; her ornaments were costly, rare, and such as could not fail to attract notice, but they did not look as though worn with that purpose. She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never descended to construct a decoration. But when we have said that Mrs. Stanhope knew how to dress and used her knowledge daily, we have said all. Other purpose in life she had none. It was something, indeed, that she did not interfere with the purposes of others. In early life she had undergone ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... the assumption that the process of reading is not a half-sleep, but, in highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical essay—the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or frame-work. Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does. That were to make a nation of supple and athletic minds, well-train'd, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... verb "to build" (O.E. byldan) is apparently connected with O.E. bold, a dwelling, of Scandinavian origin; cf. Danish bol, a farm, Icelandic bol, farm, abode. Skeat traces it eventually to Sanskrit bhu, to be, build meaning "to construct a place in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... guardian. The responsibility was then entirely theirs, and he merely obeyed their directions in preparing any necessary legal documents. But as soon as the guardianship had expired, he knew that in order to be of use in helping Macomer to rob his ward, he should be obliged to artificially construct the instruments needed, in such a way as to appear legal to the world. In such business, forgery could not be far off. The man had himself to think of as well as mere money, and at the point where the smallest illegality of action on his ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... feet, six inches in height and six feet, five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions that Dame Nature with all her sex's ingenuity would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between the shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordered by Providence, seeing that he was a man ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... beautiful compositions and pictures, which have added to the knowledge and celebrity of the English School, he modelled like a sculptor, carved ornaments in wood with great delicacy, and could make an architectural design in a fine taste, as well as construct every part of ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... the soil which they got from the cutting was made into bricks, and when a sufficient number were completed they baked the bricks in kilns. Then they set to building, and began with bricking the borders of the moat, after which they proceeded to construct the wall itself, using throughout for their cement hot bitumen, and interposing a layer of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of the bricks. On the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... When at the close of the sixteenth century the Frenchman, Rene Descartes, sought to construct philosophy anew and upon secure foundations, he too selected as the initial certainty of thought the thinker's knowledge of himself. This principle now received its classic formulation in the proposition, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... art of man is able to construct monuments far more permanent than the narrow span of his own existence; yet these monuments, like himself, are perishable and frail; and in the boundless annals of time his life and his labors must equally be measured as a fleeting moment. Of a simple and solid edifice ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... complete ribbon of black and white stripes encircling the lower neck and the narrower one which crosses the throat. The back is spotted with white. In some sections Loons build no nest, simply scooping a hollow out in the sand, while in other places they construct quite a large nest of sticks, moss and grasses. It is usually placed but a few feet from the waters edge, so that at the least suspicion the bird can slide off its eggs into the water, where it can cope with ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... such as to obviate time-lag. We must evaluate the factors already mentioned and many others, such as the reactivation of the spacecraft which was thought to have been destroyed so long ago. After having considered all these evaluations, I will construct a Minor Plan to destroy these Omans, whom we have permitted to exist on sufferance, and with them that shipload of ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith

... peoples, the Toba possessed a myth according to which their ancestors came into the world from a sacred grotto. The Buddhists took advantage of this conception to construct, with money from the emperor, the vast and famous cave-temple of Yuen-kang, in northern Shansi. If we come from the bare plains into the green river valley, we may see to this day hundreds of caves cut out of the steep cliffs of the river bank. Here monks lived in ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... name, and the majority of people undoubtedly used it until 1862. Officially, also, it was known as Lake Bigler in 1862, for in the Nevada Statutes there is recorded an Act approved December 19, 1862, authorizing certain parties to construct a railroad "to be known as the Lake Bigler and Virginia Railroad Co., to commence at a point on the Kingsbury-McDonald road known as the Kingsbury and McDonald Toll House, thence along the southern and eastern shores of Lake Bigler, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... hearth, closing a window whence she imagined a draught proceeded, and often and restlessly glancing at her. Shirley resumed: "Having destroyed your plan," she said, "which I hope I have done, I shall construct a new one of my own. Every summer I make an excursion. This season I propose spending two months either at the Scotch lochs or the English lakes—that is, I shall go there provided you consent to accompany me. If you refuse, I shall ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... descended from the ape," said Munchausen. "There isn't any doubt in my mind that before the flood all men had tails. Noah had a tail. Shem, Ham, and Japheth had tails. It's perfectly reasonable to believe it. The Ark in a sense proved it. It would have been almost impossible for Noah and his sons to construct the Ark in the time they did with the assistance of only two hands apiece. Think, however, of how fast they could work with the assistance of that third arm. Noah could hammer a clapboard on to the Ark with two ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs

... the time required to people the whole extent of the territory where their remains are found, and bring that people into a condition to construct such monuments, and when we reflect on the interval that must have passed after their construction until the epoch of their abandonment, we are constrained to accord them a ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... making of blue prints formed the subject of an article in No. 51, Vol. II. —NINTH AVENUE. Interesting articles on the subject of electricity have been presented in Nos. 3 and 4, Vol. VI, and 16, Vol. VII. —SUBSCRIBER. An ingenious, painstaking boy can construct a very neat aeolian harp by following out the directions given in No. 16 of the fifth volume. —COPPERHEAD. 1. The drawing of the binder shows considerable ingenuity, and is doubtless novel and useful enough to warrant patenting. 2. One of the simplest and best forms of the canvas canoe ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... "Malt-Shovel Inn" is a rather decayed structure in Warwick, with its ancient porch protruding over the street, while some of the buildings, deranged in the lower stories by the acute angles at which the streets cross, have oblique gables above stairs that enabled the builders to construct the upper rooms square. This is a style of construction peculiar to Warwick, and adds to the oddity of this somnolent old town, that seems to have been practically asleep ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... be indispensable, it must be allowed to be legitimate. Nor can this approval of our interference be restricted to selections. It must be extended to additions. Just as we can select factors from 'the given' to construct 'reality,' we can add hypotheses to it to make it 'intelligible.' We can claim the right of causal analysis, and assume that our dissections have laid bare the inner springs of the connection of ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray

... general outlines. The materials are copious, but I can only state a few events that mark the changes in its civilization. That it was once occupied by a race now entirely extinct is evidenced by numerous mounds, earthworks and lines of fortifications so extensive as to have required to construct them a dense population with a knowledge of mathematics far beyond that of any tribe or race existing on the American continent, when discovered by Columbus. The works of the mound builders can be seen, and have been described, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... only through processes as various as themselves: hair seen as colour is best imitated with paint, hair seen as form with twisted metal wire. It is as impossible to embody certain perceptions in some stages of handicraft as it would be to construct a complex machine in a rudimentary condition of mechanics. Certain modes of vision require certain methods of painting, and these require certain kinds of surface and pigment. Until these exist, a man may see correctly, but he cannot reproduce ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... to construct this pilgrim's birth and boyhood and youth from his after-character and conversation; and we have no difficulty at all in doing that. For, if the child is the father of the man, then the man must be the outcome of ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... different degrees were fixed first to the number of seven by the example of the Grand Architect of the Universe, who built all things in six days and rested on the seventh. This is distinguished by seven points of reception in the Master's degrees. Enoch employed six days to construct the arches, and on the seventh, having deposited the secret treasure in the lowest arch, was translated to the abodes of the blessed. Solomon employed six years in constructing his temple; and celebrated its ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... Because the word in this passage can be derived from nadan, they construct from that a prodigious meaning. My spirit, they say, shall not be held back as in a sheath. They mean the spirit of man contained in the body as in a sheath. I shall not leave it in a sheath, they say, but I shall remove him and destroy the sheath. Such absurdities originate ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... a mechanical genius, so mother set him to making little chairs, which he readily sold, but he liked better to construct fire engines, which were quite wonderful but brought no money. He had a splendid physique, was honorable and faithful, and if mother had been guided by natural instinct in governing him, all would have been well; but he never met the requirements of the elders of ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... through the day has led along the banks of a crystal mountain stream, sparkling with trout. The path is smooth for the moccasined feet. The limbs, inured to action, experienced no weariness. The axes of the father and