"Facility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... demons and not men. I fear the white man's drink more than the assagais of the Matabili, which kill men's bodies. Drink puts devils into men and destroys their souls and bodies." Though a Christian himself, and giving the missionaries in his dominions every facility for their work, he has never attempted to make converts by force. A prohibition of the use of alcohol, however, has seemed to him to lie "within the sphere of governmental action," and he has, indeed, imperilled his throne ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... interesting facts have been communicated with regard to the freedmen—their natural endowments, their facility in acquiring knowledge in letters and arms, their industrial habits, their shrewdness in business transactions, their gratitude, their courage, their acquaintance with passing events, their confidence that the result of the rebellion will be the liberation of ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood
... strictures on individuals. The style of Phaedrus is pure and classical, and combines the simple neatness and graceful elegance of the golden age with the vigor and terseness of the silver one. He has the facility of Ovid and the brevity of Tacitus. In the construction of his fables, he displays observation and ingenuity; but he is deficient in imagination. He makes his animals the vehicles of his wisdom, but he does not throw ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... trifling exceptions, let on leases for terms varying from twenty to thirty years, and in farms of sufficient size to employ at the least two or three ploughs. The unlimited issues of government paper and the security afforded by these leases induced the Scottish banks to afford every facility to landlords and tenants to embark capital in the improvement of the land. The substantial education supplied by the parish schools, of which nearly the whole population could then avail themselves, had diffused through all ranks such ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... my identity—which I am sure interests you greatly—before Baron von Marhof, and, we will add, the American Secretary of State, be quite sure that I shall not do so until I have taken precautions against your departure in any unseemly haste. I, myself, dear friend, am not without a certain facility in ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... moment suffices to obtain the likeness, and no constrained position is required. Hence a happy expression of face is instantly caught, and young children may be taken without difficulty. To those who wish for several copies of the same Portrait, the Calotype offers every facility, as an unlimited number of impressions may be printed, by the agency of the sun, from the glass plate. These will all be exactly equal to the first, and may be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... ever-ready explanation of conduct and its facility in finding motives, ascribed Sir Nigel's chronic impecuniosity to the fact that he contributed to the support of Mrs. Avory and her little girl. Mrs. Avory, who knew quite well what was said of her, ate her cold mutton for supper, and economized ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... company of a person who is able to talk well on a great variety of subjects, is much sought after. The importance, therefore, of cultivating the art of conversation, cannot easily be over-estimated. It should be the aim of all intelligent persons to acquire the habit of talking sensibly and with facility upon all topics of general interest to society, so that they may both interest others and be themselves interested, in whatever company they may chance ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... the last session in favour of Roman Catholics, was again exerted in the present session on behalf of Protestant Dissenting ministers and school-masters. A bill to relieve them from some painful and absurd restrictions, was carried with great facility. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... for purposes of defense, these two forces ought, owing to the facility with which troops might be transported from one to the other, by the net-work of railroads in Middle and West Tennessee, to be considered almost as one. General Sherman remarked, also, on the facility with which reinforcements ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... which troubled me most was your reference to modern criticism," she went on, recovering her facility. "I was brought up to believe that the Bible was true. The governess—Miss Standish, you know, such a fine type of Englishwoman—reads the children Bible stories every Sunday evening. They adore them, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... The facility of discounting bills of exchange, it may be thought, indeed, gives the English merchants a conveniency equivalent to the cash accounts of the Scotch merchants. But the Scotch merchants, it must be remembered, can discount their bills ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... this school the early labors of Hannah More were devoted; and she soon attracted attention by her accomplishments, especially in the modern languages, in which she conversed with great accuracy and facility. But her talents were more remarkable than her accomplishments; and eminent men sought her society and friendship, who in turn introduced her to their own circle of friends, by all of whom she was admired. Thus she gradually ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... now to sympathize with Cosmo's desire to find Everest before it should have disappeared with its giant brothers. Its location was accurately known from the Indian government surveys, and Captain Arms had every facility for finding the exact position of the Ark. They advanced slowly toward the northwest, a hundred glasses eagerly ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... establish fixed forms or to give general instructions that will cover all cases. Officers and noncommissioned officers must be so trained that they can apply suitable means and methods to each case as it arises. Study and practice are necessary to acquire proper facility in this respect. Theoretical instruction can not replace practical instruction; the former supplies correct ideas and gives to practical work an interest, purpose, ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... is a fact that in the snail which is so common and grows to such an enormous size in the valleys and on the slopes of your great Cordilleras I found an animal combining a maximum of sympathetic harmony with the greatest facility of being observed, the best health and habits, and the utmost simplicity of prononcee manifestation. But, you ask, what seek I, then? My Heaven, Monsieur! there was the grand Idea,—the Idea upon which I build my ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Popish sense for my ejaculation; and he seemed to accept my disclaimer with unusual facility, and ran on once more upon what had ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... argument. That is, the danger of revolution which is rising on the horizon of all Europe and which, supported by England, is demonstrating a new mode of fighting. Five monarchs have been dethroned in this war, and the amazing facility with which the strongest Monarchy in the world was overthrown may help to make us feel anxious and call to our memory the saying: exempla trahunt. Let it not be said that in Germany or Austria-Hungary the conditions ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species have been founded. They can shew, too, that the changes daily taking place in ourselves—the facility that attends long practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases,—the strengthening of the passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of those habitually curbed,—the development of every faculty, bodily, moral, intellectual, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... "Facility to believe, impatience to doubt, temerity to assever, glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, sloth to search, seeking things in words, resting in a part of nature—these and the like have been the things ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... aquiline nose of the latter, seeming to possess an eagle-like and hostile curvature,—his compressed lip, sarcastic and cold expression, and the fine classical chin, a feature in which so many of the Saxon race fail, a haughty scorn that caused strangers usually to avoid him. Eve drew with great facility and truth, and she had an eye, as her cousin had rightly said, "full of tints." Often and often had she sketched both of these loved faces, and never without wondering wherein that strong difference existed in nature which she had never been able to impart ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the completion of this tragedy), for the first time these six years, "Venice Preserved," a similar reply on a different occasion by Renault, and other coincidences arising from the subject. I need hardly remind the gentlest reader, that such coincidences must be accidental, from the very facility of their detection by reference to so popular a play on the stage and in the closet as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... crime.—Around Lyons,[3314] under the same pretext and at the same date, similar mobs perform similar visitations, and, on all these occasions, "the rent-rolls are burnt, and houses are pillaged and set on fire. Municipal authority, organized for the security of property, is in many hands but one facility more for its violation. The National Guard seems to be armed merely for the protection of robbery and disorder."—For more than thirty years, M. de Chaponay, the father of six children of whom three are in the service, expended ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of Europe;" of the "abominable extravagance of buying a great and good novel in a perishable form for a few cents;" of the increased accessibility of books by the "masses of the people" that must result from increasing prices; and of the greatly increased facility with which circulating libraries may be formed whensoever the "great and wealthy houses" shall have been given power to claim from each and every reader of Dickens's novels, as their share of the monopoly profits, thrice ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... man shorter than the General, but not quite so slight. His hair was intensely black and he wore glasses. He is an accomplished linguist, speaks English with facility and is acknowledged by the priests to be the equal of any of them in reading and speaking Latin. It is to be remarked that while Aguinaldo is not a man of high education he has as associates in his labors for Philippine independence a considerable number of scholarly men. It ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... crop of armed men. The Union, sir, is dissolved. That is an accomplished fact in the path of this discussion that men may as well heed. One of your confederates has already wisely, bravely, boldly confronted public danger, and she is only ahead of many of her sisters because of her greater facility for speedy action. The greater majority of those sister States, under like circumstances, consider her cause as their cause; and I charge you in their name to-day: "Touch not Saguntum."[37] It is not only their cause, but it ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... nymphs them round enclosed had, Wond'ring with what facility, About they turn'd them in such strange agility; And still when they unloosed had, With words full of delight they gently kissed them, And thus sweetly to sing they never missed them. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... soon exhausted, he turned back at Thorpe Lunatic Asylum; but Borrow went off to Yarmouth, and lived on the Caister Denes for a few days. I don't remember hearing of any exploits. He had a wonderful facility for learning languages, which, however, he never appears to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... humblest classes, proves that he was as much mistaken in this as he was in many of the views which he maintained. There are thousands of persons who would probably never have thought of laying by a penny, but for the facility of the savings bank: it would have seemed so useless to try. The small hoard in the cupboard was too ready at hand, and would have become dissipated before it accumulated to any amount; but no sooner was a place of deposit provided, where sums as small as a shilling ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... And indeed if elegancy of style proceedeth, and English pens maintain that stream we have of late observed to flow from many, we shall, in a few years, be fain to learn Latin to understand English, and a work will prove of equal facility in either". Milton, both in his verse and prose, has carried this affectation to such a degree, as not only to be frequently beyond a meer English apprehension, but even beyond that of an ordinary proficient in the learned languages. Yet, so far were these ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... becoming dangerous, or there is a tendency to the grosser insubordination of a "kicking match." Not so in a pony-carriage: low down upon the ground, even under their very heels, you are completely at the mercy of your team; and the facility of egress in the event of a runaway only tempts you to the fatal expedient of jumping out—another form of expression ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... The facility with which concrete can be used in founding under water renders it particularly suitable for subaqueous structures. The method of dropping it from hopper barges in masses of 100 tons at a time, inclosed in a bag of coarse stuff, has been successfully ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... mentioned that she was superior to most women in the habit of close attention to whatever she undertook. This was the real key to her facility in languages, history, music, drawing, and calisthenics, as her professor called female gymnastics. The flexible creature's limbs were in secret steel. She could go thirty feet up a slack rope hand over hand with wonderful ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... for infinite divisibility, which are derived from the point of contact. I know there is no mathematician, who will not refuse to be judged by the diagrams he describes upon paper, these being loose draughts, as he will tell us, and serving only to convey with greater facility certain ideas, which are the true foundation of all our reasoning. This I am satisfyed with, and am willing to rest the controversy merely upon these ideas. I desire therefore our mathematician to form, as accurately ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... its jaws must be likewise constructed to devour prey, its claws to seize and tear it, its teeth to rend it, its limbs to overtake it, its organs of sense to discern it afar. Again, in order to enable the jaw to seize with facility, a certain form of condyle is necessary, and the zygomatic arch must be well developed to give attachment to the masseter muscle. Again, the muscles of the neck must be powerful, whence results a special form in the vertebrae and the occiput, where the muscles are attached. Yet again, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... that with this simple circumstance, facility of getting Books, the whole conditions of the business from top to bottom were changed. Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded them! The Teacher needed not now to gather men personally ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... and among others the Clipper family departed. We missed Mr. Clipper greatly, for though bearing strong evidence to Darwin's theory about the face, he was a chatty companion and capital "raconteur," while his facility for remembering names, even of places visited in his youngest days, was ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... academies for the pages, who are the sons of gentlemen, and receive their education without any expence to their parents. Dr. Johnson said, that manners were best learned at those courts.' You are admitted with great facility to the prince's company, and yet must treat him with much respect. At a great court, you are at such a distance that you get no good.' I said, 'Very true: a man sees the court of Versailles, as if he saw it on a theatre.' He said, 'The best book that ever was written ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... reserve, make friends, yet not sacrifice his individuality and family traditions? He recalled his father's haughty: "Associate with your own kind, or walk the path alone." But he was too young to find joy in aloofness. The facility of speech, the adaptive moulding to another's mood was not ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... conduct—it was certainly a year of grace. All the help I had to get in touch with the world I was invading was a piece of paper not much bigger than the palm of my hand—in which I held it—torn out of a larger plan of London for the greater facility of reference. It had been the object of careful study for some days past. The fact that I could take a conveyance at the station never occurred to my mind, no, not even when I got out into the street, and stood, taking my anxious bearings, in the midst, so to speak, of twenty thousand hansoms. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... as yet—the young man at the head of the table gave others every facility for silence—Richard could occupy his thought in many directions. Among other things, he instituted a comparison between the young lady who sat opposite to him and someone—not a young lady, it is true, but of the same ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... never been fairly tried. For, owing to his prodigious superiority in weight, strength, and skill, his victories had always been certain and easy; and in proportion to the facility with which he uniformly smashed an antagonist, his pugnacity and insolence were inflamed. He thus became an odious nuisance in the neighbourhood, and the terror of every mother who had a son, and of every wife who had a husband who possessed a spirit to ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... want of such a school having been long a source of opprobrium among foreign writers on England. The Shakespeare Gallery was sufficient to convince the world that English genius only needed encouragement to obtain a facility, versatility, and independence of thought unknown to the Italian, Flemish, or French schools. That Gallery he had long hoped to have left to a generous public, but the recent Vandalic revolution in France had cut up his revenue by the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... identical in principle in both countries. This method, the d'Hondt rule, favours the largest parties, and this explains why, in the smaller Belgian constituencies, cartels or combinations of parties take place. The Swedish system enables such combined action to take place with greater facility. It enables two parties to make use of the same motto without presenting a common list of candidates. No inter-party negotiations are required, as in Belgium, with reference to the order in which ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... eating and sleeping with the men employed on the estate, but being the constant companion of Bertha, who was laboring to civilize and educate him. She had been partially successful in her philanthropic labors; for Noddy knew how to behave himself with propriety, and could read and write with tolerable facility. But books and literature were not Noddy's forte, and he still retained an unhealthy relish for ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... besides being a Member of the Legion of Honour, was invested with the decorations of several other Orders. He wrote French with as much facility as his native language, and many French journals were proud to number him among their contributors. He also assisted Madame de Stael in her celebrated work De l'Allemagne, and superintended the publication of her posthumous Considerations sur la ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... sermons. Yet he may be tempted, half unconsciously, to treat them too lightly in practices, particularly if he is beset with a consciousness that he is not "a born preacher," or if he stands in the opposite danger of having a "fatal" facility of speech. Let the Clergyman only remember that his sermon, his public delivery of instruction, of exhortation, in the Lord's name, is not to be an exhibition of his own powers of thought or utterance, but a faithful message-bearing to his own flock, in the light of what he knows of Christ and ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... only one thing at a time, a grand maxim in education, when rightly understood. These exercises should be commenced with the first steps in reading, and continued until the articulation is perfected, and the student has acquired facility as well as precision, grace as well as force, and distinctness and ease have been ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... enough, next to Eveena, Eive was by far the best reader. Eunane understood infinitely better what she was perusing; but the art of reading aloud is useless, and therefore never taught, in schools whose every pupil learns to read with the usual facility a character which the practised eye can interpret incomparably faster than the voice could possibly utter it. This reading might have afforded many opportunities of private converse with Eveena, but that Eive, whose knowledge was by no means proportionate to her intelligence, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... as I saw these Martians for the first time they seemed to be endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon them with some facility. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... got hold of some volumes of Byron, and had read them together at school, chiefly after retiring to the chamber they shared together. The consequences were an unbounded admiration and a facility of reference, with the use of emotional adjectives. Alec did not know a single poem of that writer, except the one about the Assyrian coming down like a ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... be a wrongful ghost at all," the apparition continued, "it would be much pleasanter to be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. And what would happen if he were to see me, and find out, as I am sure he would, how long and why I had inhabited his house, I can scarcely conceive. I have seen him in his bursts of passion; and, although ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... and meditations one shall regain his youth, and others shall attain to be Shien-sien, i.e. 'Terrestrial Beati,' in whose state every desire is gratified, whilst they have the power to transport themselves from one place to another, however distant, with speed and facility." Schott, on the same subject, says: "By Sian or Shin-sian are understood in the old Chinese conception, and particularly in that of the Tao-Kiao [or Taosse] sect, persons who withdraw to the hills to lead the life of anchorites, and who have attained, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... government spending, much of it to help ensure a smooth transition to civilian rule, ballooned the budget deficit and caused inflation and interest rates to rise. The lack of fiscal discipline forced the IMF to declare Nigeria not in compliance with an 18-month standby facility started in January 1991. Lagos has set ambitious targets for expanding oil production capacity and is offering foreign companies more attractive investment incentives. Government efforts to reduce Nigeria's ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... are most wonderful linguists. I met a great many men who knew three, four or five languages, such as Brahui, Nharui, Persian, Afghan, and even Hindustani, and on experiment they showed remarkable facility for picking up and correctly retaining words of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... few months Mary thought that it was more work training her than it would have been to do the work herself. They had many visitors, both Christians and others. John loved to sit and talk with the men who came, and although his facility in the use of the spoken language developed, the progress he made in the book work required by the course of study was extremely slow. Mary often longed to shoo the men visitors out the door, lead John into his study, set him down at his desk, and shut him ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... ocean communications may be vulnerable throughout its length; but it does not follow that an assailant can operate against it with equal facility at every point, nor does it follow that it is at every point equally worth assailing. Lines running past hostile naval ports are especially open to assault in the part near the ports; and lines formed by the confluence ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... was produced, and the facility with which it was disposed of, caused Mr. Brigham to stare. He endured its consumption, however, with the most philosophical fortitude, until we began to drink toasts, make speeches, and exhibit other indications of ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... discharges are unheard of and resignations rare. When I started clerking for this madhouse I was assistant to the assistant Chief Clerk's assistant. Now, ten years later, by dint of mighty effort and a cultivated facility for avoiding Senatorial investigations, I've succeeded in losing only one of ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond
... man, perjuring himself with a readiness and facility most unbecoming in a student desiring letters of probation from the Protesting and ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... not to have lost his facility. "But my ear is getting slower," I said. "For instance, I eavesdropped a while ago when you were talking about your Huron soldiers, and I got most of what you said because you spoke English. I doubt if I could if ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... re-examining the parts the testicles were found in the scrotum. When he found that there was no chance for escape he acknowledged that he was an impostor and gave an exhibition in which, with incredible facility, he pulled both testes up from the bottom of the scrotum to the external abdominal ring. At the word of command he could pull up one testicle, then another, and let them drop simultaneously; he performed other like feats ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... studying her. Mr. Holt closed the Bible reverently, and announced a prayer, whereupon the family knelt upon the floor and leaned their elbows on the seats of their chairs. Honora did likewise, wondering at the facility with which Mr. Holt worded his appeal, and at the number of things he found to pray for. Her knees had begun to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that Germans do not tolerate the vapid dreary drawing-room songs we listen to complacently in this country; for in England people often have beautiful voices without any musical understanding, or technical facility without charm. I suppose such cases must occur amongst Germans too, and in the end one speaks of a foreign nation partly from personal experience, which must be narrow, and partly from hearsay. I have met Germans who were not musical, but I ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... a man of action and of thought to be prodigal of words. And she knew that a facility in making pretty speeches is in nine cases out of ten merely the refuge of those who desire to conceal indifference or shallowness ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... bayonetted for smoking in a forbidden vicinity, and that one had died and the other was still in hospital, I have the honour to inform you that I visited the camp at Guestrow on February 12, 1916. I did not notify the camp authorities of my arrival. I was shown every courtesy and received every facility for speaking to the British prisoners out of earshot of the Germans. I talked with a large number of British non-commissioned officers and with some of the men, and all were unanimous on two points; ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... gave his wife the longest limit, so, in addition to the chicken, a bird whose unhappy attribute is a facility for being devoured with the utmost speed, a mixed grill of cutlets, bacon, and French sausages appeared ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... did not see that. That I could not teach him to speak the Taghalian dialects so well, that he could read them with facility before Saturday. But I could do a good deal better. Did he remember writing a note to old Jack Percival for me five years ago? No, he remembered no such thing; he knew Jack Percival, but never wrote a note to him in his life. Did he remember ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... GATES (1795-1854).—Poet, b. at Berlin, Conn., was a precocious child, and a morbid and impractical, though versatile man, with a fatal facility in writing verse on all manner of subjects and in nearly every known metre. His sentimentalism appealed to a wide circle, but his was one of the tapers which were extinguished by Lowell. He had also a reputation as a geologist. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... with the chisel, in so far as the quality and spirit of the performance are concerned; but the former may, nevertheless, drive the latter out of the market, and seems in a great measure to have done so, by the infinitely superior facility and rapidity of its operation. Hence the gradual decay, and almost extinction among us, of this old art, of which former ages have left us so many beautiful specimens. It is said to survive now, if at all, not among our artists by profession, whose ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... afterwards ascertained at our camp. My chief object in visiting the lake was to cultivate a good understanding with these natives in the hopes that one of them might be induced to accompany me down the Lachlan. The facility with which Piper, then at a distance of 200 miles from his native place, Bathurst, conversed with these people showed that their dialects are not so varied as is commonly believed; and I had little doubt that ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... also that the above-mentioned Congregation will in a few years' time be endowed with revenues sufficient for the support of the Community, Thus widows without children, and young girls who desire to serve God in chastity, obedience, and poverty, will have every facility for entering it, since they will be received without any other payment than that of a dowry or pension provided by ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... than half windows; and, when the observer stood at the western side of the building, the edifice offered but a small obstacle to a full view of the rising sun. It was, in truth, but a very comfortless open place, through which the daylight shone with natural facility. On its front were divers ornaments in wood, designed by Richard and executed by Hiram; but a window in the centre of the second story, immediately over the door or grand entrance, and the steeple were the pride of the building. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... that, if the passions peculiar to youth virulently assail virtue and expose the heart to the seductions of pleasure, they also give a great facility of doing good, by inflaming youthful zeal which age never fails to cool. The ardor aroused by them for the commission of evil can be easily employed for the practice of virtue; they are young and fiery steeds which ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... agreed to wait outside from a quarter past seven onwards. He looked forward to the occasion with painful eagerness, for in the cab on the way from the theatre to the station he thought she would let him kiss her. The vehicle gave every facility for a man to put his arm round a girl's waist (an advantage which the hansom had over the taxi of the present day), and the delight of that was worth the cost ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... as in grafting trees, the capacity of one species or variety to take on another is incidental on generally unknown differences in their vegetative systems; so in crossing, the greater or less facility of one species to unite with another is incidental on unknown differences in their reproductive systems. There is no more reason to think that species have been specially endowed with various degrees of sterility to prevent them crossing and breeding in Nature, than to think that trees have been ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... shimmering in cream satin was the animated heart of another group. His love for scandal and his facility for acquiring the latest tidbit made him the delight of many an old tabby cat. Now his eyes shone with the joy of imparting ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... well as all his countrymen, had not the same facility of pronunciation as the Mallecollese; we were therefore obliged to tell him our names, modified according to the softer organs of the Otaheitans. His features were rather handsome, his eyes large and very lively; and the whole countenance expressed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... what papa was saying the other morning at breakfast. He said that he had had the houses built on the most approved principles, with every sort of convenience and facility for the promotion of health and order, and yet when he took a party of gentleman down to the pit last week, he was utterly ashamed to observe the squalor and misery of the place. He said that some of the worst slums of London could hardly be worse, except in the matter ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... stars in their buttonholes,[2] and sat at another table conversing in an unknown lingo with a crowd of foreigners. He made inquiries, and found it was Esperanto they were talking. He was so much struck by their facility, and the practical way in which they had set his business to rights in a minute (the waiter was an Esperantist trained ad hoc!), that he decided to give up French and go in for Esperanto. This man was a real learner of French, who had spent a long ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... of a Milton or a Dante. Occasionally a lecture before some literary association brought his name into the newspapers in connection with remarks that kindled his vanity into a flame. Debating clubs afforded another field for display, and he made liberal use of the facility. ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... referred the matter to Mr. Crown-Solicitor Croke, to ascertain what might be the legal impediments. Impediments, obstacles, difficulties! But who had asked for them? The application had been for facilities. Of course, Mr. C.S. Croke, as instructed, and with all the facility of any lawyer worth his salt, duly found the required impediments; and so the disturbing enemy was defeated, and the ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... good demanding sacrifice in general terms one day, and the next day, for local reasons, opposing the elimination of some unneeded Federal facility. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower
... Mr. Tarleton," he said, "just tell the Office of Works that it is the Prime Minister's wish that I should have every facility, and as to staff, look at these." As he spoke he touched a bundle of papers which lay on the table. "You have choice ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... in spite of this facility in obtaining a divorce, there are very few who recur to it, a circumstance that ought to have weight with those persons who fight furiously against a measure so conducive to the real defence of the family, defence in the sense that its condition and functions would ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... million of combatants on the side of the enemy, let the hero of the book be opposed to them, and we have perforce to believe, whether we like it or not, that the said knight wins the victory by the single might of his strong arm. And then, what shall we say of the facility with which a born queen or empress will give herself over into the arms of some unknown wandering knight? What mind, that is not wholly barbarous and uncultured, can find pleasure in reading of how a great tower full of knights sails away across the sea like a ship ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... with equal facility Mr. Tag-rag's hard port and his soft blarney; but all fools have large swallows. When, at length, Tag-rag with exquisite skill and delicacy alluded to the painfully evident embarrassment of his "poor Tabby," ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of industry, every sound remedy that can be devised should be applied for the relief of the farmer. He represents a character, a type of citizenship, and a public necessity that must be preserved and afforded every facility for ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... Satan repeated, "and he who plays upon it dies at once. But," he added cheerfully, "that need not worry you. I noticed a marvelous facility in your arm work. Your staccato and spiccato are wonderful. Every form of bowing appears child's play to you. It will be easy for you ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... mislead; carefully chosen figures give a wrong impression; the reviewer is tempted to pick out passages that support only his contention, whether eulogistic or depreciatory. Leslie Stephen speaks of "the ease with which a man endowed with a gift of popular rhetoric, and a facility for catching at the current phrases, can set up as teacher, however palpable to the initiated may be his ignorance." A larger proportion of the great mass of books yearly published are mere trash, appealing to untrained readers, and only confirming them in unwarranted ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... whatever is known, the "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue," is one of the four or five greatest compositions that exist for this instrument. The remarkable thing about this fantasia is the freedom of its treatment and the facility with which it lends itself to virtuoso handling, as distinguished from the rather limited treatment of the piano usual in Bach's works. The second part of the fantasia is occupied by a succession of recitatives of an extremely graphic and poetic character. ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... he thought—'that fearful hole leads to the subterranean sewers of the city, and also to the Dark Vaults beyond them. By means of that platform, the villains of the Infernal Regions below, can pass to and from their den with facility ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... uttered the two words, "any scandal. It was suggested at the Prefecture to-day that it would be well to make a perquisition, not only in Mrs. Pargeter's own house, but also in the houses of some of her intimates. Mr. Pargeter, as you know, gave the police every possible facility. Nothing was found in the Villa Pargeter which could throw any light on Mrs. Pargeter's disappearance. Now, Monsieur, before subjecting you to such an unpleasant occurrence, I decided ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his friends, who were interested in his work, and felt confidence in his work, unknown to him, selected a new house, and furnished it throughout with every facility for convenience and comfort, and when all was completed invited him and his family to it, and made him a present of the loan of his house, and ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... this time sufficiently mastered the art of penmanship to enter the events of the day in my journal with facility, which I seldom failed to do. My notes are, however, far too numerous to be copied. I therefore write out only such as I deem most likely to be interesting to ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... they sprout directly, and alternate with the fine native cedars and hollies in clothing the streets with shadow. Several citizens, as Mr. Richard Wright and Mr. Thomas C. Hand, whose handsome cottages are tasteful specimens of our seaside architecture, have been tempted by this facility of vegetable life at Atlantic City to lay out elaborate gardens, which with suitable culture are successful. Fine avenues of the best construction lead off to Shell Beach or to the single hill boasted by the locality. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... severe punishments. Thirdly, on account of a great desire for or a great pleasure in the sin: for men are not easily deterred from such sins unless they be severely punished. Fourthly, on account of the facility of committing a sin and of concealing it: for such like sins, when discovered, should be more severely punished in order to deter others from ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... prince had now, with the facility with which children pass from one subject to another, turned his attention to a large diamond brooch fastened to Josephine's golden sash. "How beautiful it is!" he exclaimed—"how it is flashing as though it were a star fallen from heaven, and fastened to your breast, because it loves you, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... was conquered with equal facility, and the East Angles, from their hatred of the Mercian government, which had been established over them by treachery and violence, and probably exercised with tyranny, immediately rose in arms and craved ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... future. This ignorance and this curiosity had led to the utmost confusion in human knowledge; all things were still mere personal experience; the nomenclatures of theory did not exist; printing was done at enormous cost; scientific communication had little or no facility; the Church persecuted science and all research which was based on the analysis of natural phenomena. Persecution begat mystery. So, to the people as well as to the nobles, physician and alchemist, mathematician and astronomer, astrologer and necromancer were six attributes, all meeting ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... entered the latter than we were observed by the natives, and could distinguish them, through our glasses, shoving off from the bank in four or five large canoes, and paddling towards us. Their boats are all built flat-bottomed for greater facility in shooting rapids, and were each manned by a crew of ten or twelve men, who presented a curious spectacle—their faces and bodies completely covered with tattooing, their long black locks streaming in the wind, and bright brass ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... inquiries of a near-by policeman and found that they could reach it by the elevated. Their encounter with this metropolitan facility for transportation turned out to be among the most memorable bits of sightseeing of their trip. Neither of the girls had ever imagined anything so lurid as the Saturday noon jam, the dense, packed throngs waiting on the platforms and bursting out through the opened doors like beans from a split ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... they bound themselves not to leave it, and to pay an annual tribute of the value of forty piastres each man above the age of fifteen.' They lived in tents near the large towns, and seem only to have worked as much as was requisite to keep body and soul together. But, he adds, 'they possess a natural facility and quickness in acquiring the knowledge of the arts,' and musical performance was their forte. They were also employed as slaves in the households of the boyards, especially in the kitchens, which they made 'not less disgusting than the receptacles of swine.' They were bastinadoed, often ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... was the facility with which the Baron made a catspaw of him. For the old Vicomte slowly stepped down as it were from his high standpoint of indifference, and allowed himself to be interested in the financier's schemes. It was out of keeping with the attitude which my patron had assumed a ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... number the fluent use of the French language, which my mother early bestowed upon us as if its acquisition was mere sport-bestowed; for, unhappily, I know of no German grammar school where pupils can learn to speak French with facility; and how many never-to-be-forgotten memories of travel, what great benefits during my period of study in Paris I owe to this capacity! We obtained it by the help of bonnes, who found it easier to speak French to us because our mother always did ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... noted with amusement that his love of success led him to play tricks and cheat in order not to "fall into the pit." At other times, if the conversation languished, he proposed that each person should tell a story; and when no Boccaccio-like facility inspired the company, he sometimes launched out into one of those eerie and thrilling recitals, such as he must often have heard from the improvisatori of his native island. Bourrienne states that Bonaparte's realism required darkness ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the plentiful small herring or menhaden. He taught them the proper care of the soil, and the rotation of crops. This passionate love of the earth was an integral part of the man. As the force of his mind drew its power, not from mere rhetorical facility, but from fundamental principles, so his magnificent body, like that of the fabled Antaeus, seemed to draw perennial potency from contact with the earth. To acquire land—he owned nearly eighteen hundred acres at the time of his death—and to cultivate it to the highest ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... beautiful, yet hindered him so greatly in the painting of figures, that the older he grew the worse he did them. And there is no doubt that if a man does violence to his nature with too ardent studies, although he may sharpen one edge of his genius, yet nothing that he does appears done with that facility and grace which are natural to those who put each stroke in its proper place temperately and with a calm intelligence full of judgment, avoiding certain subtleties that rather burden a man's work with a certain laboured, dry, constrained, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... John Jay to the affectionate regard of men. It was his nature to be serious and thoughtful. Among friends he talked freely, often facetiously, becoming, at times, peculiarly instructive and fascinating, as his remarkable memory gave up with accuracy and facility the product of extensive travel, varied experiences, close observation, and much reading. His statements, especially those relating to historical and political details, were rarely questioned. We read ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the means, all our grammar and high school masters will be able to order from the library such books as are suited to their classes. This plan introduces the children to a kind of reading somewhat better than would otherwise reach them, and, best of all, it gives them great facility in expression." ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... infidelity, that Mr. Foxton, late of Oxford, has adopted in his 'Popular Christianity;' as perhaps also Mr. Froude in his 'Nemesis.' It is not very easy, indeed, to say what Mr. Foxton positively believes; having, like his German prototypes, a greater facility of telling what he does believe, and of wrapping up what he does believe in a most impregnable mysticism. He certainly rejects, however, all that which, when rejected a century ago, left, in the estimate of every one, an infidel in puris naturalibus. ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... by any similar institution anywhere. The course of study is progressively graded with a view to giving students a thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the facts and principles upon which their future work is to be based. These clinic exercises in connection and immediately following give them facility and readiness in the art of applying the facts and principles which they have acquired in recognizing ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... it dies out and gives place to the odiously convenient pump, with the last patent on its cast-iron uninterestingness, does it not seem as if the farmyard aspect had lost half its attraction? So long as the dairy farm exists, doubtless there must be every facility for getting water in abundance; but the loss of the well-sweep cannot be made up to us even if our milk were diluted to twice ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... scouts, until a scout was within ten feet of a box on the opposite side. Then the contents of that particular box would have to be disclosed and the men stood out. Troops without any enemy within twenty feet could be returned to their boxes for facility in moving. Playing on such a scale would admit also of the introduction of the problem of provisions and supplies. Little toy Army Service waggons can be bought, and it could be ruled that troops must have one such waggon for every fifty ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... reconciling and making attractive his course of life, whatever may have been his feelings at the commencement of it. The persons who condemn are those who have driven him to this base means of existence; the facility with which money is obtained from those who give (through the habit of doing so from having seen their parents do it, or because they believe the distressed is a poor Jew and has no recognised refuge), induces an opinion that this is the proper and legitimate ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... opportunity. Men and women get their chance in various ways; some of implacable temper and versatile gifts thrust themselves to the position they need for the exercise of their powers; others display an astonishing facility in securing honours and occasions they can then only waste; others, outside their specific gift, are the creatures of luck or the victims of modesty, tactlessness or incapacity. Most of the large businesses ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... doctor's house. The hints of his story that got about made him an interesting figure, especially to women, and his remarkable gifts were recognised as soon as circumstances began to give him fair play. All modern things were of interest to him, and his knowledge, acquired with astonishing facility, formed the fund of talk which had singular charm alike for those who did and those who did not understand it. Undeniably shy, he yet, when warmed to a subject, spoke with nerve and confidence. In days of jabber, more or less impolite, this appearance of an articulate mortal, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... had been hers, none of the domestic arts were unknown to her. She acquired them with ease and practised them with the air of a dignified princess and neat-handed facility. While the other children of the house stewed over lessons and rebelled against essential tasks, to Soosie everything seemed to make for holiday. She read voraciously, so that her application of English became so keen that she was the first to detect verbal dissonances. She, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... was like the stone of Sisyphus, and which came every Monday, crashing down on to the feather of his pen, Etienne worked for three or four literary magazines. Still, do not be alarmed; he put no artistic conscientiousness into his work. This man of Sancerre had a facility, a carelessness, if you call it so, which ranked him with those writers who are mere scriveners, literary hacks. In Paris, in our day, hack-work cuts a man off from every pretension to a literary position. When he can do no more, or no longer cares for advancement, the man who can ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... heads bent over the page eagerly, while Roy, in a low voice, read the facts about No. 131. He had been in jail twice, it seemed, his last term having expired, as Roy figured, some four months previous. He was noted for his suave manners and the facility with which he ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... nominally a heavy artillery regiment, was thoroughly schooled in the heavy tactics and also as light or field artillery and infantry; able or qualified to be used in either arm of the service with equal facility. The order to proceed to the front was hailed with delight, duty in the field being ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... who, without being original or inventive, have still, through strong understanding and culture, much to say that will profit their contemporaries; men of a certain mental calibre, of talent, activity, will, cleverness, of verbal facility and of prominent ambition and in most cases of audacity, and who by discipline and labor attain to a style which for their purposes is effective. Of this class Jeffrey, Brougham, Macaulay are conspicuous ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... there may be much ability Shown in this sort of desultory rhyme; But there's a conversational facility, Which may round off an hour upon a time. Of this I'm sure at least, there's no servility In mine irregularity of chime, Which rings what's uppermost of new or hoary,[nn] Just as I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... relaxation associate with the family. You will learn to speak better from women and children in three months, than from men in a year. Such a situation, too, will render more easy a due attention to economy of time and money. Having pursued your main studies here about two years, and acquired a facility in speaking French, take a tour of four or five months through this country and Italy, return then to Virginia, and pass a year in Williamsburg, under the care of Mr. Wythe; and you will be ready to enter on the public stage, with superior advantages. I have proposed to you to carry on the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the Indians. Love of story telling. Appreciation of style. Power and resources of their languages. Facility in acquiring foreign languages. Native writers in the English tongue. In Latin. In Spanish. Ancient books of Aztecs. Of ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... its immense volume never dwindled to the proportions of a soprano. The priest recited and modulated in this extraordinary key, introducing all the ornaments peculiar to the ancient Arabic chant with a facility which an operatic singer might have envied. Then there was a moment's silence, broken again almost immediately by a succession of heavy sounds which can only be described as resembling rhythmical thunder, rising and falling three times at equal intervals; another ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... losses approaching 100 percent. Other major systems (such as highways, airports, and pile-supported piers at water terminals) have better survivability characteristics and therefore would fare much better, with damage generally in the moderate range of 15 to 30 percent. These transportation facility loss estimates are stated in terms of immediate post-quake effects. They do not reflect the impact of priority emergency recovery efforts and expedient alternatives that are available, some within hours, to aid in restoration ...
— An Assessment of the Consequences and Preparations for a Catastrophic California Earthquake: Findings and Actions Taken • Various
... cold countries is soft and fine, while that of the warmer climates is, on the other hand, harder, firmer, and more lasting. Hard wool is easier for the weaver to handle, and the tufts can be cropped with more facility. It is partly owing to these facts that the rugs of the cold districts are most ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... this, the coast was just what a pirate wants. The map shows a series of natural harbours, often backed by lagunes which offer every facility for the escape of the rover from his pursuers; and while in the sixteenth century there were no deep ports for vessels of heavy draught, there were endless creeks, shallow harbours, and lagunes where the Corsairs' galleys (which never drew more than six feet of water) could take ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... devoted to the adepts. He defends nothing; for this oracle delivers his dictum, and details every event as matters not questionable. He sits on the tripod; and every page is embellished by a horoscope, which he explains with the utmost facility. This voluminous monument of the folly of the age is a quarto valued at some guineas! It is entitled, "Christian Astrology, modestly treated of in three books, by William Lilly, student in Astrology, 2nd edition, 1659." The most curious part of this work is "a Catalogue of most astrological ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... being broken in some places by rocks, and encumbered by fallen timber in others. Here is where the jumping powers of the kangaroo came in handily, as he could clear rocks and logs with the utmost facility, and he had the ability to select a comparatively smooth spot to come down upon. His jumping is done with the muscles of his very powerful hind legs. He doesn't use his fore legs at all in walking or jumping, employing them principally as hands and arms, very much ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Chapel. An antique repose is displayed in the whole work, perfectly agreeing with the character of the lady as described by Michel Angelo, and which suits the advanced age at which she is painted. The execution is like that of the picture in the Florentine Tribune, in the wonderful facility of its execution. In the coloring a carnation hue is remarkable, like that in Michel Angelo's Roman works. The hands of the figure are thought to be by some other artist. Only the head and part of the person seem to be by the author. The picture has suffered ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... spring was her commercial interest,—this the one motive of all her important political acts, or enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor, but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility. The fame of success remains, when the motives of attempt are forgotten; and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in which while ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... that in Scripture, genius as displayed in literary insight and facility, in ingenuity and inventiveness as to the various arts, and even in the conception of instruments of husbandry, is attributed to Divine inspiration. It may not be the same order of inspiration by which "men spake from God, being moved by the Holy ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... began between the two women. After Mercedes had freely taught Saxon the loose-wristed facility of playing accompaniments on the ukulele, she proposed an exchange. Her time was past, she said, for such frivolities, and she offered the instrument for the breakfast cap of which Saxon had ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... carriage, and in her room, she saw again the look of her lover, that cruel and dolorous look. She knew with what facility he fell into despair, the promptness of his will not to will. She had seen him run away thus on the shore of the Arno. Happy then in her sadness and in her anguish, she could run after him and say, "Come." Now, again surrounded, watched, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... health, and he was tided safely over the period when he was most delicate. Professor Packard told me that when Hawthorne was a student at Bowdoin in his freshman year, his Latin compositions showed such facility that they attracted the special attention of those who examined them. The Professor also remembers that Hawthorne's English compositions elicited from Professor Newman (author of the work on Rhetoric) ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... branches is retarded by their inability to read the language fluently and intelligently. When children are well educated in reading, they find profitable employment; and they are, of course, by the knowledge of language acquired, able to comprehend, with greater facility, every study ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... and sincerely regretting that it was materially impossible for it to do at present more for Servia, wished to assure her that, faithful to their friendship, it would continue to accord her every assistance and facility consistent with its ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... this were only a slight victory: my eye pierces deeper into that distant period, which is to us no more than an hour is to man. Soon will cavillers and haters of the established Church spread about like the plague: pretended reformers of heaven and earth will arise, and their doctrines, from the facility of communication, will penetrate even into the hut of the beggar. They will think to do good, and to purify the object of their hope from falsehood. But, if men begin well, how long do they continue to act so! Sin is not more ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... away. Let us inquire further into this: In what class do you find abandoned females? In that where they have not sufficient wealth or happiness constantly to provide themselves with the obstacles which have saved you; in that, where men have attacked their virtue with more audacity, more facility, more frequency, and more impunity, and consequently with more advantages of every sort; in that, where the impressions of education, of example, of pride, the desire of a satisfactory establishment could ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... at the desk, and the race began. Isobel had a small gift and a large ambition: the gift was a cartoonist's facility in line drawing, and the ambition was to be able, in the dim and distant future, to illustrate Jimaboy's stories. Lantermann, the Times artist, whose rooms were just across the hall, had given her a few lessons in caricature and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... West than it is in the East; hence the easy preys made by the Powers of the Age of Darkness in this cyclic struggle, and the many delusions under which the world is now laboring. One of these is the relative facility with which men fancy they can get at the "Gate" and cross the threshold of Occultism without any great sacrifice. It is the dream of most Theosophists, one inspired by desire for Power and personal selfishness, and it is not such feelings that can ever lead them ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... warm, however, soon melted the snow, and, getting heated up with work, we got on bravely. Indeed, we soon became not less surprised at the rapid progress we were making than at the facility with which we accommodated ourselves to our strange condition of life, and even grew cheerful under what would seem a state of the greatest possible distress. Thus you observe how perfectly we may reconcile ourselves to any fate, if we ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... through the same process with that, until he feels that on a majority of occasions, from a fairly decent lie, he could depend upon making a respectable brassy shot. He will find unsuspected difficulties in the brassy, and in doing his best to overcome them he will probably lose to some extent the facility for driving which he had acquired. Therefore, when he has become a player with his brassy, he should devote a short space of time to getting back on to his drive. It will not take him long, and then he should take out both ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... be bad or good; he no doubt wanted a lyric facility and technical skill; but he had the source of poetry in his spiritual perception. He was a good reader and critic, and his judgment on poetry was to the ground of it. He could not be deceived as to the presence or ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... be allowed that Cosway suited his customers, and, moreover, in the main satisfied the art-demands of his period. However stern critics might censure, or rival painters scoff, his success was assured. And in artistic facility and accuracy of drawing, when he cared to be particular in that respect, he could hardly be said to be behind his contemporaries. His copies from the antique were both graceful and correct, owing to his frequent ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... can paint landscapes or sea pieces at will; he knows that only thorough mastery of the technicalities of his art—supplemented by wide experience and close application—enables him to succeed as he does, and to delight people who, seeing his facility of handling, may imagine that picture painting is very easy and could be readily acquired—perhaps from books. So it is with the Taxidermist. Those, therefore, who procure this book, thinking to do all attempted to be explained therein without long study and without a knowledge of anatomy, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... since. In stature, Mr. Gough is tall and slim, with black hair, which he usually wears too long. As an orator, he is considered among the first in the United States. Having once been an actor, he throws all his dramatic powers into his addresses. He has a facility of telling strange and marvellous stories which can scarcely be surpassed; and what makes them still more interesting, he always happens to be an eyewitness. While speaking, he acts the drunkard, and does it in a style which could not be equalled on the boards of the Lyceum ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... It was not a very suitable tree for a signal staff, and there were cocoa palms and others of a far more appropriate kind, but these were unclimbable without notches being prepared for the feet, whereas the pandanus offered better facility. ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... volunteer for the purpose to give, in his own phrasing, the substance of an entire lecture. For a young man thus to stand up and virtually deliver one of Guizot's lectures required great concentration of thought and considerable facility in expression, but several students availed themselves of the permission, and acquitted themselves admirably. This seemed to me an excellent training for effective public speaking, and several of my old students, who have since distinguished themselves in ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... potential in our batteries. This twentieth-century stage-coaching is one of the delights to which we are heirs, though horses are still used by those that prefer them. We have been much aided in our material progress by the facility with which we obtain the metals. It was observed, some time ago, that when artesian and oil wells had reached a considerable depth, what appeared to be drops of lead and antimony came up with the stream. It finally occurred to a well-borer ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... freedom from conventional prejudices, the results of a long and insensible growth in families, which trammel nearly every mind in densely peopled countries, and more especially in places where commerce is languidly carried on. Perhaps also in some measure it may be owing to the greater facility the poorer classes have in all colonies of earning a livelihood, which, by freeing their minds from anxiety on that score, leaves some room for ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... la mano, quite candidly confeccionar, to make up *confesar, to confess conservas alimenticias, preserves definir, to define (also to settle) dificultad, difficulty ensayo, trial, proof, venture escoger, to choose exceder, to exceed facilidad, ease, facility fijo, fixed, firm fondos, grounds (pictures, cloth) gana (de buena, de mala), willingly, unwillingly ganga, a bargain langosta, lobster mariscos, shell-fish muestrarios, pattern cards, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... '"Direct that every facility be given to Mr. Somerset to visit any part of the castle he may wish to see. On my return I shall be glad to welcome him as the acquaintance of your relatives. I have two of his ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... unexampled facility in the discovery of analogies in a multitude of separate resemblances and relations, but he had an equal facility of tracing with untiring persistency a single idea through all its possible variations. Take, for example, the idea of gold, in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... pakornashae vass blagadoroo," and the distinguished American retired with a proud consciousness of having done his duty. I was not very much enlightened as to the state of the bride's health; but, judging from the facility with which she rattled off this tremendous sentence, we concluded that she must be well. Nothing but a robust constitution and the most excellent health would have enabled her to do it. Convulsed with laughter, Dodd and I made our escape from the church and returned to our quarters. I ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Achille Grandissime, he who took Agricola away from Frowenfeld's shop in the carriage, essays to engage Agamemnon in conversation, and the colonel, with a glance at his kinsman's nether limbs and another at his own, and with that placid facility with which the graver sort of Creoles take up the trivial topics of the lighter, grapples the subject of boots. A tall, bronzed, slender young man, who prefixes to Grandissime the maternal St. Blancard, asks where his wife is, is answered from a distance, throws her a kiss and sits ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... any gift of nature, it was necessary for students to make lists of words and phrases for themselves, and after a while a few of these would be thrown together, and would be reduced to alphabetical order for facility of reference. It is to such a process as this that we owe the Glossaries which form an interesting branch of Anglo-Saxon literature. The Epinal Gloss is the oldest of these, and it is very valuable because of the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... success in that difficult walk; and so perfect were his disguises,—both of dress, voice, and manner,—that he actually at one time succeeded in obtaining charity from his very opponent in the wager. He wrote ballads with the greatest facility, and sang them with infinite pathos and humor; and the old woman at the corner of College Green was certain of an audience when the severity of the night would leave all other minstrelsy deserted. As these feats of jonglerie usually terminated in a row, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... own part, I do not think it has been yet clearly established that all these acknowledged differences are incompatible with the same authorship. If the Iliad were written in youth, the travels of the poet, the change of mind produced by years and experience, the facility with which an ancient Greek changed or remodelled his pliant mythology, the rapidity with which (in the quick development of civilization in Greece) important changes in society and manners were wrought, might all concur in producing, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... craze for composition, and the indulgence of it was encouraged by her facility. There was no reason in heaven, earth, or the other place, why what she wrote should see the light, for it had little to do with light of any sort. "Autumn Leaves" had had no such reception as her mother would have Walter believe. Lady Tremaine was one of those good mothers ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... country gentlemen whose domain, worth less than 50,000 francs, brings in only 2000 or 3000 francs income;[3131] a domain of this size came within reach of a great many purses, and hence found purchasers more readily and with greater facility than a large holding; the State was almost always the seller, and thenceforth the old proprietor could make no further claim or pretension.—Thus, for many of the emigres, "the senatus-consulte of the year X is simply a permit to starve to death in France "and,[3132] four years later,[3133] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... with an idea that had ripened in expectancy. They might be seen there too, but nobody would know them; just as, for that matter, now, in the refreshment-room to which they had adjourned, they would incur the notice but, at the worst, of the unacquainted. They would "have something" there for the facility it would give. Thus had it already come up for them again that they had no ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... everywhere—a pursuit for which there was ample choice and facility. At one time he would direct his steps along the edge of the flat tableland, and contemplate the depths below, where still there lay sheets of water left by the floods of winter, and where the island-like patches of forest showed leafless boughs; while at another time he would plunge into ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol |
