"Composing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the heaviness produced by this inebriating draught, the soul falls along the zodiac and the milky way to the lower spheres, and in its descent not only takes, in each sphere, a new envelope of the material composing the luminous bodies of the planets, but receives there the different faculties which it is to exercise while it ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... liberty to which he is entitled by his moral character, and possess all possible facilities for the full and healthy development of his entire nature. Here, under the combined influence of true religion, intelligence, and freedom—and these must go hand in hand—the millions composing this great nation must become ever more and more ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... they think the herd most likely to pass, and watch its motions. The gayals, on meeting these balls as they pass along, are attracted by their appearance and smell, and begin to lick them with their tongues, and, relishing the taste of the salt and the particular earth composing them, they never quit the place till all the balls are consumed. The Kookies, having observed the gayals to have once tasted their balls, prepare a sufficient supply of them to answer the intended purpose, and as the gayals lick them up they throw down more; and it ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... of a single State to absolve themselves at will and without the consent of the other States from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberties and happiness of the millions composing this Union, can not be acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant both to the principles upon which the General Government is constituted and to the objects which it is expressly formed ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... was made to adapt the Veda to modern ideas by composing new Upanishads. The inspiration of such works is not denied but they have not the same influence as ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... adulteration act, though there is great satisfaction in knowing that when we eat it we are not taking in a mild death-dealing potion. But, come to think of it, there are other great scientists in the country besides those composing the National Academy. Some of them have decided in a contrary manner. Is it not best to have the question decided by a majority vote of reputable chemists, and then stick to the good old things, whichever ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... would enable him to put the family estate on a proper standing. He had arrived at this place since the year before last, and had, what is more, lived all along in very straitened circumstances. He had made the temple his temporary quarters, and earned a living by daily occupying himself in composing documents and writing letters for customers. Thus it was that Shih-yin had been in constant ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... I knew, was almost entirely of the poetical sort. She was a great hand at composing poetry. On one occasion only she showed me some of her poems. I am no judge of such things. Her poetry was of the dismal kind, despairing about herself, and wondering why she had ever been born, and nonsense like that. Her husband ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... the construction and adornment of business premises, people occupied with what they call "Business", which means being very busy without producing anything. Then there is a vast army of people engaged in designing, composing, painting or printing advertisements, things which are for the most part of no utility whatever, the object of most advertisements is merely to persuade people to buy from one firm rather than from another. If you want some butter it doesn't matter whether you buy it from Brown or Jones ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... had carried him so far as to prompt him to commit the results of his enquiries to writing, until, in the character of residuary legatee, his will put me in possession of all his manuscript papers. To such as may think the composing of such productions as these inconsistent with the character and habits of a country priest, it is necessary to observe, that there did exist a race of priests—those of the old school, a race now nearly extinct—whose habits ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Naples, has amused himself, and probably pleased his sovereign, by composing a life-sized group, representing Religion supporting King Ferdinand, and guarded by an angel, who places his foot on an evil spirit. On the other side of this group is a child bearing the scales of justice. "How much," writes a correspondent of the Athenaeum, "the artist is to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... The persons composing the expedition, being assembled at Kayee, a small town on the Gambia a little below Pisania, Park engaged a Mandingo priest, named Isaaco, who was also a travelling merchant and much accustomed to long inland journies, to serve as the ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... The Turk has the same raw materials of Nature, soil and water. There is no difference in the capacity for the exercise of physical force—or if there is, the difference is in favour of the Turk. The real difference is a difference of ideas, of mind and outlook on the part of the individuals composing the respective societies; the Turk has one general conception of human society and the code and principles upon which it is founded, mainly a militarist one; and the Englishman has another, mainly a Pacifist one. And whether the European society ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Ancients to make overtures to Autaritus for exchanging all the Barbarians, if necessary, for the aged Gisco, and the other Carthaginians detained like him. The Libyans and Nomads composing the army under Autaritus knew scarcely anything of these Mercenaries, who were men of Italiote or Greek race; and the offer by the Republic of so many Barbarians for so few Carthaginians, showed that the value of the former was nothing ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... slid past, the boys fending her off, and the Parson already composing himself at the bottom of the boat, Nelson leaned ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... view, the valley was half hidden in mist, as when we had seen it before. Snow could be distinguished on the higher parts of the coast mountains; eastward, as far as the eye could extend, it ranged over a terrible mass of broken snowy mountains, fading off blue in the distance. The rock composing the summit consists of a very coarse, dark, volcanic conglomerate: the lower parts appeared to be of a very slatey structure. The highest trees were a few scattered cedars and aspens. From the immediate foot of the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... acting the part of a plummet, can, to a certain extent, throw light upon the geological constitution of strata at great depths? By means of this instrument we are enabled to trace the striking analogy which exists between the formation of the granular rocks composing the lava currents ejected from active volcanoes, and those endogenous masses of granite, porphyry, and serpentine, which, issuing from the interior of the earth, have broken, as eruptive rocks, through the secondary strata, and modified them by contact, either in rendering ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Dawson hospitals on the survivors. For the stampede to Squaw Creek occurred on the coldest night of the year. Before morning, the spirit thermometers at Dawson registered seventy degrees below zero. The men composing the stampede, with few exceptions, were new-comers in the country who did not know the way ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... mistake; for, as a fact, in close sleeping-rooms the purest air is below and the most impure above. It is true that carbonic acid is heavier than common air, when pure; but this it rarely is except in chemical experiments. It is the property of all gases, as well as of the two (oxygen and nitrogen) composing the atmosphere, that when brought together they always are entirely mixed, each being equally diffused exactly as it would be if alone. Thus the carbonic acid from the skin and lungs, being warmed in the body, rises as does the common air, with which it mixes, toward ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... elderly, and he was getting into the systematic habit of regarding her less in her reality than in the ideal image which he had arranged in his mind; now, when he was writing the autobiography where the Countess figured as his Beatrice, and when he was composing the Latin epitaphs which were to unite his tomb with that of the woman "a Victorio Alferio, ultra resomnia dilecta," just at this time Alfieri appears to have returned to those flirtations with women neither respectable ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... choose to hear, and went on with composing observations, till the fair little face she had drawn to her side was as bright as the sun, and returned her ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in the sporangium occurs the capillitium. This consists of most delicate thread-or hair-like elements, offering great variety both in form and structure. The threads composing the capillitium are not to be regarded, even when free, as cells, nor even of cellular origin; probably, as would appear from the researches of Strasburger and Harper, all forms of capillitial threads arise in connection with vacuoles in the protoplasmic mass. "Whether the thread is hollow ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... mood in question results from a definite, a systematic, and an artificially produced misconception of the structure and the main phenomena, good and evil, of society as it exists to-day, and the different parts played by the different classes composing it. It has been the object of the present volume to expose, one after another, the individual fallacies of which this general misconception is the result, not with a view to suggesting that in society as it exists to-day there are ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... accumulated, the said Warren Hastings did cause the Treasury accounts at Calcutta to be examined and scrutinized, and an account of another arrear, composed of various articles, pretended to have accumulated during seven years previous to the year 1779, (the articles composing which, if they had been just, ought to have been charged at the times they severally became due,) was sent to the Resident, and payment thereof demanded, to the amount of 260,000l. sterling; which unexpected demand, in so distressed a situation, did not a little embarrass the Nabob. But whilst ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the printing office, Edwin came upon Big James giving a lesson in composing to the younger apprentice, who in theory had 'learned his cases.' Big James held the composing stick in his great left hand, like a match-box, and with his great right thumb and index picked letter after letter from the case, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the composing-room said anything; but those compositors who had started to go home began slipping off their overcoats, and every one stood with his eyes fixed ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... brushed away at the pleasure of the wearers, the Indians dragged out for a long time a miserable existence. The musquitoes stung them, and their tails teased them. The little insects worried them continually, and their frisky companions, the women, were any thing but a cup of composing drink. At length the Great Spirit, seeing how the poor Indians were afflicted, mercifully withdrew the greater part of the musquitoes, leaving a few as a memorial of the pest which had formerly annoyed them. The Kickapoos petitioned that the women should also be taken away from them, and their old ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... careful student of the career of Joseph Smith, Jr., and of his family and his associates, up to the year 1827, will fail to find any ground for the belief that he alone, or simply with their assistance, was capable of composing the Book of Mormon, crude in every sense as that work is. We must therefore accept, as do the Mormons, the statement that the text was divinely revealed to Smith, or must look for some directing hand behind the scene, which supplied the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... purposes of the festival, which was to continue five days. On the 15th of June, in the city of Boston, "The National Jubilee and Great Musical Festival" was begun. The number of instruments and performers composing the great orchestra was 1,011; and an organ of immense proportions and power, built expressly for the occasion, was employed. The grand chorus and solo vocalists numbered 1,040. Besides, one hundred anvils (used in the rendering of Verdi's "Anvil ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... true, had insisted that religion was an affair not of national institutions nor of outward observance, but of the people's heart—by which heart they and their hearers must have understood the individual hearts composing it. But, in urging upon his generation repentance, faith and conversion to God, Jeremiah's language is more thorough and personal than that used by any previous prophet. The individual, as he leaves Jeremiah's hands, is more clearly ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... birthplace of its use by man. The first great explorer of the West found the sensuous natives of Hispaniola rolling up and smoking tobacco-leaves with the same persistent indolence that we recognize in the Cuban of the present day. Rough Cortes saw with surprise the luxurious Aztec composing himself for the siesta in the middle of the day as invariably as his fellow Dons in Castile. But he was amazed that the barbarians had discovered in tobacco a sedative to promote their reveries and compose them to sleep, of which the hidalgos ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... must, along with his various accomplishments as a linguist, have eminently fitted him for developing systematically the high significance of human speech. On Sunday the 11th January 1829, he was engaged in composing a lecture which was to be delivered on the following Wednesday, and had just come to the significant words—"Das ganz vollendete und voll-kommene Verstehen selbst, aber"—"The perfect and complete understanding of things, however"—when the mortal palsy suddenly seized his hand, and before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... with each step labour becomes more and more productive, and is rewarded with better food, clothing, and shelter. Famine and disease disappear, life is prolonged, population is increased, and therewith the tendency to that combination of exertion among the individuals composing these communities, which is the distinguishing characteristic of civilization in all nations and in all periods of the world. With further increase of population and wealth, the desires of man, and his ability to gratify them, both increase. The nation, thus formed, has more corn ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... what is thought of in the mass or bulk, as money, wheat, coal. Number is used when we think of the individuals composing the mass, as men, ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... pursuit of a far more ambitious nature than mine. It was always part of my second brother's whimsical, self-contradictory character to view with the profoundest contempt the learned profession by which he gained his livelihood, and he is now occupying the long leisure hours of his old age in composing a voluminous treatise, intended, one of these days, to eject the whole body corporate of doctors from the position which they have usurped in the estimation of their fellow-creatures. This daring work is entitled "An Examination of the Claims of ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... to-day, along with you in your historical pursuits, is to turn the muse of history upside down—a most disrespectful proceeding—and yet to ignore them—to forget all about them—to hang them up with your hat and coat in the hall, to remain there whilst you sit in the library composing your immortal work, which is so happily to combine all that is best in Gibbon and Macaulay—a sneerless Gibbon and an impartial Macaulay—is a task which, if it be not impossible is, at all events, ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... the exercises upon the stand with an appropriate oration; and though he had mused and muttered and studied over it, from the day when he was first requested to "perform" until this eventful morning itself, he had not yet succeeded in composing ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... Certainly, old man; busy gathering subtle fancies here and there, his mind is not in the house, but he himself is; perched aloft, he is composing a tragedy. ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... street the doctor whistled a few measures composing a rather peculiar melody, expressive, it seemed to me, of unrest. I never forget a tune I have once heard, and this one was soon ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... winter-refuge at Laurentum, where Pliny only kept 'a few cases contrived in the wall for the books that cannot be read too often.' But when the Bishop writes about his friends' houses we find many allusions to their libraries. Consentius sits in a large book-room when he is composing his verses or 'culling the flowers of his music.' When he visited the Prefect of Gaul, Sidonius declared that he was whirled along in a stream of delights. There were all kinds of out-door amusements and a library filled with books. 'You would fancy yourself among a Professor's ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... turned the pages; here would be a poor bookkeeper, or a type-writer, or other cog in the business machine, who had read of the fortunes made by writers of fiction, and had spent all his hours of leisure for a year in composing a tale of the grand monde, or some feeble imitation of the sugar-coated "historical romance" of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... night time, and in the most inclement weather, preaching the gospel in the fields, visiting families, and conversing with the people individually and in groups, attending stated general meetings—taking part in their deliberations, composing differences, confronting gainsayers and opponents, and writing the papers and manifestoes of the persecuted party. His services were in constant and increasing demand, in various places widely scattered. After he had been ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... tender, but it must be absolutely decisive. There must be no loop-hole left by which she could again entangle him, no crevice by which she could creep into Buston. The letter should be a work of time. He would give himself a week or ten days for composing it. And then, when it should have been sent, he ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... of Jean Paul Marat and John Brown of Ossawatomie rises to the fore in the shape of one Andres Bonifacio, warehouse porter, who sits up o' nights copying all the letters and documents that he can lay hands on; composing grandiloquent manifestoes in Tagalog; drawing up magnificent appointments in the names of prominent persons who would later suffer even to the shedding of their life's blood through his mania for writing history in advance; spelling out Spanish tales of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... thousands carried in the double bottom of a suitcase. Of course, so frequent a traveller would require a plausible reason for his journeys, but that would present no difficulty to men like those composing the syndicate. In any case, by crossing in rotation by the dozen or so well-patronized routes between England and the Continent, the continuity of the travelling could be largely hidden. Moreover, thought Merriman, why print the notes in France ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... of the following year, 1477, Isabella resolved to pay a visit to Estremadura and Andalusia, for the purpose of composing the dissensions, and introducing a more efficient police, in these unhappy provinces; which, from their proximity to the stormy frontier of Portugal, as well as from the feuds between the great houses of Guzman and Ponce de Leon, were plunged in the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... characteristic of this volume consists in this, that all the stories composing it belong not only to the same period but have been written one after another in the order in which ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... possible, also, under extraordinarily favorable conditions, to select a company congenial and varied and harmonious enough to dine together successfully. The tact for getting the right people together is perhaps rarer than the art of composing the dinner. But it exists. And an elegant table with a handsome and brilliant company about it is a common conjunction in this country. Instructions are not wanting as to the shape of the table and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... composing a gun's crew, excluding the Powderman or Boy, are to be Boarders. When this rule gives an odd number of men, the odd one is to be a ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... provisions procured at Trois Rivieres, the ladies retired for the night. Captain Sinclair stationed sentinels at different posts as a security from any intruders, and then the remainder of the troops with the other males composing the party lay down with their feet toward a large fire, composed of two or three trunks of trees, which blazed for many yards in height. In a short time all was quiet, and all were in repose except the sentinels, the sergeant and corporal, and Captain ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... trouser-pockets in default of settlement, to deal with.... But one does not develop muscle, the thing above all that W. Keyse most longed to possess. When he went into the printing-business and bent all day over the formes of type in the composing-room, hand-setting up the columns of the North London Half-penny Herald, to the tune of three-and-eightpence a day, the hollow chest grew hollower, and he developed a "corf." The physician in charge of the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... for this picture-frame stage that every dramatist is composing his plays," Brander Matthews says; "and his methods are of necessity those of the picture-frame stage; just as the methods of the Elizabethan dramatic poet were of necessity those of the platform stage." ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... much sleep is of such advantage, if an infant sleep but little, would you advise composing medicine to be ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... the good administration of distributive justice is one of the things on which principally depends the good government of the community, and the happiness of its people and of the districts composing it, I order you to grant what offices and posts of the country are at your disposal to meritorious men, and for services and capacity. You shall grant the offices in such a way that they be filled by the old inhabitants who have lived ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... situation was too critical to admit of delay; it was therefore resolved to return back to our last station on the 6th, under Peel's Range, if for no other purpose than that of giving the horses water. I felt that by attempting to proceed westerly I should endanger the safety of every man composing the expedition, without any practical good arising from such perseverance, It was therefore deemed more prudent to keep along the base of Peel's Range to its termination, having some chance of finding water in its rocky ravines, whilst there was none at all in attempting ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... force on the expedition to Pekin, in discipline and in equipment and the conduct of the men composing it, it was absolutely beneath contempt. Unless the art of foraging and looting can be considered soldier-like qualities, they appeared to me ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... its colonnade of white pillars, resembling a cloister. To the left Lopez's palace rears its shattered tower, and on the right hand is the arsenal, which serves as the barracks for the three or four thousand troops composing the Brazilian army of occupation. Near it is the horse-car station, connected by the street-cars with the station of the Asuncion and Paraguari railroad, a line about twenty-five leagues in length. Carts drawn by horses move slowly to and fro on the quay. Here and there along the shore, with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... one should laugh on the other side of the wall just as I happened to be standing before the closed gate. The inclosure was probably in connection with the servants' apartments; or it might be the exclusive privilege of Chrysophrasia to walk there, composing anapaestic verse to the infinite faintness of the moon,—or anything. A quarter of an hour later I was in the drawing-room drinking a cup of tea. I came in when the others had finished reading their evening letters, and there were none for me. The tea was ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... should be divided into suitable units of attack; one large thought together with its supporting details should constitute one section, another large thought together with its associated details a second, etc.; all of these together composing the whole field. In other words, the student, instead of making progress in knowledge fact by fact, should advance by groups of facts. His smallest unit of progress should be a considerable number of ideas so related to one another that they make a whole; ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... Barbadoes, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, one of the Lesser Antilles. The negroes, composing by far the larger part of ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... language. To decipher the message, a special code-book or dictionary would be required. In order to transmit the currents through the line, he devised a mechanical sender, in which the circuit would be interrupted by a series of types carried on a port-rule or composing-stick, which travelled at a uniform speed. Each type would have a certain number of teeth or projections on its upper face, and as it was passed through a gap in the circuit the teeth would make or break the current. At the other end of the line the currents thus transmitted would excite ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... elephantine dimensions and leviathan bills of fare. It is nominally, perhaps, or really, perhaps, the annual benefit concert of some well-known performer, or it is the speculation of a great musical publishing house, in the name of one of their composing or performing proteges. The latter is, indeed, a very common practice. But whether the music-publishing and opera-box-letting firm be the real concert-giver, or merely the agent, to it is left the whole of the nice operation of 'getting up' the entertainment. It has then exhausted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... employed her as secretary. Every evening, when they were alone, he walked up and down the large room and dictated for an hour. In the silent old house, his solemn voice, and another sweeter and fresher, awakened singular echoes. "Our author is composing," ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... and finally, the rank and file lazy, untidy, and frankly contemptuous of the school of the soldier. Some one had once said of the Ninth that there was consolation to be found in the mortifying knowledge that the men composing it were there with the unique view of escaping jury duty. The consolation lay in the probability that such infernally bad soldiers would have made jurors quite as ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... adding has previously exercised {414} linkages with the responses composing the addition table, while the mental set for multiplication has linkages with the responses composing the multiplication table. When the set for adding is active, a pair of numbers, seen or heard, together with this internal stimulus of the mental ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... amused myself in writing a long letter to my dear Emily; and with the assistance of a bottle of wine, succeeded in composing a tolerably warm and rapturous sort of a document, which I sealed, kissed, and sent to the post-office; after which, I built castles till bed time; but not one castle did I build, in which Emily was not the sole ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... were now scattered about in little groups; and the conversation was very animated. Here sat an ancient dowager, delighting some gentlemen with piquant anecdotes of the Court of Louis XV.; there, stood a jovial priest, composing rhymes for the amusement of a half-dozen young girls; at a little distance were several statesmen, earnestly discussing the recent acts of the Convention—all doing their best to kill time, as travellers ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... my parents having retired, our cousin threw a deck upon our table. They two and I sat down to play, while my dear and tenderly loved brother, not liking the idea of playing cards, turned to his music, which he was composing as a graduating exercise for examination day, and went to work at that. We three needed a fourth one to make the game go properly, and we began trying to persuade my brother to come and take part with us; but he declared he thought it was not right to spend time in card-playing—that ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... he, "you know there should be silence in the apartment of a dying man. For shame!—for shame! Cease this clamor, it will but distract him for whom you weep, and prevent him from composing his mind for the great trial that is ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... bed in his old room at the vicarage protesting that he had enjoyed the first day of his holiday immensely. As he blew out the light, he thought suddenly how often in that very room he had gone to bed dreaming about the lady in black and composing verses to her, till somehow the Greek terminations would get mixed up with the Latin roots, the quantities all seemed to change places, and he used to fall asleep with a delicious half romantic ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... whole inheritance he had derived from his ancestry. Perhaps this melancholy yet consolatory reflection crossed the mind of the unfortunate young nobleman with a breathing of comfort. Favourable to calm reflection, as well as to the Muses, the morning, while it dispelled the shades of night, had a composing and sedative effect upon the stormy passions by which the Master of Ravenswood had been agitated on the preceding day. He now felt himself able to analyse the different feelings by which he was agitated, and much resolved ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... President shall invite the governments of the countries composing the Latin Union, so called, and of such other European nations as he may deem advisable, to join the United States in a conference to adopt a common ratio between gold and silver for the purpose of establishing internationally the use of bimetallic money and securing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... labourer at the alehouse or the harvest home are not of his own composing. The tunes whistled by the ploughboy as he goes down the road to his work in the dawn were not written for him. Green meads and rolling lands of wheat—true fields of the cloth of gold—have never yet inspired those who dwell upon them with songs uprising from the soil. The solitude ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... after the revels of the night previous, and as though resting in preparation for those to come, it wore an air of peaceful inactivity. At a table a maitre d'hotel was composing the menu for the evening, against the walls three colored waiters lounged sleepily, and on a platform at a piano a pale youth with drugged eyes was with one hand picking an accompaniment. As Wharton paused uncertainly the young man, disdaining ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... The mass of ants composing the nest appeared so loosely connected that it seemed as if a touch would tear a hole, a light wind rend the supports. It was suspended in the upper corner of the doorway, rounded on the free sides, and measured ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... 1260, he reluctantly accepted the bishopric of Ratisbon, and in two years after resigned it, and returned to his cell in Cologne, where the remainder of his life was passed in superintending the school, and in composing his voluminous works on divinity and natural science. He died in 1280. The absurd imputation of his having dealt in the magical art is well known; and his biographers take some pains to clear him of it. Scriptores Ordinis ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... and because it could not easily be forgiven him that before the senate he apologized for the crimes of Nero. This reflection did not seem to affect Louis in the least. When we spoke of Livy, Capet said that he seemed to have taken satisfaction in composing great speeches which were never uttered to any other audience than that which was reached from his study-table; 'for,' he added, 'it is impossible that generals really delivered such long speeches in front of their armies.' He then compared Livy with Tacitus, and thought that the latter ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... composing, a lively and, what is called, a 'masterly' handling of the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed, captivating qualities to young minds, and become of course the objects of their ambition. They endeavour to imitate these dazzling excellences, which they will find no great labour in attaining. ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... decayed vegetable matter, becomes a part of the superficial mould; and in any event, brute life immensely changes the form and character of the superficial strata, if it does not sensibly augment the quantity of the matter composing them. The remains of man, too, add to the earthy coating that covers the face of the globe. The human bodies deposited in the catacombs during the long, long ages of Egyptian history, would perhaps build as large ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... very quiet girl, and very musical. She always came over here with her music-books—composing, you know; and she generally works all day, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... credit thereto, why do not you the same to these jovial new Chronicles of mine? Albeit, when I did dictate them, I thought thereof no more than you, who possibly were drinking the whilst, as I was. For, in the composing of this lordly book, I never lost nor bestowed any more, nor any other time, than what was appointed to serve me for taking of my bodily refection; that is, whilst I was eating and drinking. And, indeed, that is the fittest and most proper hour, wherein to write ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... a cento of sayings attributed—rightly or wrongly it is impossible to say—to Jesus among his materials, thought they were, or might be, records of a continuous discourse, and put them in at the place he thought likeliest. Ancient historians of the highest character saw no harm in composing long speeches which never were spoken, and putting them into the mouths of statesmen and warriors; and I presume that whoever is represented by "Matthew" would have been grievously astonished to find that any one objected to his following the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... and Briton too, is on the war-path, and we can, without an undue stretch of imagination, picture him composing a telegram to the Kaiser in these terms: "Just off to repel another raid. Your customary wire of congratulations should be addressed, 'British Headquarters, German ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... body-guard mounted, was to pass out by it, and surprise the Janissaries defending the battery. Simultaneously Justiniani should sally by the Gate St. Romain, cross the moat temporarily bridged for the purpose, and, with the footmen composing the force in reserve, throw ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... was restored, and I often thought that life was entirely extinct. At length he opened his eyes; he breathed with difficulty and was unable to speak. The surgeon gave him a composing draught and ordered us to leave him undisturbed. In the meantime he told me that my friend had certainly not many hours ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... equally Unsuccessful to a Person without Interest at Court, (and you'll as rarely find the Friendship of an Orestes, as the Chastity of Penelope) When a Man of Fortune has no other Task, than to give out a stupid Performance to be of his own Composing, and he's immediately respected as a Celebrated Writer: And if a Man has the good Fortune to hit the capricious Humour of the Age; after he has attained a Reputation with the utmost Difficulty, ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... the word uncompromising as if it were always a praiseworthy thing to be. But it hardly ever is, if you stop to think. Certainly if life's an art, like composing music or painting pictures, then compromise is in the very fabric of it. Getting different themes or colors that would like to be contradictory, to work together; developing a give and take. What's the important thing? To have a life that's full and good and serviceable, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... was demanded by the Americans, and the 100 men composing the garrison were allowed to depart in boats for Naig on the west coast of Cavite. Their commander, however, surrendered himself prisoner, and went on board the Baltimore with his family. He was at once offered (but wisely refused) his liberty, and later on ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... unable to leave their business, are left to their own resources as housekeepers in their deserted houses and apartments. It is for their benefit that I have put together these hints on housekeeping for men. It may be that in composing them I owe something to the current number of the leading women's magazines. If so, I need not apologise. I am sure that in these days We Men all feel that We Men and We Women are so much alike, or at least those of us who call ourselves so, that ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... better, but after walking six hours we had only gained four miles, and were then compelled by fatigue to encamp on the borders of Round-Rock Lake. Augustus tried for fish here, but without success, so that our fare was skin and tea. Composing ourselves to rest, we lay close to each other for warmth. We found the night bitterly cold, and the wind pierced through ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... crimson, and the night was fair and calm above us, though in the interior of our little vessel the air had already begun to lose its freshness. We suffered more or less from its closeness through the night, and woke in the morning to find it heavy with impurity from the breaths of some sixty persons, composing the officers and crew. Sunrise found us on deck, enjoying pure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the meaning of this war, I confess that I think them almost incorrigible; yet I cannot believe that even they, if they had had the experience which has placed not only General Butler, but almost every one of the twenty thousand men composing the old "Army of the Gulf," firmly on the side of freedom to all, of whatever complexion, could longer withstand the dictates ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in recognition of their gallant and efficient services on the 12th of July, 1871. That there are individuals whose conduct reflects discredit upon the force is but natural; but as a whole, there does not exist a more devoted, gallant, and efficient body of men than those composing the police ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... from here!" he said in a stage whisper, dropping his voice, and looking round cautiously, as he pointed along the row of houses composing "the Terrace," where our most fashionable parishioners ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of that feeling about his bad luck. How I ever succeeded I don't know, for Paul caught my mood and began to believe it himself. But somehow I did. And then I made him give up his violin and begin composing. Of course we had to have money for that. I wrote a relative and demanded, point blank, shamelessly, two thousand dollars. I felt it was my restitution to Paul. I received the money. What the relative thought, I don't know. I suppose ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... the intrest of the King of Britain, was disgraced. The nixt (but rather should have bein made the first) was his Mai:s bad choyse of a false chirking willain, Mr. Douning,[635] to be his agent to negotiat affaires at the States Generall in the beginning of that war, who steid of composing things rancored them worse and made them almost uncurable, judging it good fisching in troubled waters, wheiras if a moderat and ane honest man had bein made use of in that business, things would ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... we had been at terrific muscular tension, withstanding the awful pressure of that wind. And then, suddenly, the pressure was removed. I know that I felt as though I was about to expand, to fly apart in all directions. It seemed as if every atom composing my body was repelling every other atom and was on the verge of rushing off irresistibly into space. But that lasted only for a ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... by Italians, as the earnest of progress, the first step toward truly national institutions and a representation of the people. Gratitude has done its natural work in their hearts; it has made them better. Some days before the fete were passed in reconciling all strifes, composing all differences between cities, districts, and individuals. They wished to drop all petty, all local differences, to wash away all stains, to bathe and prepare for a new great covenant of brotherly love, where each should act for the good of all. On that day they all embraced in sign of ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... who through perfect meditation has merged his consciousness with the Creator perceives the cosmical essence as light; to him there is no difference between the light rays composing water and the light rays composing land. Free from matter-consciousness, free from the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time, a master transfers his body of light with equal ease over the light rays of earth, water, fire, or air. Long concentration on the liberating spiritual ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... yards long, thirty yards wide, and as ye see, pious fathers, the grains composing it are of the same kind, for the people of that time were from Egyptian grandfathers and great- ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... carried it to his own chamber, where he read and partly understood the poem. But he was not ripe enough either in philosophy or religion for such meditations. Having executed his task, for as such he regarded it, he turned to look through the strange mixture of wisdom and credulity composing the volume. One tale after another, of witch, and demon, and magician, firmly believed and honestly recorded by his worthy relative, drew him on, until he sat forgetful of everything but the world of marvels before him—to ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Thus far for the Composing a Kennel: I come now to the Kennel it self, of which I need say little, as indeed unnecessary, leaving that to the Discretion of the Huntsman; only I would have him observe, that it be built ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... her foot. The cynical tone of the question grated upon an artistic temperament at the crucial moment when it was composing and acting at the same time. "Don't you say it, Sissy Madigan!" she cried petulantly. "I can say it myself. And then"—turning to Maude Bryne-Stivers, to whom she was telling the touching incident, with a resumption of ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... have spent six or seven days in composing this sublime piece; the orb of my moonlike genius has made the fourth part of its revolution round the dull earth which you inhabit, driving you mad, while it has retained its calmness and its splendour, and I have been fitting this its last phase ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... position in colonial journalism. Our office, as I have remarked, was a rude affair. The accompanying picture will convey a better idea of its appearance than anything I might write. The editorial room was a small space partitioned off from the composing room, which contained also the little hand-press on which the paper was printed. A person who might wish to see the editor was forced to pick his way through a line of stands and cases at which stood the coatless printers who set the type and prepared ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... Don Pedro was his brother. Furthermore, he said, he was safe in Andalusia, where he was happily married, in the best of health, and had three robust children. Then he touched on his brother's gift for composing poetry, and said that the very two sonnets the captive had mentioned, he himself knew by heart. Whereupon every one asked him to recite them, and so he did with fine feeling and intelligence. Then ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... compelled to occupy one room—Humphreys, Lewis, and Nelson. Humphreys, aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief at Yorktown, was a most estimable man, and at the same time a poet. About this period he was composing his 'Widow of Malabac.' Lewis and Nelson, both young men, were content, after the labors of the day, to enjoy a good night's repose. But this was often denied them, for Humphreys, when in the vein, would rise from his bed at any hour, and, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... a bench and bent all her energies to composing the story that Pauline would shortly write at ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... by Land or Sea, a comedy; acted by the Queen's servants, 1653. Mr. Rowley assisted in the composing ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... be preferred, and its 'attain unto' brings out the idea which the Authorised Version fails to express, that the text is intended to point to the period at which Christ's provision of helpful gifts to the growing Church is to cease, when the individuals composing it have come to their destined unity and maturity in Him. The three clauses of our text are each introduced by the same preposition, and there is no reason why in the second and third it should be rendered 'unto' and in the first should be watered ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... the room with the utmost suavity. As for Mr Wentworth, it is probable that his brother's serenity had quite the reverse of a soothing effect upon his mind and temper. He rose from the table as soon as Jack was gone, and for a long time paced about the room composing himself, and planning what he was to do—so long, indeed, that Sarah, after coming up softly to inspect, had cleared the table and put everything straight in the room before the Curate discovered her presence. It was only when she came up to him at last, with her little rustical ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Composing himself, he turned to the girl again with a deprecatory smile. But no smile answered him from her set face. She had seen her beloved hero's nature in curl-papers, as it were, and she found the spectacle disgusting and terrifying. It recalled ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... too small or too large for him,—generally the latter. For it is a curious fact, that the more uneducated a man is,—in which condition his ordinary language must of necessity be proportionately idiomatic,—the greater pains he takes, when he has formed the resolution of composing, to be splendid and expansive in his style. He racks his brains until he rummages out imperfect memories of the turgid paragraphs of cheap newspapers and novels which he has some time or other read, and forthwith struts off with all the finest feathers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... beauty of character, as well as of countenance, and indeed of everything human, is to be tried in this manner. Cruel indeed would it be if such a work as this history, which hath employed some thousands of hours in the composing, should be liable to be condemned, because some particular chapter, or perhaps chapters, may be obnoxious to very just and sensible objections. And yet nothing is more common than the most rigorous ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... the several corps composing the Army is such as to admit its expansion to a great extent in case of emergency, the officers carrying with them all the light which they possess to the new corps to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various |
