"Figuring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... immediate privilege to give sentence of life or death—to seem in ignorance of what every one else is full of—to be behind-hand with the polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of mankind—to be at a loss and dumb-founded, when all around us are in their glory, and figuring away, on no other ground than that of having read a work that we have not! Books that are to be written hereafter cannot be criticised by us; those that were written formerly have been criticised long ago; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... and mapped out the English play of "Henry the Fourth," taken from an old historical play, and was figuring on two comedies—"Midsummer Night's Dream" and the "Merry ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... transferred to the fostering care of the nymphs of Mount Nysa. An aged satyr named Silenus, the son of Pan, took upon himself the office of guardian and preceptor to the young god, who, in his turn, became much attached to his kind tutor; hence we see Silenus always figuring as one of the chief personages in the various expeditions of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... to dress, Lanley was just in the act of drawing the last neat double lines for his balance. He had been delayed by the fact that Mrs. Wayne had been talking to him almost continuously since his return to figuring. She was in high spirits, for even saints are ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... another: your cousin Sophy bothers me to build an Elizabethan pigsty, and wanted her poor mother to dance with the butler in the servants' hall last Christmas, when the fellow was as drunk as an owl: I hope it mayn't end in her figuring off herself with the footman; for Sophy is rather a pet of mine, and a right-down English girl after all. But, Frank, if you can't read in peace in the library, you surely could have a room fitted up for yourself up stairs; and you shall ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... oatmeal; another kettle of prunes and a quantity of bread. The system then was one of "help yourself and pass it on," which was all right for the fellow at the head of the table, but the fellows on the opposite end had to do the figuring. ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... to disturb you, but you have been libelling one of our clients. He objects to your putting his Christian name in the paper—says that even with another surname it will injure him with his neighbours. He doesn't want his Christian name to be figuring in ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... completely. "You will do nothing of the sort," she cried, warm with friendship and the prospect of figuring in the most sensational episode Nevis had known this many a year. "Come to me. Be my guest until the banns have been properly published, and marry from Ogilvy Grange. Everything must be de rigueur, or I should never forgive myself. And it would give me the ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... representing, on one side of the dome, Suraj Mall in 'darbar', smoking his hookah, and giving orders to his ministers; in another, he is at his devotions; on the third, at his sports, shooting hogs and deer; and on the fourth, at war, with some French officers of distinction figuring before him. He is distinguished by his portly person in all, and by his favourite light-brown dress in three places. At his devotions he is standing all in white before the tutelary god of his house, Hardeo.[15] In various parts, Krishna ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... those rights. Unfortunately, however, in these Southern communities the opinion of such persons cannot have such weight as it would in ours. The spirit of caste, of which I have already spoken, is an element figuring largely against them in any contest involving principle,—an element of whose practical workings we here know very little. The walls between individuals and classes are so high and broad, that the men ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... we'd do it," she said. "That's why I said I needed your help in figuring it out. Something like that, I suppose. Sweeping and making beds isn't ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... friendly than he had ever before been known. But those boys who knew him so well understood what his sudden conversion meant. He aspired to fill the important position of coxswain on the crew, and was figuring to gain the votes of a majority of those entitled to pass judgment ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... the vast theatre—even in November—was nightly crammed to overflowing. As Gertrude White walked back to her home her heart was filled with bitterness. She had caught sight of the ostentatious placard; and she knew that the photograph of the creature who was figuring there was in every stationer's shop in the Strand. And that which galled her was not that the theatre should be so taken and so used, but that the stage heroine of the hour should be a woman who could act no more than any baboon in ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... in figuring your return. Personally we employ trigonometry, altho many prefer calculus and a couple ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... numbers, then, we had immediately about the city 8,500 troops. These were scattered from the cemetery around to Aguadores. In front of us, actually in the trenches, there could not by any possible method of figuring have been less than 6,000 men. You can twist it any way you want to; the figures I have given you are absolutely correct, at least they are absolutely ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... the Conemaugh shed at Johnstown up to the time of the flood was probably 2 5-10 inches. He believes it was much heavier in the mountains. The country drained by the little Conemaugh and Stony Creek covers an area of about one hundred square miles. The bureau, figuring on this basis and 2 5-10 inches of rainfall, finds that 464,640,000 cubic feet of water was precipitated toward Johnstown in its last hours. This is independent of the great volume of water in the lake, which was not ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... ask whether they had got him too; but thankful as I was for the greater knowledge, I confess that I did not much care what answer I received. Already I was figuring out how much we might each get, and how old we should be when we came out. But my companion tilted his hat to the back of his head, at the same time putting his face close to mine, and compelling my scrutiny. And my answer, as you have already guessed, was the face ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... fellow said," remarked the hill billy, grinningly. "Reedy Jenkins was out yesterday figuring on buyin' the lease; and he said: 'If I had ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... 1499, stands out from the "ordinary pictures" belonging to this early period. It consists of a charming and gay Nativity in the centre, and two knights in armour on the wings, probably portraits of the donors, Stephan and Lucas Paumgartner, figuring as warlike saints. Stephan, a personal friend of Duerer's, figured again as St. George in the Trinity and All Saints picture painted in 1511. There were originally two panels with female saints beyond these ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... I made that water hazard all right, though it was a close call. Which reminds me of the perhaps interesting fact that forty-five and sixty-four hundredths cylindrical feet of water will weigh twenty-two hundred and forty pounds, figuring one cubic foot of salt water at sixty-four and three-tenths pounds, if you get my meaning!" and there ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... more correct. That the writer of these pages considers him in the light of a man who, deluding himself, was the means of deluding others, may be inferred from his finding a place in these volumes, and figuring among the Flamels, the Agrippas, the Borris, the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... exceeding five hundred koku capacity, his object being to prevent oversea enterprise, he caused to be constructed for the use of the Bakufu a great ship called the Ataka Maru, which required a crew several hundred strong and involved a yearly outlay figuring in the official accounts at one hundred thousand koku. One of Tsunayoshi's first orders was that this huge vessel should be broken up, and when his ministers remonstrated on the ground that she would be invaluable in case of emergency, he replied that if an insurrection ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... here and there from people I watched. That's one way a man never fails to learn—watching people. That's the only way our forefathers had to learn. I learned arithmetic the same way. I never considered I was much at figuring but I took a contract from a man who had all kinds of education and that man said I could do arithmetic ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... belonged, and the army, anxious to do honor to the Comte de Forzheim, were all represented by their magnates. There were nearly two hundred indispensable invitations. How natural, then, that little Madame Marneffe was bent on figuring in all her glory amid such an assembly. The Baroness had, a month since, sold her diamonds to set up her daughter's house, while keeping the finest for the trousseau. The sale realized fifteen thousand francs, of which five thousand were sunk in Hortense's ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... thing to interrupt a merchant when he's busy. He, and he alone, knows what is most important for him to do. Maybe he has an urgent bill or sight draft to meet; maybe he has a rush order to get off in the next mail; maybe he is figuring up his profit or his loss on some transaction. Then is not the time to state your business if you wish to make your point. The traveling man must not forget that the merchant's store is a place of business; that he is on the lookout for good things and just as anxious to buy ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... was known that there were individuals who had betrayed a bias towards monarchy, and there had always been some not unfavorable to a partition of the Union into several confederacies; either from a better chance of figuring on a sectional theatre, or that the sections would require stronger governments, or by their hostile conflicts lead to a monarchical consolidation. The idea of dismemberment had recently made its appearance ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... teacher, a school house and shop, and to bring their own dwellings into the locality fixed upon for the school. Then there were sent out two native teachers (one a woman, capable of teaching spinning and loom weaving), to begin the instruction of the children in language, figuring and in industrial arts not known to the Ilongot. This school experiment promises to succeed and has already led to starting one or two other schools in communities still more ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... to take a man's gun that-a-way," he went on, "for when yo' are figuring that yo' have the drop on him and he is makin' the play to give it up—Jest reach out now ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... gave me a look that I swore I would pay him for, the villain; as the extensive mademoiselle, suiting the action to the word, started up, and hooked on, and as a cotillion had been called, there I was, figuring away most emphatically, to Bang and Transom's great entertainment. At length the dance was at an end, And a waltz was once more called, and having done my duty, I thought I might slip out between the acts; so I offered to hand my solid armful ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... getting near to the steamer, he did not venture to consider. But he could not help figuring up the number of soldiers on board of the tug; the force which had captured him and Percy consisted of four men, and two men were with the lieutenant. Two officers and six men was the available force of the enemy on board of the ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... Young Arnold, as I dimly gather, had got married, apparently a Wife with portion; bought the Mill from his Father, he and Wife co-possessors thenceforth;—"Rosine his Spouse" figuring jointly in all these Law-Papers; and the Spouse especially as a most shifty litigant. There they continue totally silent to mankind for about eight years. Happy the Nation, much more may we say the Household, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Vandenesse's daughters, and sister of Charles and Felix. Like her husband and cousin, during the early years of the Restoration, she was a brilliant type of the period, combining, as she did, godliness with worldliness, occasionally figuring in politics, and concealing her youth under the guise of austerity. However, in 1828, her mask seemed to fall at the moment when Madame de Mortsauf died; for, then, she wrongly fancied herself the object of Eugene de Rastignac's ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... what is here meant, and of the difference between the theistic position and Mr. Spencer's, may be supplied by an example he has himself proposed. Thus,[254] he imagines an intelligent watch speculating as to its maker, and conceiving of him in terms of watch-being, and figuring him as furnished with springs, escapements, cogged wheels, &c., his motions facilitated by oil—in a word, like himself. It is assumed by Mr. Spencer that this necessary watch conception would be completely false, and the illustration is made use of to show "the presumption ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... help laughing. 