"Pretty much" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Currie married Jack Churchill I was broken-hearted...or believed myself to be so, which, in a boy of twenty-two, amounts to pretty much the same thing. Not that I took the world into my confidence; that was never the Douglas way, and I held myself in honor bound to live up to the family traditions. I thought, then, that nobody but Sara knew; but I dare say, now, that Jack knew it also, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of grog before him, pretty much to the northward, and a luncheon of bread and beef almost as big as his head; for he ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... Jack," said the cowboy. "Just my luck! There wasn't any one here when I arrived. Reckon I oughtn't have stayed. Columbine, you look pretty much upset." ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... explanation—"There's a small order just come in, for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to Natur' as I could, for sixpence!" Caleb's employer, Tackleton, in his large green cape and bull-headed looking mahogany tops, was then described as entering pretty much in the manner of what one might suppose to be that of an ogrish toy-merchant. His character came out best perhaps—meaning, in another sense, that is, at its worst—when the fairy spirit of John's house, the Cricket, was heard chirping; ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... disheartening circumstances in our social condition, it would be unpardonable to omit the enormities of intemperance, which, though groaned over day after day, remain pretty much what they have been for years; and it is to be feared, that so long as reformers confine themselves to attacking mere symptoms, instead of going to the foundation of the evil—a deficiency of self-respect, growing out of a want of instruction ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... set to work to write Charles O'Malley I was, as I have ever been, very low with fortune, and the success of a new venture was pretty much as eventful to me as the turn of the right color at rouge-et-noir. At the same time I had then an amount of spring in my temperament, and a power of enjoying life which I can honestly say I never found ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... with the arrival of Lady Davers, and will occasionally write what passes among us, I will not say worthy of notice; for were I only to do so, I should be more brief, perhaps, by much, than you seem to expect. But as my time is pretty much taken up, and I find I shall be obliged to write a bit now, and a bit then, you must excuse me, if I dispense with some forms, which I ought to observe, when I write to one I so dearly love; and so I will give it journal-wise, as it were, and have no ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Conservatives had their head-quarters at the Royal Hotel in Temple Row. Crowds of excited people surrounded the hotel day by day and evening after evening. One night something unusual had exasperated them, and they attacked the hotel. There were no police in Birmingham then, and the mob had things pretty much their own way. Showers of heavy stones soon smashed the windows to atoms, and so damaged the building as to make it necessary to erect a scaffold covering the whole frontage before the necessary repairs could be completed. When I first saw it, it was in a ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... to let you know when I think of coming again, and if you mean by that that you would be glad to see me, I can only say, thank you. I don't mean to give you up yet, and I don't believe you want me to say what you will. I don't spy after you; you're mistaken in that. But I'm pretty much always thinking about you, and I wish you were nearer to me. I may have to go to Bristol in a week or two, and perhaps I shall be there for a month or more, so I must see you before then. Will you tell me what day would suit you, after ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... be granted, I fear, that the Celts of Ireland feel pretty much as the Britons felt under the ascendency of the Saxons, and as the Saxons in their turn felt under the ascendency of the Normans. In the estimation of the Christian Britons, their Saxon conquerors, even after the conversion of the latter, were 'an accursed ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... days pass pretty much after this fashion. Mr. Philbrick gets up about six, calls me, and I obey, having stipulated for a full hour in which to dress. After we get downstairs it takes the united efforts of most of the family to get the breakfast on the table, and we are fortunate if we get up from that ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... These were pretty much Otto's reflections, and certainly it was a good feeling which lay at the bottom of them. Let us remember in our judgment that he was so young, and that he had only known Copenhagen one year; otherwise he would most certainly have ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... witness meant one who swore continually; but he was soon convinced otherwise, and his whole demeanour gradually became as polite and deferent as his coarse nature would allow. And Ben told his adventure on Pike island, as we have heard him tell it, pretty much in the same words, for the judge and Mr. Grantly let him take his own courses; and then he added (with a characteristic expletive, which we may as well omit, seeing it occasioned a cry of "order" in the court), "There, if that there white-livered little ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "Well, pretty much so in the mornings and sometimes up till late at night, but Errington's a rattling good 'boss' and very often gives me an 'afternoon out.' That's why I'm here now. I'm off duty and Miss de Gervais told me ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... that have long since passed their period, to be as influential as they were in their prime. We know that love and hate disappear in the distance, and that love long dead and a long-deferred hatred tend to express themselves as a feeling of mildness and forgiveness which is pretty much the same in spite of its diverse sources. If the examiner knows that a great passion, whether of hate or of love, exists, he thinks he is fooled when he finds a full, calm and objective judgment instead of it. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... well as beggars, better, generally speaking, then the men who have reached the road simply as drunkards; they know more about the tricks of the trade and are cleverer in thinking out schemes and stories. All genuine tramps in America are, however, pretty much the same, as far as manners and philosophy are concerned, and all are equally welcome at the "hang-out."[276] The class of society from which they are drawn is generally the very lowest of all, but ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... man's production began to be tested more definitely by the technique he possessed, the skilled way in which he performed his task. Did he play the game well? That was the first question. Often it was the first and last. If he did, his subject-matter, and his particular vision of Life, were pretty much his own affair. And this modern touchstone, applied to the writings of our two authors, favored Thackeray. Simple, old-fashioned readers inclined to give Dickens the preference over him because the former's interpretation of humanity was, they averred, kindlier ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... out and looked her over. She sure was balky. I was glad she said somethin', if it was only 'Guzzuh,' instead of quittin' on me silent and scornful. Sounded like she was apologizin' for stoppin' up like that. I felt of her chest and she was pretty much het up. When she cooled off, I started her easy—sort of grazin' along pretendin' we wasn't goin' to lope again. When she got her second wind I give her her head, and she let out and loped clean into the desert town, without makin' a stumble or castin' a shoe. Paid three ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... I ain't, but wouldn't 'ee rather go to Bristol? 