"Moot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Oswestry till, as a newspaper writer put it, "a rival to Shrewsbury is brought into condition to do it damage." Another was for complicating it with other new schemes. One of the sternest of all controversies still raged round the moot point whether the line was to run from Oswestry to Newtown or from Newtown to Oswestry, and even private friends fell out as to the exact spot on the proposed route at which the actual work should begin! "Discord triumphs—local prejudice is rampart—personal ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... same quarter is, that Professor Erni of Yale College has been making an interesting series of experiments on fermentation—a process of which the original cause has never yet been satisfactorily explained, and is still a moot-point with chemists. They tell us it is one by which complex substances are decomposed into simpler forms, as some suppose, by chemical action; others, by development of fungi, different in different substances. Among the experiments, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... every age in support of the conflicting opinions on government: and that wisdom and duty dictate an humble resignation to the verdict of our future peers. I doing this myself, I shall certainly not suffer moot questions to affect the sentiments of sincere friendship and respect, consecrated to you by so long a course of time, and of which ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... mouse. To educate Albert, to raise him above his groove in life and develop his soul, appealed to her romantic nature as a worthy task, and as a good way of filling in the time. It is an exceedingly moot point—and one which his associates of the servants' hall would have combated hotly—whether Albert possessed a soul. The most one could say for certain is that he looked as if he possessed one. To one who saw his deep blue eyes and their sweet, pensive expression ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... horror when I saw those awful German names staring out at me under my own signature—and in an article espousing the side of France in the Alsace-Lorraine controversy? Perhaps not—unless you understand the feeling of the actual possessor and the aspirant to possession of border and other moot territories. "By their spelling ye shall know them!" is their cry. Later, I happened to be in America when that dear good faithful copy-reader changed my Bizerte to the dictionary's Bizerta in an article on Tunis, and was able to go to the mat with him. I ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... Paris, as well as with some of my countrymen, officers in the service of France. My next will be from Paris. Remember me to our friends at A—'s. I am a little heavy-hearted at the prospect of removing to such a distance from you. It is a moot point whether I shall ever return. My ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... the master, though a tall and tolerably robust fellow, found the feat considerably more difficult than he could have supposed. We swayed from side to side of the school-room, now backwards, now forwards, and for a full minute it seemed to be rather a moot point on which side the victory was to incline. At length, however, I was tripped over a form; and as the master had to deal with me, not as master usually deals with pupil, but as one combatant deals with another, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... they had discovered a new plan for carrying on the internal affairs of the country, and the idea was to leave each district to manage its own affairs. This is only a return to the original Saxon plan. In every village there was a moot-hill, or sacred tree, where the freemen met to make their own laws and arrange their agricultural affairs. Here disputes were settled, plough lands and meadow lands shared in due lot among the villagers, and ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... the equinoctial line, and reveal to the knowledge of civilized man the great river, afterwards called the Amazon, and the country of Brazil. The fleet in which Vespucci took passage left Spain in the month of May, 1499, that commanded by Pinzon left in December; and it is still a moot question whether the first or the second was the first to arrive on the coast of Brazil. But Pinzon sailed beyond Vespucci on that voyage, though he was to be surpassed, the next year, in the generous rivalry that existed ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... Negro has been a moot question for a generation past. But even to-day what do we find the general reliance of the American mind in determinating this question? Almost universally the resort is to material agencies! The ordinary, and sometimes the extraordinary ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... contends that there were five hundred and eighty-five guests. This, I think, may be treated as a moot point. ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... fight, and sought the wood, Fled to the fastness, and saved their lives, And more of the men than was at all meet, 195 If they those services all had remembered, That he for their welfare to them had done; So Offa to him one day had erst said At the meeting-place, when he held a moot, That there [very] proudly they many things spake 200 Which after in need they would not perform.[18] Then was down-fallen the prince of the folk, AEthelred's earl: all of them saw, The hearth-companions, that their lord lay dead. Then hurried there forth ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... fondly to Pitt, who had taken care of her and helped her and been good to her. Was it all over? and no more such kindly ministry and delightful sympathy to be ever hoped for any more? Had Pitt forgotten her? It gave Esther pain, that nobody guessed, to be obliged to moot this question; and it busied her a good deal. Sometimes her thoughts went longingly back beyond Pitt Dallas to another face that had always been loving to her; soft eyes and a tender hand that were ever sure to bring sympathy and help. She could not much bear to think of it. That was ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... all of the notable marriages we had in New York three years ago," said I, after she had most engagingly reduced me to a state of subjection in the matter of three or four moot questions that came up for settlement. "You don't seem to fit in with any of the international affairs I can ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... later nineteenth century, the utmost importance attaches to Anglo-Saxon arrangements respecting local government and administration. The smallest governmental unit was the township, comprising normally a village surrounded by arable lands, meadows, and woodland. The town-moot was a primary assembly of the freemen of the village, by which, under the presidency of a reeve, the affairs of the township were administered. A variation of the township was the burgh, or borough, whose population ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... make plain; and that if the men didn't do what was right, it was none o' Mr Wentworth's fault. The young priest indemnified himself in "the district" for much that vexed him elsewhere. There was no question of Skelmersdale, or of any moot point there, but only a quantity of primitive people under the original conditions of humanity, whose lives might be amended, and consoled, and elevated. That was a matter about which Mr Wentworth had no doubt. He ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... tentatives have winged Betwixt your Majesty and Russia's court, To moot that one of their Grand Duchesses Should be your Empress-wife. Nought else ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... time allowed—and of course there was no knowing what effect the resistance of Dublin might have on the country—it may be a moot point whether it might not have been advisable to separate the two questions of the sentence of death and the actual executions, and one can well imagine the conciliatory effect of a Royal Act of Clemency in the event ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... thought that you had just to moot the question And say you felt the closing hour had come And we should simply jump at your suggestion And all the Hague with overtures would hum; You'd but to call her up, And Peace would follow like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... us and will hear of it. But for that, Con would have manoeuvred against his wife to send him downstairs at the lady's heels. The fellow was a perfect riddle, hard to read as the zebra lines on the skin of a wild jackass—if Providence intended any meaning when she traced them! and it's a moot point: as it is whether some of our poets have meaning and are not composers of zebra. 'No one knows but them above!' he said aloud, apparently to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... man of sin, Sir Philip de Lymbury, lifted up his heel against the Abbey of St. Alban's, and actually laid hands upon Brother John Moot, the cellarer; and on Monday, being market day at Luton in Beds, did actually clap the said cellarer in the pillory and kept him there, exposed to the jeers and contempt of the rude populace, who, we may be sure, were in ecstasies at this precursor of Mr. Pickwick in ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... and upright leader, and a good orator, he did much for the moulding of a united Canada. He is also famed as a writer of French lyrics, which were published in 1875, two years after his death. Whether the stamps ever got beyond the proposal stage is a moot point but at any rate a list of chosen subjects ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... of the Prologues of these plays has long been a moot question. The tendency of the more recent investigators has been to hold that all were, at least in part, written by ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... little addition to the sum of knowledge he possessed, master and dog grew closer to one another. It is always a moot point whether our dogs consider they belong to the family with which they live, or whether they do not regard the matter the other way about, and judge that the family belongs to them. In Murphy's case there is no shadow of doubt that, so far as his master was concerned, ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... retire at all times and be hidden. Of all that he experienced within his heart at this time not any part was visible to the brother who was his idle visitor; or perhaps only the least part, and that not until the moot point between ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... but under that master's brothers Duerer studied and helped to support himself by his art at Colmar and at Basle. Various wood-blocks executed by him at the latter place are preserved there. Whether he also visited Venice now or not is a moot point. Here or elsewhere, at any rate, he came under the influence of the Bellini, of Mantegna, and more particularly of Jacopo dei Barbari—the painter and engraver to whom he owed the incentive to study the proportions of the human body—a study which henceforth became the most ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... the side towards which justice inclines, and we lived far within our borders with scarcely the power to injure or be injured, except on the ocean. Now we are running into the crimes to which strong nations are liable. Our diplomatists unblushingly moot the question of taking foreign territory by force if it cannot be purchased; our executive prevents piratical expeditions against the lands of neighboring States as feebly and slowly as if it connived at them; we pick quarrels to gain conquests; and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Estates'—Monarch, namely, Barons, and Clergy. It is made up in nearly three equal parts of ingenuity, wit, and grossness. It is a drama, and was acted several times—first, in 1535, at Cupar-Fife, on a large green mound called Moot-hill; then, in 1539, in an open park near Linlithgow, by the express desire of the king, who with all the ladies of the Court attended the representation; then in the amphitheatre of St Johnston in Perth; and in 1554, at Edinburgh, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... arming slaves is in my opinion a moot point, unless the enemy set the example. For, should we begin to form Battalions of them, I have not the smallest doubt, if the war is to be prosecuted, of their following us in it, and justifying the measure upon our own ground. The contest then must be who can arm fastest, and where are our arms? ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... time 'at I had broucht her up the stair—an' says she, layin' her han' upo' my airm wi' a clap, as gien her an' me was to be freen's upo' sic a gran' foondation o' dirt as that!—says she, makin' a laich toot moot o' 't,—'He's Lord Lossie's!' says she, an' maks a face 'at micht hae turnt a cat sick—only by guid luck I had nae feelin's. 'An' nae suner's my leddy deid nor her man follows her!' says she. 'An' what do ye mak o' that?' says she. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... mena, mina, moot, Le'me catch you by the foot; Fill your eyes and mouth with soot, Pull a tree up ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... deserted. Tracey wakened Will by stamping heavily across the floor, and Will mechanically pushed down his spectacles and dipped a pen in ink, slewing the register round for the guest's signature. He says he knew at a glance that The Mysterious Stranger was no travelling man, but this is a moot point, Tracey's memory being minutely accurate and at ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... long talk during which we fixed up a good many moot points, went on to see General d'Amade. Unluckily he had just left to go on to the Flagship to see me. I did not like to visit the French front in his absence, so took notes of the Turkish defences on "V" and had a second and a more thorough inspection of the beach, transport and storage arrangements ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... successor, Paul the Third, the influence of Contarini and the moderate Catholics secured a more favourable reception of plans of reconciliation. In April, 1541, conferences for this purpose were in fact opened at Augsburg in which Contarini, as Papal legate, accepted a definition of the moot question of justifications by faith which satisfied Bucer and Melancthon. On the other side, the Landgrave of Hesse and the Elector of Brandenburg publicly declared that they believed it possible ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... days, and there still may be found, a property of no vast size—snug, however, and of good repute—and called universally "Anerley Farm." How long it has borne that name it knows not, neither cares to moot the question; and there lives no antiquary of enough antiquity to decide it. A place of smiling hope, and comfort, and content with quietude; no memory of man about it runneth to the contrary; while every ox, and horse, and sheep, and fowl, and frisky ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be uglier by day or by night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination is at ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... gardens gay with the homely flowers John Bunyan knew and loved, leads to the village green, fringed with churchyard elms, in the middle of which is the pedestal or stump of the market-cross, and at the upper end of the old "Moot Hall," a quaint brick and timber building, with a projecting upper storey, a good example of the domestic architecture of the fifteenth century, originally, perhaps, the Guesten- Hall of the adjacent nunnery, and afterwards the Court House of the manor when lay-lords had succeeded ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... spectators, and ends up in Aisne Bunker. FERDINAND (canny, cautious type of player) hits a wind-cheating screamer which finished fully forty yards from the tee. Critics differ as to FRANCIS-JOSEPH's shot, and it is still a moot point whether he had a species of fit or was simply trying to follow through. When restored to perpendicular was found to have ball deeply embedded in his person. Disqualified for handling. MEHMED ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 - 1917 Almanack • Various
... It is a moot point which delighted us the more, Feodor's charming manner or his exquisite trousers. These two characteristics were the more pleasing because of their perfect contrast; for whereas his manner was refined and retiring, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... Bolivia, and was extremely inconvenient for all dwellers on the eastern side of the Andes to reach. Whether this was a masterpiece of policy calculated to discourage lawsuits, or whether it was merely due to Spanish incuriousness and maladministration, is a moot point. *2* The Indians of the missions were not allowed to possess firearms at this period. *3* 'Paraguay', Dr. E. de Bourgade la Dardye; English edition by George Philips junior (London, 1892). The Indians call it Salto de Canandiyu, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... some doubt as to whether this was a civil or criminal trial, but there was no doubt whatever of the existence of a trial of some kind; neither did there exist any doubt as to the importance of this, the first case the prosecuting attorney had ever tried, outside of moot courts. It was the first speech he had ever made in public, barring college "orations," carefully memorized, and an occasional Fourth of July speech, which might have been better for more memorizing. The attorney for the prosecution, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... nature on his mind. His saddler had to be seen,—and threatened,—on a certain matter touching the horses' backs. A draught of hounds were being sent down to a friend in Scotland. And there was a Committee of Masters to sit on a moot question concerning a neutral covert in the XXX country, of which Committee he was one. But the desire to punish Slide was almost as strong in his indignant mind as those other matters referring more especially ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... As there are moot points concerning the stones themselves and the conduct of the sport, so the chungke spears differ in the accounts of the early adventurers in this region. The length is variously given as eight, ten, twelve feet. The shape is sometimes represented ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Ojibways that there were occasionally bad ones among them, "but the good council of the wise sachems and the mark of disgrace put upon unruly persons had a very desirable influence."[199] The extreme form of punishment in the power of the folk-moot of the Tuschinen is to be excluded from the public feasts, and to be made a spectator while stoned in effigy and cursed.[200] Sending a man to Coventry is in vogue among the Fejir Beduins: one who kills a friend is so despised that he is never spoken ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... be settled before I go," Benjulia proceeded. "Here are some papers, which I have received from your lawyer, Mr. Moot. They relate to a slander, ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... through the city streets, and the sight sent his heart plunging against his side like an inward sledge-hammer. Would one pulse in her heart stir ever so faintly at sight of him? Just as he asked himself the question, and was stepping forward to moot her, feeling very like the country swain in love—"hot and dry like, with a pain in his side like"—he suddenly stopped. Another figure came forth from the shadow of an opposite house, and softly pronounced her name. It was a short figure—a woman's figure. He could not see the face, and ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... in earnest; and I will try. There are some preliminaries to settle. first: the uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A. D. , Linnaeus declares, I hereby separate the whales from the fish. But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year , sharks and shad, alewives and herring, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... want your tonsils out now, won't you?" The question of a tonsilectomy had been a moot one for years. Nancy had always been anxious to have them out, having been told that it was merely a case of "snip, snip, and a day on ice cream." Henry, who regarded tonsilectomy skeptically as a fad, and who knew, ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... moot point whether even Dick Vaughan's voice would have served to penetrate the cloud of fury in which Jan moved. He became very terrible in his wrath. One saw less of the bloodhound and more, far more, of his sire, of royal Finn, the fighting wolfhound of the Tinnaburra ranges, ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... would be well to emphasize that it is important to avoid the too free use of condiments and stimulating foods. We have used salt so long that our bodies seem adapted to it, and it is usually considered essential to the welfare of domestic stock; therefore it is a moot question as to whether it is advisable for human beings to avoid it altogether. Yet the excessive use of it to which we are prone is certainly harmful. How is this to be avoided? If we eat our food ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... myself discerned no evidence to convict her; but the populace cried out, in universal frenzy, that she was guilty, that she should die; and that the barbarians, when they heard of the punishment inflicted on their secret adherent, would retire in dismay from Rome. This also was a moot point of argument, on which I vainly endeavoured to decide; but the Senate and the people were wiser than I; and Serena was condemned to be strangled to-morrow by the public executioner. She was a woman of good report before this time, and is the adopted mother of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... he so humbly appealed to me for my opinion on that moot point, did much to conciliate me. He had not carried me with him all the while. He seemed to me a bit out of date, too like an ante-Christian prophet. Yet how my heart went out to him as he ended up so very abruptly with his 'meanwhile.' His voice broke queerly, and his eyes shone. 'Meanwhile ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... subject matter; matter, theme, noemata [Gr.], topic, what it is about, thesis, text, business, affair, matter in hand, argument; motion, resolution; head, chapter; case, point; proposition, theorem; field of inquiry; moot point, problem &c (question) 461. V. float in the mind, pass in the mind &c 451. Adj. thought of; uppermost in the mind; in petto. Adv. under consideration; in question, in the mind; on foot, on the carpet, on the docket, on the tapis^; relative to ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... basis of all our science, and which has received a proportionate attention from Mr Mill, must not be amongst those which are passed over. We mean the law of Causation. What should be described as the complete and adequate notion of a cause, we need not say is one of the moot points of philosophy. According to one school of metaphysicians, there is in our notion of cause an element not derived from experience, which, it is confessed on all hands, can teach us only the succession of events. Cause, with them, is that invisible power, that mysterious bond, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... opened the show in a field by the market-town, which stood in a hollow among the moors. The grass sloped to a river that sparkled in the sun and then vanished in the alders' shade. Across the stream, old oak and ash trees rolled up the side of the Moot Hill, and round the latter gray walls and roofs showed among the leaves. A spire and a square, ivy-covered tower rose above the faint blue haze of smoke. A few white clouds floated in the sky and their cool shadows crept ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... covenant, "and all the people stood to the covenant." The stone connected with the ceremony was regarded as the most sacred attestation of the engagement entered into between the newly-elected king or chief and his people. It was placed in some conspicuous position, upon the top of a "moot-hill," or the open-air place of assembly. Upon it was usually carved an impression of a human foot; and into this impression, during the ceremony of inauguration, the king or chief placed his own right foot, in token that he ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... there were neither cattle nor sheep to be seen; and if, as they strongly suspected, the blockhouses in sight accommodated a few men, none of their occupants revealed their presence nor made the slightest attempt to interfere with the uninvited visitors. It was a moot point between Dick and Grosvenor whether they should not take the bull by the horns, as it were, by riding up to the nearest blockhouse and attempting to get into communication with its occupants at once; but Grosvenor was very strongly opposed to any such step, upon the ground that, if ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... meat and bread, washed down by 'green pots' of ale and wine. When 'the horn' sounded for supper, the student was in most cases better able to see the truth of knotty points than when in compliance with etiquette he bowed to the benchers, and asked if it was their pleasure to hear a moot. It seems probable that long before 'case-puttings' and 'mootings' were altogether disused, the old benchers were wont to wink mischievously at each other when they prepared to teach the boys, and that sometimes they would turn away ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of; on man's wretched lot; on modesty; on advantages of music; order of different kinds of exercises according to; on intercourse between men and their wives; calls salt divine; epithets applied to liquids by; a moot point in third book of Iliad; essay on life and poetry of; biographical sketch of; the two works of; metre and dialects used by; epithets used by; tropes found in; figures of speech in; various styles used by; on constitution of the universe; natural philosophy ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... was full of anxiety. This would mean at least a delay of several days before they could possibly see Michael, and meanwhile it was a moot question as to how much longer Lady Arabella could restrain Magda from taking definite steps with regard ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... in two or three instances, space has been found too limited to allow of more than an occasional reference to the opinions of modern scholars. Such being the object of the explanations, the reader will not be surprised at the absence of critical and lengthened discussions on many of those moot points of Mythology and early history which have occupied, with no very positive result, the attention of Niebuhr, Lobeck, Mueller, Buttmann, and many other scholars of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... practice. The youth breathed a legal atmosphere from morning till night all the year round. He had the advantage of most admirable instruction, and the resources of a complete library. He listened to the lectures, he studied the text-books, he was drilled in the recitations, he had practice in the moot courts and in the law clubs. He discussed points of law in the boarding-house and on his walks with his companions. He came to know thoroughly the great men who were his instructors, and to understand their mental processes, and the methods by which they had gained their success. The title ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... recalls the wonders of old-time. It will be our endeavour to tell of the old country houses that Time has spared, the cottages that grace the village green, the stern grey walls that still guard some few of our towns, the old moot halls and public buildings. We shall see the old-time farmers and rustics gathering together at fair and market, their games and sports and merry-makings, and whatever relics of old English life have been left for an ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... agree to giving up the shirts; loudly declaring that they belonged to the skin; and after some discussion on this moot point, his claim was allowed; and our adventurers were spared the shame of entering the Arab encampment in ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... a moot point whether 'Letters Written for the Post, and not for the Press,' an anonymous volume which appeared in 1820, and which consists of descriptions of a tour in Scotland, interspersed with dull moral lectures on the conduct of a wife towards her husband, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... [190] We moot a higher question: Is he fit for the pulpit,—for that great conservative power by which religion, and morals, and freedom, must be maintained among us? "I do not believe," he declares, in one of his sermons, "the miraculous origin of the Hebrew church, or the Buddhist church, or of the Christian ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... that way to "convey his matter" — told, or "taught," so much more directly and simply by word of mouth. It is impossible to pronounce positively on the subject; the question whether Chaucer saw Petrarch in 1373 must remain a moot-point, so long as we have only our present information; but fancy loves to dwell on the thought of the two poets conversing under the vines at Arqua; and we find in the history and the writings of Chaucer nothing ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... long, somewhat narrow parallelogram, enclosed on its longer side by old gabled houses; shut in on its western end by the massive bulk of the great parish church of St. Hathelswide, Virgin and Martyr, and at its eastern by the ancient walls and high roofs of its mediaeval Moot Hall. The inner surface of this space is paved with cobble-stones, worn smooth by centuries of usage: it is only of late years that the conservative spirit of the old borough has so far accommodated itself to modern requirements as to provide ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... alterations in one or two of the Doctor's speeches in the first part; and whether it should be called 'The Battle of Life. A Love Story'—to express both a love story in the common acceptation of the phrase, and also a story of love; with one or two other things of that sort. We can moot these by and by. I made a tremendous day's work of it yesterday and was horribly excited—so I am going to rush out, as fast as I can: being a little used up, and sick. . . . But never say die! I have been to the glass to look at my eye. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... German, French, and Belgian territories shoot three narrow tongues that form, roughly, the segments of a half-circle. Whether the German tongue is split in the middle by N'glili River, so that it forms a flattened broad arrow, with the central prong the river is a moot point. We, in Downing Street, claim that the lower angle of this arrow is wholly ours, and that all the flat basin of the Field of Blood (as they call it) is entitled to receive the shadow which a flapping Union ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... they have life and wit; and yesterday, upon Charlotte's raving against me upon a related enterprise, I told her, that I had had in debate several times, whether she were or were not too near of kin to me: and that it was once a moot point with me, whether I could not love her dearly for a month or so: and perhaps it was well for her, that another pretty little puss started up, and diverted me, just as I was entering upon ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... very high mountains, the points that have reared themselves nearest to the sun but farthest out of the sheltering blanket of the earth's atmosphere. The actual temperature of the moon's surface by day is a moot point. It may be below the freezing-point or above the boiling-point ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... to own up to the matter on the Old Squire's return. He said little; but after considering the matter over night, he held a species of moot court in the sitting-room, heard all the evidence and then, good-humoredly, "sentenced" Addison, Halstead and myself to work on the highway that fall till we had earned enough to repair the wheel, six ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... whispered, in the long intervals of the organ. She had removed him from the church before the collection for the Red Cross, and when they had eaten a sort of dinner she had borne him away to the Russian dancers in the Moot Hall. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... partnership, guardianship, loan for use, mortgage, division of a 'family,' partition of joint property, those on the innominate contracts of sale by commission and exchange, and the suit for recovery of an inheritance. Until quite recently it was a moot point whether the lastnamed was properly an equitable action, but our constitution has definitely decided the ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... which, the reader is to be informed, was to have been finished in one night! My partner undertook the first canto: I the second: and which ever had done first, was to set about the third. Almost thirty years have passed by; yet at this moment I cannot without something more than a smile moot the question which of the two things was the more impracticable, for a mind so eminently original to compose another man's thoughts and fancies, or for a taste so austerely pure and simple to imitate the Death ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... town; in the Middle Ages it ranked as the second city in the kingdom. Its prosperity was chiefly due to its large trade in wool. It is a moot point whether the town was ever a settlement of the Romans, no traces of such occupation having ever been discovered. The castle mound, no doubt, formed some part of the earthworks of an earlier stronghold. The word Norwich is probably of Norse ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... States v. Shipp,[47] it was held that violations of a court's order are punishable as criminal contempt even though the order is set aside on appeal as in excess of the court's jurisdiction or though the basic action has become moot. Finally, the Court held that conduct can amount to both civil and criminal contempt, and the same acts may justify a court in resorting to coercive and to punitive measures, which may be imposed ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... made is refined at other works in Scotland, a not inconsiderable quantity is sent to the Welsh refiners, while some of it is sent to the Continent. Of the remaining works, 16 refine the crude oil only. There are altogether 3804 retorts in operation, both vertical and horizontal. It is a moot point, which is now engaging the attention of those in the trade, whether vertical or horizontal retorts are the best suited for the purposes in view. At Mr. Young's works, which are the largest and most important in Scotland, nothing but vertical retorts are used, it being considered that they ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... the student as regards the ensemble of violin and piano will be recalled by all who have enjoyed the 'Sonata Recitals' he has given together with Mrs. Mannes. And as an interpreting solo artist his views regarding the moot question of gut versus wire strings ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... or Asia in his backyard, nor a lifetime of leisure for research, for special learning, on the moot questions of church-scholarship. Progress consists in each man's doing his best to advance the interests of the kingdom of God in his own special sphere. From others he must take something for granted. The ear of the Church ought always to be open to ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... i; and even the size of the dot and its place above the letter are matters on which men hold warring opinions. We have not even raised the question of laid or wove paper, nor of the intermixture of different series or sizes of types. In short, every phase of the subject bristles with moot points, the settlement of one of which in a given way may determine the settlement of a score ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... restraining certain registration officials from excluding the appellant from the voting list. However, the election in which appellant desired to vote was held prior to the appeal, and the case thereby became moot. See also St. Pierre v. United States, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... down to the present time it has been a moot question whether a vegetable or meat diet was best for man. Each side can present equally strong arguments; each can point to exceptional instances of physical development under the different methods; each can point to ill results that ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... said, at length. "I've knowed the time, boys, when sech an incident as this, on the briny deep, would have fairly keeled me over, an made me moot, an riz every har o' my head; but look at me now. Do I tremble? do I ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... must be assumed to consist almost entirely of that substance generally in the form of common salt, and be valued accordingly. Sulphate of lime and organic matter though abundant constituents of most manures, add but little to their value, and it is a moot point whether they ought to be taken into consideration, although most persons allow a small value for them. Carbonate of lime, sand, or siliceous matter, and water, of course, ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... be an independent "spirit," as it claims to be; or the subconsciousness of the medium; or whether it is a sort of compound consciousness, made up of the collected minds of those forming the circle at the time; or whether some other interpretation is open to us—this is all a moot question, which is referred to here, merely to draw attention to the ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... own prophecies is a moot point. It is said that he bought the lease of a house, which expired about twenty-five years after his date ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... towards the dramatic fame and merit of our friend, I would say that it does not lie so much in hostile critics or feeble health, as in a careless habit of writing, and a peevish vanity which causes him to shut his eyes to his faults. The question of original capacity I will not moot; one may think very highly of the honorable baronet's talent, without rating it quite so high as he ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... here it is a moot question which is the better, yours or ours, for buck-jumpers. Carver's boys rode in their own saddles against our Victorians in theirs, all on Australian buckers, and honors seemed easy. Each was good in his own style, but the horses were not what I should call really good buckers, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... as follows: "If Baptism is regeneration, why, then, does not every one who has been baptized in infancy walk with God from his Baptism? Why does not every one lead a pious life? Evidently, such is not the case!" "As a matter of fact, for a hundred years the Lutheran Church has abandoned the moot question of the body of Christ, etc., and has left it to the consciences of its members to decide what they must believe according to Holy Writ. This we may do without deviating from the faith of our Church, since at our ordination, especially in this country, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... working members of these Parliaments, which were in general merely courts of justice for civil and criminal causes. The nobles only attended on occasions of unusual interest. Moreover, a law or edict of the King became valid on being registered by a Parliament. It was a moot question whether the Parliament had the power to baffle the King by refusing to register an edict, and Henry IV. had avoided a refusal from the Parliament of Paris, by getting his edict of toleration for the ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... japanning be more simple and produces a less durable, a less costly coating than the Japanese method, yet its practice is not so injurious to the health. Indeed, it is a moot point in how far the Japanese themselves now utilize their classical process, as the coat of natural japan on all the articles exhibited at the recent Vienna exhibition as being coated with the natural lacquer, when recovered after six months' immersion in sea water ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... was called Hrunting, an ancient heritage. Steel was the blade itself, tempered with poison-twigs, Hardened with battle-blood: never in fight it failed Any who wielded it, when he would wage a strife In the dire battlefield, folk-moot of enemies." ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... and fair— Who to these modest pages turn, To raise a smile, to soothe a care, Or some moot point of duty learn,— Forget not this: that whilst you live, Your hearts may yield to pride or sin, Take, then, the warning here ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Message I bare to king Marsiliun; By my cunning I held myself secure. To that fighter Rollant my challenge threw, To Oliver, and all their comrades too; Charles heard that, and his noble baruns. Vengeance I gat, but there's no treason proved." Answered the Franks: "Now go we to the moot. ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... were, however, in front, where he would sooner have them than behind, and he set off down the valley for Hexham. He found the old Border town, clustering round the tall dark mass of the abbey, strangely picturesque; the ancient Moot Hall and market square invited his interest, but he shrank from wandering about the streets in the dark. Now he had Graham's checks, he must be careful; moreover his knapsack and leggings made him conspicuous, and he went to ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... is to state facts, rather than to moot theories, I leave this debatable ground to others, and here close a narrative, compiled with much care, of this interesting and instructive case. I was the rather disposed to examine it critically and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... law are unlocked. But besides the sea-folk of the ship-shires King Orry remembered the Church. He found it on the island at his coming, left it where he found it, and gave it a voice in the government. He established a Tynwald Court, equivalent to the Icelandic All Moot, where Church and State sat together. Then he appointed two law-men, called Deemsters, one for the north and the other for the south. These were equivalent to his Icelandic Loegsoegumadur, speaker of the law and judge ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... air "The Ash Grove" is but another version of the same tune; but whether the Welsh derived the air from England or vice versa is a moot point. The matter is discussed, at some length, in Chappell's "Popular Music of the Olden Time," p. 665, to which ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp |
