"Commodity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The cold commodity which he provided met, therefore, with a warm welcome from the English inhabitants. They recognized the boon afforded them, and expressed their gratitude by raising a subscription and presenting to the enterprising Yankee merchant a fire-proof building in which ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... have been, in the first place, directed to a system which could be adapted to any existing apparatus, and in certain cases where water was scarce, to avoid altogether the use of that, in some districts, rare commodity. For the purpose of explanation we select an ordinary amalgamating table fitted with mercury riffles. The surface of the table is in no way interfered with or disturbed. The bed of the riffle, however, is constructed of some porous material, such as leather, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... calculations and tricks of learned and legalized jugglery, by which the end of law itself was baffled and its advocates alone enriched. But what else could be expected of lawyers in those days and in that wicked city, or even in any city of the whole Empire, when justice was practically a marketable commodity; when one half of the whole population were slaves; when the circus and the theatre were as necessary as the bath; when only the rich and fortunate were held in honor; when provincial governments were sold to the highest bidder; when effeminate favorites were the grand chamberlains of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... word monopoly is derived from the Greek. It means, sole-selling, and expresses itself at once. It is almost unnecessary at the present day to announce the law of political economy, that wherever a small number of individuals acquire the exclusive privilege of selling any commodity, or undertaking any particular kind of service, the public will be ill served. The price demanded will be high, and the commodity or the work will be bad in proportion. Thus much, indeed, of political economy our ancestors of the reign of King ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... trade, studies general conditions, and continually deals with the situation from the point of view of large intelligence. No human being is so entirely devoid of interest to his fellows as the trader who barters one commodity for another without any comprehension of higher values or wider connections; on the other hand, few men are more interesting than the great merchants whose vision penetrates to the principles behind business, and who acquire a kind of wisdom which is the more engaging because it is constantly verified ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... reprehensible. Mining, storekeeping, liquor-selling, gambling, steamboating, all were occupations which men followed as necessity or convenience prompted. A citizen gained repute by the manner in which he deported himself, not by reason of the nature of the commodity in which he dealt. Such, at least, was the ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... and as mentioned by us under "Signs, Omens, and Warnings," at page 399. At the Tweed, fishermen still (1879) have a belief in the power of fairies to affect the fisheries. It is the custom not only to impregnate nets with salt, but also to throw part of that commodity into the water, to blind the mischievous elves, who are said to prevent fish being caught. The salting process was carried on at Coldstream very recently, with a result highly satisfactory to the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Rich in natural resources, Australia is a major exporter of agricultural products, minerals, metals, and fossil fuels. Of the top 25 exports, 21 are primary products, so that, as happened during 1983-84, a downturn in world commodity prices can have a big impact on the economy. The government is pushing for increased exports of manufactured goods, but competition in international markets continues to be severe. GDP: purchasing power equivalent - $280.8 billion, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... one's own happiness. Chief emphasis was put, however, upon trade as a means of bringing the conduct of one into harmony with that of others. In commerce, each aims at the satisfaction of his own wants, but can gain his own profit only by furnishing some commodity or service to another. Thus in aiming at the increase of his own private pleasurable states of consciousness, he contributes to the consciousness of others. Again there is no doubt that this view expressed and furthered a heightened ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... pessimist cry, but unfortunately for Friend Pessimist, we have a gauge on the over-production idea that lays all fears to rest. When the supply of any commodity increases faster than the demand, we have over-production and falling prices. Vice-versa, under-production is shown by a rising price. That prices of poultry and eggs have risen and risen rapidly, has ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... like most people whom fate occasionally favours with that rare commodity he did not like to be disturbed in the realisation of it. He was already squeezing out quantities of ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... just possible—if he kept his eyes and ears well open at Swanhaven—that he might improve his prospect of making a marketable commodity of the stolen correspondence, Mr. Bishopriggs had put the letter in his pocket when he left Kirkandrew. He had recognized Blanche, as a friend of the lady at the inn—and as a person who might perhaps be turned ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... England. "The strength of Britain," he would say, "lies in her iron and coal beds; and the locomotive is destined, above all other agencies, to bring it forth. The Lord Chancellor now sits upon a bag of wool; but wool has long ceased to be emblematical of the staple commodity of England. He ought rather to sit upon a bag of coals, though it might not prove quite so comfortable a seat. Then think of the Lord Chancellor being addressed as the noble and learned lord on the coal-sack! I am afraid it wouldn't answer, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... suited their conveniency. In respect to the religious rite itself, it was evidently not considered as an essential point of faith, since the king enforces it on the principle, "for the profit and commodity of his realm." Burnet has made a just ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and will prove the source of vast wealth to the colony. Steam-vessels in the Indian ocean will be supplied with coal from Western Australia; and the depots at Sincapore, Point-de-Galle, and perhaps at Aden, will afford a constant market for this valuable commodity. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... thought there would have been no market for such a commodity—that is, in the case of people such as you describe," observed ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... cooked with bacon is added to the bill of fare. Of course the blood becomes impoverished, and almost every one has scrofula. Calomel and pills are the great panacea for all their bodily ills. Pills are brought on by the quart, and sold by the merchants like any other commodity. Cleanliness of the person is an unheard of luxury; I doubt whether they ever bathe. Children come to the table with unwashed faces. They are put to bed with the same clothes they wear during the day. Then add to all this the fact that tobacco is used almost ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... division of labour first began to take place, this power of exchanging must frequently have been very much clogged and embarrassed in its operations. One man, we shall suppose, has more of a certain commodity than he himself has occasion for, while another has less. The former, consequently, would be glad to dispose of; and the latter to purchase, a part of this superfluity. But if this latter should chance to ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... or steady, in the proceeding, with regard either to the continuance or the repeal of the taxes. The whole has an air of littleness and fraud. * * * There is no fair dealing in any part of the transaction." * * * * * * * * * * * "No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition of three-pence. But no commodity will bear three-pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The feelings of the colonists were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... deliberately to try to stir up ill-feeling between the two countries. We want to get behind the Press. For that purpose we need to know the truth about many matters; and as the truth is a somewhat rare commodity, we are willing to pay for it. Now we come face to face. It will be your business, if you accept my offer, to collect such facts as may ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... English pirates found a clergyman, they acted as if pillaging had been only a last resort, owing to the scarcity of that commodity in those seas. Captain Roberts took a vessel which had on board a body of English troops with their chaplain, destined for garrison-duty. His crew went into ecstasies of delight, as if they had separated themselves from mankind and incurred atrocious suspicions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... than it was under the English?" thought the Chasseur, with a certain, careless, indifferent irony on himself, natural to him. "There I killed time—here I kill men. Which is the better pursuit, I wonder. The world would rather economize the first commodity than the last, I believe. Perhaps it don't make an ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... into the interior to trade with the people, but many of them, as we were now informed, exchanged only against ivory. And it appeared to us impossible to do any profitable trade if we must convey such a heavy and valuable commodity as ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... [by analogy with {VAXen}] Fanciful plural of {box} often encountered in the phrase 'Unix boxen', used to describe commodity {{Unix}} hardware. The connotation is that any two ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... life, is not a small waste. Permit it to every person now in the United States, and the sum total of wasted time to a single generation, would be 25,649,098 years—equal to the average duration of the lives of 854,970 persons. The value of this time, as a commodity in the market, at a low estimate—only forty dollars a year—would be over A THOUSAND MILLIONS of DOLLARS! And its value, for the purposes of mental and moral improvement, cannot be estimated ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... accepting the delicate seat or delicious banquet that was offered her, but contented with coarse bread for her food, she delivered her message from Venus. Presently the box was returned to her, shut and filled with the precious commodity. Then she returned the way she came, and glad was she to come out once more into the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... limits of the trade were considerably extended by the quantities of wampum tribute which poured into the hands of the colonial authorities. Wampum was the commodity in which tribute was universally paid, and the stern justice of our fathers imposed this with no sparing hand upon their weak and erring neighbors. In 1634, the Pequots were fined 400 fathoms of wampum, and two years afterwards ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... out the chests of tea, and when on deck stove them and emptied the tea overboard. Having cleared this ship, they proceeded to Captain Bruce's, and then to Captain Coffin's brig. They applied themselves so dexterously to the destruction of this commodity, that in the space of three hours they broke up three hundred and forty-two chests, which was the whole number in these vessels, and discharged their contents into the dock. When the tide rose it floated the broken chests and the tea insomuch that the surface of the water was filled therewith ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... you. Your love's a pretty cheap commodity, my lad. If you have no means of keeping a wife, that settles ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... anchored we were of course surrounded by boats selling every possible commodity and curiosity, carved ebony, ivory, sandal-wood, and models of the curious boats in use here. These boats are very long and narrow, with an enormous outrigger and large sail, and when it is very rough, nearly the whole of the crew of the boat go out one by one, and sit on the outrigger ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... to that place one Miles Dickinson, in a ship of Bristol, who together with our said factors took a house to themselves there. Our French factor, Romaine Sonnings, desired to buy a commodity in the market, and, wanting money, desired the said Miles Dickinson to lend him a hundred chikinoes until he came to his lodging, which he did; and afterwards the same Sonnings met with Miles Dickinson in the street, and delivered him money ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... undertaking, and takes time and an expenditure of material to erect, and bears no comparison with the cheap hangar which can be run up in a moment to accommodate the aeroplane. The gas to lift the airship is by no means a cheap commodity. If it is to be made on the station where the airship is based, it necessitates the provision of an expensive and elaborate plant. If, on the other hand, it is to be manufactured at a factory, the question of transport comes in, which is a further ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... a slip, as Lisle recognized. It is not in human nature to dispose of a commodity that will shortly increase in value. Crestwick, however, obviously failed to notice this; Lisle thought the idea of getting on to the inside ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... for Jim, who got up meekly when permitted, and pleaded for mercy. Mr Sharp told him that mercy was a commodity in which he did not deal, that it was the special perquisite of judges, from whom he might steal it if they would not give or sell it to him, and, bidding him come along quietly, led him to the station, and locked him up ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... diverted with this method of estimating an author according to the quantity of his works, inquired about the subjects of this bard's writings; but of these his brother could give no account, or other information, but that there was little market for the commodity, which hung heavy upon his hands, and induced him to wish he had ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and laid it on the table, with a feeling that money, which according to tradition is a talkative commodity, might now conclude the conversation. Mrs. Owen saw the check-book—looked at it over her glasses, apparently ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... anonymous writing, on its occasional convenience, and on its pernicious consequences, I shall make no remarks. Facts, rather than arguments, should be the staple commodity of an ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... not dishonestly; she seeketh not her own; she doth all things to the commodity of her neighbors." A charitable man will not promote himself with the damage of his neighbor. They that seek only their own advantage, forgetting their neighbors, they are not of God, they have not His livery. Further, "Charity is not provoked to anger; she thinketh not evil." We ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... and Aissa in a small prau loaded with green cocoanuts, and claimed the ownership of both vessel and cargo. How it came to pass that Babalatchi, fleeing for his life in a small canoe, managed to end his hazardous journey in a vessel full of a valuable commodity, is one of those secrets of the sea that baffle the most searching inquiry. In truth nobody inquired much. There were rumours of a missing trading prau belonging to Menado, but they were vague and remained mysterious. Babalatchi told a story which—it must be said in justice to Patalolo's ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... of trouble was full, and that if she wanted to get a hold on him she mustn't show him stripes, but something in cheerful checks. Yet when the trouble-hunters looked her up, she had a full line of samples of their favorite commodity to ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... told it was inaccessible to strangers, and therefore was obliged to content myself with viewing it at a distance. Such vast piles are not uncommon in and near London; yet how great and certain must be the profits of a commodity to warrant the expenditure of such large capitals before there can be any return! It might seem too that a man possessed of sixty thousand pounds, or of as much as, at the present value of money, would purchase for ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... all this while? Having lost her supplies from the West Indies, she was quietly spinning away at American slave labor cotton; and to ease the public conscience of the kingdom, was loudly talking of a free labor supply of the commodity from the banks of the Niger! But the expedition up that river failed, and 1845 found her manufacturing 626,496,000 lbs. of cotton, mostly the product of American slaves! The strength of American slavery at that moment may be inferred from the fact, that we exported ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... world, she could not shut her eyes. Her own family had been too near the seat of power not to see all the base intrigues by which that sacred and solemn position of Head of the Christian Church had been traded for as a marketable commodity. The pride, the indecency, the cruelty of those who now reigned in the name of Christ came over her mind in contrast with the picture painted by the artless, trusting faith of the peasant-girl with whom she had just parted. Her mind had been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... portion. So when the marriage ceremony was over, Captain Hull whispered a word to two of his men-servants, who immediately went out, and soon returned, lugging in a large pair of scales. They were such a pair as wholesale merchants use, for weighing bulky commodities; and quite a bulky commodity was now to ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beyond. This boudoir did not differ from others to which I have been admitted: the same delicate shades; all the dainty appliances of Art for beauty; the lavish profusion of bijouterie; and the usual statuettes of innocence, to indicate, perhaps, the presence of that commodity which might not be guessed at otherwise; and burning in a silver cup, a rich perfume loaded the air with voluptuous sweetness. Through a half-open door an inner boudoir was to be seen, which must have been ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... command, Rosy tripped out of the kitchen, and in an instant returned with the desiderated commodity—a dumpy, bluff, opaque bottle, of about a gallon contents—which she placed on the table. Adair seized it by its long neck, and, filling up a brimming bumper, tossed it off to the health of his guest. This done, he filled up another topping glass, and presented it to the stranger, with a strong ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... is of grey silk; I do not see that there is vanity in descending to straw, which is a more homely commodity. But what reason ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... For Anderson, before mentioned, at page 401, says, "That in the year 1562, captain Hawkins, assisted by subscription of sundry gentlemen, now fitted out three ships; and having learnt that Negroes were a very good commodity in Hispaniola, he sailed to the coast of Guinea, took in Negroes, and sailed with them for Hispaniola, where he sold them, and his English commodities, and loaded his three vessels with hides, ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... voleurs au bonjour, donneurs de bonjours, bonjouriers, are those who introduce themselves into a house and carry off in an instant the first movable commodity that falls in their way. The first bonjouriers were I am assured, servants out of place. They were at first few in number, but, soon acquiring pupils, their industry increased so rapidly, that from 1800 to 1812, there was scarcely a day that robberies were not committed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... 'it shall seem good to your honour that I with others shall give the attempt for her Majesty's use which cannot be without blood, I will not only take it in hand, but also receive the blame thereof unto myself, to the end so great a commodity should redound to her Grace, hoping that, after bitter storms of her displeasure, showed at the first to colour the fact, I shall find the calm of her favour in such sort as I am most willing to hazard myself to serve her Majesty. Great pity it were such a rich booty ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... the Potters" contain nearly all the workshops of a given kind. Probably you can find no others in the city. Prices are regulated by custom and competition; in case any master artisan is suspected of "enhancing" the price of a needful commodity, or his shady business methods seem dangerous to the public, there is no hesitation in invoking an old law or passing a new one in the Assembly to bring ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... cry you mercy, you look more like a showman or a conjurer."—Ferret, nettled at this address, answered, "It would be well for you, that I could conjure a little common sense into that numskull of yours." "If I want that commodity," rejoined the squire, "I must go to another market, I trow.—You legerdemain men be more like to conjure the money from our pockets than sense into our skulls. Vor my own part, I was once cheated of vorty ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... is still going on, and one of its principal centres is before this church, in the Piazza of the Annunziata. Cloth is the chief commodity offered for sale, and none of the finest; coarse, unbleached linen and cotton prints for country-people's wear, together with yarn, stockings, and here and there an assortment of bright-colored ribbons. Playthings, of a very rude fashion, were also displayed; likewise books in Italian and French; ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Catholic religion, and bozals must be baptized within eight days after landing. All overseers must be Catholic. Sundays and fete days are days of rest for the negro; no sale of negroes or any other commodity can take ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... themselves to be perfectly safe, and that as they were able by these incursions "to gratify at once their passions of avarice and revenge, and their desire for spirituous liquors, every boat carrying more or less of that commodity, few of them may be expected to attend; nor are they much to be depended on should they attend generally." He further remarked: "Our settlements are extending themselves so fast on every quarter where they can ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... capacities which makes up masculine efficiency and passes for masculine intelligence. This intelligence, at its highest, has a human value substantially equal to that of their own. In a man's world it at least gets its definite rewards; it guarantees security, position, a livelihood; it is a commodity that is merchantable. Women thus accord it a certain respect, and esteem it in their husbands, and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the morning, the Spanish fleet after the forsayd tumult, having arranged themselves againe into order, were, within sight of Greveling, most bravely and furiously encountered by the English; where they once again got the wind of the Spaniards; who suffered themselves to be deprived of the commodity of the place in Calais road, and of the advantage of the wind neer unto Dunkerk, rather than they would change their array or separate their forces now conjoyned and united together, standing only upon ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... some influence over Antoinette. It would have greatly surprised Mlle. Moiseney had he represented to her that she lacked good sense. This good creature flattered herself that she had an inexhaustible stock of this commodity; she placed the highest estimate on her own judgment; she believed herself to be well-nigh infallible. She discoursed in the tone of an oracle on future contingencies; she prided herself on being able to divine all things, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... assiduous research I am enabled to certiorate the reader, that the name of this person was Saunders Broadfoot, and that he dealt in the wholesome commodity called ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... my dear," said Mrs. Brett. "Our train leaves in three-quarters of an hour. Each girl will please pack a small bag, if she possesses such a useful commodity, and we must walk as fast as ever we can to the station, for my poor dear husband has no end of things for me to attend to to-day, and the moment we get to Dartford we shall have to bustle about, I can tell you. There'll ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the other 'Brandons,' and saw all the inhabitants. Captain Shirley spent the day here. Mr. Wm. Harrison much better, and Miss Gulie very pretty. They have some visitors. It is quiet and delightful here, the river is beautiful. Agnes will write when she finds 'time,' which is a scarce commodity with her. I had intended to write before breakfast, the longest portion of the day, but walked out and forgot it. We have little time after breakfast. Give much love to Mary and Custis. I hope that you are all well and comfortable. I was very glad to receive your letter ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... skirting the bottom of the hills, and sometimes carrying their lines of straggling hedgerows a little way up the ascent. Above these were green pastures, tenanted chiefly by herds of black cattle, then the staple commodity of the country, whose distant low gave no unpleasing animation to the landscape. The remoter hills were of a sterner character, and, at still greater distance, swelled into mountains of dark heath, bordering the horizon with a screen which gave a defined and limited ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... cancelled all profits, and slowly brought on ruin. The widow had no suspicion of Derues' disgraceful dealings, and he carefully referred the damage to other causes, quite worthy of himself. Sometimes it was a bottle of oil, or of brandy, or some other commodity, which was found spilt, broken, or damaged, which accidents he attributed to the enormous quantity of rats which infested the cellar and the house. At length, unable to meet her engagements, Madame Legrand made the business over to him in February, 1770. He was ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Houses of the Nobility, you won't see (not to say a Bough, but even) a Leaf grow beyond the rest. They are the best Weavers in the Universe, and make Cloath of stript Feathers, which they have the Art of spinning, and which is the Staple Commodity of the Kingdom; for no Feathers are comparable to these for this Manufacture. When I pass'd the Meadow, every one quitted her Employment to come and stare at me; they all spoke together so loud, and with such Volubility, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... goodness. We do not think of greatness when we see him or hear him, but we think with our hearts when he is before our eyes. Goodness is more marketable than greatness, and