the sons speedily construct a camp, open to the south and perfectly sheltered on the roof and on the sides by the bark of trees. The busy fingers of the daughters have in the meantime spread over the floor a soft and fragrant carpet of evergreen twigs. The mother is preparing supper, of trout from the stream, and the fattest ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... cannot but be favorable to us, for we are naturally sceptical of mediation on the part of a statesman so partial to England, and at the same time so naive as President Wilson. This necessarily follows on the consideration that the President would primarily be concerned to construct peace on the basis of the status quo ante, and particularly in respect of Belgium. Although there is to-day little on which to form an estimate as to how far we shall be in a position to bring about a solution in conformity with our own interests to the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... privileges, and vested with a sweep of properties beside which those of the petty industrial bosses were puny. Railroad owners, we say; the distinction is necessary between the builders of the railroads and the owners. The one might construct, but it often happened that by means of cunning, fraud and corruption, the builders were superseded by another set of men who vaulted ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... is a mistake to encourage people to go on the land after the time for the spring work has passed. I mean by this that under our conditions the settler has to construct a small house and do some brushing and clearing in order to grow vegetables for himself and a small amount of winter ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek

... springs, escapements, oil, &c., which the watch's conception has been supposed to attribute to him; inasmuch as all these parts must have existed as distinct ideas in the human watchmaker's mind before he could actually construct the clock formed by him. Nor is even this all, for, by the hypothesis, the watch thinks. It must, therefore, think of its maker as "a thinking being," and in this it is absolutely and completely ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... lapwing; but she, like the lapwing, gradually increased the distance between them, till he gave up the pursuit with some disappointment, and returned to his brother and sister. More ambitious than they, he proceeded to construct—chiefly for the sake of the moat he intended to draw around it—a sand-castle of considerable pretensions; but the advancing tide drove him from his stronghold before he had begun to dig the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... appreciation of what is meant by the Rational Social Will. Man, his instincts, the degree of his intelligence and self- control, the history of the development of human societies, cannot be ignored. It is the weakness of good men, endowed with a high degree of speculative intelligence, to construct Utopias, and to tabulate the "rights of man," or, as Bentham well expressed it, to make lists of "anarchical fallacies." [Footnote: See Works, Bowring's Edition, Volume II.] Thus, some may, with Plato and Aristotle, advocate infanticide. The Greek city-state ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... prophetic. It is probable that among his chemical discoveries he re-invented gunpowder. It is certain that he divined the properties of a lens, and diving deep into experimental and mechanical sciences, actually foresaw the time when, in his own words, "men would construct engines to traverse land and water with great speed and carry with them persons and merchandise." Clearly in his dreams Bacon saw the Atlantic not merely explored, but on its bosom the White Star liners breaking records, contemptuous of its angriest seas. He saw, too, a future Dumont circling ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... was at the feet of George in an instant. Tom could not keep his hands still, as he had also learned to play the instrument, and ventured to suggest that he would like to assist in building a bass viol, and not to be outdone Ralph offered to construct a flute. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... that brought about a stirring up of old history, for many and humorous had been Toby's attempt to construct a flying machine, and also a parachute that would save the lives of daring aeronauts when their engines gave out a mile or two up ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... remarkable. He disapproved of parentheses; and I believe in all his voluminous writings, not half a dozen of them will be found. He never used the phrases the former and the latter, having observed, that they often occasioned obscurity; he therefore contrived to construct his sentences so as not to have occasion for them, and would even rather repeat the same words, in order to avoid them[596]. Nothing is more common than to mistake surnames when we hear them carelessly uttered for the first time. To prevent this, he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... an indefinite period—the purchase of Louisiana: in Mr. Madison's, the United States Bank again, the power of the federal government over the militia of a state—the right of that government to construct roads: in Mr. Monroe's, the right in congress to pass the bankrupt law—to lay a duty on imports for the encouragement of manufactures—to appropriate money for the relief of the poor of the district of Columbia: and in Mr. John Quincy Adams's, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... once witnessed the same strange occurrence. I was not six years old when I was waiting at the side of a deep pond, and watching my brother, four years older, construct a raft, with which he had promised to come over and take me a-sailing. He put a number of boards loosely together, and using a shingle for a paddle, worked out from shore and began making his way toward me, who was in high ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... one better preserved, called the Theseum, stands on a lower hill. There are also similar ruins in many places along the shores of the Mediterranean. The most interesting are at Paestum in Italy, and at Girgenti in Sicily. Long before these temples were ruined they had taught the Romans how to construct one of the most beautiful kinds of buildings, and this the Romans later taught ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... kindergarten teaching to-day centers about the development of the child's own impulses and interests. Of these the two most noticeable are the tendency to play and the tendency to construct. Even if a mother had no higher motive than to keep her little child out of mischief she would welcome a treasury of devices that will always be at hand to answer the question, "Mother, what shall I do now?" But most mothers appreciate the value and importance of well directed play ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... I presume, see in any one who interests them, not so much what is there, as a reflection of what they construct from the hints that have pleased them. Some of them it takes a miserable married lifetime to undeceive; for some, not even that will serve; they continue to see, if not an angel, yet a very pardonable mortal, therefore altogether loveable man, in the husband in whom everybody else sees only a vile ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... surrounding us. It would be all right if, with our pessimism, we renounced life, went to live in a cave, or made haste to die, but, as it is, in obedience to the universal law, we live, feel, love women, bring up children, construct railways!" ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... office, during the first six months of Desroches' installation, on a winter evening when the work had been got through more quickly than usual, and the clerks were warming themselves before the fire preparatory to departure, it came into Godeschal's head to construct and compose a Register "architriclino-basochien," of the utmost antiquity, saved from the fires of the Revolution, and derived through the procureur of the Chatelet-Bordin, the immediate predecessor of Sauvaguest, the attorney, from whom Desroches had bought his practice. The work, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... that time Prof. Benjamin Peirce had not published his "Explanations of the Navigator and Almanac," so that Maria was obliged to consult many scientific books and reports before she could herself construct the astronomical tables. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... coerce, constrain, require, necessitate, occasion, oblige; create, construct, fabricate manufacture, compose, invent, prepare, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... of these observations to an intelligent mind must be clearly this, that if it be possible at any rate to construct a federal government capable of regulating the common concerns and preserving the general tranquillity, it must be founded, as to the objects committed to its care, upon the reverse of the principle contended for by the opponents of the proposed Constitution. It must carry ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... which we allow 1 1/4deg. of freedom at the acting edge of the fork; the face of the ruby pin is therefore on this line. The next thing to do is to find the center of the pin. From the side n of the slot we construct the right angle o n t; from n, we transmit 1/2 the width of the pin, and plant the center x on the line n t. We can have the center of the pin slightly below this line, but in no case above it; but if we put it below, the pin will be thinner and therefore ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner

... Petrovitch. 'You deny everything; or, speaking more precisely, you destroy everything.... But one must construct too, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... warriors," Aska said. "We are but children in the art of war beside them, and methinks it would be difficult indeed for us to construct such a machine, though mayhap it could be done had we with us many men skilled in the making of chariots. But sometimes, Beric, they must have occasion to attack places where such machines could ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... to construct a map showing the geographical distribution of the serf population, we should at once perceive that serfage radiated from Moscow. Starting from that city as a centre and travelling in any direction towards ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... going to clothe you each in human form, marvelously and beautifully made, the highest work of my hands. Some of you shall be men. To these men I will give the task of labor in the fields, of warfare with wild beasts. It shall be your duty to subdue wildernesses, and to construct and defend a dwelling-place for this other one whom I am going to make a woman. Therefore I shall give you men large bones to deal strong blows, and a heavy skull to withstand the like. I shall give you courage and physical power and audacity ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... fabricate, manufacture, bring about, construct, fashion, occasion, bring into being, create, force, perform, bring to pass, do, frame, reach, cause, effect, get, render, compel, establish, make out, require, compose, execute, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... telescope on Long's Peak. You know that it brings the moon to within two leagues only of the Rocky Mountains, and that it allows them to see objects having nine feet of diameter on her surface. Well, our industrious friends will construct a gigantic alphabet! They will write words 600 feet long, and sentences a league long, and then ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... It will be seen hereafter(67) that there are weighty scientific reasons for giving to every science as much of the character of a Deductive Science as possible; for endeavoring to construct the science from the fewest and the simplest possible inductions, and to make these, by any combinations however complicated, suffice for proving even such truths, relating to complex cases, as could be proved, if we chose, by inductions ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... convention of the Alliance was held at Ocala, Florida, and the Ocala platform was published. This meeting recommended the so-called sub-treasury plan by which the Federal Government was to construct warehouses for agricultural products. In these the farmer might deposit his non-perishable agricultural products, and receive 80 per cent of their market value in greenbacks. Surely the Southern farmer had shaken off ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson

... the most admired frescoes of the greatest masters, slowly but surely becoming spoiled and effaced. It must be more than the want of funds which prevents the people from properly finishing the buildings they took so much time to construct and decorate—some senseless superstition must attach to it in some way, I ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... had in his capture. But the longer he looked, the more he found himself attracted by the rich changefulness of expression on a countenance usually very still. He surmised little of the conflict of emotions that sent it to the surface, had to construct no theory to calm the restlessness of intellectual curiosity, discovered no secret feeding of the flame from behind. Yet the flame itself drew him as the candle draws the moth. Emotion in the face of a woman was enough to attract Scudamore; the prettier the face, the stronger the attraction, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... momentum. Luther, for his part, incarnates the spirit of revolt against tyrannical authority, urges the necessity of a return to the essential truth of Christianity as distinguished from the idols of the Church, and asserts the right of the individual to judge, interpret, criticise, and construct opinion for himself. The veil which the Church had interposed between humanity and God was broken down. The freedom of the conscience was established. The principles involved in what we call the Reformation were momentous. Connected on the one side with scholarship and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the Romans had in his time built the coast road from the Rhone to Carthago Nova; and it is incredible that the coast road in Italy itself should not have been constructed previously. It is, however, a very different thing to open a road for traffic, and so to construct it that it takes its name from that construction in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... wrath of the gods. The nymph, though loath to part with her lover, sought out the melancholy Ulysses, where he sat weeping beside the deep, and giving him tools, led him to the forest and showed him where to fell trees with which to construct a raft. His labor finished, she provided the hero with perfumed garments, a full store of provisions, and saw him set forth joyfully upon ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... vice-chief had his turn. He declared the next three days to be a period of work. Some of the men were to build a boom across the river in the defile, others were to construct a stone wall across the gorge leading from the Deadman's Pool; while he started the women and children on a new set of huts, having condemned the old village as unfit for habitation. Further, he passed a law that any man, woman, or child found wandering ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... was trying to construct on French soil lines of defence as mighty as those of Wellington at Torres Vedras; and on October 7, Wellington pushed his left across the Bidassoa, the stream that marks the boundaries of Spain and France. On the French side ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... succeeded in dragging the vessels into the true channel, I shall construct a dam in the rear, so as to retain the water at a higher level. I have no doubt that a series of such dams will be required to enable us to reach the Nile. Should it be impossible to proceed with the heavy vessels, I shall leave them ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... great discovery was probably shut out forever from the world, but Clewe was well satisfied. He would never make another shaft, and it was not to be expected that men would plan and successfully construct one which would reach down to the transparent nucleus of the earth. The terrible fate, whatever it was, which had overtaken Rovinski, should not, if Clewe could help it, overtake ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... batter out of flour, water, grease, and salt, and cook it in a mess pan, the product being the army "flapjack." It invariably was tough as a mule's ear, about as heavy as lead, and very indigestible. Later we learned to construct ovens of wood, daubed with mud, or of stone, and in them, in the course of time, we acquired the knack of baking good bread. But with us in the west the hardtack was generally our standard bread diet, and ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... accurately traces the nerves and arteries, the physiognomist reads character, which the novelist delineates and the actor personates, because there are facts behind all these, the materials wherewith to construct a science. In organization there are permanent forces which operate uniformly, thus revealing the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... by Professor Clifton F. Hodge, of the University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore., which any one is free to construct and which, if used universally about stables early in the season, would greatly help toward banishing the ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... dumb at his oars for very fear of the boldness of her advance. He recognized this for an original and fearsome, not to say delectable, vein of talk. She came on like the sea itself, impetuous and all-embracing. Unfathomed, too. Could fancy itself construct a woman so, pat ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... centralized dictatorship of a party, the Maximalist Social Democrats. The Baboeuf conspiracy, extremely centralized and jacobinistic, tried to apply a similar policy. I am compelled frankly to admit that, in my opinion, this attempt to construct a communist republic with a strongly centralized state communism as its base, under the iron law of the dictatorship of a party, is bound to end in a fiasco. We are learning in Russia how communism should not ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... morning, the leader announced his intention of going himself to the Indian camp, to make overtures of peace, and to invite the Chiefs to a conference; and he desired his men to construct a strong and spacious wigwam for their reception, and to make a door to it, which could be closed and fastened securely. He did not then explain his project more clearly; but Rudolph understood it, and his soul revolted from the treachery he suspected. 'Now,' said the captain, having finished ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... that we should with all speed construct rafts by tying together the planks of which we had abundance, and that we should embark upon these rafts and so try to make the shallop and the skiff, which would bear us in safety to ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the Committee, Dru told them to consider every existing tax law obliterated, to begin anew and to construct a revenue system along the lines he indicated for municipalities, counties, states and the Nation. He did not contemplate, he said, that the new law should embrace all the taxes which the three first-named civil ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House

... the rookery of the tropic birds was one of a colony of the snowy tern before mentioned. These gentle, black-eyed creatures do not even pretend to construct a nest, but simply deposit a solitary egg upon the bough of a tree (like the gogo, or whale bird). They select for this purpose a tree destitute of foliage, and a branch of horizontal growth. It is strange that, notwithstanding the exposed situation of these eggs, they are very ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... soldier must know with extreme accuracy the configuration of the country over which his army is operating. An engineer must know the exact level and contour of a region over which he has to lay a railway or construct a canal. A merchant must know whether a country produces cotton, tea, and sugar; or wheat, wool, and meat. For all these and others, each for his own particular purpose, we want the kind of information ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband

... if you are speaking the truth," he said. "Whether you are or not makes no difference. If there is no machine in your baggage, you shall construct ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... Egyptian army arduous work. They had to construct the railway; they had to build gunboats, and sailing craft through the dangerous cataracts, they had to be on incessant fatigues, moving stores and cutting wood for the steamers. It may be fairly said that had it not been for the work of the Egyptian army the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... fine country;" he said. "Even her waste places possess untold sources of wealth. Take this place, for instance: there are fish enough in the rivers and the bay to feed a multitude; there is timber enough to build a dozen towns, and construct a navy as well; yet it continues almost as solitary as when I came here, I can't remember ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... to construct a bridge to form a communication between Hamburg and Haarburg by joining the islands of the Elbe to the Continent along a total distance of about two leagues. This bridge was to be built of wood, and Davoust seized upon all the timber-yards to supply materials for ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... is also under obligation to discharge jury duty,[36] and by himself or his representatives to perform his part of the labor necessary to construct and keep in order roads, bridges, streets and all grades of public highways.[37] And in this progressive age upon the male sex is devolved the duty of constructing and operating our railroads, and the engines and other rolling stock with which they ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... system is the greatest saving fund which the American people possess. The total value of school property is greater than the entire fortune of the richest American. Each year the people spend upon their schools a sum sufficient to construct a Panama Canal or a transcontinental railway system. Thus the public school is the greatest public investment ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... importance to himself, so that it required no orders for their construction. As soon as a regiment or brigade gained a position within easy distance for a sally, it would set to work with a will, and would construct such a parapet in a single night; but I endeavored to spare the soldiers this hard labor by authorizing each division commander to organize out of the freedmen who escaped to us a pioneer corps of two hundred men, who were fed out of the regular army ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... saeculorum. In Newry you see a striking change. Duncan, Boyd, Wylie, MacAlister, Campbell, McClelland, McAteer, and so on, greet you in all directions. You are in one of the colonies. The breed is different. You are among the men who make railways, construct bridges, invent engines, bore tunnels, make canals, build ships, and sail them over unknown seas. You are among a people who have the instincts of achievement, of enterprise, of invention, of command, who depend upon themselves, who ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... saw how the little creature perforated the wood with its well-armed head, first in one direction and then in another, till the archway was complete, and then daubed over the roof and sides with a kind of varnish; and by copying this work exactly on a large scale, Brunel was at length enabled to construct his shield and accomplish his great ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... getting on to the north looked slim. It was well that Perry, whose service with the Royal Engineers meant something, was along in command of the column. He decided to throw a rope across with the little skiff, which was the only thing in sight and then construct and cross by a swinging raft. The raft was constructed under his direction, and his own detachment of Police, with the gun and ammunition and harness put on board. Of course, he went himself, as he never asked his men to go anywhere without him. Things went fairly till near the other side, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... to construct in Paris that handsome building called the Observatory, the King himself chose the site for this. Having a map of his capital before him, he wished this fine edifice to be in a direct line of perspective with the Luxembourg, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... Burns asserted. "The quicker they broke, the less objection I'd have to 'em. It's a wonder the modern child has a trace of resource or inventiveness left in him. Teach him to construct, not to destroy, then you've done ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... realm, that his imagination might plume its wings for greater flights by its efforts to interpret the heart of things that live. Thus his imagination learned to traverse space, to explore sights and sounds his senses could not reach, and to construct for him another world of ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... alone, had been the instigator of voice in all that region, was cowed into thinking that, if the dead could rise from the grave for purposes of revenge, how much more easily could he rise now from so crude a coffin as he himself had helped to construct for him! ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... of men, and of a good art struggling to free itself from self-consciousness. But it does mean that Balzac, when he wrote it, was under the burden of the very traditions which he has helped fiction to throw off. He felt obliged to construct a mechanical plot, to surcharge his characters, to moralize openly and baldly; he permitted himself to "sympathize" with certain of his people, and to point out others for the abhorrence of his readers. This is not so bad in him as it would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... and he treated them as the writers of short stories in France twenty years ago treated their own Parisian environment. He made an incident the means of illustrating a portrayal of character. Later he was to construct elaborate plots for dramas and ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens

... a complete water-course and had only to open the floodgates for the water to rush in and do the rest, another set of men should come along and begin to advise them that it would be much better, instead of letting the water out, to construct a machine which would ladle the water up from one side and pour ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... Her ceaseless winding in and out of shops, her mad and furious buying of furniture, her wild grasping at any loose articles that came in her way, from rugs to rolling-pins, appeared to him as so many futile efforts to construct a dam. Over and over again the insane impulse came on him to seize her little hands and stop her; to tell her that it was no good, that the absurd thing could never stand, that he alone knew the strength of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... Canadian parliament, and the members accordingly took their places in the senate and the house of commons during the short October session of 1873, when Sir John Macdonald's government resigned on account of transactions arising out of the first efforts to construct ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... the Brigade arrived at its wagon lines, a short distance west of Neuve Eglise, and immediately each battery sent work parties to the scene of action, in order to construct emplacements and make its position habitable. The spot allotted to our battery was in a little hollow close to the cut roads, near the small ruined village of Wulverghen. Our front line was placed on the top of an undulating rise, ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... these troops—a difficult matter—for those at Victoria and San Antonio had to be provisioned overland from Indianola across the "hog-wallow prairie," while the supplies for the forces at Brownsville and along the Rio Grande must come by way of Brazos Santiago, from which point I was obliged to construct, with the labor of the men, a railroad to Clarksville, a distance ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan



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