'Tis a brave place, you know. For my part, I'd so soon see Bristol as London: 'tis pretty much o' the same lookout here as there." But while Captain Triggs had been saying these words his thoughts had made a sudden leap toward the truth, and, finding Reuben not ready with a remark, he continued: "'Tain't on no account of the young female you comed aboard here with that's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... River above, and made for Franklin via Spring Hill. I headed him off at Spring Hill with a division, and concentrated at Franklin. There he made the heaviest assaults I have ever seen, but was fairly repulsed and terribly punished. In fact we pretty much knocked all the fight out of him on that occasion, and he has shown very little since. Now I reckon he ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... little to do with women. He did not pretend to understand them, and it had never occurred to him that there was any reason why he should strive to do so. He had experienced pleasant moments in their company, but one woman was pretty much the same as another to him, and it is quite certain that no such thing as a faded flower, or a glove, or love token of any kind held a place among his treasures. No woman in the past had given him a single heart throb which love lent a sense ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... ran the current of his thoughts, 'I have learned pretty much all there is to be found out here; have not done badly, either. Cousin Bennett's advice to mother was right. I am not ready to go to New-York yet. There is much country knowledge to be gained. Let me see, I will drive over to Burnsville next week. Joel Burns is ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... punishment? Alas, alas, I must say you reward and punish pretty much alike! Your dignities, peerages, promotions, your kingships, your brazen statues erected in capital and county towns to our select demigods of your selecting, testify loudly enough what kind of heroes and hero-worshippers you ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... been east to Wheeling, Virginia, and north to the Western Reserve, in Ohio, west to Louisville, and south to Bourbon County, Kentucky, besides having driven or ridden pretty much over the whole country within fifty miles of home. Going to West Point would give me the opportunity of visiting the two great cities of the continent, Philadelphia and New York. This was enough. When these places were visited I would have been glad to have had a steamboat or railroad collision, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... had lived long enough in the turbulent tierra caliente to take startling things pretty much for granted. Honor's coming was now a happily accepted fact. A cool, dim room had been made ready for her,—a smooth floor of dull red tiles, some astonishingly good pieces of furniture which had come, Mrs. King told her when she took her up, from the Government pawnshop ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... exercise rights of free speech and free deliberation on their own affairs. Their merchant-gild over its ale-feast regulated trade, distributed the sums due from the town among the different burgesses, looked to the due repairs of gate and wall, and acted in fact pretty much the same part as ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... try it awhile anyhow. You see the hotels have raised. I used to get a lodgin' and a nice breakfast for a half a dollar, but now it is as much as you can do to get a lodgin' for the money, and it's just as dear in the Port as it is in the city. I've tried hotels pretty much everywhere, and one's about ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... custom of ships to have a dog or cat on board. You never will find a coasting vessel without a dog or cat, usually both; and I believe it is for this strange historical reason, as shown in this Statute of Westminster I: In those days all wrecks belonged to the king. (Pretty much everything, in fact, did belong to the king, except the land that was held by book or charter, or such personal property as a man had in his own house—all mines, all franchises, all monopolies, even all whales and sturgeons that were thrown up on the ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... there is the Plant Industry Station there with a lot of experimental work, greenhouse work and all sorts of basic research work, fertilization work, and so forth, going on there. A lot of people like to come to Washington. Our plantings are pretty much the same condition as Dr. Crane's and not a display proposition such as you have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... likely to take us longer than I expected," he said. "To begin with, there are a number of inlets, all of them pretty much alike, along this part of the coast, but I needn't go into the reasons for supposing that this is the one Hartley visited. Taking it for granted that we're right, we're up against another difficulty. So far as ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... woman who illustrates just what I have been saying," continued Carroll. "You picked her out as a self-respecting, nice-looking girl—and so she is—but she wouldn't like to have to tell all she knows. No, they are all pretty much alike. They wear low-neck frocks, and the men put on evening dress for dinner, and they ride after foxes, and they drop in to five-o'clock tea, and they all play that they're a lot of gilded saints, and it's one of the rules of the game that you must believe in the next man, so that ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... of living generally. The upper classes, and such middle classes as exist, are remarkably hospitable and social; they live in great comfort, and some of them in luxury, which we fear is not always warranted by their revenues. The style of living is Franco-German, in fact pretty much the same as in St. Petersburg. Many people dine regularly at the large hotels, especially in those which have open-air conveniences for that purpose during the summer months. The theatres are well frequented, and in summer the favourite ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... efforts, first of all to raise enough means for ordinary administrative purposes, and secondly to reorganize trade and agriculture, brought him almost immediately into conflict with the peasants, who, during the long struggle for national independence, had become accustomed to do pretty much as they pleased. The utterances of the Man from Smaland are typical of the sentiments that prevailed among the peasants throughout the country, not least when he speaks of the King's intention to "take away ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... have brained young Gordon, to whom the next dance belonged, and who came just at this climaxing moment to claim Patricia. But there was no help for it, short of a cold-blooded and rather embarrassing deed of violence, and the hard-won confidence ended pretty much where it had begun. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... lost pretty much everything, except some papers in an iron box—the box that was warped all out ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... weather. "Oh it rains! what a bore! We can't go out," said a young lady, standing at the breakfast-room window at a house in Ireland; to which her host rejoined, "If you don't go out here when it rains, you don't go out at all;" which is pretty much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... particular, he intimated that he thought its course was indicated by a wish to cover its own confusion. Surely, after four years' uninterrupted publication of lies with regard to America, I should think it has done pretty much to destroy its influence on foreign ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... "Pretty much the same in the Greek," muttered Mr. Oldbuck; and then said aloud, "and if this eccentric genius has work enough in singeing the Dutchman's linen, what the devil has ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... upon maintaining and extending. Indeed, that was what they had crossed the ocean for. Under these circumstances they developed a kind of government which we may describe in the present tense, for its methods are pretty much the same to-day that they were two ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... Neil, was a hand on board the steamer Glenara Castle, and very seldom came ashore. He had but small wages; and it was all he could do, in the bringing up of the boys, to pay a certain sum for their lodging and schooling, leaving them pretty much to cadge for themselves as regarded food and clothes. Their food, mostly porridge, potatoes, and fish of their own catching, cost little; and they did not spend much money on clothes, especially in ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... be said in all those card-club' that my father he's try to buy Fortune so to marry her. An' by that he had a quarrel with one of those young Lefevre', who said pretty much like his mother, only in another manner, pretty insulting. And, same old story, they fought, like we say, 'under those oak,' Metairie Ridge, with sharpen' foil'. And my father he got a bad wound. And he had to be nurse' long time, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... had life before them and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. Sidney Lanier, then an Alabama school teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhaps you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The taxpayers were nonparticipants in the affairs of government. Some people withdrew entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations, kept ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... deck, they found the poop pretty much the same, but the forward portion of the ship had all broken to pieces, hardly a timber being left, save part of the forefoot or cut-water, which had got jammed in between the rocks along with the anchor-stock, the heavy mass ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... fall and winter we kept pretty much by ourselves, not deliberately but because neither of us cared particularly about whist parties and such things but preferred to spend together what time we had. And then I guess Ruth was a little ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... were, for that Reason, highly caressed by the Great, and their Works so well paid for, that it was as rare to see a Poet poor, as a Minister of State grow rich by his Employment. This I said, as well out of Regard to Truth, as for the Honour of my Country. He appeared pretty much surpriz'd at this Account of our Poets, and told me theirs were of a different Character, and met with a different Fate; for they were but little regarded by any great Birds, except the Vain and the Silly, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... one'll make a 'nine patch' and one'll make a 'wild-goose chase,' and there'll be two quilts made out of the same kind of pieces, and jest as different as they can be. And that is jest the way with livin'. The Lord sends us the pieces, but we can cut them out and put 'em together pretty much to suit ourselves, and there's a heap more in the cuttin' out and the sewin' than there ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... that when the poor knight left Robin Hood in the forest Little John went with him to act as his yeoman. He stayed for some time in Sir Richard's service, and a light and pleasant post he found it, for he was free to do pretty much as he liked. ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... bodies. We have noted that it requires a goodly change of place on our own part to shift the position in which some object in the far distance is seen by us. To two persons separated by, say, a few hundred yards, a ship upon the horizon will appear pretty much in the same direction. They would require, in fact, to be much farther apart in order to displace it sufficiently for the purpose of estimating their distance from it. It is the same with regard to the moon. Two observers, standing ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... "Pretty much so," replied the Baron; "which cannot fail to please you, since you are in pursuit of tranquillity. As to the University, it is, as you know, one of the oldest in Germany. It was founded in the fourteenth century by the Count Palatine Ruprecht, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... twinkled something like a tear, and said,—"I was guessin' it might turn out so between you two, and if I'd had anything against you, Mark, I wouldn't ha' let it run on. Be a steady boy, and you'll make Sally a steady woman. She's had pretty much her own way." ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the time in the fort. I have no doubt that in the reign of Shah Jahan ordinary offences committed by ordinary criminals were ruthlessly punished, and to some extent suppressed. But, under the best Asiatic Governments, great men and their dependants have usually been able to do pretty much what they pleased. The English Government has the merit of refusing to give formal recognition to difference of rank in criminals, and of often trying to punish influential offenders, though seldom succeeding in the attempt. From time to time a conspicuous ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... through a rocky vale, is not totally devoid of picturesque merit, and as I met no cabriolets or tituppings on the chaufee, I concluded that the waters were not as yet much visited; and that I should have their romantic environs pretty much to myself. But, alas, how rudely was I deceived! The moment we entered up flew a dozen sashes. Chevaliers de St. Louis, meagre Marquises, and ladies of the scarlet order of Babylon, all poked their heads out. In a few minutes half ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Richard Horton came down into the village. He was accustomed to be treated with a good deal of deference at the Hall, and to order servants and grooms about pretty much as he chose, and the indifference with which the fisher boys regarded him offended him greatly. He was a spoilt boy. His uncle had a resident tutor for him, but the selection had been a bad one. The library ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... get a heap of solid comfort out of chewing tobacco. Picked up the habit in Missouri, and took to it like a Yankee to pie. At that time pretty much every one in those parts chewed, except the Elder and the women, and most of them snuffed. Seemed a nice, sociable habit, and I never thought anything special about it till I came North and your Ma began to tell me it was ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... in the waning light. The driver urged on his horses. The carry-all bumped over the uneven road, swaying giddily from side to side, the girls clinging tightly to the sides of the wagon, fearing that they might be thrown out. Darkness shut out pretty much everything at an early hour. Janus decided that they had better wait for supper till they reached the "Shelter," a cabin part way up the side of the mountain, where tourists halted for a rest or to stay over night when intending to climb the mountain. It was not expected ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... as much as possible to those which are susceptible of new aspects. For the whole gallery of those who follow, we can undertake that the memorials which we shall bring forward, may be looked upon as belonging pretty much to what has hitherto ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... suffragettes would by no means allow devotion to their cause to carry them to jail; and as for influencing statesmen, or setting their plans at naught—" she shook her head—"why, I do not even know who they are. They are not in our set," laughing. "Really, we are pretty much butterflies from your—from any—viewpoint, are n't we? But ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... mechanics (six in number) were all pretty much of the same mind. Brownbill was but one. Perhaps they are less to blame than is imagined, since Colonel Stanhope is said to have told them, 'that he could not positively say their lives were safe.' I should like ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... "He looks pretty much the blithering old idiot he is," said Clarence. "If I'd only known he was going to London I'd have told him to get me a few thousand cigarettes—they've none here of course. But I expect he'd only have brought 'Woodbines,' or ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... fifth conversation was pretty much a monologue of her own. The company collected proved much larger than any of us had anticipated: a chosen company,—several persons from homes out of town, at considerable inconvenience; and, in one or two instances, fresh from extreme experiences of joy and grief,—which ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... in general for personal characteristics; and the thickness of the skin serves still more to mask the expression of their faces. But the greater part of these men were Mexicans of mixed Indian and Spanish blood, and their faces are pretty much European. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... time they attempted to make a stand. Our cavalry, having pushed on and got in the rear of the Confederates, captured twenty-four pieces of artillery, besides retaking what had been lost in the morning. This victory pretty much closed the campaigning in the Valley of Virginia. All the Confederate troops were sent back to Richmond with the exception of one division of infantry and a little cavalry. Wright's corps was ordered back to the Army of the Potomac, and two other ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... you, Linda. I take any liberty I pretty nearly please with most of the girls I have been associated with. I tie their shoes and pull their hair—down if I want to—and hand them round 'most any way the notion takes me, and they just laugh and take the same liberties with me, which proves that I am pretty much a girl with them or they are pretty much boys with me. But it wouldn't occur to me to touch your hair or your shoe lace or the tips of your fingers; which proves that you're more feminine than any other girl I know, because if you were not I would be treating you more like ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... looked up, with weather-beaten eyes, and saw that he had no fool to deal with, in spite of all soft palaver. The intensity of Mr. Mordacks's eyes made him blink, and mutter a bad word or two, but remain pretty much at his service. And the last intention he could entertain was that of restoring this fine crown piece. "Spake on, Sir," he said; "and I ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... been there several times, as well when there was a tragedy as when there was a ballet; for the pieces in which there were the greatest number of characters on the stage were the most interesting to see from the flies. One sat pretty much in the dark up there, and most people took their supper up with them. Once three apples and a great piece of bread and butter and sausage fell down right into the dungeon of Ugolino, where that unhappy man was to be starved ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of his tone of contempt, he had a kindly feeling for the unambitious fiddler. Indeed, this was the attitude of pretty much every one in the community. A few men of the rougher sort had made fun of him at first, and there had been one or two attempts at rude handling. But Jacques was determined to take no offence; and he was ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... as was the custom. The Blake's captain shouted that his vessel was making a lot of water. The other responded: "We are making some too, and we shall have more wind and sea before there is less." This was about ten on a February morning. Their sailing qualities were pretty much on a par, so that they were kept in company all through the day. The wind had shifted from E.S.E. to S.E., and they headed E.N.E. with about two and a half points leeway, making the true course, after the toss of the sea had been allowed, about N.E. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... answer. "I've spoken to a number of the boys, and they're with me. You know we're pretty much 'on our own,' when we're flying, and I think that we can drop the bombs and make a descent long enough to pick up Harry and other refugees if we ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... discovered one soldier who passed through the much-advertised spiritual crisis, like this fellow, Donald Hankey, and the one I knew was already studying for the ministry, so he was ripe for it. I honestly think that's all pretty much rot, though it seemed to give sentimental comfort to those at home; and may make fathers and mothers appreciate their children. This crisis-inspired religion is rather valueless and fleeting at best. I think four men have discovered Paris to ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... stay and get your dinner with me. It will take you pretty much all day to bury Brian. You probably never buried a bear before," she added, as patronizingly as if she herself had been a professional grave-digger, "and you don't know what a piece of ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... see but that we shall have to quit drinking tea," said Doctor Warren. "We drink altogether too much. It has become a dissipation. We drink it morning, noon, and night. Some of the old ladies of my acquaintance keep the teapot on the coals pretty much all the time. Our wives meet in the afternoon to sip tea and talk gossip. The girls getting ready to be married invite their mates to quiltings and serve them with Old Hyson. We have garden tea-parties on bright afternoons in summer and evening parties in winter. So much tea, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... know. It is my impression that in my life, as in the lives of most women, all roads lead to Rome. Whether one does this or that, one finds oneself in pretty much the same position at the end. It doesn't answer to rebel against the recognized condition of things, and it doesn't answer to submit. Only generally one must, as in my case. A choice of ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... him. Men and women come and go—Hawthorne knows the errands they are on. He sees a militia company parading below, and they remind him from that elevation of the toy soldiers in a shop-window,—which they turned out to be, pretty much, at Bull Run. A fashionable young man comes along the street escorting two young ladies, and suddenly at a crossing encounters their father, who takes them away from him; but one of them gives him a sweet parting look, ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... the victory of good and the defeat of evil in the whole. And he contrived a general plan by which a thing of a certain nature found a certain seat and room. But the formation of qualities he left to the wills of individuals. For every one of us is made pretty much what he is by the bent of his desires and the nature ...
— Laws • Plato
... letter of inquiry. As to that petition in 1867, I was one of the signers, and, probably had something to do with getting the other signatures, though I have nothing but my memory to depend on as to that; but I was pretty much alone here in those days, on the woman suffrage question. Who the other signers were I made an attempt to find out in the secretary of state's office the other day, but found that it would take days, instead of the few hours I had at my command. I find ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... poor, their hovels were wretched, their clothes ragged, and their food scanty; but, with all that, they were not discontented, and very far from unhappy. There was no prosperity at hand to contrast with their poverty. The world was, on the whole, pretty much as they always remembered it. They would have liked to be 'better off' if they knew how, but they did not know if there were a 'better off,' much less how to come at it; and if there were, Peter Gill certainly did not ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... sister's, where there would be rest and food for them, and even the luxury of a comfortable bed. The confusion was so great—the regiments disintegrated, no discipline, and no officers to enforce it—that the men were free to do pretty much as they pleased. There was plenty of time to look about them and hunt up their commands; they would have a few ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... his head. "I don't think the Governor would care a straw about her connections, if she were a king's daughter. He considers all foreigners pretty much alike. And then, you know" (Frank's voice sank into a whisper),—"you know that one of the very reasons why she is so dear to me would be an insuperable objection to the old-fashioned ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a good deal of company," he said. "On account of my fiddlin', and singin', and recitin' I've always had things pretty much my own way. It's opposition that's ruination. That's what shatters a man's heart and takes all his sperrit. As long as the game's between just a man and a girl there's nothin' very serious. One or the other ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... I have copies of your letters and the Government has the originals. They are not very dangerous, but that is because you are not big enough to be dangerous. The authorities have left you pretty much to my discretion, sir. It rests with me whether to have you taken in charge and held for trial or merely to warn you and watch you. Very well. I warn you now and you may be certain that you are watched. You'll stop your silly, seditious talk at once and you'll write no more letters like those ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of his named Arabella Logan, and how, rather out of jealousy than forgiveness, such a union or quasi-union took place between husband and wife that they had two sons, George and Robert, the elder of whom was his father's favourite and like, while the younger was pretty much left to the care of Mr. Wringhim. The tale then tells how, after hardly seeing one another in boyhood, the brothers met as young men at Edinburgh, where on extreme provocation the elder was within an ace of killing ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... domestic catalogue—whatever its component details might be—sung to the one fixed tune, the trade information sung to another, and so on. A good singer, in these parts, means the man who can make up the best song—the most impressive, or the most amusing; I have elsewhere mentioned pretty much the same state of things among the Ga's and Krumen and Bubi, and in all cases the tunes are only voice tunes, not for instrumental performance. The instrumental music consists of that marvellously developed series of drum ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... got a talking 'long with the old woman, and, arter a good deal of trouble, I got hold of pretty much the whole history about this 'ere girl. So she told me, amongst other things, that the girl's uncle wanted her to marry one of them officers that ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... sentimentalists who followed Richardson, or on the pseudo-Orientalists like Walpole and Lewis, or on the pseudo-mediaevalists like Mrs. Roche and Mrs. Radcliffe. This sort of work filled the few literary periodicals of the day, but was not read enough to make such publications profitable even then, and is pretty much all unreadable now. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and Pamela said: "I'm not sure that our happiness won't be the greater because it has come twenty years late. Twenty years ago we would have taken it pretty much as a matter of course. We would have rushed at our happiness and swallowed it whole, so to speak. Now, with twenty lonely, restless years behind us we shall go slowly, and taste every moment and be grateful. Years bring their compensation.... ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... minutes he and Gates were safely in the cabin—Gates having dived nimbly out of our canvas fort; while Tommy, oozing rage, had walked erect, shaking his fist at the Orchid and calling me pretty much every kind of a lizard ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... he had marched ten miles he found that he was weaker than he had supposed. Weeks of wretched food and three days of almost complete starvation had taken the strength pretty much out of his stalwart frame. His breath was short; he stumbled over the slightest obstacles; occasionally he could not see clear. From time to time it struck him that he had been dreaming or else that his mind ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... foreign press is triumphant, while the Chinese press is much less enthusiastic, its rejoicings far less obvious. Here's a bit of gossip for you, blown along with the dust of Peking. (By this time you must have discovered that Peking dust and Peking gossip are pretty much the same thing, whirling and blowing along together, sifting over you and into you, physically and mentally, till you are saturated through and through.) Miss Z—— told us this; she knows every bit of rumor in Peking, from ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... those who were in any way morally and intellectually defective at the mercy of chance currents and eddies. As a result there appeared a strange medley of tiny sects. These groups, seething with enthusiasm, scattered pretty much over England, unorganized or loosely organized, generally gathered about some influential psychopathic leader, were lumped together in the public mind and named "Ranters."[1] They are by no means a negligible phenomenon of the period. They reveal the back-wash ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... rate," returned Discontent, "and well named vin ordinaire, for ordinary it is in every sense of the word, pretty much like themselves for that; but if you like to have any when we are in England, I'll make you some; take a little port wine, put some vinegar and a good deal of water with it and there you have it at once; is not ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... with huge buttons, a cocked hat stuck on the back of his head, and a cane as high as his chin. His face was broad, but his features were sharp; his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red, by two fiery little gray eyes, his nose turned up, and the corners of his mouth turned down pretty much like the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... last few years we have as regards pretty much everything not connected with the Isthmus of Panama so failed in our duty of national preparedness that I fear there actually is a general consensus of opinion to precisely this effect among the nations of the world as regards the United States ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... already stated, the copper salt used in the manufacture of this pigment in England is the sulphate, and it is carried out pretty much according to Braconnot's method as described by Dr Ehrmann; but any one would infer, from reading his description of the manufacturing process, that the compound, aceto-arsenite of copper, was formed almost immediately after the addition of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... he does not, out of his own stores, clothe his subject with the same richness of imagination, or the same glowing colours of language. Deckar excels in giving expression to certain habitual, deeply-rooted feelings, which remain pretty much the same in all circumstances, the simple uncompounded elements of nature and passion:—Webster gives more scope to their various combinations and changeable aspects, brings them into dramatic play by contrast and comparison, flings them into a state of fusion by a kindled fancy, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... grown—business or professional man of the great cities—perhaps even yet, although you long have studied the market reports and faithfully have read the papers every day—perhaps that first impression of what a farmer was like still lingers in a more or less modified way. So that to you pretty much of an "Old Hayseed" he remains. Thus, while you have been busy with other things, the New Farmer has come striding along until he has "arrived in our midst" and to you he is ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... endeavour to say nothing that is not true, as far as I can manage, and that is pretty much all that I can engage for. (A laugh.) Advices, I believe, to young men—and to all men—are very seldom much valued. There is a great deal of advising, and very little faithful performing. And talk that does not end in any kind of action, is better suppressed ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... to which, by the way, Van Dorn ascribed[75] much of his recent ill-success, all helped to make the retirement of the Confederates from the Pea Ridge battle-ground pretty much of a helter-skelter affair. From all accounts, the Indians conducted themselves as well as the best. The desire of everybody was to get to a place of safety and that right speedily. Colonel Watie and his regiment made their way to Camp Stephens,[76] near which place the baggage train had been ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... out among other men; and then when children come and you have to contrive and pinch, why you just plod along and don't ever get flustered. It's just the first dash of cold water in the face, child; after that all lives is pretty much the same." ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... wit sometimes shot brilliantly, though but for a single moment. This, we say. Greaves gathered from the conversation around him, and as in one or two cases he perceived, on the part of the speakers, scarcely any desire to preserve a tone of secrecy on the subject, he felt pretty much assured, that the case was a bad one indeed, and that the individual who could so far forget his own interests for the sake of the bottle, and who could be tolerated in any position of high trust in the State, while addicted to vices of such ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... always the one thing with Alan Massey's kind. I know what I am talking about, Carlotta. He was a little in love with me once. I dare say we both thought it was different at the time. It wasn't. It was pretty much the same thing. Don't cherish any romantic notions about love, Carlotta. There isn't any love as you ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... were Sunny Boy's swing and sand-box, and the center was in thick, green grass. Mondays the grass belonged to Harriet, who used it to walk on when she hung out the clean clothes, but other days Sunny had the whole yard pretty much to himself. ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... on the shore, too, pretty much all the time. Just let me see anybody moving, and I'm ready to drop flat till the storm rolls by. What's that over ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... been pretty much at the grindstone for the last month. And now, girls, what's the best of your news? We're waiting to be entertained. How do you like the West End of Glasgow, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... inclined to have it out with John Prather; but that would have precipitated a general fight with Leddy's gang. The conservatives got the hot-heads to wait till you came. You see, the trouble with every suggestion is that pretty much everybody is against it except the fellow who made it. The more we have talked, the more we have drifted back to you. It's a case of all we've got in the world and standing together, and we are ready to get behind you and take ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... heir had attained his age before the death of his ancestor, yet the king intruded between him and his inheritance, and obliged him to redeem, or, as the term then was, to relieve it. The quantity of this relief was generally pretty much at the king's discretion, and often amounted ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... most popular present day Pantomime subjects, besides showing many of our present day Pantomime libretto writers that in such well-known themes as "Aladdin," "Cinderella," and others, there is no need to cast their stories pretty much in the same groove, year after year, when by drawing on the fairy-lore of the East much that is new and original, for present-day English Pantomimes, is waiting the attention of their ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... to us; your room was prepared, everything in readiness, when he met your man Mike, setting forth upon a mule, who told him you had just taken your departure for the villa. We both had our claim upon you and, I believe, pretty much on the same score. By-the-bye, you have not seen Lucy since your arrival. I never knew it till yesterday, when I asked if she did not ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... life they had of it. They had their own wine closet at the King's Head,—or Roebury Inn as the house had come to be popularly called,—and supplied their own game. The landlord found everything else; and as they were not very particular about their bills, they were allowed to do pretty much as they liked in the house. They were rather imperious, very late in their hours, sometimes, though not often, noisy, and once there had been a hasty quarrel which had made the landlord in his anger say that the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... falls pretty much under the same censure, when he speaks of beautiful women as "tortures to the eye,"[6] though here there is some excuse, as the speakers in this passage are drunken barbarians. Still, even from dramatic motives, such errors in taste should not be permitted to ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... badly off after all: we walk out with an obliging escort, who let us do pretty much as we like; and all our work is confined to sweeping the courts in front of the king's palace. We are free of the castle, and allowed to conduct strangers over it, as in your case. Oh! for the fellows at St Stefano, it is quite another matter; as a part of their punishment, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... limits are the Brenta to the east, and the Astico to the west."] They are, of course, subject to the Austrian Government, but not so strictly as the Italians are; and though they are taxed and made to do military service, they are otherwise left to regulate their affairs pretty much ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... Jonas's apprenticeship passed on pretty much according to universal rule; that is, he did the drudgery of the house as well as learned the trade, and received kicks and cuffs from the journeymen. But in five years his servitude was out, and he was a journeyman himself. He was now, by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... had ever been married, and late comers never heard of it. To all intents the owners of the Quirt outfit were old bachelors who kept pretty much to themselves, went to town only when they needed supplies, rode old, narrow-fork saddles and grinned scornfully at "swell-forks" and "buckin'-rolls," and listened to all the range gossip without adding so much as an opinion. They never talked politics ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Kirkwood, Maurice Kirkwood, Esq., it used to come on his letters. As for his ways of living, he was the solitariest human being that I ever came across. His man carried his meals up to him. He used to stay in his room pretty much all day, but at night he would be off, walking, or riding on horseback, or paddling about in the lake, sometimes till nigh morning. There's something very strange about that Mr. Kirkwood. But there don't seem to be any harm in him. Only nobody can guess what his business is. They ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to change. He looked less and less like Dionysus as the seconds went by, and more and more like William Forrester. At the same time, the golden aura around his body began to fade. After a few minutes he looked like William Forrester completely, a nice enough guy but pretty much of a nonentity. ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... scarce; they has pretty much their own way. Hold on—he's gotter 'aug a bit by one hand from a bar what goes through his cage, ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... with an inward shudder; for Schomberg had been overpowered, as it were, by his imagination, and his reason could not react against that fanciful view of his guests. And it was not only their appearance. The morals of Mr. Ricardo seemed to him to be pretty much the morals of a cat. Too much. What sort of argument could a mere man offer to a . . . or to a spectre, either! What the morals of a spectre could be, Schomberg had no idea. Something dreadful, no doubt. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... me there's deep speritial things in religion. You can't make much out wi' talking about it, but you feel it. Mr. Irwine didn't go into those things—he preached short moral sermons, and that was all. But then he acted pretty much up to what he said; he didn't set up for being so different from other folks one day, and then be as like 'em as two peas the next. And he made folks love him and respect him, and that was better nor stirring up their gall wi' being overbusy. Mrs. Poyser ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... dull eyes. The air of neglect and decay which was everywhere visible, and which was such a shock to Betty, had not been reached in a season, he was really convinced that the place looked pretty much ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... he'd have me just where he wanted me," he retorted. He was regarding her with a steady, questioning stare, and presently he gave a little sigh. "I'll have to tell you something I didn't mean to," he said. "In my opinion Tex Lynch is pretty much of a scoundrel. He knows I know it, and there isn't anything he wouldn't do to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... Latin, I am just finishing Lucan, who remains pretty much where he was in my opinion; and I am busily engaged with Cicero, whose character, moral and intellectual, interests me prodigiously. I think that I see the whole man through and through. But this is too vast a subject for a letter. I have gone through all Ovid's ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... he scratched his head with the scratch-awl. "It's a'most done now. Ther ain't much more to do. We've pretty much finished up. Ther's the doors to hang and trim, 'n' the closet shelves 'n' things to fix up; the stairs ain't quite done, n'r the front steps. I d'nno; ther's a number o'little jobs 'round,—don't amount to much,—coal-bin, thresholds, and one or two things ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... and his career. I came across him once several years ago in reference to an old case of mine with which he had nothing to do, but concerning which he gave me some valuable information. I found that Curly John was all right at that time, and, as people of his profession regard it, pretty much on the square. I want you, if you will, to ring the bell and order him brought up here and let ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... goes. If he'd wanted us to know about Caroline he'd of told us. He doesn't want us to know and he'd maybe take it pretty much to heart if he knew we'd ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... seem to have simultaneously arrived at the charitable conclusion that my heart is pretty much in the same condition that the Hebrew temple was, when Christ undertook to drive out the profane. Thongs in hand you two have overturned my motives, and, by a very summary court-martial, condemned them to be scourged out. Now, mark you, I am neither ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... predisposition to gloom. And at this moment I recall a remarkable illustration of what I am saying, communicated by Wordsworth's accomplished friend, Sir George Beaumont. To him I had been sketching the distressing sensitiveness of Sir Sidney pretty much as I have sketched it to the reader; and how he, the man that on the breach at Acre valued not the eye of Jew, Christian, or Turk, shrank back—me ipso teste—from the gentle, though eager—from admiring, yet affectionate—glances of three very young ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... I admit it. I'm a low down chump. Still, if I had it to do over again, I should do pretty much the same. A few things differently, but in general ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... earliest, a difference of a week in marketing oftentimes making a difference of one half in the profits of the crop. Capt. Wyman, who controlled the Early Wyman cabbage for several years, sold some seasons thirty thousand heads if my memory serves me, at pretty much his own price. As a rule, it is the very early and the very late cabbages that sell most profitably. Should the market for very late cabbages prove a poor one, the farmer is not compelled to sell them, no matter at what sacrifice, as would be the case a month earlier; he can pit them, and so ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... books, three or four drawings, and a library chair and table (once the property of my old friend Kenyon—I am writing on the table now), and you have the greater part of the vision before you. Is this the end of all things? I believe it is pretty much like most scenes in the fifth act, when the green (or black) curtain is about to drop and tell you that the play of Hamlet or of John Smith is over. But wait a little. There will be another piece, in which John Smith the ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Daily Record of Rain-fall,' I should much like you to look over them, for my object in both has been to check the uniformity of treatment which too much prevails with those who are officially called upon to direct draining, and who still treat mixed soils and irregular surfaces pretty much in the same way as homogeneous clays and even surfaces, the only difference being, that the distance between the drains is increased. We have now, without doubt, arrived at that point in the practice ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... been friends pretty much since I can remember. Our mothers used to trade turns fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives around the corner on Third Avenue, upstairs over the grocery store his old man runs. If anyone asked me how come we're friends, I couldn't ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville
... statistics given by the Agricultural Department at Washington, for the year 1866, the average yield in some of these States was but four and a half bushels per acre. It is evident from this that Mr. Skinflint has had things pretty much his own way. His land now produces four and a half bushels per acre; what time shall elapse when it shall be four and one half acres per bushel? Who dare predict that manure will not at some day be of value west of the Alleghanies? New-Jersey, with a soil naturally inferior ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... if I could go back where I used to live," said Miss De Courcy with her hoarse, abrupt little laugh. "No, I don't either. Folks are pretty much all ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... which condemned state, Berlin Society almost wholly disapproving it, the Arnold Process was found at Friedrich's death (restoration of honors to old Furst and Company, one of the first acts of the New Reign, sure of immediate popularity); and, I think, pretty much continues so still, few or none in Berlin Society admitting Miller Arnold's claim to redress, much less defending that onslaught on Furst and the wigs. [Herr Preuss himself inclines that way, rather condemnatory of Friedrich; but his Account, as usual, is exact ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... pocket-handkerchief and be inconsolable when you die? Why should it care very much, then, whether your worship graces yourself or disgraces yourself? Whatever happens it talks, meets, jokes, yawns, has its dinner, pretty much as before. Therefore don't be so conceited about yourself as to fancy your private affairs of so much importance, mi fili. Whereas Mr. Harry Warrington chafed and fumed as though all the world was ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... closely watching those two who were aboard, and I am bound to admit that their behaviour seemed quite unexceptionable. I mean," I continued, noticing a slightly puzzled look on my companion's face, "they seemed to behave pretty much like the natives of most of the other islands which we have visited, except that they did not ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... crowds that now rushed to the Louvre, as the news spread of the destruction of its great collection, a military order came that no visitors should be admitted without permission from the foreign commandant of Paris. This direction was pretty much adhered to by the sentinels as far as the exclusion of the French, but the words Je suis Anglais, were always sufficient to gain leave to pass from the Austrians: our own countrymen were rather more strict, but, in general, foreigners could, with but little difficulty, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... let me talk to ye? Please, do!" urged Peg. Then she went on: "Ye haven't said a kind wurrd to me since I've been here." She stopped a moment. Ethel said nothing. Peg continued: "Sure, we're both girls, in the same house, of the same family, an' pretty much the same age, and yet ye never look at me except as if ye hated me. Why, ye like yer dog betther than you ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... opera— French rather than German, but Italian rather than either German or French. Wendling's associates are all of the opinion that my compositions would please extraordinarily in Paris. One thing is certain; I would not fear the test. As you know I am able to assimilate and imitate pretty much all ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... have passed away, and that they must now adapt themselves to new surroundings. Therefore, they work in the hay fields, tend stock, chop logs in the mountains, haul firewood, drive freighting teams, build houses and fences, and, in short, do pretty much all the work that would be done by an ordinary ranchman. They do not perform it so well as white men would; they are much more careless in their handling of tools, wagons, mowing-machines, or other implements, but they are learning ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... peculiarities, from the Egyptian monuments, several thousand years before the Christian era. Upon these monuments the negroes are so represented as to show that in natural propensities and mental abilities they were pretty much what we find them at the present day,—indolent, playful, sensual, imitative, subservient, good-natured, versatile, unsteady in their purpose, devoted and affectionate. From this picture I exclude the character of the half-breeds, who have, more or less, the ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... will, Father Pat—relapse or reclaps, it's pretty much the same I'm thinking; for she'd niver get through another bout. God send we may be well out of the hobble this day twelvemonth. Martin's my own son, and ain't above industhrying, as his father and mother ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... comparison; and, in the result, he furnished an astonishingly comprehensive, as well as an astonishingly accurate classification of the larger groups of the animal kingdom. On the other hand, classification of the vegetable kingdom continued pretty much as it had been left by the book of Genesis—all plants being divided into three groups, Herbs, Shrubs, and Trees. Nor was this primitive state of matters improved upon till the sixteenth century, when Gesner (1516-1565), and still more Caesalpino (1519-1603), ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... simplicity and sanity of the people of Ansbach under all their civic changes. Saints and soldiers, knights and barons, margraves, princes, kings, emperors, had come and gone, and left their single-hearted, friendly subjectfolk pretty much what they found them. The people had suffered and survived through a thousand wars, and apparently prospered on under all governments and misgovernments. When the court was most French, most artificial, most vicious, the citizen life must have remained immutably German, dull, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not much fun for a fellow who's at school in London. It's pretty much the same story—grind, grind, from one week's end ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... that year seemed pretty much like all the others, except that coming home was better than ever. But when Christmas went by, and February came and our turn to be out again on the Gunnel, I went with a dismal feeling I hadn't known before. For Bathsheba was drawing ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that Anne is worse, nor can I say she is better. She varies often in the course of a day, yet each day is passed pretty much the same. The morning is usually the best time; the afternoon and the evening the most feverish. Her cough is the most troublesome at night, but it is rarely violent. The pain in her arm still disturbs her. She takes the cod-liver oil and carbonate ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... hanging over change is great, just in proportion as it tends to produce such disorder by giving any large number of ignorant men, whose notions of what is good are of a low and brutal sort, the belief that they have got power into their hands and may do pretty much as they like. If any one can look round us and say that he sees no signs of any such danger now, and that our national condition is running along like a clear broadening stream, safe not to get choked with mud, I call him a cheerful man; perhaps he does his own ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... was abundance, and if the sword gave place to the brickbat and the bludgeon, the consequences were pretty much the same—"Green Erin" gained a great victory over Erin of the Orange preferences, and over the Saxon in general. The spirit in which this result was received at Conciliation Hall, and its effect upon the hopes and aspirations of the people, may be gathered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... poetry have been pretty much the same from the first; and if a man should ever be born among us with a great imagination, and the gift of the right word,—for it is these, and not sublime spaces, that make a poet,—he will be original rather in ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... "Pretty much so," admitted Dr. Smathers. "Remember, we're just here for preliminary investigation. When the ship brings ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... subject, and a unanimity perfectly marvellous, and no demonstration of the unfitness of any of its parts will be of any avail; some of its details may be corrected and amended, but substantially it must pass pretty much ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... man going home along the lane. He ran and called some people, and they fetched the fire-engine from the village and pumped out of the horse-pond just close by. It was pretty much of a wreck by the time they got the fire out, but it wasn't all gone, as you might have expected. You see, it had been out of use for some time, sir, and there was mostly nothing but old broken ploughs and lumber there; and what's more, there was a deal of rain early in the week, as ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... To Melitus, that good and patriotic man, as he says, and to my later accusers, I will next endeavor to give an answer; and here, again, as there are different accusers, let us take up their deposition. It is pretty much as follows: "Socrates," it says, "acts unjustly in corrupting the youth, and in not believing in those gods in whom the city believes, but in other strange divinities." Such is the accusation; let us examine each particular ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... little beast!" said he to Blinks, and putting the toe of his boot under the little dog, he kicked him clear out of the door of the cabin. Then turning to Holly, he looked at her pretty much as if he intended to kick her out too. But he didn't. He put out one of his big red hands and ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... I told you all, you would be the more willing to look after the little book in case it goes ill with me. When the war broke out I was teaching school down in Maine, in the same village where my father was schoolmaster before me. The old man when he died left me quite alone. I lived pretty much by myself, having no interests outside of the district school, which seemed in a manner my personal property. Eight years ago last spring a new pupil was brought to the school, a slight slip of a girl, with a sad kind of face and quiet ways. Perhaps it was because she wasn't very strong, ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... you are to read into a dissyllable, and pretty much like Boney's old friend on the road from Moscow, General Doct'roff, who 'doctor'd them off,' as the Laureate observes, and prescribed for the whole French army gratis. But now ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... whose only aim, so they say, is public utility, the most useful of all arts, the art of training men, is still neglected. Even after Locke's book was written the subject remained almost untouched, and I fear that my book will leave it pretty much as ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... very keel, and passing through her timbers and scattering terrific splinters, which did more appalling work than the shot itself. A constant stream of wounded men were being hurried to the cockpit from all quarters of the ship. My feelings were pretty much as I suppose every one else felt at such a time. That men are without thought when they stand among the dying and dead is too absurd an idea to be entertained. We all appeared cheerful, but I know that many a serious thought ran through my mind. Still, what could we do but keep up a semblance ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... the cannonading is almost incessant. However, the damage done is but small. To-day, the 7th April, things seem to be in pretty much the same position as they were after Bergeret had been beaten back and Flourens killed. The forts of Vanves and Issy bombard the Versailles batteries, which in their turn vomit shot and shell on Vanves and Issy. Idle spectators, watching from the Trocadero, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... in their purpose they would have cut off a large section of our army and captured property of great value. In my account of the fight written at the time to my people I said, "Barlow got us together in line and found that a good deal more than half of the men were gone, and pretty much all of the officers. Captains Deming, Spencer and Moore lost legs, and Angell was wounded. Lieut. Crawford and Adjutant Gregory were wounded. Col. Barlow and Lieuts. Keech and Morrison were the only officers ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... appear of terrestrial origin, but descended from some of the inhabitants of the moon, because the principal language spoken there, and in the centre of Africa, is very nearly the same. Their alphabet and method of writing are pretty much the same, and show the extreme antiquity of this people, and their exalted origin. I here give you a specimen of their writing [Vide Otrckocsus de Orig. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... "Things happened pretty much as people foresaw back in 1981," she said. "The drive was perfected. The ships went out to the nearer stars. They found worlds. They established colonies from the overflowing population of Earth. They found human indigenous races on a few worlds, all of ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... revolvers in all manner of cases hung at the hip, the regulation holster, in most instances, being conspicuous by its absence. Indeed, throughout the entire command the remarkable fact was to be noted that a company of regular cavalry, taking the field against hostile Indians, had discarded pretty much every item of dress or equipment prescribed or furnished by the authorities of the United States, and had supplied themselves with an outfit utterly ununiform, unpicturesque, undeniably slouchy, but not less undeniably ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... time, without being able to either see or hear the variation. The watch might, however, on the average keep fair time; but it would not be a perfect one; and what matters, if it answers all the purposes for which we want it? A really bad watch that can not keep time is a different affair;—it is pretty much the same with a horse. If the unsoundness is such as to render him unable to do his work, or even to do it unpleasantly to himself or owner, or if it is likely to bring him to this, our advice is to have nothing to do with him. If, however, ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... the Air Force's "Mr. Flying Saucer." As quickly as one of the pilots would set me up and bat me down, the next one grabbed me off the floor and took his turn. But I couldn't complain too much; I'd asked for it. I think that this group of seven pilots pretty much represented the feelings of a lot of the airline pilots. They weren't wide-eyed space fans, but they and their fellow pilots had seen something and whatever they'd seen weren't hallucinations, ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt |
