"Middling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the plain of Hazeldale, which was a wide valley with a middling river winding about it, the wild-wood at its back toward the Tofts, and in front down-land nought wooded, save here and there a tree nigh a homestead or cot; for that way the land was builded for a space. Forsooth it was not easy ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... sarde is a large fish; its flesh is delicate, and of a fine flavour, the scales grey, and of a moderate size. The red fish is so called, from its red scales, of the size of a crown piece. The cod, fished for on this coast, is of the middling sort, and very delicate. The thornback is the same as in France. Before we quit this island, it will not, perhaps, be improper to mention some things ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... M. Postel, that typical, provincial tradesman. "Are you pretty middling? I have just been experimenting on treacle, but it would take a man like your father to find what I am looking for. Ah! he was a famous chemist, he was! If I had only known his gout specific, you and I should be rolling along in our ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... circumspect in her choice? Is it not because when once made she must abide by it? "She sets her life upon the cast, and she must stand the hazard of the die." From domestic uneasiness a man has a thousand resources: in middling life, the tavern, in high life, the gaming-table, suspends the anxiety of thought. Dissipation, ambition, business, the occupation of a profession, change of place, change of company, afford him agreeable and honourable ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... felt the stone, and saw him, he turns about, and comes after him, taking devilish long strides, and strolling along at a strange rate, so as he would put a horse to a middling gallop. Away runs Friday, and takes his course, as if he ran towards us for help; so we all resolved to fire at once upon the bear, and deliver my man; though I was angry at him heartily for bringing the bear back upon us, when he was going ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... Story to tell of myself: middling well: still here, pottering about my House, in which I expect an invalid Niece; and preparing for my Ship in June. William Airy talks of coming to me soon. I am daily expecting the Death of a Sister in law, a right good Creature, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... it. All this belonged, under the name of Mademoiselle, to Madame de Mare, her governess. I sat down and chatted with them; but the impatience of the Duc d'Orleans to learn the news could not be checked. He asked me if I was very satisfied. "Middling," I replied, not to spoil his dinner; but he rose at once and took me into the garden. He was much affected to hear of the ill-success of my negotiation; and returned downcast to table. I took the first opportunity to blame his impatience, and the facility with which he allowed the impressions ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... than they are at the Kydd School, and they will get no scarlet fever. Nobody is ever sick there. They will be better cared for than my children are when they are left to me, and they will be seven hundred miles nearer to us than if they were here. The little ones can go to the Model School, the middling ones to the Academy, and the oldest can go to college. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... we discern at once the excuse which Henry would make to himself for his severities against the nobility, and the motive of that extreme popularity of manners by which Elizabeth aimed at attaching to herself the affections of the middling and lower orders ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... did not attend church. Pawnbrokers were an incentive to theft, cunning and lack of honest industry, etc., etc. Thus their explanations ran. In referring to mechanics and paupers, the committee described them as "the middling and inferior classes." Is it any wonder that the working class justly views "charitable" societies, and the spirit behind them, with intense ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... is uncongealable, and a good lubricant for the moving parts. When once the desired region of cold is reached, air itself is used, which moistens the metals but does not completely avoid friction; so that the results would have remained only middling, had not this ingenious physicist devised a new improvement which has some analogy with superheating of steam in steam engines. He slightly varies the initial temperature of the compressed air on the verge of liquefaction so as to avoid a zone ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... sheet, had formed a friendship for the rigid and sombre young widow. She showed her a sort of childlike affection mingled with a kind of respectful terror. Olivier complimented the aunt and niece, while Grivet hazarded a few spicy jokes that met with middling success. Altogether the company were delighted, enchanted, and declared that everything was for the best; in reality all they thought about ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... it in middling order," said Mrs. Patton, humbly. "Me and Mis' Dockum have done the best we knew,—opened the windows and let in the air and tried to keep it from getting damp. I fixed all the woollens with fresh camphire and tobacco ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... undertook the office for the sake of gain; and accompanied by only a few priests, and often without a single taper, it was borne to the very nearest church, and lowered into the first grave that was not already too full to receive it. Among the middling classes, and especially among the poor, the misery was still greater. Poverty or negligence induced most of these to remain in their dwellings or in the immediate neighborhood; and thus they fell by thousands; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... at the foot of the steep declivities of the higher division of the mountain. They stand on uneven ground, and form a small wood. Of the oldest and best looking trees, I counted eleven or twelve; twenty-five very large ones; about fifty of middling size; and more than three hundred smaller and young ones. The oldest trees are distinguished by having the foliage and ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... two sons, Tembaitake and Tembinatake. Tembaitake, our king's father, was short, middling stout, a poet, a good genealogist, and something of a fighter; it seems he took himself seriously, and was perhaps scarce conscious that he was in all things the creature and nursling of his brother. There was no shadow of dispute between the pair: the greater man filled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... writing of late as for his first, early works, which were so full of spontaneous poetry, and his latest publications I had not liked at all. Speaking generally, if I may venture to express my opinion on so delicate a subject, all these talented gentlemen of the middling sort who are sometimes in their lifetime accepted almost as geniuses, pass out of memory quite suddenly and without a trace when they die, and what's more, it often happens that even during their lifetime, as soon as a new generation grows up and takes ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... time before Lovel could, through the thick atmosphere, perceive in what sort of den his friend had constructed his retreat. It was a lofty room of middling size, obscurely lighted by high narrow latticed windows. One end was entirely occupied by book-shelves, greatly too limited in space for the number of volumes placed upon them, which were, therefore, drawn up in ranks of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Samoiede and the Laplander, however, have their counterpart, though on a lower latitude, on the shores of America: the Canadian and the Iroquois bear a resemblance to the ancient inhabitants of the middling climates of Europe. The Mexican, like the Asiatic of India, being addicted to pleasure, was sunk in effeminacy; and in the neighbourhood of the wild and the free, had suffered to be raised on his weakness a domineering superstition, and ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... counting-houses, where no insurances were taken, but to which books were carried, as well as from the different offices in every part of the town, as from the Morocco-men, who went from door to door taking insurances and enticing the poor and middling ranks to adventure. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... into an international struggle to divert attention from demands for domestic reform. "Democratic ambition was awakened; the desire of power, under the name of reform, was rapidly gaining ground among the middling ranks; the only mode of checking the evil was by engaging in a foreign contest, by drawing off the ardent spirits into active service and, in lieu of the modern desire for innovation, rousing the ancient gallantry of the British people."* (* Alison, History ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... says of him: 'Dr. Smith was rather above the middling stature, straight, and well proportioned. His head was well formed, though blanched and bald somewhat in advance of his years. His face, too, as to its lineaments, was very regular and comely. His eyes were of a ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... no heed of these details," replied the captain. "I am but a middling sailor. Like all nervous people, I hate the sea; and yet I have an idea that with ships, France being a seaport with two hundred ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the morning I set out for Bammakoo, at which place I arrived about five o'clock in the afternoon. I had heard Bammakoo much talked of as a great market for salt, and I felt rather disappointed to find it only a middling town, not quite so large as Maraboo; however, the smallness of its size is more than compensated by the riches of its inhabitants; for, when the Moors bring their salt through Kaarta or Bambarra, they constantly rest a few days at this place; and the Negro merchants here, who ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... whimpered Tommy, "but that would mean the kirk was crammed, and I just meant it to be middling full." ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... fashions knocked out of shape and altered, or thrown by as unsuited to the climate, don't be caught out here. But if you can bear grief with a smile, can put up with a scale of accommodations ranging from the soft side of a plank before the fire (and perhaps three in a bed at that) down through the middling and inferior grades; if you are never at a loss for ways to do the most unpracticable things without tools; if you can do all this and some more come on. . . . It is a universal rule here to help one another, each one keeping an eye single ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... and Perry go over there Saturday morning and bring back as many middling-sized ones as you can carry. You other fellows cut up pieces of string about ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... and going of the promenaders, who each formally paced back and forth upon the planking for a certain time, and then went quietly home, giving place to the new arrivals. They were nearly all French, and they were not generally, it seemed, of the first fashion, but rather of middling condition in life; the English being represented only by a few young fellows and now and then a redfaced old gentleman with an Indian scarf trailing from his hat. There were some fair American costumes and faces in the crowd, but it was essentially Quebecian. The young girls ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old man, clutching his head in despair "Why didn't the man die? He is only forty now. He will take my last penny from me, he will marry, ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... with the world as to whether a woman might be an author without incongruity. Thus, too, we have Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne writing to his daughters about the learned women of his century, and cautioning them, in conclusion, that the study of letters was unsuited to ladies of a middling station, and should be reserved for princesses.[63] And once more, if we desire to see the same principle carried to ludicrous extreme, we shall find that Reverend Father in God, the Abbot of Brantome, claiming, on the authority of some lord of his acquaintance, a privilege, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that man of whom he expected things so fair. He had asked in a loud voice of the middling funny gentleman (then in the middle of a song) whether he thought Joey would be long in coming, and when at last Joey did come he screamed out, "How do you do, Joey!" and went ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... la Cour des Fees, with a portion of that national taste, which she inherited from her father. The heavy magnificence that distinguished the reign of Louis XIV. had scarcely descended to one of the middling rank of Monsieur de Barberie, who had consequently brought with him to the place of his exile, merely those tasteful usages which appear almost exclusively the property of the people from whom he had sprung, without the encumbrance and cost of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... of her fascination over Henry was a puzzle to observers. "Madame Anne," wrote a Venetian, "is not one of the handsomest women in the world. She is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised, and in fact has nothing but the King's great appetite, and her eyes, which are black and beautiful".[544] She had probably learnt in France the art of using her beautiful eyes to the best advantage; her hair, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... upon was far more dangerous than any hitherto attempted by me, needs no further proof than this:—I went and made my will at Porlock, with a middling honest lawyer there; not that I had much to leave, but that none could say how far the farm, and all the farming stock, might depend on my disposition. It makes me smile when I remember how particular I was, and how for the life of me I was puzzled to bequeath ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... in the house, how did you observe Miss Blandy behave towards her father, and in what manner did she use to talk of him, three or four months before his death?—Sometimes she would talk very affectionately, and sometimes but middling. ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... other nations, is a species of luxury which all ranks adopt according to their ability, and which, when once become habitual, it is almost impossible to shake off. Being however like other luxuries expensive, few only among the lower or middling class of people can compass the regular enjoyment of it, even where its use is not restrained, as it is among the pepper-planters, to the times of their festivals. That the practice of smoking opium must be in some degree prejudicial ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... remarked that the lower and middling classes of society never entertained the opinion that the highest classes exhibited models of piety and virtue, and were, indeed, disposed to believe them worse than they really were, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... from the Subscriber, on the 4th of May, a Negro Man named Cato, of a middling Stature, has lost the Sight of his left Eye, had on a kersey Jacket and leather Breeches. Whoever shall take up said Negro, and bring him to his Master in Salem, shall have Two Dollars Reward, and ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... is an excellent example of Miss Austen's genius for making her characters talk. Luckily, conversation was still formal in her day, and it was as possible for her as for Congreve to make middling men and women talk first-rate prose. She did more than this, however. She was the first English novelist before Meredith to portray charming women with free personalities. Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse have an independence (rare in English fiction) ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... was thin; the oats only middling; and the corn sold very badly on account of its smell. A curious circumstance was that La Butte, with the stones cleared away from it at last, yielded ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are scenes of all sorts; some dreadful combats, some grand and lofty horse-riding, some scenes of high life, and some of very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental, and some light comic business; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery, and brilliantly illuminated with ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... II. The middling order say to them the roads are an inconvenience, instead of being useful, as they have turned them out of their old ways; for their horses being never shod, the gravel would soon whet away their hoofs, so as to render them unserviceable; whereas the rocks and ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... "Middling—when all that can grow and flourish there?" Lasse pointed to where birch and aspen stood waving their shining foliage to and fro in the breeze. "No, but it'll be a damned rough bit of work to get it ready for ploughing; I'm sorry now that ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... by cultivators that the poorer the soil in which they are grown the oftener these willows should be cut over. "In a good soil a coppice of this species will produce the greatest return in poles, hoops, and rods every five, six, seven, or eight years; and in middling soil, where it is grown chiefly for faggot-wood, it will produce the greatest return every three, ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... "Middling," said the boatswain grudgingly. "Might be better; might be wuss. But look here, young fellow; I don't ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... some fine morning or other in events, if not in catastrophes. I have been watchful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell as yet. You may laugh at me, and very likely think me foolishly fanciful to trouble myself about what is going on in a middling-class household like ours. Do as you like. But here is that terrible fact to begin with,—a beautiful young girl, with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to Nature's women, turned loose among ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... representative in the eyes of the law. A very minute census was kept. Children up to three years of age were classed as "yellow" (kwo); those between three and sixteen, as "little" (sho); those members of the household between sixteen and twenty, as "middling" (chu); those between twenty and sixty, as "able-bodied" (tei), and those above sixty as "old" or "invalids," so as to secure their exemption from forced labour (kayaku or buyaku). The census was revised every six years, two copies of the revised document ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... into the round innocent face of his son, "that's the stuff the traders used to sell the Indians. Strong? Well, you might say it was middling strong—just middling—about three drops of it would make a rabbit spit in ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... "Well, yes, middling; but as obstinate as a mule. When he gets his mind set on a thing, it's no use to try to budge him. I've whipped him till he was black and blue, and it didn't do ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... thrown back from his face, to see if he gave any token of jeering or malice, but could see nought such: nay, his face was grave and serious, not ill-fashioned, though it were both long and broad like his body: his cheek-bones somewhat high, his eyes grey and middling great, and looking, ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... seems, is in a fourth edition, a success rather above the middling run, but not much for a production which, from its topics, must be temporary, and of course be successful at first, or not at all. At this period, when I can think and act more coolly, I regret that I have written it, though I shall ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... with a passage six feet wide, a narrow carpeted flight of steps, and a bed-room prepared for the ladies to uncloak in, and another in which the men can brush their hair and hide their hats. Some such snuggeries very possibly exist in England, among the middling classes; but I believe all over the continent of Europe style is never attempted without more suitable means ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... how you'd been disabled along of the rheumatism, Miss Hannah, and wasn't able to do no weaving, and as I knowed young Ishmael would be out of work as long as I was, I just made so free, Miss Hannah, as to bring you this bag of flour and middling of bacon, which I hope you'll do me the honor of accepting from ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... we frequently find tradesmen carrying on a prodigious trade with but a middling stock of their own, the rest being all managed by the force of their credit; for example, I have known a man in a private warehouse in London trade for forty thousand pounds a-year sterling, and carry on such a return ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... You think they have designs upon my life? Who could make capital out of the death of an old lady of seventy-three, who never did harm to anybody in the world except the miscreants and peace-breakers in the romances which she writes herself, who makes middling verses which can excite nobody's envy, who will have nothing to leave except the state dresses of an old maid who sometimes went to court, and a dozen or two well-bound books with gilt edges? And then you, Martiniere,—you may describe the stranger's appearance as frightful as you like, yet I cannot ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... mighty Rome, Aricia received me in but a middling inn: Heliodorus the rhetorician, most learned in the Greek language, was my fellow-traveller: thence we proceeded to Forum-Appi, stuffed with sailors and surly landlords. This stage, but one for better travellers ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... It’s easy to find out what Kanakas think. Just go back to yourself any way round from ten to fifteen years old, and there’s an average Kanaka. There are some pious, just as there are pious boys; and the most of them, like the boys again, are middling honest and yet think it rather larks to steal, and are easy scared and rather like to be so. I remember a boy I was at school with at home who played the Case business. He didn’t know anything, that boy; he couldn’t do anything; he had ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very expressive; but from her long residence with the Indians, she has acquired the habit of peeping from under eye-brows as they do with the head inclined downwards. Formerly her hair was of a light chestnut brown—it is now quite grey, a little curled, of middling length and tied in a bunch behind. She informed me that she had never worn ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... light, but it was only a glimmering. He could understand that a man should not call his own goods middling; but he could not understand that a man is only carrying out the same principle in an advanced degree, when he proclaims with a hundred thousand voices in a hundred thousand places, that the article which he desires to sell is the best ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a great one. Poverty treads upon the heels of great ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... little boracic acid, a little arsenic powder, a very little of Venetian turpentine, a quantity of gray building-paper pulp (soak paper and squeeze and beat up even and then squeeze water out). To furnish a body to this mass, stir in dry white lead until middling thick. Beat the whole ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... picture, and Sophia thought for an instant that she had at length encountered life on a plane that would correspond to her dreams of romance. And she was impressed, with a feeling somewhat akin to that of a middling commoner when confronted with a viscount. There was, in the distance, something imposing and sensational about that prone, trembling figure. The tragic works of love were therein apparently manifest, in a sort of dignified beauty. But when Sophia bent ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... neighbors was noted for her molasses sponge cake. If asked for the recipe, she would give it as follows: "I take some molasses and saleratus and flour and shortening, and some milk. How much? Oh, a middling good sized piece, and enough milk to make it the right thickness to bake good." Needless to say, she continued to be the only molasses ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... above their school learning they've been taught to swim, ride, dance, use tools, play on the piano, and speak fair to middling French. Yet, as you say, Fred, the most difficult part is to come, just as we fancied that we were through. And the terrible reflection is that we're not so sure now what we ought to do for them as we were when ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... recompense is bad for the state and bad for letters. Assuredly nothing can be more absurd or mischievous than to waste the public money in bounties for the purpose of inducing people who ought to be weighing out grocery or measuring out drapery to write bad or middling books. But, though the sound rule is that authors should be left to be remunerated by their readers, there will, in every generation, be a few exceptions to this rule. To distinguish these special cases from the mass is an employment well worthy of the faculties of a great ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her a trencher filled with chopped things, and a man in a blue jerkin came to her side bearing a middling pig, seared to a pale clear pinkness. The boy held the slit stomach carefully apart, and she lined it with slices of bread, dropping into the hollow chives, nutmegs, lumps of salt, the buds of bergamot, and marigold ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... conquest; at least, if we may judge of the increase of money by the price of corn. The medium between the highest and lowest prices of wheat, assigned by the statute, is four shillings and threepence a quarter; that is, twelve shillings and ninepence of our present money. This is near half of the middling price in our time. Yet the middling price of cattle, so late as the reign of King Richard, we find to be above eight, near ten times lower than the present. Is not this the true inference, from comparing these ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... all the dreams and 'voices' in this hustling world wouldn't have put any guile into the soul of Nathaniel, and they won't into Angel Halsey's. Saints are saints, sinners are sinners, middling folks are middling, just the same whether they have three 'revelations' a day apiece, or one once a year, or none at all. You're fretting because you think a righteous man might do something wicked, thinking that the voice of the Lord had told him. Not a bit of it! The Lord will ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... knee, and with a cloth cap upon his head; and, at first sight, you might have taken him for a corporal of dragoons, of particularly neat and soldier-like aspect, and in the prime of his age and strength. He is only of middling stature, but his build is very compact and sturdy, with broad shoulders and a look of great physical vigor, which, in fact, he is said to possess,—he and Beauregard having been rivals in that particular, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Sir pretty middling, within doors; but I don't like the climate, Mr. John I don't the climate, Sir. There's no country like h'England, I believe, for my business. 'Ere's a fine rose, Sir if you'll step a bit this way quite a new ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the taxes on land as low as possible; and common interest may always be reckoned upon as the surest bond of sympathy. But if we even could suppose a distinction of interest between the opulent landholder and the middling farmer, what reason is there to conclude, that the first would stand a better chance of being deputed to the national legislature than the last? If we take fact as our guide, and look into our own senate and assembly, we shall find that moderate proprietors of land prevail in ...
— The Federalist Papers
... ties which bound them to the stony hillsides of New England. Yet the older towns of New England also complained of the Western fever which was carrying off the available labor supply. Fearon found "the small and middling tradesmen" always ready to sell out when business got bad and "pack up for the back-country." The immediate destination of these New Englanders was western New York. Within a decade what had been a frontier area was filled with an industrious ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... souls and bellicose, Peacemaker and foeman; Czech and Hun, and mixed with those German, Slav, and Roman; Men of middling size and weight, Dwarfs and giants mighty; Men of modest heart and state, Vain men, proud ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... denied that there are men in this world in whose lot failure seems to be the rule. Everything to which they put their hand breaks down or goes amiss. But most human beings can testify that their lot, like their abilities, their stature, is a sort of middling thing. There is about it an equable sobriety, a sort of average endurableness. Some things go well: some things go ill. There is a modicum of disappointment: there is a modicum of success. But so much of disappointment comes to the lot of almost ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... twisted on system; and if their drapery in general might startle Baron Stulz, it evidently cost as dexterous cutting out, and as ambitious tailoring, as the most recherche suit that ever turned a "middling man" into a figure for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... this embouchure is a mile and a half, and the banks on both sides are high, steep, and little wooded. It is crossed by a shallow, not above two or three feet deep; but on its east side the channel will admit ships of a middling size fully laden. The current was so strong against us, that it was with much exertion our rowers accomplished crossing the shallow. We landed on the left bank in order to determine the geographical position of the mouth, and found the latitude ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... petites morales forms so great a part of the education of our rising aristocracy, and is considered so vitally important to their proper carriage, as well in their set as out of it, that their children are as far advanced in this particular at fifteen, as the children of middling people at twenty-five. The petticoat-string by which the youth of the non-fashionable class is tied to their mother, is a ligature not in use among the fashionable world; from the earliest period professional persons are employed in their education, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... She saves a little money, and spends a great deal of time over them. The Englishwoman, when she possibly can, likes to spend her time in a different way. In both countries there are admirable housekeepers, and middling housekeepers, and extremely bad ones. The German who goes the wrong way about it sends her husband to the Kneipe by her eternal fussing and fidgeting. She is not his companion mentally, but the cook's, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... cattle, cleaning dishes,—in fine, performing their moderate share of the labors of life, without being harassed by its cares. The sable inmates of the mansion were not excluded from the domestic affections: in families of middling rank, they had their places at the board; and when the circle closed round the evening hearth, its blaze glowed on their dark shining faces, intermixed familiarly with their master's children. It must have contributed to reconcile them to their lot, that they saw white men and women ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nine kinds of union according to dimensions. Amongst all these, equal unions are the best, those of a superlative degree, i.e., the highest and the lowest, are the worst, and the rest are middling, and with them the high[33] ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... hundred and fifty in the hot room you feel more comfortable than outside at eighty-two. The Turkish bath in the hotel is very nicely fitted up, but the native masseur wasn't a pleasing experience, his weak chocolate-coloured hands gave me the sensation of the touch of a middling strong eel; his lean, lithe figure and the charms round his neck, and grey hair died brick-red I expect to see again in dreams—a crease in his teeth and ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... in volume that grew as the twilight deepened. Along with the troops, the motors flowed up, and soon there was an unbroken roar. Limousines glided through an enormous sea of lorries, little, middling, and big. All these cleared aside, wedged themselves in, subsided in their appointed places. A vast hum of voices and mingled noises arose from the ocean of men and vehicles that beat upon the approaches to the station and began in ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... hundred pounds of seed-cotton per acre, and the character of the fruit and the arrangement upon the stalk make it very expensive to harvest. Besides, the stalk grows too much to a tree and is not prolific proportionately, and the quality of the lint is equal to American "middling." We are trying to develop a plant that will yield 1,000 pounds of seed-cotton to the acre, with a lint equal in quality to fully good "middling" ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... circle, in our coronation robes, in our wedding dresses, let the likeness be correct and the colours bright—we leave the rest to you." Such seems to have been the Royal artistic edict issued in the beginning of the present reign. In no instance has the choice fallen on a painter of talent; but the middling from every country in Europe seems to have found a ready welcome at the Court of Queen Victoria. We find there middling Germans, middling Italians, middling Frenchmen—and all receiving money and ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the porch into the house. There was no hall; they walked straight into the sitting-room, where a table was spread with tea, and Miss Hilton, a rather faded-looking lady of middling age, was already seated ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... "Middling," responded the captain, to whom a dead calm was not quite so agreeable as it was to his passengers. "Should ha' been in all the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of Water, and forty Pounds of fine Sugar, mix these together, boil and clarify it with the Whites of Eggs: against this is done, have two hundred middling Oranges, pared so thin that no White appear upon the Rinds; and as soon as the Syrup is taken off the Fire, put the Peels of five and twenty Oranges into it; and when the Liquor is quite cold, put in the Juice of the Oranges, with ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... had been going to rack and ruin, morally speaking. He was a middling decent sort of man when I first knew him; and I judge there must have been something about him more than common, or he never could have got such a wife. But then women do marry, sometimes, unaccountably. I've ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... "A middling sample; not so many English as usual," he remarked. "If they keep on coming in as they're doing, we'll get harvest hands ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... widow with three children in destitute circumstances following the father's death. The boy asserted there were no children in the family. And they had just moved in, within a very few days, during which time the neighbourhood had only glimpsed a "middling old" woman. It was strange at least, adding distinctly to the puzzle of the whole affair. West grew nervous, wondering why the two should remain so long within, out of sight and hearing. If this was merely a charitable visit, it surely did not need require such a ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... in the number of middling Orators, the two brothers L. and Sp. Mummius, both whose Orations are still in being:—the style of Lucius is plain and antiquated; but that of Spurius, though equally unembellished, is more close, and compact; for he was well versed in the doctrine of the Stoics. ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... this disease, it will be found to have been attended with this remarkable circumstance; namely, that it has almost uniformly confined its attacks to the male sex, and, among these, to people in the higher and middling classes of society, while the artificer, labourer, and peasant have escaped wholly uninjured. It has raged chiefly in palaces, castles, halls, and gay mansions; and those things which in general are supposed not to be inimical to health, such as cleanliness, spaciousness, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... state of society. Among the upper classes gaming is reduced to a science and is almost exclusively the order of the day. There is little or no taste for litterature among any part of the native society. The upper classes are sensualists; the middling ignorant and superstitious. With regard to the Lazzaroni, I do not think that they at all deserve the ill name that has been given to them. They always seem good humoured and willing to work, when employment ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... brass of the handrail will be clouded; and if the brass be not immaculate, certainly all will be to match—the reflectors scratched, the spare lamp unready, the storm-panes in the storehouse. If a light is not rather more than middling good, it will be radically bad. Mediocrity (except in literature) appears to be unattainable by man. But of course the unfortunate of St. Andrews was only an amateur, he was not in the Service, he had no uniform coat, he was, I believe, a plumber by his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... superiority to the things of the flesh. Thin ladies, who take little exercise, and whose livers are not strong enough to bear stimulants, are so extremely critical about one's personal habits! And, after all, the Rev. Amos never came near the borders of a vice. His very faults were middling—he was not very ungrammatical. It was not in his nature to be superlative in anything; unless, indeed, he was superlatively middling, the quintessential extract of mediocrity. If there was any ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... be beginning to study home comforts, all the modern houses being built upon very commodious plans; still the middling classes, in the towns at least, are miserably lodged, in comparison with the same grades in England, families of apparently great respectability inhabiting places so desolate as to ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... voices, nor movements of people in the cabin. Through the planks, overhead, however, came the sound of a rapid tread of feet, accompanied by the thud of coils of rope flung hastily down. The cabin porthole was a middling-sized, circular window. I saw the whaler in it as in a frame. I unscrewed the port, but with no intention to cry out, never doubting for a moment from the looks of the men that they would silence me in some bloody ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... the gipsy at last, "is a very remarkable hand. I see stories and people reading them. I see a dark gentleman and a gentleman of middling colour." ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... are only middling," she explained to herself. "If we were poor, we could go on excursions with the charity children; and if we were rich, we'd travel to the mountains or the sea. We're only middling, so we ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... learn easier than others. I learned middling easy—it didn't take me long—and when I felt I knowed enough I just naturally quit and went ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... said Merril dryly, "but it strikes me that it's middling cheeky for you fellows to be discussing how you 'll jilt your sweethearts with least expense to their feelings, when the chances are that if you should ever get one, you 'll need all your wits to keep ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... show the fluctuations of the average prices of prime field hands (unskilled young men) in Virginia, at Charleston, in middle Georgia, and at New Orleans, aL well as the contemporary range of average prices for cotton of middling grade in the chief American market, that of New York. The range for prime slaves, it will be seen, rose from about $300 and $400 a head in the upper and lower South respectively in 1795 to a range of from $400 to $600 in 1803, in consequence of the initial impulse ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... shall I do with my life?" And it isn't just me—though that's the burning, close question to my simple selfishness. But it's a lot of women—a lot. We're waking all over the world. We want to help, to be worth while; to help, to count. It won't do much longer to know French and Italian and play middling tennis and be on the Altar Society. You know what I mean. All that—yes—but beyond that the power which a real person carries into all that to make it big. The stronger you are the better your work is. I want to be strong, to be useful, to touch things with a personality which ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... these mountains above the level of the sea, has not yet been determined; but I should imagine that it cannot exceed four thousand feet. For the first ten or twelve miles they are tolerably well clothed with timber, and produce occasionally some middling pasture; but beyond this they are excessively barren, and are covered generally with a thick brush, interspersed here and there with a few miserable stunted gums. They bear, in fact, a striking similarity, both ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... Will—it is in the victory I find the joy. I would conquer them to feel my power. Conquer your book, Will, stride ahead of your class, then play your fill till they arrive abreast of you again. But a laggard, a stupid, or a middling! And, in faith, the ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... was about fifty years of age, middling size, rather plump, with a full shining, ruddy countenance. His gray hair, very smooth and rather long, parted by a straight line in the middle, fell flat over his temples. He had retained the fashion ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... her chamber, and she was middling old, Her petticoat was satin and her stomacher was gold. Backwards and forwards and sideways did she pass, Making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass. The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass As comely or as kindly or as ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... the sake of the shipwrecked men we may have to bring home, and who are pretty sure to be in greater need of the stuff than us. I never drink myself, sir, and that's one reason, I think, why I manage to meet the cold and wet middling well, and rather better than some men who look stronger than me. However, I told Charlie Verrion to measure the rum out and serve it round, and it would have made you laugh, I do believe, sir, to have seen the care the men took of the big bottle—Charlie ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... "Middling," said the President.—"By the way," he added, "if you have any money, it is usual to offer some champagne. It keeps up a good spirit, and is one of my own ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years of lamentable experience of, a vicious system of voting, the members of the Convention went calmly on their way, accepting as a matter of course the crude and haphazard methods known to them, the unscientific system of voting so dear to the heart of the "middling" politician and the party intriguer. I believe Mr. Glynn alone raised his voice in favour of proportional representation, in the Convention, as he has done consistently in every representative assembly of which he has been a member. Instead of seeing ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... "There are different opinions about life. Some call it good and some bad. It would be more correct to say that it is middling, because we are never as happy as we would like to be and we are never as sad as our enemies ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... there was no appeal, and no other dissent than what was expressed by a look or a low murmur. But I perceived the corpulent gentleman and the wan mathematician slily exchange their dishes, by which they both seemed to consider themselves gainers. The dish allotted to me, being of a middling character, I ate of it without repining; though, from the savoury fumes of my right-hand neighbour's plate, I could not help wishing I had been allowed ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... instead of a true testicle; and on the left side we observed a testicle fixed to the extremity of one of the vessels, as usual, invested in its tunicle, which left testicle we do not find to be at all flabby, but of a middling size: upon the whole, we are of opinion that the said Le Page is capable of the conjugal act but in a feeble manner. Signed and dated March 5, 1684. By the sentence of M. Cheron, the official, the said De Loris's petition ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... that there is anything particularly new or interesting. Not much is going on there. We have had a good crop of hay, the corn looks middling well; the rye is not much rusted. I think we shall not want for ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... nerve to escape the horrors in store. Twice she altered her course and twice we did the like, fetching ever nearer until it seemed she was doomed to share the bloody fate of so many others. By noon we were so close that she was plain to see, a middling-size ship, her paint blistered, her gilding tarnished as by a long voyage, and though very taut and trim as to spars and rigging, a heavy-sailing ship and sluggish. A poor thing indeed to cope with such ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... rice, meat, dancing, wine, and fiddling, Which turned the isle into a place of pleasure; The servants all were getting drunk or idling, A life which made them happy beyond measure. Her father's hospitality seemed middling, Compared with what Haidee did with his treasure; 'T was wonderful how things went on improving, While she had not one hour to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... to cut out in Shivers as Dutch-Beef:—Take a middling leg of mutton, then take half a pound of brown sugar, and rub it hard all over your mutton, and let it lie twenty-four hours; then take an ounce and half of saltpetre, and mix it with a pound of common salt, and rub that all over the mutton every other day, till 'tis ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... they were very poor, and therefore but indifferently accommodated with the necessary machinery, they could, when they exerted themselves, make among them about twelve pounds of pins in a day. There are in a pound upward of four thousand pins of a middling size. Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upward of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... and body both found rest, as one athirst finds joy who drinks of heavenly dew. The elephant being thus converted, the people around were filled with joy; they all raised a cry of wonder at the miracle, and brought their offerings of every kind. The scarcely-good arrived at middle-virtue, the middling-good passed to a higher grade, the unbelieving now became believers, those who believed were strengthened in their faith. Agatasatru, mighty king, seeing how Buddha conquered the drunken elephant, was moved at heart by thoughts profound; then, filled with joy, he found a twofold growth of piety. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... alternately under the despotism of a father, a brother, and a husband; and the middling and the poorer classes shut out from the acquisition of bread with independence, when they are not shut out from the very means of an industrious subsistence. Such were the views she entertained of the subject; and such the feelings with ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... again," she said, "it makes us too much out of breath, and we can't walk afterward. Now let's rest a minute, and then walk on just middling fast,—because it's a long way yet. What time do ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... Whereby athrough the throat of Aetna's Mount Such vast tornado-fires out-breathe at times, I will unfold: for with no middling might Of devastation the flamy tempest rose And held dominion in Sicilian fields: Drawing upon itself the upturned faces Of neighbouring clans, what time they saw afar The skiey vaults a-fume and sparkling all, And filled ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... our heads and hearts so long. That is its vexation. It is a Government for the 'bus people, the first settled and serious Government that ever attempted their case. Its action is worth all the pedantry of the doctrinaires and the middling morals of the juste milieu; and I, who am a Democrat, will stand by it as long as I can stand, which isn't very long just now, as I ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... to the anti-republican party. Without numbers, he is a host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile, where they might be finished; but too much security on the republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performers to oppose to him. In truth, when he comes forward, there is nobody but yourself who can meet him. His adversaries have begun the attack, he has the advantage of answering them, and remains unanswered himself. A solid reply might yet ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... put me down as "a queer kid." I was middling good at most of their games and would get sudden spurts when I would become almost a leader. But at other times, often right in the middle of a game, I would suddenly forget where I was and would think of Sam, of the cannibals that I had seen, of the man who had jumped ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... landed with their fowling-pieces, were fortunate in shooting a capybora, a rodent animal as large as a middling-sized pig. Soon afterwards they knocked over a couple of little peccaries, which furnished a welcome addition to the supper to all hands. The officers and men collected as before round their respective fires; the ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... told you; and it is, that I know my own writings are trifling and of no depth. The other is, that, light and futile as they were, I am sensible they are better than I could compose now. I am aware of the decay of the middling parts I had, and others may be still more sensible of it. How do I know but I am superannuated? nobody will be so coarse as to tell me so; but if I published dotage all the world would tell me so. And who but runs that risk who is an author after severity? ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... troubles coming when an old king is taking her, and she without a thought but for her beauty and to be straying the hills. OLD WOMAN. The gods help the lot of us. . . . Shouldn't she be well pleased getting the like of Conchubor, and he middling settled in his years itself? I don't know what he wanted putting her this wild place to be breaking her in, or putting myself to be roast- ing her supper and she with no patience for her food at all. [She looks out. LAVARCHAM. Is she coming from the glen? OLD WOMAN. ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... verse than middling poetry. And maybe even the humblest of rhymes has its uses. Happiness is happiness, whether it be inspired by a Rossetti sonnet or a ballad by G. R. Sims. Let each one who has something to say, say it in the best way he can, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... the trading companies into which the middling ranks were distributed on the continent, in the twelfth century, those concerned in silk and woollens were most numerous and honourable. None were admitted to the rank of burgesses in the towns of Aragon who used any manual trade, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... seized Coonly by the collar of his coat with his left hand, held him out as though he had been a small boy, unbuckled his sword-belt, and took two revolvers from his pockets with his right. The captain was a middling-sized man, and he struggled in the gripe of the powerful Kentuckian; but he might as well have attempted to ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... mutton, cut it in slices, season it with a little pepper and salt; cut three middling turnips in round pieces, and three small carrots scrap'd and cut in pieces, a handful of spinage, a little parsley, a bunch of sweet herbs, and two or three cabbage lettice; cut the herbs pretty small, lay a row of meat and a row of herbs; put the turnips and carrots at the ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... own cohesion, and the necessity, exercise and profit thereof, so a great and varied nationality, occupying millions of square miles, were firmest held and knit by the principle of the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling property owners. So that, from another point of view, ungracious as it may sound, and a paradox after what we have been saying, democracy looks with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the Penobscot. Our birch was nineteen and a half feet long by two and a half at the widest part, and fourteen inches deep within, both ends alike, and painted green, which Joe thought affected the pitch and made it leak. This, I think, was a middling-sized one. That of the explorers was much larger, though probably not much longer. This carried us three with our baggage, weighing in all between five hundred and fifty and six hundred pounds. We had two heavy, though slender, rock-maple paddles, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... make the bear follow him, and show us some laugh as he called it. As soon as the bear felt the blow, and saw him, he turns about and comes after him, taking very long strides, and shuffling on at a strange rate, so as would have put a horse to a middling gallop; away reins Friday, and takes his course as if he ran towards us for help; so we all resolved to fire at once upon the bear, and deliver my man; though I was angry at him for bringing the bear back upon us, when he was going about his own business another way; and especially I was angry that ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... guesses to be the sum of the fingers expanded by himself and his adversary. The closed fist is none, the thumb one, the thumb and forefinger two, &c. so that the chances lie between 0 and 5, as each must know the number held out by himself. The middling class of people likewise play at this game when they give entertainments where wine is served, and the loser is always obliged to drink off a cup of wine. At this childish game two persons will ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... there's no harm in them ones. What the sergeant said to the gentleman Patsy the smith couldn't hear but it was maybe half an hour after when the sergeant went home again and he had a look on him like a man that was middling well satisfied. Patsy the smith saw him for he was in the ditch when he passed, terrible sick, retching the way he thought the whole of his liver would be out on the road before he'd done. Well, there was no more happened last night; but it wasn't more than nine o'clock ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... somewhat more devil-may-care in expression than we are accustomed to see in New England. They poured down the gangway, trailed arms, ascended the promenade-deck, ordered arms, grounded arms, and broke line. The drill struck me as middling, which may be owing to the fact that the company has lately increased to about two hundred members, thus diluting the old organization with a large number of new recruits. Military service at the South is a patrician exercise, much favored by men of "good ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... is a sample of soap, which you value at 4d. per lb.: was that a good quality of soap?-It was middling; but it was in such a state from being dried up, that one could scarcely judge of it. However, I think that ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... homines, non Di, non concessere columnae.' 'But God and man, and letter'd post denies That poets ever are of middling size.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and that the highest of the aristocracy should feel proud of being connected, either personally or through their relatives, with those pursuits on which their country's greatness depends. The wealthier manufacturers and merchants already mix with those classes, and the larger and even the middling tradesmen are frequently found associating with the gentry of the land. It is good that this ambition should be cultivated, not by any rivalry in expense, but by a rivalry in knowledge and in liberal feelings; and few things would ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage |
