"Arbitrarily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Virginia have empowered the railway or public service commission to fix all rates, including telephone and telegraph. Passenger rates are now usually fixed at two cents per mile in the East, or at two and one-half cents in the South or West. In 1907 Kansas and Nebraska arbitrarily reduced all freight rates fifteen per cent. on the price then charged. In 1907 there was some evidence of reaction; Alabama, in an extra session, repealed her law enacted the same year prescribing maximum freight rates, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... know how to put it up." But God answered: "Go, get busy with its setting-up, and while thou art busy at it, it will rise of its own accord." And so it came to pass. Hardly had Moses put his hand upon the Tabernacle, when it stood erect, and the rumors among the people that Moses had arbitrarily put up the Tabernacle without the command ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... proof. Frequently a proposition is presented in abstract terms as a proof of the same in concrete, as, in Moliere's parody, 'L'opium endormit parcequ'il a une vertu soporifique.' So, some qualities of a thing selected arbitrarily are termed its nature or essence, and then reasoned from as though not able to be counteracted by any of the rest. 'Question-begging appellatives,' particularly, are cases of Petitio Principii, e.g. ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... 'Lucrece Borgia.' If there are still any who hold that Hugo as a dramatist was "of the race and lineage of Shakspere," they may find instruction in the fact that this highly artificial situation, which the superb French lyrist was seemingly unable to leave out of his arbitrarily complicated plots, was not employed even once by ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... the thin veneer of alien civilisation he had taken for granted, and builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal, with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised with ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... houses arbitrarily checking or controlling each other is inconsistent; because it cannot be proved on the principles of just representation, that either should be wiser or better than the other. They may check in the wrong as ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... to which the talents are given. But the talents themselves are the spiritual knowledge and endowments which are properly the gifts of the ascended Lord to His Church. Two important lessons as to these are conveyed. First, that they are distributed in varying measure, and that not arbitrarily, by the mere will of the giver, but according to his discernment of what each servant can profitably administer. The 'ability' which settles their amount is not more closely defined. It may include natural faculty, for Christ's gifts usually follow the line of that; and the larger the nature, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... most wide-spread consternation. Not only the workmen and the large class of idlers attracted to Paris by the system, but rentiers and government officials, whose incomes were paid in assignats on a scale arbitrarily fixed by the government, saw themselves threatened with actual starvation. The government yielded to the outcry that arose; but the expedients by which it sought to mitigate the evil, notably the division of those entitled to relief into classes, only increased ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... Words arbitrarily formed by a constant and settled analogy, like diminutive adjectives in ish, as greenish, bluish; adverbs in ly, as dully, openly; substantives in ness, as vileness, faultiness; were less diligently sought, and many sometimes have been omitted, when I had no authority that invited ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of what is going on: men have been killed, slaughtered, murdered, massacred, and I am ignorant of it! Men have been arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, banished, exiled, transported, and I scarcely glimpse the fact! My mayor and my cure tell me: "These people, who are taken away, bound with cords, are escaped convicts!" I am a peasant, cultivating ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... modern ideas, which have had their origin in Europe, and which can only be realised among peoples of a high political development; that the sense of nationhood is but slowly created, and must not be arbitrarily defined in terms of race or language; and that the capacity for self-government is only formed by a long process of training, and has never existed except among peoples who were unified by a strongly felt community of sentiment, and had acquired the habit and instinct of ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... the fortune poor Noel left you unless I am married within a certain time. The house and lands are to be mine (thanks to your kindness) under any circumstances. But the money with which I might improve them both is to be arbitrarily taken away from me, if I am not a married man on the third of May. I am sadly wanting in intelligence, I dare say, but a more incomprehensible proceeding I never ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... capacities, is with him a supreme law. 'Le glorieux chef-d'oeuvre de l'homme, c'est de vivre a propos.' He, the sage, is already so much in advance of his century that he yearns for laws and religions which are not arbitrarily founded, but drawn from the roots and the buds of a universal Reason, contained in every person not degenerate or divorced from nature desnature. A mass of passages in the Essays strengthen the opinion that Montaigne ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... General Steedman and General Fullerton, and cases were then sent before military courts. Men of the highest character were dragged before the Bureau tribunals upon frivolous complaints, were lectured, abused, ridiculed, and arbitrarily fined or otherwise punished. The jurisdiction of the Bureau courts weakened the civil courts and their frequent interference in trivial matters was not conducive to ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... secret close from the girls as well as from Hans, any betrayal to them being likely to reach Mirah in some way that would raise an agitating suspicion, and spoil the important opening of that work which was to secure her independence, as we rather arbitrarily call one of the more arduous and dignified forms of our dependence. And both Mrs. Meyrick and Deronda had more reasons than they could have expressed for desiring that Mirah should be able to maintain herself. Perhaps "the little mother" was rather helped in her secrecy ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of some systematic design upon the territorial organization of Europe, inspire and determine the foreign policy of governments. Let one or other of these impulses prevail, and governments have disposed arbitrarily of the fate of nations. War has ever been their indispensable mode ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... of history are not arbitrarily severed, but grow out of each other, we must briefly notice the mental conditions of the period in Germany which preceded the rise of rationalism; next indicate the new forces, the introduction of which was the means of generating ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... classic; the second the classic-romantic; the third the romantic, and the last the bravura. I beg the reader, however, not to extend these designations beyond the boundaries of the present study; they have been chosen arbitrarily, and confusion might result if the attempt were made to apply them to any particular concert scheme. I have chosen the composers because of their broadly representative capacity. And they must stand for a numerous epigonoi whose names ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... man! And why? The goodness,—how did he acquire it? Was it self-gained, did God inspire it? Choose which; then tell me, on what ground Should its possessor dare propound His claim to rise o'er us an inch? Were goodness all some man's invention, Who arbitrarily made mention What we should follow, and whence flinch,— What qualities might take the style Of right and wrong,—and had such guessing Met with as general acquiescing As graced the alphabet erewhile, When A got leave ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... divination is also of two kinds: the one argues from natural causes, as in the predictions of physicians relative to the event of diseases, from the tongue, pulse, etc. The second the consequence of experiments and observations arbitrarily instituted, and is mostly superstitious. The systems of divination reduceable under these heads are almost incalculable. Among these were the Augurs or those who drew their knowledge of futurity from the flight, and various other actions of birds; ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... same remarkable document Mirabeau raises his voice against the harsh laws which arbitrarily deprived Prussians of freedom to leave the country. The tyrannical prohibition of emigration excited his vehement protest, and he proceeded also to denounce to the new king the right of seizing the property of deceased foreigners, and demanded for burghers the freedom ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... fraternity. He carries a short truncheon in his hand, which he calls his filchman, and has a larger share than ordinary in whatsoever is gotten in the society. He often travels in company with thirty or forty males and females, abram men, and others, over whom he presides arbitrarily. Sometimes the women and children who are unable to travel, or fatigued, are by turns carried in panniers by an ass, or two, or by some poor ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... money, as well as debtors to divers of his Majesty's subjects to escape; hath been guilty of the most notorious breaches of his trust; great extortions, and the highest crimes and misdemeanors in the execution of his said office; and hath arbitrarily and unlawfully loaded with irons, put into dungeons, and destroyed prisoners for debt under his charge, treating them in the most barbarous and cruel manner, in high violation and contempt of the laws ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... Provence, when "drest in her brief authority" as Lady Chancellor, had arbitrarily imprisoned the Lord Mayor, and this the ballad converts into a persecution of the unfortunate Lady Mayoress, whom she sent"—into Wales with speed, And kept her secret there, And used her still more cruelly Than ever man did bear. She mude her wash, she made her starch, She made her drudge ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... less. The assessment is spread over an area extending back from one to six miles from the improved road. The assessment area is generally divided into about four zones parallel to the road. The zone next the road is assessed at a rate arbitrarily determined as a fair measure of the benefit, and each succeeding zone is assessed at a somewhat lower rate. Generally about three-fourths of the total assessment is placed on the half of the assessment area ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... arbitrarily that evolution is untrue; neither will we allow scientists to decide what we shall believe. But we shall appeal to the facts, and evolution must stand or fall by the evidence. "Evolution is not to be accepted until proved." It is not yet proved and ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... consider is the date of The Nights in its present form; and here opinions range between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries. Professor Galland began by placing it arbitrarily in the middle of the thirteenth. De Sacy, who abstained from detailing reasons and who, forgetting the number of editors and scribes through whose hands it must have passed, argued only from the nature of the language ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... more easily if we observe the differences between written and spoken language. The written word "stone," and the spoken word, are each of them symbols arrived at in the first instance arbitrarily. They are neither of them more like the other than they are to the idea of a stone which rises before our minds, when we either see or hear the word, or than this idea again is like the actual stone itself, but nevertheless the spoken symbol and the written one each alike ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... Here we have an illustration of how music intensifies and exalts the emotions of educated men. St. Augustine's devotion "glowed within him" when he heard the music. It is for this power that the church has always employed music as a hand-maid; and those ecclesiastics who would to-day banish it arbitrarily from the church, know not what a valuable ally they are blindly repulsing in these days of religious scepticism. As Mr. Gladstone very recently remarked: "Ever since the time of St. Augustine, I might perhaps say of St. Paul, the power of ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... thought proper to retreat, and soon after departed from Albany. A second expedition in the Spring proved more successful, for he gained possession of the city and fort. No sooner was he in possession of the garrison, than most of the principal members absconded, upon which, their effects were arbitrarily seized and confiscated, which so highly exasperated the sufferers, that their posterity, for a long time, hurled their bitterest invectives against ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... reduced this preference for black to zero, and succeeding series brought about a rapid and fairly regular decrease in the number of errors, until, in the thirteenth series, the white was chosen every time. Since I arbitrarily define a perfect habit of discrimination as the ability to choose the right box in three successive series of ten tests each, the tests ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... disturbed by matters of etiquette, where surely they should least have been expected to occur. These disputes are the most insusceptible of determination, because they have no foundation in reason. Arbitrary and senseless in their nature, they are arbitrarily decided by every nation for itself. These decisions are meant to prevent disputes, but they produce ten, where they prevent one. It would have been better, therefore, in a new country, to have excluded etiquette altogether; or if it must be admitted in some form or other, to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... voice ended abruptly. The news announcer's voice came back. He said that the member of the 'copter crew had given some other information before he was arbitrarily cut off. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... then that we can begin to speak of the indulgence of the passions which prompt those practices as "sin." When Paul calls the law the strength of sin, or says that the law came in that the trespass might abound, he states a truth, but sees it, if one may say so, out of focus; for the law was not arbitrarily imposed in order to brand a multitude of harmless acts as offences, but in proportion as the moral law is discerned by man's mind, acts which formerly were merely non-moral begin to range themselves on this side or that, as right and wrong. True, even when our moral perceptions ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... which is everywhere in modern science the chief variable, is only a time-length, indefinitely and arbitrarily divisible. There is no genuine duration, nothing really tending to evolution in Spencer's evolution: no more than there is in the periodic working of a turbine or in the stationary tremble of a diapason. Is not this what is emphasised by the perpetual employment of mechanical ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... piecemeal glimpse of the animal life of the Paris Basin, and of the few other extinct forms then known, was all he had to depend upon or reason from. He was not disposed to believe that the thread of life once begun in the earliest times could be arbitrarily broken by catastrophic means; that there was no relation whatever between the earlier and later faunas. He utterly opposed Cuvier's view that species once formed could ever be lost or become extinct without ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... and the other poems that follow have been found in files of The Rolling Stone, in the Houston Post's Postscripts and in manuscript. There are many others, but these few have been selected rather arbitrarily, to round out ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... wearing of a sword being restricted to nobles, it was not unusual to see such zasciankowicze, or peasant nobles, following the plough bare-footed, wearing an old rusty sword hanging at their side by hempen cords."—Naganowski. In this volume hamlet has been arbitrarily chosen as a translation for the name ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... William of Brandenburg fought against the Swedes at Fehrbellin. The story of the play is briefly as follows: The Prince of Homburg, to whom has been confided the commandment of the cavalry of the Mark of Brandenburg, arbitrarily disobeys the orders given him, and advances too soon. He wins the battle, but is placed on trial before a court martial by Frederick William and condemned ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... happened to be taking a brief holiday among his own people in the South. It was a judiciously flattering dispatch. It prayed the famous lawyer-politician to undertake the defence of a relation, an orphan, a mere child, unjustly accused of murder and arbitrarily imprisoned, and to deign to accept a pitiful honorarium of five thousand francs—the largest sum which a parish priest, poor but jealous of the honour of his family, could scrape together. If the great man accepted the offer, he might arrive by the nest day's boat. There ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... clause was that they, as feudal tenants-in-chief, were not to pay more than the ordinary feudal dues. But they left to the king, and they reserved to themselves, the right to tallage their villeins as arbitrarily as they pleased; and even where they seem to be protecting the villeins, they are only preventing the king from levying such judicial fines from their villeins as would make it impossible for those villeins to render their services to the lords. ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... sounds, expressed by the letters of the different alphabets. But, in this sense, all things on earth are the same, as consisting of matter. This gives up the useful distribution into genera and species, which we form, arbitrarily indeed, for the relief of our imperfect memories. To aid the question, from whence our Indian tribes descended, some have gone into their religion, their morals, their manners, customs, habits, and physical forms. By such helps it may be learnedly proved, that our trees and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... incidents of taxation; for personal and land taxes, tithes and forced labour, were exacted from the common people alone. No liberty of worship, nor of thought: Protestants were condemned to the galleys by hundreds; booksellers met the same fate. Authors and books were arbitrarily sent by lettres de cachet to the Bastille or Vincennes. Yet in spite of all repression, a generation of daring, witty, emancipated thinkers in Paris was elaborating a weapon of scientific, rationalistic and liberal doctrine ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... originally tough constitution. Our landlady, who spoilt my brother from the first, was much concerned on his behalf, and wished to call in the local doctor; but Ralph said dreadful things about the profession, and quite frightened the good woman by arbitrarily forbidding her ever to let a doctor inside her door. I had to apologize to her for the painful prejudices and violent language of "these colonists," but the old soul was easily mollified. She had fallen in love with my brother at first sight, ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... possible to determine what percentage of old native thought may still linger on in fragments here and there. In the face of all this, moral ideals, which were of common knowledge derived from the teaching of the Chinese sages, are now arbitrarily referred to the "Imperial Ancestors." Such, in particular, are loyalty and filial piety—the two virtues on which, in the Far-Eastern world, all the others rest. It is, furthermore, officially taught that, from the earliest ages, ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... understanding, and had so driven him out of his accustomed demeanor, that faculties which long had lain dormant were roused up, as it were, and his brain was in a state of constant activity. Moreover, they observed that he had a habit of arbitrarily taking up two or three words here and there, and repeating them again and again from sheer haste. He seemed to be stumbling over himself. Sometimes this appeared absurd, but then he laughed and it was forgotten. The school-master ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... interest of their country more at heart than the gratification of any private view of any of their members, or being at all affected by the smiles or frowns of a Governor, both which ought equally to be despised when the interest of the country is at stake." "We see men's deeds destroyed, judges arbitrarily displaced, new courts erected without consent of the legislature, by which, it seems to me, trials by juries are taken away when a Governor pleases." "Who, then, in that province can call any thing his own, or enjoy any liberty longer than those in the administration will ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... too bitterly. It is faith of this sublime integrity which, brought down to personal experience, believes, endures, hopes, sacrifices and loves on to the end, winning finally what never would have been given to a more prudent and reasonable devotion. So, if Margaret had her doubts, she put them arbitrarily down, and sent her brother away with manifold tokens of her love—among them, with a check on the Kirkwall Bank for sixty pounds, the whole of ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... stroke a new capitalist class and a new proletariat.[29] ... In short, the socialism of Owen led him to propose a practical scheme which was not even socialistic, and which, if it could possibly have been carried out, would have simply arbitrarily redistributed the capital of the country without altering or superseding the capitalist ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... saloon-keeper, and his gang were coming down on us like a pack of wolves on a sheepfold. Clausen, naturally enough, was considerably put out, simply because I was forced through the contradictory nature of conflicting circumstances to arbitrarily stand him up for the refreshments and smokes, and he appeared desirous of getting square. Fortunately for us, the high wind that had threatened to blow over our tent was off-shore, and by the time the Staten Islanders reached the end of the ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... hand, if his master has wronged him intolerably, he can take sanctuary at the Temple of Theseus, and claim the privilege of being sold to some new owner. A slave, too, has still another grievance which may be no less galling because it is sentimental. His name (given him arbitrarily perhaps by his master) is of a peculiar category, which at once brands him as a bondsman: Geta, Manes, Dromon, Sosias, Xanthias, Pyrrhias,—such names would be repudiated as an insult ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... from the creation of the world to the death of Joseph. "A French physician of the eighteenth century, Astruc, was the first scholar to point out that the two principal designations of God in Genesis, Elohim and Jahveh, are not used arbitrarily. If we place side by side the passages in which God is called Elohim, and those in which he is called by the other name, we get two perfectly distinct narratives, which the author of the Pentateuch, as we possess it, has juxtaposed rather than fused. This one discovery suffices to discredit ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... attempt of some historians of a philosophical turn of mind to fit each race into a category and to give each race a sharply defined sphere of influence has been carried too far, and has discredited the effort to interpret arbitrarily the genius of the different races and to assign arbitrarily their functions. It remains true, however, that, in a broad sense, each race has had a peculiar quality of mind and spirit which may be called its genius, ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... their influence is very feeble and uncertain. As the relation of cause and effect is requisite to persuade us of any real existence, so is this persuasion requisite to give force to these other relations. For where upon the appearance of an impression we not only feign another object, but likewise arbitrarily, and of our mere good-will and pleasure give it a particular relation to the impression, this can have but a small effect upon the mind; nor is there any reason, why, upon the return of the same impression, ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... his Disciples, do both Practice and Teach, the not putting up Affronts unreveng'd; and this only because the Fashion of the Country has establish'd it, that a Gentleman cannot do so with Honour? A Term which herein signifies nothing, but agreeably to certain measures of acting that Men have Arbitrarily made for themselves, and which are not founded upon any Principle of right Reason; however to be obey'd, it seems, by a Gentleman preferably to the Commands of Christ. If there are Cases wherein from want of a due provision in Governments against some sort ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... in the dark days of Queen Victoria young men at Oxford and Cambridge were subjected to a horrible sort of religious torture. They were forbidden, by fantastic monastic rules, to indulge in wine or tobacco during certain arbitrarily fixed periods of time, before certain brutal fights and festivals. Bigots insisted on their rising at unearthly hours and running violently around fields for no object. Many men ruined their health in these dens of superstition, many died there. All this is perfectly true and irrefutable. Athleticism ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... not so much scantily as arbitrarily furnished. It contained a big mahogany sideboard; a common deal table, an extraordinary kind of folding wash-hand-stand; a deal bookshelf, the cane lounge, and three unrelated chairs. There were three framed Dutch prints on the marble ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... thermal death point of most bacteria ranges from 130 deg.-140 deg. F. where the exposure is made for ten minutes which is the standard arbitrarily selected. In the spore stage resistance is greatly increased, some forms being able to withstand steam at 210 deg.-212 deg. F. from one to three hours. If dry heat is employed, 260 deg.-300 deg. F. for an hour is necessary to kill spores. Where steam is confined ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... not think that Iza is an impossible personage; nor do I think that she is even an improbable one to such an extent as to bar her out, possible or impossible. But I am not sure that she is not rather arbitrarily synthetised instead of being re-created, or that she, though possible and not quite improbable, is not singly abnormal[386] to the verge of monstrosity. It must be evident to any reader of tolerable acuteness that the obsession ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... last View I referred to the mysteries of Time and Space as twin-sisters; they have, as we saw, many aspects in common, and are the two modes or conditions under which all our senses act and by which our thoughts are limited. We arbitrarily divide each of these two mysteries into two parts, which parts are separated from each other, in either case, by a point which has, apparently, as its centre, our very consciousness of living. In the case of Space ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... the latter, even when harmonically justified, as much as possible. Instead of accenting a composition in accordance with sense and rhythm, he exaggerated and prolonged the notes and intervals that were pleasing to his ear; he did not even hesitate to repeat them arbitrarily, when an expression of ecstasy frequently passed over his face. Since he disposed of the dissonances as rapidly as possible and played the passages that were too difficult for him in a tempo that was too slow compared with the rest of the piece, his conscientiousness not permitting him to omit ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... this subject is now especially prominent in view of the repeal by the act of June 26, 1884, of all statutory provisions arbitrarily compelling American vessels to carry the mails to and from the United States. As it is necessary to make provision to compensate the owners of such vessels for performing that service after April, 1885, it is hoped that the whole subject ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... mysticism. The external world was not to him the embodiment of invariable forces, and therefore capable of revealing a general law in a special instance; but rather a system of symbols, signatures of the Plastic Nature, to which mysterious truths were arbitrarily annexed. A Pythagorean doctrine of numbers was therefore congenial to his mind. He ransacks heaven and earth, he turns over all his stores of botanical knowledge, he searches all sacred and profane literature to discover anything that is in the form of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... and tenants for generations, is utterly unwarranted. In several respects indeed he has been treated by the Act as if the land did not belong to him, while freedom of contract, until recent years one of the most cherished principles of our law, is arbitrarily interfered with. The chief alterations made by the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... Jerome, in opposition to the Alex., remarks that, according to the Hebrew, the translation ought to be: Nomen ejus vocabunt, he does not contend against their use of the Singular per se, but only against their arbitrarily supplying "Jehovah" as the subject; against their explaining "The Lord shall call," instead of "one" shall call. The manner in which the false reading [Hebrew: iqrav] first arose, is clearly seen from the reasons by which its later defenders endeavour ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Indians and to advise them that resistance was both unwise and useless. Thompson, however, with his usual lack of tact, rushed onward in his course, and learning that five chiefs were unalterably opposed to the treaty, he arbitrarily struck their names off the roll of chiefs, an action the highhandedness of which was not lost on the Seminoles. Immediately after the conference moreover he forbade the sale of any more arms and powder to the Indians. ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... was ancient and deeply rooted. It is all the more remarkable because astronomical considerations prove that it can have had no historical foundation. The inference appears to be inevitable that the passion of Christ must have been arbitrarily referred to that date in order to harmonise with an older festival of the spring equinox. This is the view of the learned ecclesiastical historian Mgr. Duchesne, who points out that the death of the Saviour was thus ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... will surely have that position, and our brave Silesian army will then be headed by a Russian. No, field-marshal, you must not go. You have no right to quit the army so arbitrarily, and without ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... administration these gigantic contracts, involving an amount of more than $6,000,000, were distributed with a view to influence votes in the House of Representatives upon the Lecompton Bill. Some of the lesser ones, such as those for furnishing mules, dragoon horses, and forage, were granted arbitrarily to relatives or friends of members who were wavering upon ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Italy will sometimes be repelled by a certain narrowness in the critical estimate of modern sculptors; though of all arts sculpture demands and justifies the most liberal eclecticism. Thus, a broad line of demarcation has been arbitrarily drawn between high finish and prolific invention, originality and superficial skill; as if these merits could not be united, or were incompatible with each other,—and that, invariably, works of "outward skill elaborate" are "of inward less exact." A Boston critic denominates Powers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the men, fought shy of the women. Most of them had put the best face upon their lives, rejoicing in the occasional streaks of fat, eating the lean uncomplainingly. They led a migratory existence, moved arbitrarily, like pawns, at the will of eminent and elderly gentlemen a thousand or so miles away, whom they did not know and who did not know them. Continually, as their temporary habitations began to take on the semblance ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... destined for allotment but had not yet parcelled out, nor directly abandoned the claim to them, but tolerated the former owners in provisional possession without regulating their title, and indeed even allowed various still undistributed tracts of Sullan domain-land to be arbitrarily taken possession of by individuals according to the old system of occupation, which was de jure and de facto set aside by the Gracchan reforms.(1) Whatever in the Sullan enactments was indifferent ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... generation France has accumulated a colonial empire second only to that of Great Britain, while she has incessantly demanded the reintegration of German lands, and especially a German city which she arbitrarily annexed and held by "militarism" for about five generations. The "militarism" of a republic and a democracy which retains the essential features of Napoleonic administration has been quite as efficient as that of a monarchical democracy ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Falieri was born at Venice about 1278, and was elected doge in 1354. For many years the government of the republic, under an oligarchy, had been arbitrarily dominated by the Council of Ten, an assembly that, after serving a special purpose for which it was created, was declared permanent in 1325 and became a formidable tribunal. Professing to guard the republic the Ten in fact destroyed its liberties, disposed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... which for many a strange room never ceases to yield. He had found far too many tables upholding nothing which one could remember, far too many pictures that returned his look, and rugs that seemed to have been selected arbitrarily and because there was none in stock that the owner really liked. He was therefore pleasantly surprised and puzzled by the room which welcomed him. The floor was tiled in curious blocks, strangely hieroglyphed, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... them; while in my position the multitude was so great that only patient and repeated effort enabled me to separate from the rest those peculiarly brilliant luminaries by which we are accustomed to define such constellations as Orion or the Bear, to say nothing of those minor or more arbitrarily drawn figures which contain few stars of the second magnitude. The eye had no instinctive sense of distance; any star might have been within a stone's throw. I need hardly observe that, while on one hand ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... discrepancies appear when the order of fossils shall have been further investigated, or a more correct scale shall have been formed. Meanwhile, it is a wonderful evidence in favour of our hypothesis, that a scale formed so arbitrarily should coincide to such a nearness with our present knowledge of the succession of animal forms upon earth, and also that both of these series should harmonize so well with the view given by modern physiologists of the embryotic ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... in a camera, then immersing it, according to given recipes, in appropriate liquids, and of making {185} the picture of a relative or friend appear thereon, is a magical operation, but based on real actions and reactions, instead of on arbitrarily assumed sympathies and antipathies. Magic, therefore, was a science groping in the dark, and later became "a bastard sister of ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... against its own domestic foes. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in number to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: 'Is there, in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness?' 'Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... characterization, if he interferes with his people after they are once created and attempts to coerce them to his purposes instead of allowing them to work out their own destinies. He may be untruthful in his plotting, if he devises situations arbitrarily for the sake of mere immediate effect. He may be untruthful in his dialogue, if he puts into the mouths of his people sentences that their nature does not demand that they shall speak. He may be untruthful in his comments on his characters, if the characters ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... popular character. But it was necessary that he should possess a Senate merely to vote men; a mute Legislative Body to vote money; that there should be no opposition in the one and no criticism in the other; no control over him of any description; the power of arbitrarily doing whatever he pleased; an enslaved press;—this was what Napoleon wished, and this he obtained. But the month of March 1814 resolved ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... door. Nothing, therefore, could be more clearly demonstrated than that the Scotch are strongly justified in leaving the door open when they quit an apartment. Doubts, indeed, may be entertained as to the values arbitrarily put on the respective items in the account: but to venture into this remote part of the inquiry would be to plunge us into the depths of metaphysics. Even supposing we were to make the matter as clear as the sun at noonday, there would still be sceptics. On shewing the above arithmetical ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... well-being. The sole difference between a garden and the wild woods is a petty artificiality. In writing a sonnet you actually cramp the profoundest emotional conceptions into a length and a number of lines and a jingling of like sounds arbitrarily fixed beforehand! Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us" is a solid, horrid mass of petty artificiality. Why couldn't the fellow say what he meant and have done with it, instead of making "powers" rhyme with "ours," and ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... same kind, and used in the same relations, always represent one class of objects; and when the office of a symbol has been once shown, the same symbol, similarly used, always fills a like office. They are never used arbitrarily. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... before the feet of the unwary; a pit to dig in the path of those who might pursue. It was anything you might choose to make of it—a door to illegal opportunity; a cloud of dust to be cast in the eyes of those who might choose, and rightfully, to see; a veil to be dropped arbitrarily between truth and its execution, justice and its judgment, crime and punishment. Lawyers in the main were intellectual mercenaries to be bought and sold in any cause. It amused him to hear the ethical and emotional platitudes of lawyers, to see how readily they ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... sometimes cross, and cried in their weary mothers' or little sisters' arms; but they did not disturb the dotards, who slept, some with their heads fallen forward, and some with their heads fallen back; March arbitrarily distinguished those with the drooping faces as tipsy and ashamed to confront the public. The small Italian children raced up and down the asphalt paths, playing American games of tag and hide and-whoop; larger boys passed ball, in training for potential championships. The Marches sat ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Hudson gained by increasing emigration. Manhattan was already the chosen abode of merchants; and the policy of the government invited them by its good-will. If Stuyvesant sometimes displayed the rash despotism of a soldier, he was sure to be reproved by his employers. Did he change the rate of duties arbitrarily, the directors, sensitive to commercial honor, charged him "to keep every contract inviolate." Did he tamper with the currency by raising the nominal value of foreign coin, the measure was rebuked as dishonest. Did he attempt to fix ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... unite, and the pursuit of which constitutes the nationality of a given people among the many of which humanity is composed,—an aim recognized by them all, and superior to them all, and therefore religious; or we must accept the sovereignty of the right, arbitrarily defined, of each nation, and its practical consequences,—the pursuit by each individual of his own interest and his own well-being, the satisfaction of his own desires,—and the impossibility of any sovereign ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... that I could surely find a more lucrative, less dangerous, and more respectable employment in India than that of a spy in Greece. I quitted England because I considered the government treated me with injustice, in arbitrarily dismissing me from the navy, after more than fourteen years of active service, for an affair of honour, while I was on half-pay." This letter obtained for Hastings an audience of the president, and his services ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Omega's finest vacation resort. Upon entering the district, all weapons had to be checked at the main gate. No duels were allowed under any circumstances. Quarrels were arbitrarily decided by the nearest barman, and murder was punished by ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... possessions are already a part of the United States; that in spite of the treaty which reserved the question of citizenship and political status for Congress, their people are already citizens of the United States; and that no part of the United States can be arbitrarily and permanently excluded ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... of the elaborate preparations being made to cover the great event, of the special writers, experts, broadcasters, cameramen, I was thankful indeed I was no longer a newspaperman, arbitrarily to be ordered aloft or sent aboard some erratic craft offshore on the bare chance I might catch a comprehensive or distinctive enough glance of the action to repay an editor for my discomfort. Instead, I sat contentedly in my apartment and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... notable burghers, to be named by the Emperor, with the great dean and second dean of the weavers, all dressed in black robes, without their chains, and bareheaded, should appear upon an appointed day, in company with fifty persons from the guilds, and fifty others, to be arbitrarily named, in their shirts, with halters upon their necks. This large number of deputies, as representatives of the city, were then to fall upon their knees before the Emperor, say in a loud and intelligible voice, by the mouth of one of their clerks, that they were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... considered that a foreigner has little chance of obtaining justice at Canton. The import and export duties, which by the law of the country ought to be levied ad valorem, are arbitrarily fixed according to the fancy of the collector. And although the court is at all times ready to punish, by confiscation of their property, such as have been guilty of corruption and oppression, yet by accepting their presents, it seems to lend them its encouragement. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... been so largely confuted that they have for the most part been compelled to make a last defense by declaring: "When the majority of women ask for the suffrage they may have it." By this very concession they admit that there is no valid reason for withholding it, and in thus arbitrarily doing so they are denying all representation to the minority, which is wholly at variance with republican principles. This is excused on the ground that the franchise is not a "right" but a privilege to be granted or not as seems best to those in power. This was the Tory argument before ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... A was chosen arbitrarily, but it is evident that that of the needles depends on its distance from the point of convergence. Thus, on taking A' instead of A in the case of Fig. 3, they approach, while the contrary happens on choosing the point A". It is clear that the different positions that a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... years, the period between the last two revolutions. His papers seem to have averaged five or six a year. They form, with those which had been previously inserted in the Revue de Paris, a series of Portraits, now embraced in seven volumes, and divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into Portraits litteraires, Portraits contemporains, and Portraits de Femmes. The names included, which with few exceptions are those of French writers, belong to different epochs, different schools, and different departments of literature. Many are famous; some are obscure; not a few, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... the colonists all the powers of an independent government. There was no reservation whatever; their acts were not subject even to royal inspection. Nevertheless, Charles, by effecting the amalgamation of New Haven with Hartford, not altogether with the consent of the former, arbitrarily set aside the provision of the federation compact which forbade union between any of its members except with the consent of all; and thereby he asserted his jurisdiction (if he chose to exercise it) over all the colonies. He could give gracious gifts, but on the understanding ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... a primary right to be fairly served. Prices should not be arbitrarily raised by any wholesale merchant who happens to be in a position to do so, or by any cartel of dealers in league for that purpose. Prices should be regulated by the cost of production, and should not be an indication of demand; they should rise beyond the cost of production augmented by a fair ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... one of our friends had even taken the trouble to bring a "document;" but the whole party spent three days under the protection of this ex-serf. Of course, we bespoke his attendance for ourselves, and remembered that little circumstance in his "tea-money." This practice of detaining passports arbitrarily, from which the ex-serf was protecting us, prevails in some localities, judging from the uproar about it in the Russian newspapers. It is contrary to the law, and can be resisted by travelers who have ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... which, on account of the increased population, was divided into the three provinces of North and South Camarines and Albay. The boundaries of these governmental districts, those between Albay and South Camarines more especially, have been drawn very arbitrarily; although, the whole of the territory, as is shown by the map, geographically is very well defined. [Land of the Bicols.] The country is named Camarines; but it might more suitably be called the country of the Bicols, for the whole ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... testimony, he continued annually on the same occasion. He wrote also several Tracts with the same design, one of which, published in the year 1718, he addressed to the elders of his own church, on the inconsistency of compelling people and their posterity to serve them continually and arbitrarily, and without any ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... happened arbitrarily, capriciously, mysteriously, without some gross and positive violation of social law, some wilful and therefore wicked departure from the known principles of science? Every random conjecture as to the causes of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... doors. This made it imperative that the city should extend the ticket rationing system to meat. The police issued cards to the residents of their districts, permitting them to purchase one-half pound of meat per week from a butcher to whom they were arbitrarily assigned in order to facilitate distribution. The butchers buy through the municipal authorities, who contract for the entire supply of the city. The tickets are in strips, each of which represents a week, and each strip is subdivided into five ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Investigation of Natal Day Influences upon Character," he said, "does not seek to build up a theory upon isolated and arbitrarily selected examples. We deal with the subject scientifically. To continue with this date, February 29th. After several cases similar to those I have recounted had come to our notice, we made out a list of two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... not put aside the duty of ultimately fighting you so long as a population of two millions, who feel themselves to be French (though most of them are German-speaking) and who detest your rule, are arbitrarily kept in subjection ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... book to oral tradition. In other words, he allows that when Papias disparages books (meaning Evangelical records, such as the St Matthew of Papias was on any showing), he cannot intend all books of this class, but only such as our author himself arbitrarily determines that he shall mean. This point is not at all affected by the question whether the St Matthew of Papias did or did not contain doings, as well as sayings, of Christ. The only escape from these perplexities lies in supposing that a wholly different class of books is intended, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... neither one nor the other had any effect upon the strength of the empire. Here, therefore, is one just subject of complaint against Gibbon, that he has dated the declension of the Roman power from a commencement arbitrarily assumed; another, and a heavier, is, that he has failed to notice the steps and separate indications of decline as they arose,—the moments (to speak in the language of dynamics) through which the decline travelled onwards ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... It is not arbitrarily that a transcendent intellect pointed out a difference between religion and religions: every mind devoted to philosophy must needs ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the future life. It is this: that each spirit chooses its own society, and naturally finds its fitting place and sphere of action,—following in the new life, as in the present, the leading of its prevailing loves and desires,—and that hence none are arbitrarily compelled to be good or evil, happy or miserable. A great law of attraction and gravitation governs the spiritual as well as the material universe; but, in obeying it, the spirit retains in the new life whatever freedom of will it possessed in its first stage of being. But I see the Elder ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... appears to compromise. This is especially the case with regard to the props or spurs, which are absolutely useless in reality, but are of the highest importance as an expression of safety. And this will farther appear when we observe that they have been above quite arbitrarily supposed to be of a triangular form. Why triangular? Why should not the spur be made wider and stronger, so as to occupy the whole width of the angle of the square, and to become a complete expansion ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... in the forest. Chacao was formerly the principal port in the island; but many vessels having been lost, owing to the dangerous currents and rocks in the straits, the Spanish government burnt the church, and thus arbitrarily compelled the greater number of inhabitants to migrate to S. Carlos. We had not long bivouacked, before the barefooted son of the governor came down to reconnoitre us. Seeing the English flag hoisted at the yawl's masthead, he asked with the utmost indifference, whether it ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... said Gazonal was intending to go to Paris to prosecute a lawsuit which the prefect of the Eastern Pyrenees had arbitrarily removed from the usual jurisdiction, transferring it to that of the Council of State. The worthy provincial determined to investigate this act, and to ask his Parisian cousin the reason of such high-handed measures. It thus happened that ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... coming crop as regards extent and appearance?' he merely telegraphs the word 'Hamlet.' If he wishes to say 'Bills of lading go forward by this mail, Invoices will follow,' he has only to telegraph 'Heretic.' For the most part, the compilers of these codes seem to have used the words arbitrarily, for the word 'Ellwood' has no visible connection with the words 'Blue Velvet,' which it represents; neither is there connection between 'Doves' and 'French Brandy,' nor between 'Collapse' and 'Scotch Coals,' though there does seem to have been a gleam of ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... to assign its exact limits to any genus. Gaps in our collections are being continually filled up, to the effacement of our dividing lines of demarcation. We are thus compelled to settle the limits of species and variety arbitrarily, and in a manner about which there will be constant disagreement. Naturalists are daily classifying new species which blend into one another so insensibly that there can hardly be found words to express the minute differences between them. The gaps that exist are simply due to our not having ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... act—such as in the making of a testament, in an action at law, or in the census—expressly or tacitly surrendered his -dominium-, neither he himself nor his lawful successors should ever have power arbitrarily to recall that resignation or reassert a claim to the person of the freedman himself or of his descendants. The clients and their posterity did not by virtue of their position possess either the rights of burgesses or those of guests: ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Spaniards from his realm, and forbidding his subjects to trade with them. Moreover, the seminary building is being erected in a place selected in violation of a royal decree, and which has been arbitrarily seized from its owners; and the monopolies granted are a grievance and injury to many persons, especially to the Indians who reside near Manila. The Audiencia accordingly revoke these, and order that the seminary building be demolished; and they issue a royal ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... interpretation on the part of Russia as to whether or not they interfered with the welfare of the empire. It is possible that, according to the individual opinions of Russian autocrats, they might all interfere with the standard of welfare which certain individuals have arbitrarily established to fit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... abstract theories, the Russian workman is not at all insensible to the prospect of bettering his material condition and getting his everyday grievances redressed. Of these grievances the ones he felt most keenly were the long hours, the low wages, the fines arbitrarily imposed by the managers, and the brutal severity of the foreman. By helping him to have these grievances removed the Social Democratic agents might gain his confidence, and when they had come to be regarded by him as his real friends ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace |
