"Nowadays" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no longer be recognised as generally sufficient for our purpose. In future the mere possibility of results such as in 1870-1871 we so often gained owing to the absence of any serious opposition on the part of the opposing Cavalry, will nowadays have to be obstinately fought for, not without considerable loss; and it needs no special proof to show what an enormous increase in the difficulty of our task this involves, and how, as a consequence, all the conditions of our future ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... her of the persistency of her lovers. "You have only to open your mouth and speak, to get rid of their importunities," was the pungent answer. She effectually silenced a coxcomb, who aimed to annoy her by saying, "Oh! wit runs in the street nowadays," by the retort, "Too fast for fools to catch it, however." Of Madeleine Guimard, the fascinating dancer, who was exceedingly thin, Sophie said one night, after she had seen her dance a pas de trois in which she represented a nymph being contended for by two satyrs, "It made her think of ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... position in a sporting goods establishment on Market Street, was sick and in danger of losing it, the son's wife expecting an addition to the family, the house on Russian Hill mortgaged. Alpheus, a veteran of the Civil War, had been for many years preparing his reminiscences, but the newspapers nowadays seemed to care nothing for matters of solid worth, and so far had refused to publish them.... Janet, as she read, reflected that these letters invariably had to relate tales of failures, of disappointed hopes; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... small, and her accomplishments considerable. From her childhood she had been considered clever, and had vindicated her reputation by gaining more than one certificate from the various examining bodies which nowadays go up and down seeking whom they may devour. All these varied excellences Eugene had had full opportunities of appreciating, for Kate was a distant cousin of his on the mother's side, and had spent a large part of the last few years at the Manor. It was, in fact, so obviously the duty of the ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... "presting." To "prest" a man meant to enlist him by means of what was technically known as "prest" money—"prest" being the English equivalent of the obsolete French prest, now pret, meaning "ready." In the recruiter's vocabulary, therefore, "prest" money stood for what is nowadays, in both services, commonly termed the "king's shilling," and the man who, either voluntarily or under duress, accepted or received that shilling at the recruiter's hands, was said to be "prested" or ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... of the passion for moralising, analysing, and philosophising which made the epoch what it was; but the rest of the world was all in the same vein. If he came to Paris in a coach from the country, he found a young lady in it, eager to demonstrate that serious passions are nowadays merely ridiculous; that people only promise themselves pleasure, which they find or not, as the case may be; that thus they spare themselves all the broken oaths of old days. "I took the liberty of saying that I was still a man of those old days. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... plaguey heavy olive stocks. But forward still, forward, man, as needs must. What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life! Ah! Strymodorus, who would ever have thought it? Here we have the women, who used, for our misfortune, to eat our bread and live in our houses, daring nowadays to lay hands on the holy image of the goddess, to seize the Acropolis and draw bars and bolts to keep any from entering! Come, Philurgus man, let's hurry thither; let's lay our faggots all about the citadel, and on the blazing pile burn with our hands these vile conspiratresses, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... indignantly. "I lose you his silly seat? . . . Rats! The little bounder compromised himself! He's been doing it freely—doing it since ten o'clock—two crowded hours of glorious life . . . 'stonishing, Otty, what a variegated ass a man can make of himself nowadays in two short hours, with the help of a taxi and if he wastes no time. When I think of our simple grandfathers playing at Bloods, wrenching off door-knockers. . . . Oh, yes—but you're waiting for the story. Well, it happened ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Nowadays the buying and dispatching of Christmas gifts is scientifically made. One merely selects this or that and orders it sent to So-and So. One turns in to a book store a list of titles and a list of names and addresses, and the ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... boys nowadays would be puzzled to cut a willow whistle or mend the baby's go-cart with such a knife as this; but still, it will not do to despise stone cutlery. Remember the big canoe at the Centennial, that took up so much room in the Government building. That boat, sixty feet long, was made in quite recent ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... fine, tinkling rhyme, and flowand verse, With now and then some sense; and he was paid for't, Regarded and rewarded; which few poets Are nowadays."[7] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... money in business," said he; "times were when you could make a profit, but nowadays it is a struggle to see who can sell the lowest. There's a revolver that I bought of Tryiton for 53 cents, and our men say he has advertised it all over for 55 cents. How the devil am I to pay freight and sell for 2 cents profit? There is no such idiocy in any business today as in the gun trade. ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... park, which Evelyn mentions as "sweet and delectable", nowadays there is but little to be seen. There still remains, however, a beech grove called the "Druid's Temple", a "Lover's Walk" for sentimental youth, and a wood of acacias and cedars, yews and tulip trees—once known as the "Wilderness", but since the eighteenth century called the "Menagerie", because ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... front-door bell rang, and continued to ring in little spurts of sound. If character can be deduced from bell-ringing, as nowadays it apparently can be from every other form of human activity, one might have hazarded the guess that whoever was on the other side of the door was determined, impetuous, ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... numbers and under intensive psychological study. That a race-horse owner goes nowadays to the astrologer for a horoscope of his racer is a fact that insinuatingly elevates the beast to the plane of his master. In the short story of 1921, the monkey, the tiger, the elephant, the dog and all their kind are treated from an anthropomorphic point of view. Courtney Ryley Cooper's ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... as the injunction to rest upon the seventh. As a consequence of all this accelerated business, and of the diminution in the number of persons officially set apart for prayer, the unabridged service of the Church fails to command a week-day attendance. We have no "clerks" nowadays to fill the choir. The only clerks known to modern times are busy ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... without losing the least link. These notes of his intention will be of ever-increasing value as the recollection of his personal wishes is lost. In 1899 Ibsen remarked to me that it was almost useless for actors nowadays to try to perform the comedies of Holberg, because there were no stage directions and the tradition was lost. Of his own work, fortunately, that can never be said. Dr. Verrall, in his brilliant and penetrating studies of the Greek ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... few doctrines of the Church that he could honestly teach, and the straightforward course was to abandon the clerical profession. Nowadays a man in Froude's plight would only have to sign a paper, and he would be free. But before 1870 orders, even deacon's orders, were indelible. Neither a priest nor a deacon could sit in Parliament, or enter any other learned profession. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... nowadays it is not enough to be a man of five feet ten inches. If strength and bravery made the general, every soldier might claim the command. The general who does great things is he who also possesses civil qualities. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... admitted, "I don't, but then—love—father, isn't love rather a serious undertaking nowadays? Is it a particularly helpful adjunct to marriage? Look at poor Eugenia. Isn't it really more sensible to marry a nice man who can support one, and then if in time one does fall in love with ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... "Everything's topsy-turvy nowadays," said Frank. "It used to be armies that did the fighting. Now it's whole nations. But look at that scrap going ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... No friend could leave such a blank to me as that old and faithful one, though the death of younger ones might be more tragic; but so many things seem gone with him into the grave. Many indeed will mourn that kind, wise, steadfast man—Antiqua fides. No one nowadays will be so noble with such unconsciousness and simplicity. I have bought two Coptic turbans to make a black dress out of. I thought I should like to wear it for him—here, where 'compliment' is ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... This altering of hands did he reiterate nine several times; at the last whereof he reseated his eyelids into their own first natural position. Then doing the like also with his jaws and tongue, he did cast a squinting look upon Goatsnose, diddering and shivering his chaps, as apes use to do nowadays, and rabbits, whilst, almost starved with hunger, they are eating oats in ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... On the desk was a letter written from Vermont. "If you don't tell me at once when you decide," had said the arch writer, "never hope to speak to me again. Mary Wood, seriously, I am suspicious. Why do you never mention him nowadays? How exciting to have you bring a live cow-boy to Bennington! We should all come to dinner. Though of course I understand now that many of them have excellent manners. But would he wear his pistol at table?" So ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... She knew the story well. Every Christmas as far back as she could remember she had eaten her bit of plum pudding from a certain rare old blue plate, on which was the picture of Saint George, the dragon and the Princess. "Nowadays," Barby went on, "because men do not ride around 'clad in bright armor,' doing knightly deeds, people do not recognize them as knights. But your father is doing something that is just as great and ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... had enough o' that, my girl," he said. "Forty-five years ago I travelled East to Winnipeg and got me a wife. Brought her back over the plains in a Red River cart. Eight hunder miles, and hostile redskins all the way! What's travellin' nowadays!" ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... so frightened of her as I once was, but I don't think I would like to be caught by her. Sara Ray is dreadfully scared of her. Peter Craig says she is a witch and that he bets she's at the bottom of it when the butter won't come. But I don't believe THAT. Witches are so scarce nowadays. There may be some somewhere in the world, but it's not likely there are any here right in Prince Edward Island. They used to be very plenty long ago. I know some splendid witch stories I'll tell you some day. They'll just make your blood freeze in ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is amusing or rueful study nowadays, accordingly as one looks at servants. Their treatment under Tusser's handling brings the husbandman poet very near to Hesiod, in whose time servitude was not called by any other name. Tusser's huswife, warned by the matin cock, called up her maids ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... go by that," said another of the accommodating strangers. "There's an awful sight of poor gasoline being palmed off nowadays. Have you got a ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... father wearily, "that old interest in work is gone. That old pride in work which we used to feel when I was at the job myself, is gone. We have a different kind of workman nowadays." ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... figure of Aladdin's Uncle selling new lamps for old). Here you are, you see! "Ali Baba," got 'em all here, you see. Never read your "Arabian Nights," either! Is that the way they bring up boys nowadays! ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... has scooped out a little burrow in the massy walls of the place for his little self and his children, which is hung with paper and printed linen, and carved chimney-pieces, in the exact manner of Berkley Square or Argyle buildings. What in short can a lord do nowadays, that is lost in a great old solitary castle, but skulk about, and get into the first hole he finds, as a rat would ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... acutely accurate observation is invariably mixed with wild fable, or else on the chance remarks of travellers or mere sportsmen, who had not the training to make them understand even what it was desirable to observe. Nowadays there is a growing proportion of big-game hunters, of sportsmen, who are of the Schilling, Selous, and Shiras type. These men do work of capital value for science. The mere big-game butcher is tending to ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... reaches are familiar to evangelical Christianity and to what is nowadays becoming known as 'mind-cure' religion or 'new thought.' The phenomenon is that of new ranges of life succeeding on our most despairing moments. There are resources in us that naturalism with its literal and legal virtues never recks of, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... should vote in this first national election. In those States where the people voted, statistics show that only three men out of every hundred of population could vote in this first presidential election, where nowadays twenty men have that liberty. In some States, the people had no voice whatever in choosing the President, because the State Legislatures decided that they were the proper mediums to choose the presidential electors. The Constitution left the matter entirely in their hands. In some States, the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... had lived on the same land, doing their duty to their neighbors and helping to form that backbone of England of which we hear so much nowadays, in its passing away. ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... took place in her—nameless but, as soon as she had given way, coercive. It was as if she knew again, in this fulness of time, that she had been, after Maud's marriage, just sensibly outlived or, as people nowadays said, shunted. Mrs. Lowder had left her behind, and on the occasion, subsequently, of the corresponding date in her own life—not the second, the sad one, with its dignity of sadness, but the first, with the meagreness of its supposed felicity—she had been, in the same spirit, almost patronisingly ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... young officer in American; "and why not? Besides I know French, Russian, German, and all the languages spoken on your little globe, to say nothing of the dialects used by those who inhabit the rest of the planets. It's our system. Nowadays, a man in the Service is expected to be up in everything. If he wasn't, how on earth could he fight, or do anything else in a satisfactory fashion? And now let us ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... much nowadays, anyhow; and I expect a good many of those are too old to lay. Uncle Jeptha couldn't fuss with chickens, and he didn't raise only a smitch of 'em last year and the year before—just them that the hens hatched themselves in stolen nests, ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... which Jeffreys did not allow the town to forget. "Hangcross tree," which once stood near the L. & S.W. station, was long locally reputed to be the gibbet on which some of the Duke's sympathisers expiated their treason. The town is nowadays chiefly dependent upon a large lace works and some collar factories. The church, which stands in the "old town" (turn down Axminster Road), is said to have been erected about 1400, and is a spacious ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... Everybody nowadays talks about evolution. Like electricity, the cholera germ, woman's rights, the great mining boom, and the Eastern Question, it is 'in the air.' It pervades society everywhere with its subtle essence; it infects small-talk with its familiar catchwords and its ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... sure I don't know what folk want with the luggage they carry about with them nowadays— The old folk didn't. Not Saratoga trunks, anyhow. I remember 'swell as if it was yesterday way back in 1880, when Richard's father and mother were married, old Simon Mascarene—he belonged to your mother's lot, the Mascarenes of Virginia— ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... with which it is mingled. I find that editors are beginning to react from the commercialized fiction that prevails to-day. They are beginning to learn that they are killing the goose which lays the golden eggs. The commercialized short story writer has less enthusiasm in writing for editors nowadays. The "movies" have captured him. Why write stories when scenarios are not only much less exhausting, but actually more remunerative? The literary tradesman is peddling his wares in other and wider markets, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... merely attack, but defeat them; as we saw done by the Swiss at that battle of Novara, to which I have already referred so often. For although history abounds in similar examples, none would have believed them, or, believing them, would have said that nowadays men are so much better armed, that a squadron of cavalry could shatter a rock, to say nothing of a column of infantry. With such false pleas would they have belied their judgment, taking no account that with a very scanty force of foot-soldiers, Lucullus routed a hundred and fifty ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... sharply than before on the rural parishes. Formerly the provincial president, who stood in as close relations with the people as with the State, formed the lowest step in the State bureaucracy. Below him were local authorities, who were no doubt subject to control, but not in the same measure as nowadays to the disciplinary powers of the district, or the ministerial, bureaucracy. The rural population enjoys today, by virtue of the measure of self-government conceded to it, an autonomy, not perhaps similar to that which the towns ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... posing as a dutiful wife as she once had done, she was now in the habit of going up to town to her friends the Penn-Pagets, who lived in Brook Street, or the Hennikers in Redcliffe Square, accompanying them to dances and theatres with all the defiance of the "covenances" allowed nowadays to the married woman. On such occasions, growing each week more frequent, her sister Ethelwynn remained at home to see that Mr. Courtenay was properly attended to by the nurse, and exhibited a patience that I could ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... my word! Cross, indeed! You write to the King! Madhav is devilish swell nowadays. He'd made a little pile; and so kings and padishahs are everyday talk with his people. Let me find him once and I'll make him dance. Oh, you snipper-snapper! I'll get the King's letter sent to your ...
— The Post Office • Rabindranath Tagore
... particular privilege of the nobles of this kingdom, we stand a long time bare to them in what place soever, and the same to a hundred others, so many tiercelets and quartelets of kings we have got nowadays and other like vicious innovations: they will see them all presently vanish and cried down. These are, 'tis true, but superficial errors; but they are of ill augury, and enough to inform us that the whole fabric is crazy and tottering, when we see ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... merely that, but capable of originating useful ideas himself, with a certain forecast of mind and judgment—I say such a man is worth dozens of slaves. Good economists tell us that when a precious article may be got at a low price we ought to buy. And nowadays when times are so bad it is possible to get good friends ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... ships were manned by British seaman, and Captain Foster could talk like this without saying anything offensive to the British merchant service. Nowadays such an observation about "Dutchmen" would be a personal insult to four-fifths of the crew of a British ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... It is nowadays so much the fashion to be witty at the expense of religion that a man will hardly pass for a genius if he does not allow his impious satire to run a tilt at its most sacred truths. The noble simplicity of holy writ must needs be abused and turned into ridicule at the daily assemblies ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... said Molly, "would be my great-grandmother!" She disposed of him conclusively by this statement and went on: "And I'm not a young lady. Nobody is nowadays." ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... that she's liable to be in there now. She don't stay inside nowadays so much. She's been comin' round the ditch, silent-like but friendly. And she'll watch us workin' for a spell, and then she's apt to move off alone into the woods, singin' them Dutch songs of hern that ain't got no toon. I've met her walkin' ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... our race nowadays is to gain the respect of other races, and more particularly our own self-respect. We haven't it now. The only way to get it is to ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... special cast from the fears and anxieties men feel when their fortune is affected or their destiny controlled by external forces. Thus omen (a prophetic utterance or sign) and portent (a stretching forward, a foreseeing, a foretelling) might originally be either benign or baleful; but nowadays, especially in the adjectival forms ominous and portentous, they wear a menacing hue. Similarly criticism, censure, and doom, all of them signifying at first mere judgment, have come—the first in popular, the other two ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... "and yet, nowadays, it is a little difficult, isn't it, to do anything really worth doing, and not be found out? They say that the press ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Christ! Oh, what was the church of Christ coming to, to have ministers like that? How ever did he get into the ministry, anyway? Of course, she knew there were young men with honest doubts who sometimes slid through nowadays, but a mean little silly man like that? How ever did he get in? What a lot of ridiculous things he had said! He was one of those described in the Bible who "darken counsel with words." He was not worth noticing. And yet, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Nowadays there is nothing strange in a youngster writing verses. The glamour of poesy is gone. I remember how the few women who wrote poetry in those days were looked upon as miraculous creations of the Deity. If one hears to-day that some young lady does not write poems one feels sceptical. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... that I have hitherto been able to detect. The same tract supplies us with a few other items germane to my subject: figs, almonds, long pepper, dates, prunes, and nutmegs. It is curious to watch how by degrees the kitchen department was furnished with articles which nowadays are viewed as the commonest ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... But things aren't always what we call them, are they? You mustn't kiss me now, Eustace. I think I've got some horrid fever—I'm sure I have. Because of course nobody could be bewitched nowadays, and put into a body that feels thick and thin in the wrong places. And my head isn't too big to get through the door.—Of course I know it isn't. It would be funny if it were. I do love funny things.—So do you. I like to hear you laugh. I wish I could say something funny, ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... is to move in a very uncertain ambit, harassed by a multitude of diverse and vain dilettantisms and mysticisms, and only too frequently by fraud, it is not any longer possible nowadays to deny that facts, objectively known, compel the positive scientist to have recourse to some such suppositions. Also without making the "subliminal," with Myers, a kind of "deus ex machina" in the world, it is certain that mediumistic phenomena of the kind mentioned are henceforth to be considered ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... more serious proof of her interest in my welfare than the proof which she was offering now. I don't say it profanely; I only mention the fact—the cards had, in some incomprehensible way, got themselves jumbled up together with her religious convictions. You meet with people nowadays who believe in spirits working by way of tables and chairs. On the same principle (if there is any principle in it) my aunt Chance believed in Providence working by way of ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... a clumsy fashion, but he was not qualified for any business. Rendered homeless by the death of Surja Mukhi's father, he went to her house. At her instigation Nagendra opened a school in the village, and Tara Charan was appointed master. Nowadays, by means of the grant-in-aid system in many villages, sleek-haired, song-singing, harmless Master Babus appear; but at that time such a being as a Master Babu was scarcely to be seen. Consequently, Tara Charan appeared as one of the village gods; especially as it was known ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... bear and to do. They tell us nowadays that it is selfish for a Christian man to animate himself, either for endurance or for activity, by the contemplation of those great glories that lie yonder. If that is selfishness, God grant we may all become a great deal more selfish than we are! No man labours in the Christian life, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... DeVere were moving picture girls, which you have probably guessed already. That is, they were actresses for the silent film dramas that make so much for enjoyment nowadays. Mr. DeVere was also an actor in the same company. He had been a semi-tragedian of the "old school," but his voice had failed, because of a throat ailment, and he could no longer declaim his lines over the footlights. He was in distress until it was suggested to him ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... being always of exceeding, and when their fury rose high, of superhuman strength. They too, like the hamrammir men, were very tired when the fits passed off. What led to their fits is hard to say. In the case of the only class of men like them nowadays, that of the Malays running a-muck, the intoxicating fumes of bangh or arrack are said to be the cause of their fury. One thing, however, is certain, that the Baresark, like his Malay brother, was looked upon as a public pest, and the mischief which they caused, relying partly no doubt on their ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... saw the Muse and Lamp in the Museo, the Fra Angelicos, and all the Signorellis. One cannot help thinking that too much fuss is made nowadays about works of art—running after them for their own sakes, exaggerating their importance, and detaching them as objects of study, instead of taking them with sympathy and carelessness as pleasant or instructive adjuncts to our actual ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... money laid by, and am not one of those smart men who can push their way. I don't know much besides bookkeeping, and my employers think I am not remarkably quick at that. I can't seem to acquire the lightning speed with which things are done nowadays; and while I try to make up by long hours and honesty, I don't believe I could ever earn much more than I am getting now, and you know it doesn't leave much of a margin for sickness or misfortune of any kind. After ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... to the knees was all that covered their nakedness. In winter every one wore furs outdoors. Beaver skins were nearly as cheap as cloth, and the wife of the poorest habitant could have a winter wardrobe that it would nowadays cost a small fortune to provide. Heavy clogs made of hide—the bottes sauvages as they were called—or moccasins of tanned and oiled skins, impervious to the wet, were the popular footwear in winter and to some ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... from Victorian stuffiness, the word "vulgar" was a polite English epithet for "fleshly," an adjective much beloved by indignant gentlemen who were permitting their wrath to triumph over their desire to be respectable. It is a word which we apply nowadays to the writings of a vulgarian like Papini, whose name is now as familiar to the general public as d'Annunzio's was when "The Child of Pleasure" was first translated. That is a measure of progress in this ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... contracts is really that of the entire community in which she lives. Her way of looking at her employer is, we sincerely believe, about the way of looking at him common among all employees. The only real restraint on laborers of any class among us nowadays is the difficulty of finding another place. Whenever it becomes as easy for clerks, draughtsmen, mechanics, and the like to "suit themselves" as it is for cooks or housemaids, we find them as faithless. ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... black feller-countrymen that had been fun' my cattle as full of spears as so many hedgehogs—I dessay they got in the road of a bullet or two. They're always gettin' in the road of things. But we don't talk of shootin' blacks nowadays These parts is too civilised—it's risky. Anyhow, I made them blacks let my cattle alone. And I slaved like a driven nigger, day in and day out, brandin' calves all day long in the dust, with the sun that hot, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... lives close to us, and Robert has seen him in his white hat, wandering along the asphalte. I had a notion, somehow, that he was very old, but he is only elderly—not much above sixty (which is the prime of life, nowadays) and he lives quietly and keeps out of scrapes poetical and political, and if Robert and I had a little less modesty we are assured that we should find access to him easy. But we can't make up our minds to go to his door and introduce ourselves as vagrant ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... chemical composition of a body might be noted by its electric resistance and the latter verified by the telephone; that is to say, by the ear. Or, to take a more subtle example. We might make calculations with sounds of which we have studied the harmonic relations as we do nowadays with figures. A sum in rule of three might even be solved sonorously; for, given three sounds, the ear can find a fourth which should have the same relation to the third as the second to the first. Every ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... topmost rock of Isandhlwana, and there you saw and heard strange things. You heard the rest of the white soldiers come and lie down to rest among their dead brothers, and depart again unharmed. Oh! what fools are these Zulu generals nowadays. They send out an impi to attack men behind walls, spears against rifles, and are defeated. Had they kept that impi to fall on the rest of the English when they walked into the trap, not a man of your people would have been left alive. ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... among all sorts of races and tribes, that one had scarcely ever heard of, except in reviews of books of travel that one never read. That sort of thing was all very well when the world was more sparsely populated, but nowadays, when it simply teems with human beings, no one is particularly impressed by the fact that a few million, more or less, of converts, of a low stage of mental development, have accepted the teachings of some particular religion. It not ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... the poet, smiling, "no one can be great in a century prefaced by the reign of a Napoleon. We are a tribe of would-be great poets; besides, second-rate talent imitates genius nowadays, ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... the thing that makes me tired. For you know as well as I do that you've made that boy of yours a sort of anesthetic. You put him on like a nose-cap, and forget the world. He's about all you remember to think about. Why, when you look at the clock, nowadays, it isn't ten minutes to twelve. It's always Dinkie minutes to Dink. When you read a book you're only reading about what your Dinkie might have done or what your Dinkie is some day to write. When you picture ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... compositions and help the performers to master them. He has to criticise the errors and defects of each during the rehearsals, and to organize the resources at his disposal in such a way as to make the best use he can of them with the utmost promptitude; for, in the majority of European cities nowadays, musical artisanship is so ill distributed, performers so ill paid and the necessity of study so little understood, that economy of time should be reckoned among the most imperative requisites of the ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... wonder as anything in Europe can be, and they are complicated and tumbled all about, so that those who travel in them with difficulty remember where they have been, unless indeed they have that general eye for a countryside which is rare nowadays among men. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... made to be looked at," said grandma. "Let's see—where do you suppose your little Zip is nowadays? ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... go into the details of the speculations that landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about business transactions there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me finally to do the giving reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of everything, one cantankerous ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... instance, to put down the carriage than to see that the small outgoings of housekeeping are more duly regulated. It is seldom, indeed, that a wife can assist her husband save by lightening his expenses by her prudence and economy. Too many husbands, nowadays, can vouch for the truth of the old saying, "A woman can throw out with a spoon faster than a man can throw in with a shovel." The prosperity of a middle-class home depends very much on what is saved, and the reason that this ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... and deep the curses that issue from between the set teeth of the clodhoppers, who now give up the harvest for lost. Formerly the unskilful mechanician who was responsible for the failure would have been clapped into gaol; but nowadays he is thought sufficiently punished by the storm of public indignation and the loss of his pay. The disaster is announced by placards posted about the streets in the evening; and next morning the newspapers are ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... people who love each other, evidently, in an almost lyric sense. You, I know, will understand that this expression contains no sneer at a frame of mind altogether surpassing my own capacity for idealism. Are there many, or any of us nowadays, who feel that there are certain things which we must do, not do, or perish eternally? I have never detected this narrow, vindictive, inherently superstitious view in Orange. I am forced to the conclusion, therefore, that his truest happiness consists always ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... earlier in the world's history, for then the people would have been keeping vigil and making ready for that nuptial ceremony of Ascension-tide when the Doge married Venice to the sea. Why can we not make pictures nowadays, as well as paint them? We are banishing colour as fast as we can, clothing our buildings, our ships, ourselves, in black and white and sober hues, and if it were not for dear, gaudy Mother Nature, who never puts her palette away, but goes ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is ever a Utopia. When we wish nowadays to represent the Christ of the modern conscience, the consoler, and the judge of the new times, what course do we take? That which Jesus himself did eighteen hundred and thirty years ago. We suppose the conditions of the real world quite other than what they are; we represent a moral liberator breaking ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... money to clear up the mortgage on the cottage. I'd take a favor from the devil in hell to get this place clear," replied Amos slowly. He took a turn up and down the room. "I can't see what's happened to children nowadays. In my day we obeyed. Lydia, I'm not going to discuss this any longer. You've ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... perception in questions of right and wrong, than goes to the writing of two or three hackneyed sentences about the laws of honour as opposed to the laws of the land or a commonplace against duelling. Yet such things would stand a writer nowadays in far better stead than Captain Ager and his conscientious honour; and he would be considered a far better teacher of morality than old Rowley or ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... attended several of these pioneer festivities and had enjoyed them greatly, and was much impressed with their importance, for underlying all the fun was an old-fashioned dignity seldom found nowadays. But Parson Lamb told me these dinners were tame compared to a real mountain dance. "Just you wait till you see a real shindig" he said. "Then you'll have something to talk about." In January, there was a letter in the mail from Jim Oss, ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... performing, and the tassel grew heavy in his hand, a mass of gold. He took up a book from the table; at his first touch, it assumed the appearance of such a splendidly bound and gilt-edged volume as one often meets with nowadays; but on running his fingers through the leaves, behold! it was a bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the wisdom of the book had ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... that not so very long ago, when it was contended by some that there are tribes of men without any sort of religion; nowadays the effort is to show that the feeling which prompts to it is ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... memory of most people nowadays chiefly as a great Italian poet, owed his fame among his contemporaries far rather to the fact that he was a kind of living representative of antiquity, that he imitated all styles of Latin poetry, endeavored by his voluminous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... There used to be such things in the old days, when thirty-five dollars were the wages out of Boston; and then you could see ships handled and run the way they want to be. But that's all past and gone; and nowadays the only thing that flies in an American ship is a belaying-pin. You don't know; you haven't a guess. How would you like to go on deck for your middle watch, fourteen months on end, with all your duty to do and every one's life depending on you, and expect to get a knife ripped ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... about Edgar, Polly, and I have a plan, but I shall not think of urging it against your will; you are the mistress of the house nowadays." ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... was well again. I was weak and began to tremble, and, going back to the fireside, lay back in my chair with a beating of the heart that was a warning. Since then she has recognized me by only a quiet kindly smile. Why has no one ever called her name? I believe Mrs. Walters knows. She comes nowadays as if to tell something, and goes away with a struggle that she has not told it. But a secret can no more stay in the depths of Mrs. Walter's mind than cork at the bottom of water; some day I shall see this mystery riding on ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... all de young people is worser, I say. Well, I tell you, dey be ridin out all times of night en girls meetin up wid Miss Fortune. At least, our colored girls does. En don' care what dey do neither. Don' seem to care what dey do nor how dey do. De girls nowadays, dey gets dey livin. Girls settin higher den what dey ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... reasonably have expected her to touch me with the furthest protended pair of tongs; and I did not see that to remedy this I should have been prepared to wade through seas of other people's blood. Indeed it is this perception which constitutes an aristocracy nowadays. It is the secret of all our governing classes, which consist finally of people who, though perfectly prepared to be generous, humane, cultured, philanthropic, public spirited and personally charming in the second instance, are unalterably resolved, in the first, to have money enough for ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... the matter that you look as you do, and what makes you so dumb?" said the captain. "Do people nowadays assume that sort of airs in England? I have been in England, and came here again as lively as a chaffinch. ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the most select in its character," chimed in Madame Couillard; "all gentry and noblesse, not one of the bourgeois to be invited. That class, especially the female portion of them, give themselves such airs nowadays! As if their money made them company for people of quality! They must be kept ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... an irrigated gold brick can be sold nowadays," said Rapp cynically. "I admit that you have some pretty fair con men in ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... Beef McNaughton. "Coach Corridan said Thor might be suddenly awakened by a shock, but no electric battery can shock that Colossus, and, besides, miracles don't happen nowadays. Yes, it's up ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... beautifully," said Mrs. Bogardus, her eyes shedding compliments as she looked around. "I should not dare go in my own kitchen at this time of day. There are no women nowadays who know how to work in the way ladies used to work. If I could have such ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... been a-rioting, or anything," Korableva said, referring to Vasiliev, as she bit tiny pieces off a lump of sugar with her strong teeth. "He only stuck up for a chum, because it's not lawful to strike prisoners nowadays." ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... proverb, "In union is strength." Like all other German Generals whom I had "done," he, too, had words of unqualified praise for the bravery of his enemies. "The Russians fight well; but neither mere physical bravery nor numbers, nor both together, win battles nowadays." ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various |