'But, Rupert,' said she, 'pray do not say too much about it in the evening. I am not at all sure that Papa will not be very much displeased to see his name figuring in the paper as if he was a supporter of this horrid place. I wish, as Lizzie says, that I had cut my head off before I went, for it has really come to be something serious. Papa's name will ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was about three miles from town, high up on the Adams Farm. After many evening trips with the old mare and much figuring we had the thing done, all but the windows, door, and shingles on the roof. Well, I knew where there was an old door and two window-sash taken off our chicken-house to let in the air during Summer. And one rainy ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... at last, "I best tell you the whole story that's in my mind. I told you I've been figuring it out. Well, it's figured to the last decimal. You think you know me. Maybe you do. Maybe you know only part of the things I know about myself. If you knew them all I'd hate to think of the contempt you'd have to hand ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... astonishing success and dispatch. King, our peerless, polo-pony leader, went lame. So hopelessly lame did he go that no expert, then and afterward, could determine whether the lameness was in his frogs, hoofs, legs, shoulders, or head. Maid picked up a nail and began to limp. Milda, figuring the day already sufficiently spent and maniacal with manger-gluttony, began to rabbit-jump. All that held her was the bale- rope. And the Outlaw, game to the last, exceeded all previous exhibitions of skin-removing, paint-marring, ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... some joyous weddings in the Department of the Platte the summer that followed, Loring gravely figuring as best man when Dean, of the cavalry, was married to Elinor Folsom, and smiling with equal gravity when he read of the nuptials of Brevet Captain Petty and the gifted and beautiful Miss Allyn. He had reverted to his original idea, that of waiting in patience until ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... of torment, lying tense on his bed in the dark, and figuring out how long it would take him to pay back the money he was advancing to himself. Any fool could do it in five years, he reasoned, but he was going to do it in three. The trouble was that his expensive ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... it if you want to. It'll pay for the hundred cows you are figuring on buying. But I was just thinking: can two men at our time of life, who have always been friends, afford to take the risk of letting a business transaction like this possibly make us enemies? You know I ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... then Chief Wish-Heap-Dough would have a dream in which the Manitou commanded him to fill up a few bottles of Sum-wah-tah at the most convenient place. 'Twas about ten o'clock, and we'd just got in from a street performance. I was in the tent with the lantern, figuring up the day's profits. John Tom hadn't taken off his Indian make-up, and was sitting by the campfire minding a fine sirloin steak in the pan for the Professor till he finished his hair-raising ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... Democritus are to be one lot that laughter and tears will go together (Sale of Creeds, l3)—accords with our views of the emotional temperament. Chiron is impressive on the vanity of fruition (Dialogues of the Dead, 26). And the figuring of Truth as 'the shadowy creature with the indefinite complexion' (The Fisher, 16) is only one example ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the intentions of the farmer who is trying to destroy them, and shows great sagacity in defeating those intentions. But, while the crow is a very intelligent bird—one of the wisest of the bird family, in fact—it obtains its knowledge of what is in the mind of the man not alone from "figuring on his intentions," but rather from that instinctive sensing of his mental states. The hen, as all know, is a very stupid bird, showing but little intelligent activity. But, nevertheless, she is very quick about sensing the poultryman's designs on her, though generally very stupid ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... stand upwards of 1.5 gee maximum spin—but that's only radial strength," Mike began figuring. "Don't think anybody ever calculated the stress of pulling the hub loose, endwise. No reason to, you know, and it wasn't expected to land or anything. And really, nobody expected it to stand in service more than a ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... gentlemen sat engaged in talk, Mr. Addison solacing himself with his customary pipe, the little maid-servant that waited on his lodging came up, preceding a gentleman in fine laced clothes, that had evidently been figuring at Court or a great man's levee. The courtier coughed a little at the smoke of the pipe, and looked round the room curiously, which was shabby enough, as was the owner in his worn, snuff-colored ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... very fact that he was connected with the "Injins," as turned out to be the case, added to his natural propensities the consciousness of guilt, and rendered him doubly dangerous. The whole time my uncle and myself were crossing over and figuring in, in order to procure for each a room, though it were only a closet, his watchful, distrustful looks denoted how much he saw in our movements to awaken curiosity, if not downright suspicion. When all was over, he followed me to the little lawn in front of the house, whither I had ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... me to speak out plain? James, stand away, if you please. You may all think what you choose of me. I don't care! Perhaps if you were to come in and find the man who, only a week ago, had offered marriage to your youngest sister, figuring away as engaged to quite another lady, you wouldn't be all milk and honey, either. I'm doing right to expose him. The man who'd deceive one would deceive many, and so you'll find, Miss Collum, little ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... purpose of figuring the excess profit tax the five, four or three years before America's entrance into the war would probably form the most appropriate basis. The aggregate industrial plant of this country, the entire scale and scope of our commerce and its concomitants, have been so completely modified in the ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... Earl of St. Albans, and his nephew, "the little Jermyn," were also notable as figuring in court intrigues. The earl was member of the privy council to his majesty, and moreover held a still closer connection to the queen mother; for, according to Sir John Reresby, Madame Buviere, and others, her majesty had privately married his lordship abroad—an act of condescension he ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... Blake with a smile. "This book has a lot in it about the big landslides. At first they were terribly discouraging to the workers. They practically put the French engineers, who started the Canal, out of the running, and even when the United States engineers started figuring they didn't allow enough ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... took on more ambitious proportions. At the time of Sir William Tyrrell's American visit, the Winston Churchill proposal for a naval holiday was being actively discussed by the British and the American press. In one form or another it had been figuring in the news for nearly two years. Viscount Haldane, in the course of his famous visit to Berlin in February, 1912, had attempted to reach some understanding with the German Government on the limitation of the German and the British ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... of making calculations where measurements are necessary, as is the case in figuring out and placing the different celestial marks which guide the sailors. I think this is a marine pad. Now, let us see what it contains, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle termeth it in the word [Greek text]; that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture, with this end, to ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... matter, was for investing every cent of theirs where it would draw the largest interest possible. Mrs. Jane had never before known very much about interest, and she was fascinated with its delightful possibilities. She spent whole days joyfully figuring percentages, and was awakened from her happy absorption only by the unpleasant realization that her husband was not in sympathy with her ideas at all. He said that the money was his, not hers, and that, for once in his life, he was going to have his way. "His way" in this ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... strikes me at once, and that is that in this paragraph all the letters of the alphabet are not used. That is very strange. If we take up a book and open it by chance it will be very seldom that we shall hit upon two hundred and seventy-six letters without all the signs of the alphabet figuring among them. After all, it may be chance," and then he passed to a different train of thought. "One important point is to see if the vowels and consonants ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... windows of bookshops, I anticipated the time when my work would be shining among the hotpressed wonders of the day; and my face, scratched on copper, or cut in wood, figuring in fellowship with those of Scott and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... raise me. Figure it up, if you haven't already, and count the time I've worked for you. Since you've put me on a business basis, like raising a calf to shipping age, let's be businesslike about it. You are good at figuring your profits—I'll leave it to you. And if you find I've anything coming to me besides my riding outfit and the clothes I've got, all right; I'll take horses ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester the Erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day—16 altogether; and carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. That is about a million in six months—the population of New York City. Well, the Erie kills from 13 to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... besides, not related a fact that is not recent and well known in our fashionable and political societies; and of ALL the portraits I have delineated, the originals not only exist, but are yet occupied in the present busy scene of the Continent, and figuring either at Courts, in camps, or ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... earthworms. I have assumed that it is fatal to them. But there is a littoral species (Pontodrilus of Perrier) found at Marseilles." Lankester adds, "It is a great pleasure and source of pride to me to see my drawing of the earthworm's alimentary canal figuring ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... wrong in saying that the temple of Athene stood on the summit of Mount San Costanzo; I was wrong in thinking that this temple lay at Ierate; Peutinger's Chart is wrong in figuring the structure on the south side of the Sorrentine peninsula; Beloch is wrong in identifying the skopelos trikoruphos of Eratosthenes with Mount San Costanzo; Eratosthenes is wrong in locating his rock at the boundary between ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... most admired of our ornithological discoveries was a white-winged superb warbler from the junction of the Darling and the Murray, all the plumage not white being of a bright blue colour; but of this we had obtained only one specimen. I had not many opportunities of figuring the birds from life, so very desirable in ornithological subjects. The eye of the eagle and the rich crest of the cockatoo of the desert could not be preserved in dead specimens, and were too fine to be omitted among the sketches I endeavoured to snatch from ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... he ejaculated. "I hope the girl won't die. Anyhow, I have no notion of figuring at a death-bed scene. So I'll just keep myself out of the way until the thing is decided. Then, I'll run down and let Cora coddle me up a bit. I can explain my wounded arm as the result of a ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... buy. They've got no sense of value left. Why, a man found an outcrop of a zinc lode under his chicken-coop yesterday—and to-day the price of chicken-coops has gone up." Madeira patted Steering's shoulder again and laughed again, pleased at his aptness in figuring the thing out. ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... addition of glory assuredly, but which had, after all, the merit, in her eyes, of having been contested. During the evening, as I was leaving the whist-table, she advanced toward me deliberately, and requested me to do her the honor of figuring with her in the character dance called the cotillon.[B] I excused myself laughingly on my complete inexperience; she insisted, declaring that I had evident dispositions for dancing, and reminding me of the agility I had displayed in the forest. Finally, ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... stammered. Events had certainly turned in the most amazing way. Instead of carrying himself almost in the manner of a judge, he was figuring rather as an unwilling witness in the hands of a ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... our boats. Here have we been figuring about holding up our rifles in the sun, and with these here cutlashes getting in the men's way wherever we rowed. Regular ornamental I calls us, never so much as fired a shot or hit any one on the nose with one's fist. We have done ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... number of seconds. This gives 6,000,000 minutes, or 100,000 hours. In days of twenty-four hours each it figures up to 4,166 2-3, and gives eleven years and five months with a couple of days extra, as the time occupied during every twenty-four hours, by the people of North America—not figuring on the Mexicans—in striking matches. Figuring a little further it gives 4,159 years time in each year. The fact may seem amazing, but it is undoubtedly quite correct.—Ottawa ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... Piccadilly." Of this ballad of Young Beichan there are numerous renderings, the name of the hero undergoing many variations,—Bicham, Brechin, Beachen, Bekie, Bateman, Bondwell—and the heroine, although Susie Pye or Susan Pye in ten of the fourteen versions, figuring also as Isbel, Essels, and Sophia. It was probably an English ballad at the start, but bears the traces of the Scottish minstrels who were doubtless prompt to borrow it. There is likelihood enough that the ballad was originally suggested by the legend of Gilbert Becket, ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... large sums of money. It must of been like sweetest music to his ears. One says how much would it be safe to count on cutting up the first year—how much in round numbers; and another would say that in round numbers, what with the expense of getting started and figuring everything down to the last cent, it wouldn't be safe to count on more than a hundred thousand dollars; but, of course, for the second year, now, why it would be nearer two hundred thousand in round numbers, even figuring everything ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Animals do think. Don't you suppose that mother moose was thinking when she stopped out there in the plain? Wasn't she turning the situation over in her mind, if you want to speak of it as that, and mentally figuring just where the danger lay, and in which direction she ought to take flight? And besides reason wild animals have instinct. One proof of this is their sixth sense; the sense of—of—what do you ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... he had worked out a theory. Guesswork, of course, was rather dangerous in a delicate matter such as this; but the doctor's report after breakfast had been the very worst yet. Peter never faltered. He picked up his hat from the study table, in front of which he had been figuring these things out, and started ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "'You ain't figuring none that in case of a run to-night we're a trifle close together for cow-herds. Besides, my men on a guard last night heard gray wolves in these sand-hills. They are liable to show up to-night. Didn't I notice some young calves ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... been figuring some. Quintana don't dare call in the constables. I can't afford to. Quintana and I've got to settle this on ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... answer. He appeared to be figuring out something on the back of an old envelope with the stub ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... married. Martin had let the contract for the new house and barn to Silas Fletcher, Fallon's leading carpenter, who had the science of construction reduced to utter simplicity. He had listened to Martin's description of what he wished and, after some rough figuring, had proceeded to draw the plans on the back of a large envelope. Both Rose and Martin knew that those rude lines would serve unfailingly. For three thousand dollars Fletcher would build the very house Martin had pictured to Rose: a two-story one with ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... pipe again, and got his thinker a'thinking. "I know what you want. You want to get me in on the ground floor, I have been in more things on the ground floor than anybody, but there was always another fellow in the cellar. You are figuring hens the way you do compound interest, but you are away off. Life is too short to wait for compound interest on a dollar to make a fellow rich, and cutting coupons off a hen is just the same. I started a hen ranch fifty ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... woman of from fifty-five to sixty years of age, who had been handsome enough in her youth to fix upon herself the glances of King James V, and who had had a son by him, who was this same Murray whom we have already seen figuring so often in Mary's history, and who, although his birth was illegitimate, had always been treated as a brother ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... written, and with a good heart), travel the trail of history, or discourse upon campaigns and sieges, diplomacies and treaties. I shall keep close to my own story; for that, it would seem, yourself and the illustrious minister of the King most wish to hear. Yet you will find figuring in it great men like our flaming hero General Wolfe, and also General Montcalm, who, I shall ever keep on saying, might have held Quebec against us, had he not been balked by the vain Governor, the Marquis de Vaudreuil; together with such ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... yourself. If I ever get to solid ground again, you may have your old air ship and sail away to the South Pole with it. I am figuring ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... "And figuring on it being three thousand miles from New York to San Francisco, we could do it in sixty hours of continuous flight," added Dick. "Only of course we'll not have ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... if she was decorated up with sails and things she'd sail. Figuring on sailing her ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... physicist frowned thoughtfully. "Well, we don't know much about this yet, so we'll have to work it out. You'll have plenty of fun figuring out strains in this machine, so let's be safe and use a factor of safety of five. ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... display—Kenny in his shifting periods of affluence was always prodigal—but there had never been cups enough with handles in the littered closet, Garry recalled, until Brian inspired had bought too many bouillon cups, figuring that one handle always would be left; Kenny could not remember to buy a teapot when he could and made tea in a chafing dish; and he had been known to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... sighed as he said it; "this is the worst day yet. It's just been a shower of telegrams, and mostly all the same. I can't do the figuring of it like you can, but I reckon I must have made another hundred ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... also great prowess or distinction is ascribed to the progeny of human and divine unions. We have already noted that, according to the traditions the records embody, the Sumerians looked back to a time when gods lived upon the earth with men, and we have seen such deities as Tammuz and Lugalbanda figuring as rulers of cities in the dynastic sequence. As in later periods, their names are there preceded by the determinative for divinity. But more significant still is the fact that we read of two Sumerian heroes, also rulers of cities, who were divine on the father's or mother's side but not on ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... him? He would be in jail now, instead of splashing along the highway many miles to the south. For that matter, he was likely to land in jail, anyway, before he was done with Foster, unless he did some pretty close figuring. Wherefore he drove with one part of his brain, and with the other he figured upon how he was going to get out of the mess himself—and land Foster and Mert deep in the middle of it. For ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... will not. I am figuring on leaving her here a few months—your wife can teach her to—to dress, and all that. And I can't take her away so long as Ohto lives. After that, I want to take her to the States. She learns fast, Terry,—and I want her to see Europe—she will ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... contact with the interior, we know. To take the most ancient of them, and that which longest endured, the Egyptian, the Pharaohs carried their conquests and their power deep into Africa. In the story of their invasions and occupancy of the interior, told in pictures on temple walls, we find the negro figuring as captive and slave. This contact may not have been a fruitful one for the elevation of the negro, but it proves that for ages he was in one way or another in contact with a superior civilization. In later days we find little trace of it in the home ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... downstairs that you'll find useful, Rick," Hartson Brant said. "It gives the comparative data on lenses. It may save you some figuring." ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... as his chum gathered up the papers on which he had been figuring on an improvised table set ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... gloomy and black. Not a word was spoken; for the driver had grown sleepy; and Sikes was in no mood to lead him into conversation. Oliver sat huddled together, in a corner of the cart; bewildered with alarm and apprehension; and figuring strange objects in the gaunt trees, whose branches waved grimly to and fro, as if in some fantastic joy at the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... a metal sheet on his table, where innumerable shifting figures were thrown by some hidden machine, and he was calculating with a set of hundreds of buttons along its edges. He spoke to me without pausing or looking up, and throughout my interview he continued with his figuring as if it had been ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... heard of anything more ridiculous," he muttered. "It's like a beggar on horseback. Think of a poor boy like Fred figuring at Rose Wainwright's party. It ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... was him, then—the old hound! I might have knowed! But I kep' on figuring that they was two of 'em! Well, the sheriff was a handy boy with his gun. Did he drop anybody before they got him? I heard two guns go off like one. Them must of been ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... though extensive, is a purely local charity, and I question whether its inmates will hear of any one save their own cousins and brothers-in-law figuring as colleagues in office. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... might, I could make nothing out of it. Meanwhile Craig was busily figuring with a piece of paper ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... was cleaning the Coal-Oil Lamps or watching the New Orleans Syrup trickle into the Jug, he was figuring how much of the Stipend he could segregate and isolate and set aside for the venerable Mr. Fishberry, the Taker-In up at the Bank with ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... Some of them go around and tell the electors how they will decide on questions after they get in. The qualifications of most of them as lawyers and as men are not known to the people. Some of them are prominent because they have been in the headlines of newspapers as figuring in sensational cases. Others have political prominence but no public experience to test their judicial capacity. Do you think this method of selection by the people would lead to the choice of a learned, skilled lawyer with that experience, courage and fine judicial quality ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... said, "That's good," or, "Yes," which sufficed Bobby. Probably, however, the man heard little of his son's talk. His mind was very busy with the elements of the game he was playing, sorting and arranging them, figuring how to earn and borrow the money necessary to permit his taking advantage of a chance he thought he saw in the western timber lands. He heard little, to be sure, and yet he was in reality wholly occupied with the child prattling away at his side—with his fortune, and his ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... allegorical representation in a dramatic or pictorial form of Death, figuring, originally as a skeleton, and performing his part as a chief actor all through the drama of life, and often amid the gayest scenes of it; a succession of woodcuts by Holbein in representation of this dance is ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... wonder," he said. "Certainly, it seems a big thing. You're figuring on its having been a carefully concocted scheme? ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... some figuring in a note-book when my wife asked: "Robert, what is your problem to-night? And what part have ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... "figuring." It will in general be unnecessary with a small lens. With large lenses or mirrors the final touches have to be given after the optical behaviour of the lens or mirror has been tested with the telescope itself, and this process is called "figuring." A book might easily be written on the optical ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... much closer intercourse with the general object of their passion. After we had crossed the Serchio that beautiful day we passed into the charming, the amiably tortuous, the thickly umbrageous, valley of the Lima, and then it was that I seemed fairly to remount the stream of time; figuring to myself wistfully, at the small scattered centres of entertainment— modest inns, pensions and other places of convenience clustered where the friendly torrent is bridged or the forested slopes adjust themselves—what the summer days and the summer ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... thinking," said Croyden, as they footed it across the Severn bridge, "that, if we knew the year in which the light-house was erected, we could get the average encroachment of the sea every year, and, by a little figuring, arrive at where the point was in 1720. It would be approximate, of course, but it would give us a start—something more definite than we have now. For all we know Parmenter's treasure may be a hundred yards out ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... her closely. In the quaint oilskin hat and her tattered muslin dress she looked bewitchingly pretty. She reminded him of a well-bred and beautiful society lady whom he once saw figuring as Grace ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... boys, is too much. On the other hand, for the girls to help earn the land, to go with no inheritance at all, is even more unfair. Now in order to arrive at a compromise that will leave each boy his farm, and give each girl the nearest possible to a fair amount, figuring in what the boys have spent in taxes and work for Father, and what each girl has LOST by not having her money to handle all these years, it is necessary to split the difference between the time Adam, the eldest, has had his inheritance, ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... finger on the lines, and, having finished his reading, jumped to his feet and hurried back to the stool, on which he mounted so quickly that it was impossible to see how he managed it—without an upset. Instantly he made a new diagram, and then fell to figuring furiously on the pad, making his pencil gyrate so fast that its upper end vibrated like the ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... what is making the trip so pleasant for me. I'm having a good time figuring it out with you. I know this river must run north between those two ranges of mountains, and it must turn to the east somewhere north of here. But I've never been ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... as an instant thing More clear than to-day, A sweet soft scene That once was in play By that briny green; Yes, notes alway Warm, real, and keen, What his back years bring - A phantom of his own figuring. ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... by the various quarterings. These all related to marriages of the Blandamer family, for Van Linge had filled the window with glass to the order of the third Lord Blandamer, and the sea-green and silver of the nebuly coat was many times repeated, beside figuring in chief at the head of the window. In these studies Westray was glad to have Martin Joliffe's papers by him. There was in them a mass of information which bore on the subject of the architect's inquiries, for Martin had taken the published genealogy of the Blandamer family, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... does not take into account depreciation of battery and engine. The average farmer is too apt to overlook this factor in figuring the cost of machinery of all kinds, and for that reason is unprepared when the time comes to replace worn-out machinery. The dynamo and switchboard should last a lifetime with ordinary care, so there is no depreciation charge ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... scratched his head and knit his brows to show that he was pondering it. The stillness was intense; the fans ceased to beat; Mr. Snoddy could be heard breathing dangerously. Mr. Swanter was considering the advisability of drawing a pencil from his pocket and figuring on it upon his cuff, when suddenly, with the energy of a whirlwind, the lecturer threw out his arms to their fullest extent and roared: "It is a fact! It is carven on stone in the gloomy caverns of TIME. It is writ in FIRE on ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... have played such tricks with proper names as to make them often unintelligible; thus we find La Rochefoucauld figuring as Ruchfucove; and in an old treatise on the mystery of Freemasonry by John Leland, Pythagoras is described as Peter Gower the Grecian. This of course is an Anglicisation of the French Pythagore (pronounced like Peter Gore). Our versions of Eastern names are so different from the originals ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... back to reality sharply. Somehow, I'd been fighting off the facts, figuring that finding the cause would end the results. But even with Wilcox out of the picture, there were twelve of us left—and air ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... the young man, in the tone of one continuing an interrupted conversation, "is figuring out how the chicken got into the jelly without busting it—am I ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Dane was doing no figuring. Pain welled behind his eyes, his left arm was limp, and a broken stanchion jammed his feet so they couldn't move. The vane motor stuttered and stopped, the plane floor dropped away from beneath him, then thudded against something. ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... matter about that. I've been figuring up on the income that we could get without touching the principal, and I make it ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... the Martians say, 'max nabiscum,' Sep," Zahooli says. "I have been figuring that we won't have to go deeper than about four thousand kilometers. All that is worryin' me is gettin' back up. I still do not fully believe that we won't melt. Supposin' Professor Zalpha is right and that we will dive down into a core of live iron ore. You have seen them pour ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... to the monarch who is the centre of the cycle; even as Cuchullinn is sister's son to Conchobar, Diarmid to Finn, Tristan to Mark, and Roland to Charlemagne. In fact this relationship was so obviously required by tradition that we find Perceval figuring now as sister's son to Arthur, now to the Grail King, according as the Arthurian, or the ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... sighing for the concentration of all Germany into one great nation, and in secretly trusting that, if ever the consummation took place, the North would be rewarded for their condescending union by a monopoly of all the privileges of the Empire. Such a character was of course extremely desirous of figuring to-night in a style peculiarly national. The persuasions of von Chronicle, however, prevailed, and induced his Highness of Pike and Powdren to dismiss his idea of appearing as the ancient Arminius, although it was ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... imperceptible ghost—after figuring largely in the banter of their first month or two at Lyng, had been gradually discarded as too ineffectual for imaginative use. Mary had, indeed, as became the tenant of a haunted house, made the customary ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... a couple of days figuring it out at the Hollow. Starlight had a map, and we plotted it out, and marked all the stages which could be safely made—went over all the back tracks and cross-country lines; some we had travelled before, and others of which we knew ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... is it they want to buy—these fellows that are figuring on making something out of—expanse? (a gesture for expanse, then a reassuring gesture) It's all right, ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... you see, gold-bricking myself—trying to find a way out that would not deprive me of things I liked to do, of pleasures I wanted to enjoy. It was pure selfishness that dominated me and made me do so much figuring on a proposition I knew was contained in a sentence; but I did fight to hang on to the ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... insurance offices there was much figuring over the lists of those thought to be lost aboard the Titanic. Nothing but rough estimates of the company's losses through the wreck ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... merchandise wet and dry, law mundane and spiritual, for although neither court nor churches were working overtime, they were available for the few who had any use for them; second, gambling, at monte, poker, or faro; and, third, figuring how to slip through the next twenty-four hours without getting a heavier load of lead in one's system than could be conveniently carried, or how to stay happily half shot and yet avoid coming home on a shutter, unhappily ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... Cleopatras and Portias (even with Portia as the very type and model of the young person intelligent and presumptuous) and to that of their Hettys and Maggies and Rosamonds and Gwendolens, suffers the abatement that these slimnesses are, when figuring as the main props of the theme, never suffered to be sole ministers of its appeal, but have their inadequacy eked out with comic relief and underplots, as the playwrights say, when not with murders and battles and the great mutations of the world. If they are shown as "mattering" as much as they ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... of giants, and to-day the men showing through the country as measuring 8 feet generally exaggerate their height several inches, and exact measurement would show that but few men commonly called giants are over 7 1/2 feet or weigh over 350 pounds. Dana says that the number of giants figuring as public characters since 1700 is not more than 100, and of these about 20 were advertised to be over 8 feet. If we confine ourselves to those accurately and scientifically measured the list is surprisingly small. Topinard measured the tallest man in the Austrian ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... linguistics are full of evidence on this point. One could do better still by attending exclusively to the vernacular, to slang, which shows us creative force in action. "Slang," says one philologist, "has the property of figuring, expressing, and picturing language.... With it, however low its origin, one could reconstruct a people or a society." Its principal, not only, means, are metaphor and allegory. It lends itself equally to methods that degrade or ennoble existing words, but with ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... said Griffith dubiously. With innate delicacy, he refrained from any inquiry as to the nature of Blake's disappointment. As he handed out his box of cigars, he went on, "I don't quite like it, though. He's a glutton for field work, but this indoors figuring soon sets him on edge. He can't stand being cooped up." "Count on me to do all I can to ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... and I bet you, can't none of these children that rub their heads on college walls beat me reading and counting. You call one and ask them to divide ninety-nine cows and one bob-tailed bull by two, and they can't answer it to save their lives without a pencil and paper and two hours' figuring when it's nothing ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... reverence have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at eventide! They spoke of the past:—the shade of some dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and accountants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks of the present day could lift from their enshrining shelves—with their old fantastic flourishes, and decorative rubric interlacings—their sums in triple columniations, set down with formal superfluity ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... him, and at last Peter realized that he never had taken seriously the ideas of the First Apostolic Church of American City. He listened to the moans of the wounded, and to the shouts and uproar of the crowd, and began seriously figuring out what could have happened. There had once been an earthquake in American City; could this be another one? Or had a volcano opened up in the midst of Main Street? Or could it have been a gas-main? And was this the end, or would it explode some more? Would the volcano go on erupting, ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... I'm not now. But that doesn't count. I've been studying over a lot of things, and I don't know what to do. I think you may be right, and that I have been all wrong. I give it up. But I do know that a fellow can't make any mistake if he tries to do what is right, and, in figuring out the thing, takes the side that seems to be against him. He can fight, he can do anything better after he feels that he has ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... Square, I found myself transported to the central place of a Belgian city, with a slope-shouldered church across the way masquerading as a hotel de ville, and the sidewalk lights at either side figuring in my imagination as those of pleasant terrace cafes. So it was always. The very hotel in which we stayed—the Charleston—is like no other hotel in the United States, though it has about it something which caused me to think of the old Southern, in St. Louis. Still, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... had been three days figuring as the star of Professor Thunder's Museum of Marvels, and was growing accustomed to his suit, and to the situation. The Professor himself was a born vagabond, and his wife, Madame Marve, the somewhat plump prophetess, who read fortunes, and was mistress ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... during the day, I'll have to turn myself in. But it ain't likely." He grinned in satisfaction. "Now that I've dug up the scratch to buy these stripes and get made sergeant—and that takes the real crackle—I'm figuring ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... "If these gentlemen can acquire that mine, I think I would capitalize for, say, about three millions." He went to the desk and made some calculations. "I assume," he continued somewhat pompously after a few moments' figuring, "that you wish to retain me, and that I am to take my compensation ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... put it, you may be sure that she would have managed to warn him in some way as to our identity. But that she had not done so, the mute's manner told me as plainly as words could have done. Seeing this, I began figuring what it meant. If she was not associated with Locke in the crime, why was she there? Immediately came the answer—through Morris. But, when I saw her last, she denied any knowledge of Morris's whereabouts. Then I reasoned, she had seen him in ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... used to be sold at good prices in San Francisco for this very purpose. But not a man in that august assembly dreamed of the manner in which such things are gotten up, except perhaps the said agent sent out to get machinery, but now figuring as a director. I was easily prevailed on to sign an argumentative certificate, and was shown one signed by Robert J. Walker on a much worse hole in the ground than this. I was also informed that New York was ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... interest to gain votes from Fremont in Illinois. He demonstrated his point, but he was not always judicious in his way of addressing solemn strangers, and in his rural manner he concludes his letter, "the whole thing is as simple as figuring out the weight of three small hogs," and this inelegant sentence conveys with little exaggeration one especial merit of his often austerely graceful language. Grave difficulties are handled in a style which could arouse all the interest of a boy and penetrate the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... meantime I was racking my poor wits figuring out how to present this strange acquaintance of mine most tactfully to the world. I knew the reporter would not tarry long; he would grab a few sentences, and rush away to ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... offended were beheaded with both neatness, and despatch. "Harper's Weekly" of January 3rd, 1863, contained a cartoon labeled "Those Guillotines; a Little Incident at the White House," the personages figuring in the "incident" being Secretary of War Stanton and a Union general who had been unfortunate enough to lose a battle to the Confederates. Beneath the cartoon was the ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... had to wear a dunce cap was Abe Lincoln. He was too smart. His side won nearly every spelling match. He was good at figuring, and he had the best handwriting of anyone at school. Master Crawford taught reading from the Bible, but he had several other books from which he read aloud. Among Abe's favorite stories were the ones about some wise animals that talked. They were by a ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... chairman was through the green baize door. At his tortoise gait he traversed the inner office, where the youthful clerks suspended their figuring—to grin behind his back—and entered the transfer office, where eight gentlemen were sitting. Seven rose, and one did not. Old Heythorp raised a saluting hand to the level of his chest and moving to an ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "under ordinary conditions he might have been justified in such surmise, but that would be figuring on the normal thickness of the normal civilized skull, but yours—why, Bub, all I'm puzzling over now is how it happens that the monkey wrench was only twisted a mite, ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... waistcoats, clubmen, shining bald heads, wide partings in scanty hair, light-coloured gloves, big opera-glasses raised and directed towards various points. In the galleries a mixture of different social sets and all kinds of dress, all the people well known as figuring at this kind of solemnity, and the embarrassing promiscuity which places the modest smile of the virtuous woman along-side of the black-ringed eyes, the vermilion-painted lips of her who belongs to another category. White hats, pink hats, diamonds ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet |
