"Defective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though certainly defective in regard to Lord George de Bruce Carruthers, had been more correct when he spoke of the lady. An interview that was very terrible to poor Lizzie did take place between her and Mr. Bunfit in Mrs. Carbuncle's house on Tuesday, the 30th of January. There had been many interviews between Lizzie ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Frank! not a word more," exclaimed Helen, placing her little hand over his mouth, "not a word more—you read with defective vision! I proclaim the book of human nature to be charming, every page teeming with interest, every line traced by the hand divine, a lesson for a lifetime. Ah! Frank, remove the film of distrust from your eyes, and read this book as it ought to be read, therein you will ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Vandover that there was money in the investment if one could and would give the proper attention to pushing it. He told Vandover that he—Vandover—was no business man, which was the lamentable truth, and would much prefer to live upon the interest of his bonds rather than to be continually annoyed by defective plumbing, complaints, and repairs. The truth of the matter was that Geary knew that a certain immense boot and shoe concern was after the same piece of property. The houses themselves were nothing to the boot and shoe people; they ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... been perfecting a great scheme to buy up what munitions-plants he could in this country in order to commit sabotage and slow up the production of the ammunition our troops are crying for. He has plotted with others to send defective shells that will rip up the guns they do not fit, and powders that will explode too soon or not at all. God! to think that the lives of our brave men and the life of our Empire should be threatened ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... I have visited, the school-house is the only available hall for public meetings. Now, a school-room, with its small, cramped seats, its lack of platform, and its defective ventilation, is not well adapted for large gatherings. No man likes to speak up to the waist in audience, under a low roof, and in stifling air. If less money were spent on needless church-building, every district in the Highlands ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... point of interrupting Marlow when he stopped of himself, his eyes fixed on vacancy, or—perhaps—(I wouldn't be too hard on him) on a vision. He has the habit, or, say, the fault, of defective mantelpiece clocks, of suddenly stopping in the very fulness of the tick. If you have ever lived with a clock afflicted with that perversity, you know how vexing it is—such a stoppage. I was vexed with Marlow. He was smiling faintly while I waited. He even ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... me thoroughly, my dear; for were any of these parts defective, the whole would be incomplete, and we might never have the pleasure of walking for miles, on a wet day, under the cover of 'The Crystal Palace,' as I hope we shall do during the next Christmas holidays. So you see, that small things are of ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... quality which endures long after the singer has lost the power to produce a pure tone or to contrive accurate phrasing and so makes it possible for artists to hold their places on the stage long after their voices have become partially defective or, indeed, have actually departed. It is knowledge of style that accounts for the long careers of Marcella Sembrich and Lilli Lehmann or of Yvette Guilbert and Maggie Cline for that matter. It is knowledge of style that makes ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... provided with money, and having but little experience in getting rid of it, Moronval decided that there was an easy mine to work. Besides, the wonderful system of Madame Moronval could be applied in perfection to the correction of foreign accents, to defective pronunciation. The Professor immediately caused advertisements to be inserted in the colonial journals, where were soon to be seen the most amazing ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... to Mr. Verdant Green with many speeches and great ceremony; while Mr. Green stood by, and smiled benignantly upon the scene, and his son beamed through his glasses (which his defective sight obliged him constantly to wear) ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... whole advantage of their commerce. When the final profit upon a whole system of trade rests and centres in a certain place, a balance struck in that place merely on the mutual sale of commodities is quite fallacious. 5thly. The custom-house entries furnish a most defective, and, indeed, ridiculous idea of the most valuable branch of trade we have in the world,—that with Newfoundland. Observe what you export thither; a little spirits, provision, fishing-lines, and fishing-hooks. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... realm, but the questions proper to the council were discussed and decided by the churchmen alone, and were promulgated by the Church as its own laws. This was real legislative independence, even if the form of it was somewhat defective, and before very long, as the result of this beginning, the form came to correspond to the reality, and the process became as independent ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... spirit of the first books; and as a genius is not to be degraded by the imputation of human failings, the cause of this declension is commonly sought in the structure of the work, and plausible reasons are given why, in the defective part, less ornament was necessary, or less could be admitted. But, perhaps, the author would have confessed, that his fancy was tired, and his perseverance broken; that he knew his design to be unfinished, but that, when he saw the end so near, he could no longer ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... repeated washings, that the crimson hunt-marks on his face were indeed indelible. During the evening, he disassembled the government-issue needlebeam and inspected its parts. As he had suspected the weapon was defective. He discarded it ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... of the universe may be recognized even in a drop of rain. The same observation may be applied to the laws of heat in all their ramifications; for, after all, our experiments are, in many instances but defective copies of what is continually going on in the great workshop ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... lat. 81 S., and this would imperil the success of the season's sledging. He decided, therefore, to send three men back from the 80 S. depot, which he reached on January 6, 1916. Cope, Gaze, and Jack were the men to return. They took the defective Primus and a light load, and by dint of hard travelling, without the aid of dogs, they reached ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... tell the truth," replied Lothario; "but as lovers they are not more defective in expression than they ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... open the questions of education, &c., now, would be to open closing wounds, nor would anything be accomplished. The priests would resist everything proposed, and the Protestants would not be satisfied. The Kildare Street Society, however defective, does a great deal of good, more than could be expected from any new system we could ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... result, cutting off the unfit and leaving only those who are fairly well adapted to their positions. Something of this sort no doubt takes place to a limited extent; but, so far as it does take place, our methods are denounced as defective and, perhaps, as old-fashioned. 'Haphazard' is a wasteful principle, and should be superseded by intelligent initiative and deliberate preparation. And this indeed is the usual process. One adapts oneself carefully and of set purpose to the conditions of one's life, instead of simply waiting for ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... are most simple and distinct, and particularly, when the objects grouped in the picture have previously been familiar. Pictures are indeed a pretty close imitation of Nature in this part of her work; and they are defective chiefly on account of their want of motion and continuity. These last are two great and inimitable characteristics in all the groupings painted upon ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... often defective; both because men are not yet acquainted with all the evils for which polished nations have endeavoured to find a redress; and because, even where evils of the most flagrant nature have long afflicted the peace of society, they have not yet been able to apply the cure. In the progress of civilization, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... speeches have been made the eldest judge shall begin to examine the parties, and proceed to make an adequate enquiry into what has been said; and after the oldest has spoken, the rest shall proceed in order to examine either party as to what he finds defective in the evidence, whether of statement or omission; and he who has nothing to ask shall hand over the examination to another. And on so much of what has been said as is to the purpose all the judges shall set their seals, and ...
— Laws • Plato
... the wings are beaded, i.e., the margin is defective at intervals, giving a beaded-like outline to the wings. This condition is very variable and much affected by other factors that influence the shape of the wings. The lighter eye color of the drawing may be taken ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... honest man's the noblest work of God." Havard, from sorrow rest beneath this stone; An honest man—beloved as soon as known; Howe'er defective in the mimic art, In real life he justly played his part! The noblest character he acted well, And heaven ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... dragged the iron diahbeeah out of the water, and had substituted new plates in many places where the metal was honeycombed with rust. The plate that had been pierced by the tusks of the hippopotamus was removed, as it proved to be very defective, and could be broken through with the blow of a heavy hammer, therefore it was not astonishing that it had been easily penetrated by the sharp ivory ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... which seemed to a philosophical observer most odious and repulsive, promised the most effectual aid to the dark purposes of an intriguer or a conspirator, and were generally fitted to win a popular support precisely in those points where Oubacha was most defective. He was much superior in external appearance to his rival on the throne, and so far better qualified to win the good opinion of a semi-barbarous people; whilst his dark intellectual qualities of Machiavelian 5 dissimulation, profound ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... vent every now and then in audible speech. It seemed to him, as his eyes rested on this scene of Mr. Tryan's labours, that he could understand the clergyman's self-privation without resorting to Mr. Stickney's theory of defective spiritual enlightenment. Do not philosophic doctors tell us that we are unable to discern so much as a tree, except by an unconscious cunning which combines many past and separate sensations; that no one sense is independent of another, so that in the dark we can hardly taste a fricassee, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... trained by long struggle with wind and wave, calm in danger, apt in emergencies, finding the narrow path of safety where common eyes see only peril and ruin. France understands tins. She knows how many of her past humiliations can be traced directly to defective seamanship. But where to seek the remedy? How to find or make sailors fit to contend with those who were almost born and bred on the restless surge? By what methods, with a slender commercial marine and a people reluctant to encounter the hardships and dangers of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... so far as it relates to the style of the rule-ridden eighteenth-century poetry, had been made before: by Cowper, by Wordsworth, by Coleridge. But Keats, with his instinct for beauty, pierces to the core of the matter. It was because of Pope's defective sense of the beautiful that the doubt arose whether he was a poet at all. It ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... limit, and he did not want to do this just yet. However, he had his opportunity when about two hundred miles had been covered. Both the red and the green cars had tire troubles, but the red one was delayed scarcely two minutes as there was a corps of mechanics on hand to take off the defective wheel and put on another. Still Tom regained his lost ground, and once more the race between those three ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... of these lessons may, in his practice, discover defective mechanical action and by his ingenuity be able to improve it; he may likewise see where an improvement can be made in acoustic construction; where a better scale can be drawn; or where different and ...
— Piano Tuning - A Simple and Accurate Method for Amateurs • J. Cree Fischer
... acted from a conscientious sense of duty towards the man. But a conscientious sense of duty to inflict pain upon a fellow-mortal for his own good does not always bring perfect serenity to the inflicter—possibly because, in the defective machinery of human compensation, pain is the only quality that is apt to appear in the illustration. Mr. Ford felt uncomfortable, and being so, was naturally vexed at the innocent cause. Why should Uncle Ben be offended because he had simply declined ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... motions of an enemy too inconsiderable in number to excite any great alarm, and to whom it would be easy, as they imagined, to give a check when more at leisure. By this fortunate coincidence of events, of which he could have no foresight, and of which he remained long ignorant from its defective mode of intercourse with the people of the country, Pizarro was permitted to advance unmolested into the centre of a great empire, before any effort of its power was exerted to stop his career. During their progress, the Spaniards acquired some imperfect knowledge ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... and second years after he had come upon the town. From the same instructor the Marquis learned the latest novelties in French conversation, the choicest oaths and phrases (for which he was famous), so that although his French grammar was naturally defective, he was enabled to order a dinner at Philippe's, and to bully a waiter, or curse a hackney-coachman with extreme volubility. A young nobleman of his rank was received with the distinction which was his due, by the French ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... require presence of mind, and which demand immediate attention to what is actually going forward, in which children, capable of the greatest degree of abstract attention, are most apt to be defective. They have many ideas, but none of them ready, and their knowledge is useless, because it is recollected a moment too late. Could we, in suitably dignified language, describe the game of "birds, beasts, and fishes," we should venture to prescribe it as no very painful remedy ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... ranks there was a good deal of loud talk and frequent cheering, but the speeches were in general made by lieutenants, and the shouts seemed intended to make up for the defective eloquence of their chief. Mr. Welwyn-Baker was too old and too stout and too shaky for the toil of personal electioneering. He gave a few dinners at his big house three miles away, and he addressed (laconically) one or two select meetings; for the rest, his name and fame had to suffice. There was ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... up a staircase which would have been distinctly the better for repairs. It was necessary to pick one's way as one went, and as the light was defective stumbles ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Roman Empire, poor soul—or rather "to drink beer and dance with the girls"; in which, if defective in other things, Wenzel had an eminent talent. He was one of the worst kaisers and the least victorious on record. He would attend to nothing in the Reich; "the Prag white beer, and girls" of various complexion, being much preferable, as he was heard to say. He had to fling ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... last addition to the Duke of York's sixteenth article that contains the pith of the author's ideas. All his examples are chosen to show that the system of bearing down together from windward in a line parallel to that of the enemy is radically defective, even if all the advantages of position and superior force are with you, and for this reason—that if you succeed in defeating part of the enemy's line you cannot follow up your success with the ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... by his adversaries. "I have made it a point of conscience," he said, "to give suitable nominations according to the morality, and talent, and importance of individuals." He had burned his ships, and without a care for the defective composition of the assembly, he set forth, one after the other, projects calculated to alarm the privileged orders. "More will be paid," he said in the preamble printed at the head of his notes and circulated in profusion over the whole ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... these masks before we use them. They may be defective in spite of the fact that they ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... organized fighting, a picked lot of vigorous young males, the fittest we can find. The too old or too young; the sick, crippled, defective; are all left behind, to marry and be fathers; while the pick of the country, physically, is sent off to oppose the pick ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... prejudice might have been little more than one of the working principles of an aristocratic government, had not the arts which supplied the amenities of life actually tended to drift into the hands of the non-citizen or the man of defective citizenship. The most abject Roman could in his misery console himself with the thought that the hands, which should only touch the plough and the sword, had never been stained by trade. His ideal was that of the nobleman in his palace. It differed ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... next morning he staggered into his quarters, more dead than alive. In his heart was a great thankfulness that Big George had not found him wanting. The last defective machine was mended, the last weakness strengthened, and the plant had reached its fullest stride. The fish might come now in any quantity; the rest was but a matter of coal and iron and human endurance. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... rendered necessary owing to earthquake shocks which occurred, and possibly from the fact that the originally defective foundations on the south side of the crypt ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... and all his triumphs, he stands for the great mass of natural manliness which must be absorbed into art unless art is to be a mere luxury and freak. An appreciation of Scott might be made almost a test of decadence. If ever we lose touch with this one most reckless and defective writer, it will be a proof to us that we have erected round ourselves a false cosmos, a world of lying and horrible perfection, leaving outside of it Walter Scott and that strange old world which is as confused and as indefensible and as inspiring and ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... sea, was among the most constant in his attendance, and completely won the confidence of the captain, who spoke of him as an excellent man who had not received his deserts. Owen, on the strength of this, insinuated that my religious principles were very defective, and offered to instruct me. He made a commencement, and might have succeeded in instilling principles not such as our excellent captain supposed he would, but directly the reverse, had not Pearson, to whom I repeated what he said, again interfered, and threatened to expose him if he continued ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... this, the thought that his favourite child could harbour a wish that involved going to England, was a blow to Mr. Faringfield. He hastened to remove all cause of complaint on the score of defective education. He arranged that the music teacher, who gave the girls their lessons in singing and in playing upon the harpsichord and guitar, should teach them four days a week instead of two. He engaged Mr. Cornelius to become an inmate of his ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... version is defective both at the beginning and at the end; there is also a complete column torn from the manuscript, making the description of the chess match defective. These three gaps have been filled up by short passages enclosed in square brackets, at the commencement ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... internal struggles, from which he does not always emerge victorious. A third is moderate in his appetites; if his sentiment of duty is strong and he possesses a strong will, he will resist his desires, while if his will is weak or his moral sense defective, he will succumb to the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... never regarded either the bishop or the promoter as her judge, was not so simple as to tell them the whole truth. It was very frank of her to warn them that they would not know all.[4] That her memory was curiously defective must also be admitted. I am aware that the clerk of the court was astonished that after a fortnight she should remember exactly the answers she had given in her cross-examination.[5] That may be possible, although she did not always say the same thing. It is none the less certain that after the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... his stories are good, and his quotations amusing. To be sure, he occasionally commits little mistakes, such, for instance, as speaking of America as his Alma Mater; but, on the whole, even without any allowance for a defective education, he appears wonderfully well. One circumstance is too indicative of strong sense, as well as good taste, not to be mentioned;—he is not ashamed of his color, but speaks of it without constraint, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... of wisdom; that in the Head there is no vision, and that thereby all the members are dark and in bonds? No vision in the head; heroism, faith, devout insight to discern what is needful, noble courage to do it, greatly defective there: not seeing eyes there, but spectacles constitutionally ground, which, to the unwary, seem to see. A quite fatal circumstance, had you never so many Parliaments! How is your ship to be steered by a Pilot with no eyes but a pair of glass ones got from the constitutional ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... his from whom he learned it, his idea may be very wrong and inadequate: because in this case, making the other man's idea the pattern of his idea in thinking, as the other man's word or sound is the pattern of his in speaking, his idea is so far defective and inadequate, as it is distant from the archetype and pattern he refers it to, and intends to express and signify by the name he uses for it; which name he would have to be a sign of the other man's idea, (to which, in its proper use, it ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... the repairs, and he had his hands full. Nothing on board but was decayed in a proportion: the lamps leaked, so did the decks; door-knobs came off in the hand, mouldings parted company with the panels, the pump declined to suck, and the defective bathroom came near to swamp the ship. Wicks insisted that all the nails were long ago consumed, and that she was only glued together by the rust. "You shouldn't make me laugh so much, Tommy," he would say. "I am afraid I'll shake the sternpost out of her." And, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lambs many hours after birth still confining their attention to the most accessible locks of wool on the neck or fore legs of the dams, and believe that in such cases the long time it took them to find the source of nourishment arose from a defective sense of smell. Its next important instinct, which comes into play from the moment it can stand on its feet, impels it to follow after any object receding from it, and, on the other hand, to run from anything ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... at a sitting.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I do not know that Campbell ever lied with pen and ink; but you could not entirely depend on any thing he told you in conversation: if there was fact mixed with it. However, I loved Campbell: he was a solid orthodox man: he had a reverence for religion. Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle; and he did nothing grossly wrong that ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... not understand the language of the woman, and turned with a helpless and appealing look to the gentleman, who still speaking French with the slightly defective English ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... is synthetical, and considers the adaptation of each system to every other, to determine its place, use, and value, in reference to universal or absolute religion. It must, therefore, examine the different religions to find wherein each is complete or defective, true or false; how each may supply the defects of the other or prepare the way for a better; how each religion acts on the race which receives it, is adapted to that race, and to the region of the earth which it inhabits. In ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... defective texts given us in the existing editions we perceive the hand of an annotator whose notes have slipped into the text,[34] but in spite of that this life is one of the most important of the secondary texts. This always itinerant brother, one of whose principal preoccupations ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... avenge his death. After years of varied fortunes the Dost had worsted all his enemies, and in 1826 he became the ruler of Cabul. Throughout his long reign Dost Mahomed was a strong and wise ruler. His youth had been neglected and dissolute. His education was defective, and he had been addicted to wine. Once seated on the throne, the reformation of our Henry Fifth was not more thorough than was that of Dost Mahomed. He taught himself to read and write, studied the Koran, became scrupulously abstemious, assiduous ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... led to the exposure of a fatal error in land titles throughout the colonies. Spode had claimed and taken possession of a portion of land occupied by Terry, who brought an action of ejectment: the jury gave a verdict in his favour; but it was stated by counsel that both grants were "defective and ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... suffering! Nothing wrong when sane women with the vote might rid politics of partisanship, greed, crookedness? Nothing wrong when prohibition is mocked by women—when the greatest boon ever granted this country is derided and beaten down and cheated? Nothing wrong when there are half a million defective children in this city? Nothing wrong when there are not enough schools and teachers to educate our boys and girls, when those teachers are shamefully underpaid? Nothing wrong when the mothers of this great country ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... creditors. This, however, led to numerous frauds; and these became more frequent in proportion as the laws governing the property of parties while the marriage relation existed between them, and as executions against landed property etc. were defective. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... advances: 'Eh? Indeed! Are you quite sure you saw my mother-of-pearl button-holder on the work-table in my room?' is at once solicited for walking leave, and graciously accords it. And soon the young couple go out of the Nuns' House, taking all precautions against the discovery of the so vitally defective boots of Mr. Edwin Drood: precautions, let us hope, effective for the peace of Mrs. Edwin Drood that ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... with senile vanity and persistence, and fashioning with avaricious care the silver shrine and crystal case in which—like a very different sort of Saint Charles Borromeo—he hopes to have the reverent ages view him, is one which increases my sense of his defective though splendid personality. And yet I cannot suppress the opposite feeling, that the man of note who lets his riches of reminiscence be buried with him inflicts a loss on the world which it is hard to take resignedly. In the Note-Books of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... of the social scale into this happy tangle, the beneficent Countess, was wretched. When you are in the enemy's country you are dependent on the activity and zeal of your spies and scouts, and the best of these—Polly Wheedle, to wit—had proved defective, recalcitrant even. And because a letter had been lost in her room! as the Countess exclaimed to herself, though Polly gave her no reasons. The Countess had, therefore, to rely chiefly upon personal observation, upon her intuitions, upon her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dunce who emerges from the depths of "apparent failure," there are ten who go under after a more or less protracted struggle, and sink contentedly to the bottom. The explanation of this is that though every child has capacity (apart, of course, from the congenital idiot and the mentally "defective"), there are many kinds of capacity which a formal examination fails to discover, and which the education that is dominated by the prize system fails to develop. The child whose particular kind of capacity does not count, either ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... district people were being murdered by the tens of thousands by tuberculosis, by defective plumbing, by new diseases born of the herding of men and women like cattle. I made some feeble attempt to investigate, to ascertain, to acquaint myself with the facts, and my investigation led me to this result—a result that the lapse of years has not altered; that the private ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... Pits," who had been bribed for an immense sum of money, admitted him at last among servants whom he sent nightly to prisons for corpses. The danger that Vinicius might be recognized was really small. He was preserved from it by night, the dress of a slave, and the defective illumination of the prison. Besides, into whose head could it enter that a patrician, the grandson of one consul, the son of another, could be found among servants, corpse-bearers, exposed to the miasma of prisons and the "Putrid Pits"? And he began work to which ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... matters also attracted his attention. What to do, was the important question that confronted him. To shut down the factory meant great loss and apparent failure. He realized this fully, but he also knew that to go on would simply be to increase the number of defective batteries in circulation, which would ultimately result in a permanent closure and real failure. Hence he took the course which one would expect of Edison's common sense and directness of action. He was not satisfied that the battery was a complete success, so he shut ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... representatives will fulfil the task that is devolved to it, in this noble work: it demands, that, to satisfy the will of the public, as well as the wishes of your Majesty, the deliberations of the nation shall rectify, as soon as possible, what the urgency of our situation may have produced defective, or left imperfect, in the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... finished the sentence. With a frightful roar the defective cartridge exploded, sending fragments of shell and parts of the breech-block into the corporal's face and chest. He was hurled with terrific force to the deck, where ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... the Percy folio manuscript, with several additional stanzas by Percy as the original copy was defective and mutilated. ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community, in any matter essential to its efficacy that is, in any matter essential to the FORMATION, DIRECTION, or SUPPORT of the NATIONAL FORCES. Defective as the present Confederation has been proved to be, this principle appears to have been fully recognized by the framers of it; though they have not made proper or adequate provision for its exercise. Congress have an unlimited discretion ...
— The Federalist Papers
... sea and stayed with the fleet. On the other hand, Howe's separated division of six remained separated, whereas four fresh French ships joined their main fleet on the 30th. Admirable tactics were thus neutralized by defective strategy; and therefore it may with substantial accuracy be said that Howe's professional qualities and defects were both signally illustrated in this, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... was the real victory of Actium. In the words of the Italian historian Ferrero, "it was a victory gained without fighting, and Antony was defeated in this supreme struggle, not by the valor of his adversary or by his own defective strategy or tactics, but by the hopeless inconsistency of his double-faced policy, which, while professing to be republican and Roman, was actually ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... here and there, being pieced together gave Laura a vague impression of a man of fine presence, abort forty-three or forty-five years of age, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight limp in his walk—it was not stated which leg was defective. And this indistinct shadow represented her father. She made an exhaustive search for the missing letters, but found none. They had probably been burned; and she doubted not that the ones she had ferreted out would have shared the same fate if Mr. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... shrugged massive shoulders. "My English is defective but distinct," he explained. "One is forced to speak slowly when one speaks badly. Also the Colonel Chichely"—the Britisher—"it is he at whom I talk carefully. The English ear, it is not imaginative. One must make things clear. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... easy to be accounted for that the statistics of no Christian communion in America are so defective, uncertain, and generally unsatisfactory as those of the most solidly organized and completely systematized of them ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... from the land the Montauk came in sight again, and Captain Truck announced the agreeable intelligence that the jury mainmast was up, and that the ship had after-sail set, diminutive and defective as it might be. Instead of heading to the southward, however, as heretofore, Mr. Leach was apparently endeavouring to get back again to the northward of the headland that had shut in the ship, or was trying to retrace his steps. Mr. Truck rightly judged that this was proof ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Gilberte, or rather you think you know her, for do we ever understand women? All their opinions, their ideas, their creeds, are a surprise to us. They are all full of twists and turns, of the unforeseen, of unintelligible arguments, or defective logic and of obstinate ideas, which seem final, but which they alter because a little bird came and perched on ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was admittedly defective all over the province. The teachers were almost as ignorant and illiterate as the people who went to learn—and perhaps more so; while the Escola Normal (Normal School) for women was almost altogether unattended. The public works were uncared for—there ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... torpedoes, no heavy guns to gain our freedom. No precious human lives will be sacrificed; no tears will be shed to establish our right. We shall capture the fortresses of prejudice and injustice by the force of our arguments; we shall send shell after shell into these strongholds until their defective reasoning gives way to victorious truth. "Inability to bear arms," says Herbert Spencer, "was the reason given in feudal times for excluding woman from succession," and to-day her position is lowest where the military spirit prevails. A sad illustration of this is my own ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... living. As for the Universalists, the record of their fidelity, as a body, to the various interests of social morality is not surpassed by that of any denomination. But in the earlier days the conflict against the two sects called "liberal" was waged ruthlessly, not as against defective or erroneous schemes of doctrine, but as against distinctly ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... indulgent reader excuse an anecdote which may encourage some workers who may have found their mathematics defective through want of use? James Gregory's nephew David had a heap of MS. notes by Newton. These descended to a Miss Gregory, of Edinburgh, who handed them to the present writer, when an undergraduate at Cambridge, to examine. After perusal, ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... possible, defining every power intended to be conferred, every crime intended to be made punishable, and prescribing the punishment to be inflicted. In addition to some particular cases spoken of more at length, the whole criminal code is now lamentably defective. Some offenses are imperfectly described and others are entirely omitted, so that flagrant crimes may be committed with impunity. The scale of punishment is not in all cases graduated according to the degree and nature of the offense, and is often rendered more unequal by the different ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... great as was its advance on the dispersed chaotic Socialism that preceded it, was defective in other directions as well as in its innocence of any scheme of State organization. About women and children, for example, it was ill-informed; its founders do not seem to have been inspired either by educational necessities or philoprogenitive passion. No biologist—indeed no scientific ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... that exists for more minute investigation and research. Investigations such as are here indicated do not involve any large expenditure of money; but they do require care and intelligence to prevent errors being made. Experiments should not be condemned as defective because the results differ from old-established theories; yet when this does happen, it is in all cases better to suspect the new experiment rather than the old theory, until the results have been fully established.—Wm. Foulis, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... she said, gaily. "Mr. Mallery, do come to the rescue. My French is defective or the translation is incorrect, ...
— Three People • Pansy
... pulmonary disorganization has proceeded far, from the presence of carbon, there is a languor in the vital action from defective oxygenation of the blood, which produces a gradual reduction in the temperature of the body, requiring double clothing, and even that addition is, with the aid of stimulants, not sufficient to keep ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... left them in the ninth year, how Weland Smith was taken prisoner by King Nidad, and hamstrung, and set to work for the king; and of the vengeance of Weland. There are one hundred and fifty-nine lines, but in the text there are many defective places. The Lay is a ballad history, beginning at the beginning, and ending, not with the end of the life of Weland, nor with the adventures of his son Widia, but with the escape of Weland from the king, his enemy, after he had killed ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... question of their authenticity to the determination of the impartial Public. The Editor contented himself with intimating his opinion, [Pref. p. xii, xiii.] that the external evidence on both sides was so defective as to deserve but little attention, and that the final decision of the question must depend upon the internal evidence. To shew that this opinion was not thrown out in order to mislead the enquiries and judgements of the readers, I have here drawn together some observations upon THE ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... had much to worry me—and the worst is yet to come," replied Helen. Then she told Bo how complicated and bewildering was the management of a big ranch—when the owner was ill, testy, defective in memory, and hard as steel—when he had hoards of gold and notes, but could not or would not remember his obligations—when the neighbor ranchers had just claims—when cowboys and sheep-herders were ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... it," says his friend, "to Hampstead air with its many sylvan beauties that du Maurier was able for so long, notwithstanding defective sight and health gradually failing, to prosecute his daily work with ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... shown defective judgment in desiring her mother not to leave them alone; and of this Mrs Dale soon felt herself aware. The thing had to be done, and no little precautionary measure, such as this of Mrs Dale's enforced presence, would prevent it. Of this ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the least experience, and it being a business that spoke directly to the senses, he was most apt to distrust his own powers; but he had applied oils to several burns, cut round the roots of sundry defective teeth, and sewed up the wounds of numberless wood choppers, with considerable clat, when an unfortunate jobber suffered a fracture of his leg by the tree that he had been felling. It was on this occasion that our hero encountered the greatest trial his nerves and moral feeling had ever sustained. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... stoves with coal or coke, or similar fuel were out of the question, being hard to light, dusty when lighted, and dirty to clean. Various spirit lamps, Etnas, Magic stoves, Soyers, and others, were examined and tried, and all were defective in grand points. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... one of those defective spirits who cannot subsist for any length of time on their own bottoms. He wanted a familiar prop, upon which he could disburden his cares, his doubts, and his humours; an humble friend who would endure his caprices, and with whom he could communicate, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... account for the rarity of really sound character, for the frequent absence of what we should call the sense of duty, public and private. I propose in this chapter to deal with the question of Roman education just so far as to show where in Cicero's time it was chiefly defective. It is a subject that has been very completely worked out, and an excellent summary of the results will be found in the little volume on Roman education written by the late Professor A.S. Wilkins, just before his lamented death: but he was describing its methods without special reference to ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... are very close relations between the science of philanthropy and sociology. The elimination of hereditary defects, the overcoming of the social maladjustment of individuals, and the correction of defective social conditions, the three great tasks of scientific philanthropy, all require great knowledge of human society. The social or philanthropic worker, therefore, requires thorough equipment in sociology that he may ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... 1813, and cannot but recollect with astonishment how limited and imperfect was the instruction which an officer received at that time: he absolutely entered the army without any military education whatever. We were so defective in our drill, even after we had passed out of the hands of the sergeant, that the excellence of our non-commissioned officers alone prevented us from meeting with the most fatal disasters in the face of the enemy. Physical force and our bull-dog energy carried many a hard-fought field. ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... his 'Idyllia' are purely pastoral; but he is not so exact in his persons, having introduced reapers and fishermen as well as shepherds. He is apt to be too long in his descriptions, of which that of the cup in the first pastoral is a remarkable instance. In the manners he seems a little defective, for his swains are sometimes abusive and immodest, and perhaps too much inclining to rusticity; for instance, in his fourth and fifth 'Idyllia.' But 'tis enough that all others learnt their excellencies from him, and that his dialect alone has a secret ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... English navigator. Had he even seen them, his own work would have been more accurate than it was, and his large chart of New Holland would have been more complete. It has already been shown that the French chart of the so-called Terre Napoleon coasts was in large measure defective, many capes, islands, and bays being represented that have no existence in fact, and a large portion of the outline being crudely and erroneously drawn. Not only so, but if Freycinet had had copies of Flinders' charts before him, ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... of yore, exposed his canvas to universal criticism, and found, to his mortification, that there was not a particle of his composition which had not been pronounced defective by one pseudo-critic or another, did not receive severer castigation than I have experienced from the unsolicited remarks ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... the complexity of his being,—the mental and moral activity elicited by his connection with Nature and life,—the problems of pain, hereditary evil, and death, which affect his individual existence,—the problems of bad or defective institutions and usages, religious, political, and warlike, which affect his social existence,—and the testimony of history to human progress, and to the principles of human spontaneity and divine control which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... defective as the terms of the treaties frequently are as regards the definition of tribal boundaries, they are by far the most accurate and important of the means at our command for fixing boundary lines upon the present map. By their aid the territorial ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... draperies! Its beneficent effects are not to be measured by yards of wool and silk. Love of light is as instinctive as the aversion to darkness. Plants growing in a dark cellar, where but one struggling ray of light enters, will instinctively grow in the direction of that ray. It is questionable whether defective lighting is not productive of as much physical deterioration in the crowded tenement districts as defective ventilation—certainly it is only secondary in degree. Light is necessary. Light is free to all, and why human beings ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... terrible time when I am confined but caring for the oldest child it preys so on my mind that I fear more defective children. Help me please!" ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... as powerless to detach his work from his past as he is to detach himself from it; and one of the saddest penalties of his misdoings is their survival in his work. The dulness of the poet's ear shows itself in the defective melody of his verse; for both metre and rhythm have a physiological basis; they represent and express the harmony which is in the body when the body is finely attuned to the spirit. Dull senses and a sluggish body are never found in connection with a great command ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... warm a hold in men's hearts, emotions and belief, as, in their days, feudalism or ecclesiasticism, and inaugurates its own perennial sources, welling from the centre forever, its strength will be defective, its growth doubtful, and its main charm wanting. I suggest, therefore, the possibility, should some two or three really original American poets, (perhaps artists or lecturers,) arise, mounting the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the persecutions, the fanaticism of the populace, and that both governors and emperor had a great deal of trouble with these disturbances. How far Marcus was cognizant of these cruel proceedings we do not know, for the historical records of his reign are very defective. He did not make the rule against the Christians, for Trajan did that; and if we admit that he would have been willing to let the Christians alone, we cannot affirm that it was in his power, for it would ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... down as an undoubted fact that all courtiers are deficient either in honesty, good sense, judgment, wit, or sincerity; that is to say, if any of them by chance possess some one of these qualities, you may depend upon it he is defective in the rest: sumptuous in their equipages, deep play, a great opinion of their own merit, and contempt of that of others, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... clashing of weapons, which has been largely, if not entirely, the cause of such a variety and extent of nervous trouble throughout the so-called civilized world. It is not confined to nervous prostration; if there is a defective spot organically, an inherited tendency to weakness, the nervous irritation is almost certain to concentrate upon it instead of developing into a ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... following morning! To ensure its delivery the same evening, I ought to have put a special-delivery stamp on it—price fivepence—in addition to the ordinary two-cent stamp. No doubt it is the universal employment of the telephone in American cities that leads people to put up with such defective ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... things." And few young men, of any considerable powers, can compare the creeds which they receive in their childhood with the teachings of Sacred Scripture, without coming to the conclusion, that on some points they are erroneous, and on others defective; that on some subjects they contain too much, and on others too little. And good young men will naturally feel disposed to lay aside what they regard as erroneous, and to accept what presents itself to their minds as true. In some cases they will make mistakes. The only men that never ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... reddish-brown, eyes rimmed with black, muzzles brown, hoofs black, and horns white tipped with black. Within a period of thirty-three years about a dozen calves were born with "brown and blue spots upon the cheeks or necks; but these, together with any defective animals, were always destroyed." According to Bewick, about the year 1770 some calves appeared with black ears; but these were also destroyed by the keeper, and black ears have not since reappeared. The wild white ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... change in him than Ginevra did; his relations with them, if not better conceived than his paternal ones, had been less evidently defective. Now he found fault with every one, so that even Joseph dared hardly open his mouth, and said he must give warning. The day after his arrival, having spent the morning with Angus walking over certain fields, much desired, he knew, of a neighbouring ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... in our expectations of such honourable and commendable appearances, for the laudable laws, and antient constitutions of this kingdom, both as to sacred and civil concerns, all these appearances, whither by addresses or protestations being so far lame and defective, as that the resolutions and purposes of such have never been fairly and freely remonstrat to the contrivers, promoters and establishers of this Union. The consideration of which, and the lamentable case and condition the land already is, and may be in, by reason ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... recent, shoe as advised in our paragraph upon "Incipient Unsoundness," being sure to cut the heel well down, putting the bearing fully upon the frog and three-quarters of the foot. If the hoof is weak from long contraction and defective circulation, lower the heels and whole wall, until the frog comes well upon the ground, and shoe with a "slipper," or "tip," made by cutting off a light shoe just before the middle calk, drawing it down and lowering the toe-calk partially. This will ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... charge, having never thought myself worthy of it: but which, however unworthy, I submitted to undertake in obedience." The archbishop was charmed with his candor and humility, would not admit his abdication, but supplied certain rites which he judged defective in his ordination: and St. Chad, leaving the see of York, retired to his monastery of Lestingay, but was not suffered to bury himself long in that solitude. Jaruman, bishop of the Mercians, dying, St. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... there were none; and a dulness and spiritless depression prevailed on every side. Those who were actively engaged around Ciudad Rodrigo had, of course, the excitement and interest which the enterprise involved: but even there the works made slow progress. The breaching artillery was defective in every way: the rain undermined the faces of the bastions; the clayey soil sank beneath the weight of the heavy guns; and the storms of one night frequently destroyed more than a whole week's labor ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... plain to him that no matter how defective the black was in speech he understood pretty well every word that was said, for a firm sinewy hand was laid upon the lad's arm and the man said softly, "Jackum won't go. Want 'top 'long you. Big Dan ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... is her husband who must sue the company, and it is to her husband that the damages, if there are any, will be awarded. In Ashfield, Mass., supposed to be the most advanced of any State in the Union in all things, humanitarian as well as intellectual, a married woman was severely injured by a defective sidewalk. Her husband sued the corporation and recovered $13,000 damages. And those $13,000 belong to him bona fide; and whenever that unfortunate wife wishes a dollar of it to supply her needs she must ask her husband for it; and if the man be of a narrow, selfish, niggardly nature, ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... of her character, and by the growing certainty that her convictions were the souls of actions to .be born them, his daring of belief in her strengthened until he began to think that perhaps it would be neither his early history, nor his defective education, nor his clumsiness, that would prevent her from listening to such words wherewith he burned to throw open the gates of his world, and pray her to enter and sit upon its loftiest throne—its loftiest throne but one. And with the thought he felt as if he must run to her, calling ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... qualities enumerated above render the Iban an agreeable companion and a useful servant. But there is another side to the picture: they have little respect for their chiefs, a peculiarity which renders their social organisation very defective and chaotic; they are quarrelsome, treacherous, and litigious, and the most inveterate head-hunters of the country; unlike most of the other peoples, they will take heads for the sake of the glory the act brings them ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... United States has entered upon the coinage of the precious metals, and considerable sums of defective coins and bullion have been lodged with the Director by individuals. There is a pleasing prospect that the institution will at no remote day realize the expectation which was originally formed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... excellent article, and I bought it at an enormous price, so my neighbors tell me. But from my indifferent success in bringing down game with it, I am forced to the conclusion that the barrel must be defective. Peter thinks not, but he is more of an adept in ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... the atmosphere forced the water to ascend into the steam-vessel through a pipe of 24 to 26 feet high, and by the admission of dense steam from the boiler, forcing the water in the steam-vessel to ascend to the height desired. This construction was defective because it required very strong vessels to resist the force of the steam, and because an enormous quantity of steam was condensed by coming in contact with the cold water ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... of green taffeta. "What hast thou brought me there, friend?" asked the kazi. "My lord," replied the porter, setting the chest on the floor, "I bring your bride." The kazi opened the chest, and discovered a woman of three feet and a half, defective in every limb and feature. He was horrified at the sight of this object, and throwing the covering hastily over it, demanded of the porter, "What wouldst thou have me do with this frightful creature?" "My lord," said the porter, "this is the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... before it gets here—and three gravities is low! Maybe it's a defective job. There have been misfires and so on. It won't take long to try this wagon, anyhow. They're anxious to send up a robot ship from the Shed and these have to be tested first. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... Miss Scrotton said. "The epitome of the commonplace. She looks like some of the queer old American women one sees in the National Gallery with Baedekers in their hands and bags at their belts; fat, sallow, provincial, with defective grammar and horrible twangs; the kind of American, you know," said Miss Scrotton, warming to her description as she felt that she was amusing Gregory Jardine, "that the other kind always tell you they never by any chance would meet ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... father, who was in the cabin, padding, with extra flannel, his stumps, to defend them from the cold, which always made him suffer much, and then led me into the cabin. It was with much difficulty I could walk; my knees trembled, and my eyesight was defective. Old Tom took my hand as I ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... organization of the mine was defective in some way, for at the time of the disaster ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... courteous in business must needs have his ear. I well know that De Vallance gained the royal favour by appearing to be your devoted friend, and by praising you for those qualities in which it was Heaven's will to leave you somewhat defective. Thus he praised your prudence, and produced your flight in proof of your innocence; yet, in the same breath, gave some instance of your rashness, and shewed that flight was ever the villain's resource. So contrariwise were his pleadings and his praises, that His Grace said one day of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... of the Irish engineering staff, and a defective commissariat, at that time was most deplorable; and although the town of —— was notoriously disaffected, the barrack chosen, temporarily, to accommodate the garrison—a company of militia—was a thatched building, two stories high, and perfectly commanded by houses in front and rear. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... bushels of popcorn and stored it in a barn. The barn caught fire, and the corn began to pop and filled a ten-acre field. An old mare in a neighboring pasture had defective eyesight, saw the corn, thought it was snow, and lay down and froze ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... Paley's 'Moral and Political Philosophy' is entitled 'PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS' it is in fact an unmethodical account of various fundamental points of the subject. He begins by defining Moral Philosophy as 'that science which teaches men their duty, and the reasons of it. The ordinary rules are defective and may mislead, unless aided by a scientific investigation. These ordinary rules are the Law of Honour, the Law of the Land, and ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... she tries to kiss me, but I ducks. All through her turn she dribbles from the chin like a defective fire-hydrant, and I can tell that she ain't got her mind on her business. She's too busy thinking about peanuts. When she's got through and taken her bows, the manager leaves the curtain up and Emily steps back behind a rope that a couple of the hands stretches acrosst the stage, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... spirits—mediums seeing what they describe, very often, when the more direct auditory method is not resorted to. The "spirit" presents somehow to the mind of the medium a picture, which is described and often interpreted by the medium. Often this interpretation is quite erroneous—resembling a defective analysis of a dream. Because of this the message is not recognized. Yet the source of the message may ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... is the business of this life to make excuses for others, but none for ourselves. We should be clearly persuaded of our own misconduct, for that is the part of knowledge in which we are most apt to be defective. (2) Even justice is no right of a man's own, but a thing, like the king's tribute, which shall never be his, but which he should strive to see rendered to another. None was ever just to me; none ever will be. You may reasonably aspire ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