more necessary. Goodness, greatness! Brilliancy is a cheap commodity when put on the counter beside goodness; and Bishop Bienvenu is a romancer's apotheosis of goodness, and we bless him for ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... recognize the right of men collectively to bargain for humane objects that have at their base the mutual protection and welfare of those engaged in all industries. Labor must not be longer treated as a commodity. It must be regarded as the activity of human beings, possessed of deep yearnings and desires. The business man gives his best thought to the repair and replenishment of his machinery, so that its usefulness will ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... pointed out that, though it is usual to speak of the prostitute as a woman who "sells herself," this is rather a crude and inexact way of expressing, in its typical form, the relationship of a prostitute to her client. A prostitute is not a commodity with a market-price, like a loaf or a leg of mutton. She is much more on a level with people belonging to the professional classes, who accept fees in return for services rendered; the amount of the fee varies, on the one ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a genuine mnemonic image. When this is so, it is impossible by a mere introspective glance to detect the falsity of the message from the past. We are in the same position as the purchaser in a jet market, where a spurious commodity has got inextricably mixed up with the genuine, and there is no ready criterion by which he can distinguish the true from the false. Such a person, if he purchases freely, is pretty sure to make a number of mistakes. Similarly, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... to explain. Cards were anew issued to all those who had been formerly included in the invitation, and of course to Mr. Touchwood, as formerly a resident at the Well, and now in the neighbourhood; it being previously agreed among the ladies, that a Nabob, though sometimes a dingy or damaged commodity, was not to be rashly or unnecessarily neglected. As to the parson, he had been asked, of course, as an old acquaintance of the Mowbray house, not to be left out when the friends of the family were invited on a great scale; but his habits were well known, and it was no more expected that ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... nefarious practice, increasing in degree as it has been found difficult of detection, is now applied to almost every commodity which can be classed among either the necessaries or the luxuries of life, and is carried on to a most alarming extent in every ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... had to work with, the mode of doing his labor, and the habits of the animal he diligently hunted for several years in order that his fellow man might convert into a luxury the products of his toil; yet had he been allowed the choice, he would not have exchanged situations with the consumer of the commodity. In the company of his boon companions and enjoying the pure mountain air, he had often seen as happy hours as ever fell to the lot of any man. And now he was starting out on probably his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... be sure. They've got the monopoly of education in England, and they get their bread by it at their public schools and universities; and of course it's their interest to keep up the price of their commodity, and let no man have a taste of it who can't pay down handsomely. And so those aristocrats of college dons go on rolling in riches, and fellowships, and scholarships, that were bequeathed by the people's friends in old times, just to educate poor scholars like you and me, and ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... coloured reports of the productiveness of the place—and such are not wanting—to come there with the vain hopes of being able to raise tropical productions* for export, even with the assistance of Chinese or Malay labourers. Wool, the staple commodity of Australia, would not grow there, and the country is not adapted for the support of ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... not a giant himself, but he knew how to distinguish true greatness from the spurious commodity. Emerson considered his varied accomplishments his worst enemy; but that depends on how you choose to look at it. It is probable enough that if Cranch had followed out a single pursuit to its perfection, and if he had not lived so many years ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... the finest sago trees, and whole woods of cinnamon, grow wild and unnoticed in Lucon. Nutmegs, cloves, and all the produce of the Moluccas, are also indigenous on these islands, and industry only (a commodity which, unfortunately, does not flourish here,) is wanting to make them a copious source of revenue. Pearls, amber, and cochineal, abound in the Philippines; and the bosom of the earth contains gold, silver, and other ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... seized with a strange notion; he imagined that in Switzerland they could change an idiot into a mail of sense. After all, the idea was quite logical; a parasite and landowner naturally supposed that intelligence was a marketable commodity like everything else, and that in Switzerland especially it could be bought for money. The case was entrusted to a celebrated Swiss professor, and cost thousands of roubles; the treatment lasted five ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... remainder verbal explanations to the effect that lack of fuel or damage to the machinery had caused the diminution. Again, one of these ubiquitous banks buys a large amount of corn or sugar, but instead of having it conveyed to the districts suffering from a dearth of that commodity, deposits it in a safe place and waits. In the meantime prices go up until they reach the prohibition level. Then the bank sells its stores in small quantities. The people suffer, murmur, and blame the Government. Nor is it only the average man who thus complains. In the Duma the authorities ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... The bug which you would fright me with I seek. To me can life be no commodity: The crown and comfort of my life, your favour, I do give lost; for I do feel it gone, But know not how it went: my second joy, And first-fruits of my body, from his presence I'm barr'd, like one infectious: my third comfort, Starr'd most unluckily, is from my breast, The ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the Far East is a commodity for which it is easy to pay too high a price—when it is obtainable at all—which, to tell the truth, it generally is not. "Change slowly—if change you must" has ever been the motto of China, and for years the capital itself ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... liberty, but meanly to purchase it at his friends' expense. For some time did these passions remain in equipoise; as thou hast often seen the scales of some honest tradesman, before he weighs his commodity; but at length honour preponderated, and liberty and fear flew up and kicked the beam; he therefore told the captains he had the most grateful sense of this instance of their love, but that he could never consent to purchase his freedom at their expense: and therefore desired they would only ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... wood, they kindled a fire amongst it, which burned for seven years, we are told; and, in the end, that which had given its name to the island, and which, in the words of the historian, overshadowed the whole land, became the most deficient commodity. The captains founded churches in the island, and the King of Portugal, Don Duart, gave the temporalities to Prince Henry, and all the spiritualities to ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... unearned increment of the land," he says, "is on all-fours with the profit gathered by one of those American speculators who engineer a corner in corn, or meat, or cotton, or some other vital commodity, and that the unearned increment in land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service but to the disservice done. It is monopoly which is the keynote; and where monopoly prevails, the greater the injury to society the greater the ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... half an hour later, being upon a different train of thought, dwelt at length on the esteem in which the Marquesans held that sort of property, how they preferred it to all others except land, and what fancy prices it would fetch. Using his own figures, I computed that, in this commodity alone, the gifts of Vaekehu and Stanislao represented between two and three hundred dollars; and the queen's official salary is of two hundred and forty in ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of its oil resources and favorable agricultural conditions, Cameroon has one of the best-endowed primary commodity economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, it faces many of the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as a top-heavy civil service and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise. Since 1990, the government has embarked on ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... by his staff of half-naked officials. As usual, he had been the last to leave the Unyamuezi, and so purchased all his stock of ivory at a cheap rate, there being no competitors left to raise the value of that commodity; but his journey had been a very trying one. With a party, at his own estimate, of two thousand souls—we did not see anything like that number—he had come from Ugogo to this, by his own confession, living on ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... heaven-descended stream;" caused to flow under great rocks, as the Niger was long believed to pass underground to the Nile, of which it was a western branch; and said to supply ebony, which is the characteristic not even of the Niger regions, but of the Zaire.[FN14] A little of this peculiar and precious commodity is produced by Old Calabar, east of the Nigerian delta, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... in the bank. No longer did he have to stretch his credit for stock. He was established—and all in less than a year. Hardware, it seemed, had been a commodity much needed in that locality, yet no one had handled it in sufficient stock because of the twenty-four-mile haul. That had been too costly. It cost Scattergood just as much, but his customers paid for it.... The difference between ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... was not a commodity intended for the Britisher. Many cases of gross abuse, and several of actual murder occurred; and in 1885 the case of Mr. Jas. Donaldson, then residing on a farm in Lydenburg—lately one of the Reform ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... delay began to be as two. But the minister was too earnest in his converse to see his companion's haste, and it was not till perception was forced upon him by the actual retreat of Somerset that he remembered time to be a limited commodity. He then expressed his wish to see Somerset at his house to tea any afternoon he could spare, and receiving the other's promise to call as soon as he could, allowed the younger man to set out for the summer-house, which he did at a smart pace. When he reached it he looked ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... too, a sad deficiency in cake; and, oh! when the negus was handed round,——Well, perhaps her nephews drew largely upon her stock of wine; or the widow possibly thought her young men got too much of that commodity in our parties, and therefore needed it less in her own. As to the senior members of the university, I never could comprehend the reasons that induced their endurance of such an aqueous beverage. Sometimes I have attributed their visits to Mrs. Welborn's merely to a ramification of that system ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... be one principle of law better settled than another (and probably it was as clearly set forth in the Revised Statutes of Venice as is set forth in our own common law), it is that a party entitled to the possession of a commodity, whether grain, guano, dead or live men's flesh, bones and sinews, is entitled, also, to pursue the usual necessary and appropriate means of obtaining the possession of the same. I appeal to Colonel W—— if this be not good law, and asking whether, if he be entitled to a dinner, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for example, petitioned for a greater discrimination in the duties on rum and on molasses, the citizens of Portland, then in Massachusetts, assured Congress that any duty on the latter commodity would operate injuriously and be attended with pernicious consequences to all the New England States. Once entered upon, this protective policy could not be stopped. By mutually aiding each other, members ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... book was a far heavier commodity than you would have cared to hold in your lap," smiled Mr. Cameron. "In fact, it was impossible to hold one of them; hence we find the old-time reading desk used as ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... bourgeoisie of Prague are splendid and well attended. The bourgeoisie is very opulent in this city. There are but few residents Noblesse. The expences at the inns here are rather greater than those at Vienna, wine being a foreign commodity and beer the national beverage. My daily expences here for lodging, dinner, supper and breakfast amounted to four florins Convenzions Muenze, about nine franks nearly, French money. The country environing Prague is rich and abounding in corn; there are likewise hops. The walls ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... clouds, which melted in turn into molten masses of smoky orange, so that the heavens were like burnished brass. Drivers whipped up their horses, and pedestrians hastened their steps. Steve Webster decided not to run even the smallest risk of injuring so precious a commodity as Doxy Morton by a shower of rain, so he drove into a friend's yard, put up his horse, and waited till the storm should pass by. Brad Gibson stooped to drink at a wayside brook, and as he bent over the water he heard a low, murmuring, muttering sound that seemed ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of testimony, no doubt, like that of every other commodity, deteriorates under a system, which renders the good of no more value in exchange than the bad. The formality of our Courts here, as everywhere else, tends to impair, more or less, the quality of ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... consistently throughout the 1914 season, regardless of prevailing jobbing prices. The large margins charged by the retailers, for the most part, were due apparently to the small amount of business handled, the perishable nature of the commodity, and ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... diametrically opposed to one another that we have no common ground for discussion. The average Parisienne of the street is not immoral; she is unmoral, that is to say she has no morals because she never did have any. She has been accustomed to look upon herself as a commodity of barter and trade and we cannot in fairness judge her as we judge women who have been brought up to ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... Young Isham came to his door with the first light, the boy found his master already up and partly dressed. Rand stood by the window looking out at the pink sky. "A bad night, Young Isham," he said, without turning. "Sleep's a commodity that has somehow run short with me. Are the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... Percy, speaking more especially to Droulde; "if you only knew how simple it all was! Gold can do so many things, and my only merit seems to be the possession of plenty of that commodity. You told me yourself how you had provided for old Ptronelle. Under the most solemn assurance that she would meet her young mistress here, I got her to leave Paris. She came out most bravely this morning in one of the market ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... quantity of rendered fat and suet, is truly a question worthy to be demanded; for it is far more likely it should be taken off their hands by persons in or near the settlements, who are leagued with them, in the way of bartering one commodity for another, than that the bush-rangers should either keep it for their own use, or bestow so much trouble on the preparation of an article that would soon spoil in their hands. The caftle that were in this instance so devoted, were the property of Stones and Tray, who ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... overlaps Crome; Corot and Daumier overlap Ingres; and then come the Impressionists. But the mass of painting and sculpture had sunk to something that no intelligent and cultivated person would dream of calling art. It was in those days that they invented the commodity which is still the staple of official exhibitions throughout Europe. You may see acres of it every summer at Burlington House and in the Salon; indeed, you may see little else there. It does not pretend to be art. If the producers mistake ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... who read his books, and be only claims for his essays that they possess the quality of common sense. He herein pays a very high compliment to the crowd which demands over the bookseller's counter so many thousands of his volumes. Wisdom, admirably put, is not a commodity glutting the market every day. We find in the pages of this new venture so many healthy maxims and so much excellent advice, that we hope the volume will spread itself farther and wider than any of its predecessors. This wish fulfilled will give it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... articles by machinery, &c. has been by so much reduced, the power of purchase now, as compared with 1640, of 1000l., is by so much increased. The article itself must determine by how much. The question put by C. H. is too general to admit of a positive solution; but should he specify the commodity and place of investment in the seventeenth century and to-day of the 1000l., our statistics might still be at fault, and deny us even a proximate determination of his inquiry. Even his 1000l., which he may consider a fixed measure of value, or punctum comparationis, is varying in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... black as of the white husbandman. Wind, wave, heat, stream, and electricity are absolutely blind forces and see no race distinction and draw no "color line." The world's market does not care and it asks no question about the shade of the hand that produces the commodity, but it does insist that it shall be up to ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... are mistaken. Praise would indeed be a most precious commodity if there were any way of converting its extravagances into solid fact. But there being none, they can only be compared to an ugly man on whom one should clap a beautiful mask, and who should then be proud of those looks that any one could take from him and break to pieces; revealed in his ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... by her feeling that her body was a commodity which she could deliver indifferently as an ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... fresh, and 'in the movement,' the result of certain inquiries put by old Barbier to a school friend of his, now professor at the Sorbonne—meant to catch the 'college people;' while on the other side lay some local histories of neighbouring towns and districts, a sort of commodity always in demand in a great expanding city, where new men have risen rapidly and families are in the making. For these local books the lad had developed an astonishing flair. He had the geographical and also the social instincts which ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Conservation. Although at present there is butter and lard on the market, the need for conserving it is important, just as in the case of meat. WASTE OF ANY KIND SHOULD BE ABHORRENT TO ALL OF US AT THIS TIME. There probably has been a greater waste of fat than of any other commodity, but it is encouraging to note that this waste has been decreased by conservation. The amount of fat in city garbage has gone down all over the country. In Columbus, Ohio, the fat in the garbage was ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... shawl for my waist to match, and he produced an old Cashmerian shawl full of holes and darns, which he assured me had belonged to one of the ladies in the king's harem, and which, he said, he would let me have at a reasonable price. My vanity made me prefer this commodity to a new Kerman shawl, which I might have had for what I was about to pay for the old worn-out Cashmere, and adjusting it so as to hide the defects, I wound it about my waist, which only wanted a dagger stuck into it, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... also rubies and emeralds, upon which she seemed to set special store, and a brooch in the form of a butterfly, which she said was made expressly for her by Lalique. But not a diamond in the collection! It appeared that she regarded diamonds as some men regard champagne—as a commodity not appealing to ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... those eager working people, clad in their poor garments, I confess I was profoundly moved. Faith is not so bounteous a commodity in this world that we can afford to treat even its unfamiliar manifestations with contempt. And when a movement is hot with life, when it stirs common men to their ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... will permit me to give you a few bottles of wine in exchange for your milk," replied Fink, "I will accept your present with thanks. I presume you have no superfluity of this commodity at your command." ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... himself, ends with a civilised community whose members severally perform different actions for each other; and they have further pointed out the changes through which the solitary producer of any one commodity is transformed into a combination of producers who, united under a master, take separate parts in the manufacture of such commodity. But there are yet other and higher phases of this advance ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... to show me over the works in which he was engaged, which were intended to supply Cadiz with water. In England water is to be had too easily to be estimated at its proper value. At Cadiz it is a marketable commodity. Even the parrots there squeak "agua." Every drop of rain that falls is carefully gathered in cisterns, and the conveyance of water in boatloads from Puerto across the Bay is a regular trade. An English company had ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... growing desperate, thought Dr. Letsom on this autumn night, as he stood watching the chrysanthemums and the fading light in the western sky. Money was becoming a rare commodity with him. His housekeeper, Mrs. Galbraith had long been evincing signs of great discontent. She had not enough for her requirements—she wanted money for a hundred different things, and the doctor had none to give her. The curtains were worn and shabby, the ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... "it is not enough that you have got this treasure; we must now contrive to carry it privately aboard, otherwise you will run the risk of losing it. There are no olives in the isle of Ebene, those that are exported hence are a good commodity there: you know I have plenty of them, take what you will; fill fifty pots, half with the gold-dust and half with olives, and I will get them carried to the ship when ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... of the first and chiefest considerations of the pioneer-farmer is always how he may most closely economize time and labour. It is particularly necessary for him, because of the scarcity of the latter commodity, and the consequent pressure upon the first. It is usually ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... outflows. By yearend, GDP had contracted 4.4%, unemployment reached 16%, and Buenos Aires struggled to meet fiscal targets. On the trade front, exports soared during the first half of 1995 - largely because of strong demand in Brazil and high commodity prices - while anemic domestic consumption lowered imports; the resulting yearend trade surplus was about $1.2 billion. However, because exports contribute only 7.5% to GDP, increased foreign sales had little impact on ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... transmutation of the baser metals into gold, or the discovery of the philosopher's stone, he attempts to sustain his sinking reputation, and recover the fortune he has lost. The communication of the great secret is now the staple commodity with which he is to barter, and the grand talisman with which he is to conjure. It can be imparted only to a chosen few—to those among the opulent who merit it by their virtues, and can acquire it by their diligence, and the divine vengeance is threatened against ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... shaft is built, which has anything but a picturesque appearance, and it is apparently likely to remain in this condition, as it is not allowed to be touched by any but native republican hands, here a rather scarce commodity. It is being built of white stone, one of the many kinds found in this country. By the by, we omitted to state, in describing the Capitol, that the balustrades of the staircases, and a good deal of ornamental work about the building, are of marble, from a quarry lately discovered ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... noble ambition not that vile scramble for places and pensions, which some men call ambition; not that bawling, brawling, Thersites character, which other men call public spirit; not that marketable commodity with which Wharton, and such as he, cheat popular opinion for a season;—but that fair virtue which will endure, and abide by its cause to the last; which, in place or out, shall be the same; which, successful or unsuccessful, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... reviving sniff at the pungency of incense. In Florence, one soon observes, the churches are relatively few and the dusky house-fronts more rarely interrupted by specimens of that extraordinary architecture which in Rome passes for sacred. In Florence, in other words, ecclesiasticism is less cheap a commodity and not dispensed in the same abundance at the street-corners. Heaven forbid, at the same time, that I should undervalue the Roman churches, which are for the most part treasure-houses of history, of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... danger of the ascent. As the dog continued howling from a great depth, my father got the old butler, who alone knew most of the localities about the castle, to unlock a sort of stable, in which Kill-buck was found safe and sound, the place being filled with the same commodity which littered the stalls of Augeas, and which had rendered the dog's ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... in and inclosed through singular commodity. For what man will let go, or diminish his private commodity for a commonwealth? And who will sustain any damage for the respect of a public commodity? The other plough also no man is diligent to set forward, nor no man will hearken to it. But to hinder and let it all men's ears ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... land, they have kept back the progress of the country by bestowing it, not on the men ready and anxious to cultivate it, but upon individuals and companies who expect to make a profit by reselling to the actual settler. By making the land a commodity to buy political support, the settlement of the country has been kept back. The rule, that the land be given only to those who will live upon it and crop it, would have saved heartbreak to thousands of willing men who came to our shores asking liberty ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... luxuries apply also to an interchange of necessaries? No state can be such properly, which is not self-subsistent at least; for no state that is not so, is essentially independent. The nation that cannot even exist without the commodity of another nation, is in effect the slave of that other nation. In common times, indeed, pecuniary interest will prevail, and prevent a ruinous exercise of the power which the nation supplying the necessary must have over the nation which has only ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... the slumberous heat, while the old man continued his harangue against the cost of everything except his own commodity, and the underfed horses strained to drag their burden over the hilly road. The mountains had been left behind, and all over the rolling hillsides about them on either hand the vineyards stretched in undulating lines, each heavy with the load of ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... any other social theory, values human life above things. All Anarchists agree with Tolstoy in this fundamental truth: if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life. That, however, nowise indicates that Anarchism teaches submission. How can it, when it knows that all suffering, all misery, all ills, result from the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... that he was their king. That there are there no glass windows, nor will they have any; which makes sport among our merchants there to talk of an English factor that, being newly come thither, writ into England that glass would be a good commodity to send thither, &c. That the King has his meat sent up by a dozen of lazy guards and in pipkins, sometimes, to his own table; and sometimes nothing but fruits, and, now and then, half a hen. And now that the Infanta is become our Queen, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to and fro several times, with the rain-drops falling into the mouth of the brazen trumpet and pattering on the bass-drum; a spirit-shop, opposite the hotel, had a vast run of custom; and a coffee-dealer, in the open air, found occasional vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold water that dripped into the cups. The whole breadth of the street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge across the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... commissariat at all; and that, not merely from the unscrupulousness of their foraging, but because they find in the instruments of their conquests the staple of their food. "Corn is a bulky and perishable commodity," says an historian;[3] "and the large magazines, which are indispensably necessary for the subsistence of civilized troops, are difficult and slow of transport." But, not to say that even their flocks and herds were fitted for rapid movement, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... sources from which I have drawn is appended to each Biography. I would indicate, as an honourable exception to the current commodity, Sir Edward Cook's excellent Life of Florence Nightingale, without which my own study, though composed on a very different scale and from a decidedly different angle, could not ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... and permanently raise wages but a rise in the price of those articles on which wages are spent. In the instance above stated, where the hatter's wages rose from three shillings to three shillings and nine pence a day, some commodity must previously have risen on which the hatter spent his wages. Let this be corn, and let corn constitute one half of the hatter's expenditure; on which supposition, as his wages rose by twenty-five per cent., ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Another commodity upon which a great industry in the United States and Mexico depends is cyanide. The discovery of the cyanide process of treating gold and silver ores permitted the exploitation of many mines which could not be worked under the older methods. At the beginning ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... never once caught sight of an eight-inch-long dildo even, to be a leathern consolation to us poor widows." Her complaint is based upon the fact that all the men were constantly absent upon military duty and the force of the play lies in her strategic control of a commodity in great demand among the male members of society. Quoting again from the same play: Calonice: "And why do you summon us, Lysistrata dear? What is it all about?" Lysistrata: "About a big affair." Calonice: "And is it thick, too'?" Lysistrata: ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... hulda, hulda!" shouted in our ears. We look around, and four coolies, as naked as Adam, one at each corner of a four-wheel truck, pushing a load of iron and relieving themselves at every step by those unearthly groans. Never have we seen that indispensable commodity transported in that fashion before. But look there! A fishmonger comes with a basket swinging on each end of a bamboo pole carried over the shoulder—all single loads are so carried—and yonder goes a water-carrier, carrying his stoups in the same manner, while ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... till now been informed that they had reasons for pursuing Welbeck with peculiar animosity. The latter was the uncle of him whose fate had been related by Mervyn, and was one of those who employed money, not as the medium of traffic, but as in itself a commodity. He had neither wines nor cloths, to transmute into silver. He thought it a tedious process to exchange to-day one hundred dollars for a cask or bale, and to-morrow exchange the bale or cask for one hundred and ten ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... (viz. countries and kingdoms), where the wares of this fair are soonest to be found. Here is the Britain Row, the French Row, the Italian Row, the Spanish Row, the German Row, where several sorts of vanities are to be sold. But, as in other fairs, some one commodity is as the chief of all the fair, so the ware of Rome and her merchandise is greatly promoted in this fair; only our English nation, with some others, have taken a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... But what commodity in England decays faster than wood? And where will you find better forest than along that shore? Build shipyards there, and our English folk would make a living off'n that and the fisheries. I know how 't was in Boston—the Flemings would salt their fish down right aboard ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... who have thus curtailed their belongings are, however, quite contented with themselves. No doubts ever harass them as to the commodity or appropriateness of their lodgements and look with pity and contempt on friends who remain faithful to old habitations. The drawback to a migratory existence, however, is the fact that, as a French saying has put it, Ceux qui ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... opposition on the part of the home Government remained, the chief enterprise of the colony. Virginia was founded on tobacco, and like the other Southern colonies, sacrificed everything to the raising of her most important commodity; and for Virginia, as for the other Southern colonies, the conditions necessary for the cultivation of her great staple were of determining influence in the development ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... had just the same. The Hitachi had been carrying ten thousand cases of Japanese canned crab to England. A great part of this was saved, and divided between the Wolf and her prize. None of us ever want to see or hear of this commodity again; we were fed on it till most of us loathed it, but as there was nothing else to eat when it was served, we perforce had to eat that or dry bread, and several of us chose the latter. How we groaned when we saw any more crab being brought ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... said the old dame, "he wad hae been nocht the waur o' a pickle mair o' the auld Adam in him. It's a rale usefu' commodity ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... and different commerce, which, desiring the products of those regions, can extend and carry on another trade, which their nations desire and crave. This is that of the Indias, from which is conveyed and bartered silver (a most noble commodity), in return for which are carried the drugs and merchandise that are produced in China and other Oriental kingdoms and provinces, and traded in Filipinas, by which all come to be sustained, united, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... as you'll dispose on't, Madam—for let me tell you—gad, a good handsome proper Fellow is as staple a Commodity as any's in the Nation;—but I wou'd be reserv'd for your own use. Faith, take a Sample to night, and as you like it, the whole Piece; and that's fair and honest dealing I ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... with?" said a brisk dilettante student to the great painter. "With Brains, sir," was the gruff reply—and the right one. It did not give much of what we call information; it did not expound the principles and rules of the art; but, if the inquirer had the commodity referred to, it would awaken him; it would set him a-going, a-thinking, and a-painting to good purpose. If he had not the wherewithal, as was likely enough, the less he had to do with colors and their mixture the better. Many other artists, when asked such a question, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... principle of our Political Economy. That 'a thing is worth what it will bring,' is a basic axiom of all trade. The only price which is recognized in commerce is the market price; which is, again, what a commodity will bring. What a commodity will bring is what the necessities of mankind will make them pay. Thus is exhibited the curious spectacle of the existence of a Religion which inculcates good will and love to our neighbor as the foundation of all true ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... there is no use telling you that; you know I am up as well as I do. I am a modest man—very—but I never lost a picayune by it in my life. Being a scarce commodity among candidates, I thought I would mention it, for fear if I did not, you never would hear it. Candidates are generally considered as nuisances, but they are not; they are the politest men in the world, shake you ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... down very late for dinner, and found his hostess on the verge of annoyance. Mrs. Watton was a large, commanding woman, who seldom thought it worth while to disguise any disapproval she might feel—and she had a great deal of that commodity to expend, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has but one form of taxation the railroad has many forms. The trust in oil or any other commodity can tax the whole nation at its pleasure, but inherently only on the one product it controls. That single taxation is of itself confiscatory enough, as is seen in the $912,000,000 of profits gathered in by the Standard ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the necessary course of circulation, into the hands of the rebels, and enabled them to buy abroad all necessary supplies of arms and ammunition, which, from the extreme poverty of that kingdom and its want of every useful commodity, they could not otherwise find means to purchase. It was therefore recommended to her, that she should pay her forces in base money; and it was asserted that, besides the great saving to the revenue, this species of coin could never ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... the milkman who announces the arrival of the morning's milk with a "barbaric yawp," like that in which Mr. Whitman is supposed to celebrate his own personality, a sturdy beggar? He would certainly resent the imputation. He is a merchant who sells a desirable commodity. Shall he be adjudged ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... merchants arrive at Canfu, the Chinese seize their cargoes, which they convey to warehouses, where the goods are detained six months, until the last merchant ship of the season has arrived; they then detain three parts in ten of every species of commodity, or thirty per cent as duty, and return the rest to the merchants. Besides which, if the emperor has a mind for any particular article, his officers have a right of taking it in preference to any other person, paying for it, however, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... trying to clean a path to the spring, but found their labors unavailing. So they filled a cask which stood in the pantry with water, that they might not fall short of this necessary commodity should ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... fix it up this way, Patty, girl; we'll just pay off all these bills and start fresh. The extra expense we'll charge to experience account—experience is an awfully high-priced commodity, you know—and next month, while we won't exactly scrimp ourselves, we'll keep our eye on the accounts and watch them as they progress. As I've told you before, my darling, I don't expect you to become perfect, or even proficient, in these things all at once. You will need years of experience ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... purposes of a neutral peace. They stand for peace, but it is "peace with honour;" which means, in more explicit terms, peace with undiminished national prestige. Now, national prestige is a very particular commodity, as has been set out in earlier passages of this inquiry; and a peace which is to be kept only on terms of a jealous maintenance of the national honour is likely to be in a somewhat precarious case. If, and when, the national honour is felt to ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... appear to me such discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to COUPLE THE SERPENT WITH THE FOWL. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity by interspersing rural imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great words, and by all the writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... the courts of justice, while the tear of sorrow was unnoticed amid the pageantry of the great, whose extravagance, insolence, and pride were only surpassed by the misery and degradation of those unfortunate beings on whose toils they lived. Justice was bought and sold like any other commodity, and the decisions of judges were influenced by the magnitude of the bribes which were offered them. Besides feudal taxes, the clergy imposed additional burdens, and swarmed wherever there was plunder to be obtained. The people ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... of heart, warranted sound, to be disposed of, shall be willing to treat for said commodity on reasonable terms; doubt not we shall agree for same; shall wait on you for further information when and where you shall appoint. This the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... very little of that freedom which we now regard as essential to successful business. Our wholesale dealers would have been considered an abomination in the Middle Ages. Those who bought up a quantity of a commodity in order to sell it at a high rate were called by the ugly name of forestallers. It was universally believed that everything had a "just" price, which was merely enough to cover the cost of the materials used in its manufacture ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... days before resuming his hated badge. But, curiously enough, the legal relaxation concerning the badge was not extended to the markets. The Jew made the medieval markets, yet he was treated as an unwelcome guest, a commodity to be taxed. This was especially so in Germany. In 1226, Bishop Lorenz, of Breslau, ordered Jews who passed through his domain to pay the same toll as slaves brought to market. The visiting Jew paid toll for everything; but he got part of his money back. He received a yellow badge, which ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... the excess of these duties over those levied on goods exported from Great Britain and consumed in Ireland. The consumer pays the tax on dutiable commodities, and a financially independent Ireland could not raise revenue twice over from the same commodity. She would, for example, have to give a drawback from the Excise duty on spirits exported to England, since a Customs duty would be levied on its import into England. On the other hand, she would be entitled to every penny of revenue derived from the tea and sugar imported ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... the preparation of it, I found it could not at present be brought to an useful state: but I may venture to say, that if proper flax-dressers could be sent to New Zealand, to observe their method of manufacturing it, they might render it a valuable commodity, both to furnish the inhabitants with cloathing, ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... of it at all, would have justified itself as expressing the pretty woman's natural affinity with pretty toys; but now it was the cost of it that struck him. He was beginning to learn from Bessy's bills that no commodity is taxed as high as beauty, and the beauty about him filled him with sudden repugnance, as the disguise of the evil influences that were separating ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... measure will be to enhance by 70 per cent the cost of blue vitriol—an article extensively used in dyeing and in the manufacture of printed and colored cloths. To produce such an augmentation in the price of this commodity will be to discriminate against other great branches of domestic industry, and by increasing their cost to expose them most unfairly to the effects of foreign competition. Legislation can neither be wise nor just which seeks the welfare of a single interest at the expense and to the injury ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... anticipation of a scarcity of some one commodity, a merchant so raises the price as essentially to diminish the sale, *he earns his increased profits*; for an enhanced price is the only practicable check on consumption. For instance, if at the actual rate of consumption the bread-stuff on hand would be consumed a month before the new ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody |
