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More "Passable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... casual feminine visitors? Well, the sisters and cousins of an undergraduate seldom seem more passable to his comrades than to himself. Altogether, the instinct of sex is not pandered to in Oxford. It is not, however, as it may once have been, dormant. The modern importation of samples of femininity serves to ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... much importance. We can only point out the field for study and research; it belongs to each one's own genius and industry to deduce the results. However ugly you may be, rest assured that there is some style of habiliment which will make you passable. ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... created a very decided sensation. Beulah made quite a passable Medea, with her inky hair trailing over the back of the seat, and her little hands grasping the reins with desperate energy. By Phoebus! you turned that corner at the bank like an electric bolt. Shake hands, Beulah! ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... occasioned a flood as violent as it was sudden; doing great damage to the meadows and fallows, by deluging the one and washing away the soil of the other. The hollow lane towards Alton was so torn and disordered as not to be passable till mended, rocks being removed that weighed two hundred- weight. Those that saw the effect which the great hail had on ponds and pools say that the dashing of the water made an extraordinary appearance, the froth and spray standing up in the air three feet ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... new and stately Eastern Capital, which, in the spirit of the Hollander, they planted in the most swampy part of the island; and, surrounded with ditches, in the closest resemblance to Holland, led a pestilential existence in the fatness of fens passable only through canals. Batavia was built, the proverbial place of filth and opulence. The Dutch gradually became masters of this fine island; divided it into seventeen provinces, and occupying the commercial coast, left the southern to the divided and helpless authority of the two native princes, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... just how lovely they say she is. Sometimes I have thought her very passable; then again—" She broke off with a defiant little laugh. "Don't you know, sir, that you mustn't ask one lady to ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... trail across to here—very bad, but easily passable for natives, even fairly well burdened—and then up the mountains, right where the trail crosses, gold is found in abundance. Begin to see?" he smiled at his audience. They looked rather less puzzled, but still uncertain, and he ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Esquire, who connected Port Phillip with Adelaide by a direct road running nearly parallel to the coast, so that the portion of the continent of Australia which lies between Moreton Bay and Adelaide is now connected by a passable route. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... Church in the province—in the kingdom—in Europe; and it is not improbable but I might progradiate another step, and say Christendom at large. And now, what's a candidate? Father, you have some apprehension in you, and are a passable second-hand controversialist—what's a candidate? Will you ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... the foremost German trading town, Cologne, and the latter in Venice, the foremost trading town of Italy. The merchants of Philadelphia and New York started the first boards of health in the United States. For what purpose? To prevent business losses from yellow fever. Desire for passable streets, drains, waterworks, and strong boards of health has generally started with merchants. For commercial reasons many of our states vote more money for the protection of cattle than for the protection of human life, and the United States votes millions for the study of ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... rock is so strongly grounded, bounded, and founded, that by force of man it can never be confounded; the foundation and walls are unpenetrable, the rampiers impregnable, the bulwarks invincible, no way but one it is or can be possible to be made passable. In a word, I have seen many straits and fortresses, in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and England, but they must all give place to this unconquered Castle, ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... set them simultaneously to work, superintending their labours, and stimulating them by his presence and example; and before night, what had been a dangerous sheep track, six miles in length, hardly passable for led horses, was made practicable for wheel-carriages as if by the power of magic. It was an admirable example of energy and well-directed labour, which could not fail to have a most salutary influence upon the surrounding population. He then proceeded to make more ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... several other dramas of the highest class. Sheridan Knowles and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton professed themselves ready to administer any amount of food to the craving appetite of the age—but all in vain. Tragedy was not what we wanted—nor comedy—no, nor even passable melodrama. We sighed for something of a more ethereal sort, and—laud we the gods!—the manna has descended in showers. Go into any of the London theatres now, and the following is your bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... aisles are astonishingly low; the choir and nave, each unusually short. There are no transepts, and there is no triforium whatever, no chapels of any remarkable beauty, and little glass that is even passable. On the walls of the nave, beneath the low clerestory windows, are a series of four carven Renaissance marble panels, with other blanks suggesting the ultimate addition of similar sepulchral-looking ornaments. ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... aside the proffered case and extracting two cigars in one motion. "Well, perhaps A'd better. A've run oot o' seegairs, an' the thoosand A' ordered frae ma Glasgae factor hae been sunk by enemy action—this is no' a bad seegair, Captain Blackie, sir-r. It's a verra passable smoke ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... At any rate blacks are not affected by the fruit, though large consumers of it, and many whites also eat of it raw and preserved, without fear and without untoward effects. Some of the Eugenias produce passable fruits, and one of the palms (CARYOTA) bears huge bunches of yellow dates, the attractiveness of which ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... sluggishness by the sight of a gold piece, which Blaise displayed, the old couple succeeded in getting for us a passable supper, which we had served to us on the end of an old wine-butt outside the inn, as ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... been for two months up here, not having been allowed to go to the Virginia springs, on account of the difficulty of carrying my children there; but I am promised that we shall all go there next summer, when there is to be something like a passable road, by which the health-giving region may ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... romance has exaggerated history to caricature. Romances are the destruction of human interest. The moment you begin to move the individuals, they are puppets. 'Nothing but poetry, and I say it who do not read it'—(Chancellor von Redwitz is the speaker)'nothing but poetry makes romances passable: for poetry is the everlastingly and embracingly human. Without it your fictions are flat foolishness, non-nourishing substance—a species of brandy and gruel!—diet for craving stomachs that can support ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... capable of producing so much mischief." "Pray, my dear," answered the marechale, "be under no mistake: you might be as much beloved as others are, if you did not monopolize the king's affections; the consequence is, that every woman with even a passable face looks upon you as the usurper of her right, and as the fickle gentlemen who woo these gentle ladies are all ready to transfer their homage to you directly you appear, you must admit that your presence is calculated to produce no inconsiderable degree of confusion." The commencement ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... the consumer on a small scale. He did not, or could not, conceive of an industry either so vast or so depersonalized as at present. He was rather writing of a system which, like the politics of the eighteenth century, had reached an equilibrium of passable comfort. His natural order was, at bottom, the beatification of that to which this equilibrium tended. Its benefits might be improved by free trade and free workmanship; but, upon the whole, he saw no reason to call in question ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... marked in the maps, of which he was not able to learn the name; that the road afterward grew stony, and the country uneven, where he observed among the hills many hollows worn by torrents, and was told that the road was passable only part of the year; that going on they found the remains of a building, once, perhaps, a fortress to secure the pass, or to restrain the robbers, of which the present inhabitants can give no other account than that it is haunted ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... left my bed betimes, and as I felt in passable good case, I went up to the castle to see whether I might peradventure get to my daughter. But I could not find either constable, albeit I had brought a few groats with me to give them as beer-money; neither would the folks that I met tell me where they ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... contrary believed it to be a post that might have proved of infinite value to his army in the event of his having been obliged to give way. The Forest of Soignies has no thicket or masses of close-growing trees. It consists of tall beeches, and is everywhere passable for men and horses. The artillery could have been withdrawn by the broad road which traverses it towards Brussels; and in the meanwhile a few regiments of resolute infantry could have held the forest and kept the pursuers ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... almost to London. The country on that side of Essex is called the Roodings, I suppose, because there are no less than ten towns almost together, called by the name of Roding, and is famous for good land, good malt, and dirty roads; the latter indeed in the winter are scarce passable for horse or man. In the midst of this we see Chipping Onger, Hatfield Broad Oak, Epping, and many forest towns, famed as I have said for husbandry and good malt, but of no other note. On the south side of the county is Waltham Abbey; the ruins of the abbey remain, ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... puppets is only passable, and the matter of the entertainment stupid and tiresome, consisting in a great part of worn-out old English songs, such as "The death of Nelson"! Colonel Phipps considers "Punch" a much more amusing performance. Lady Mount Edgecumbe, who was in a box there, would probably ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... of the Class of '96; not only football captain and hammer-thrower but debater, and passable in what the State University considered scholarship. He had gone on, had captured the construction-company once owned by the Dodsworths, best-known pioneer family of Zenith. He built state capitols, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... possessions, and contrasting advantageously with the neglect of the Spanish, who in three hundred years in the Philippines left all undone the most important step in civilization. One can drive almost completely around Tahiti on ninety miles of a highway passable at most times of the year, and bridging a hundred times the streams which rush and purl and wind from the heights ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... the ridge I was following might continue passable, I was obliged to stop frequently to survey the rocks above, and erect little piles of stone to mark the way. This not only consumed time, but so completely absorbed the attention that for hours together ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... merrily. One of them wrote a letter to her father, saying that they had been detained by the snow at the house of an acquaintance, and a messenger set off with it at sunrise, but we were told that the road would not be passable before noon. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sun was sinking behind a range of hills that rose gradually from the plain, and the summits of which were apparently about twenty miles distant, the oxen and other animals had been watered, the tent pitched, and the two leaders of the little expedition, having found a passable bathing place a short distance up the stream and taken their evening dip, were impatiently awaiting the last meal of the day, which by courtesy they named dinner, although it very inadequately represented the usual conception of what that ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... back from the advance-guard informed Andelot that the ford was passable, and that the Prince expected us to keep off the foe until the ladies, with a small escort, had crossed ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... built up from a metal disc about 3/4 inch diameter and two slightly larger discs soldered concentrically to the sides. The width of the middle disc should be the same as that of the eccentric rod. A careful filer could make a passable eccentric by sinking a square or semicircular groove in the edge of a wide disc. The centre of the eccentric must be found carefully, and a point marked at a distance from it equal to half the travel of the valve. To ascertain this, pull the valve forward until ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... in the fields the keen-eyed pigeons coo; They fill their crops, and then away they fly. Pigeons are sometimes passable in stew, And always ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... he was astonished to see the plains so saturated with water. Never, to his knowledge, since he had followed the calling of guide, had he found the ground in this soaking condition. Even in the rainy season, the Argentine plains had always been passable. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... a difficult miracle to restore water in a dry well, but we will try, if my brother Merlin fails. Brother Merlin is a very passable artist, but only in the parlor-magic line, and he may not succeed; in fact, is not likely to succeed. But that should be nothing to his discredit; the man that can do this kind of miracle knows enough to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... time. If we separated, the chances were that both divisions would be destroyed; for those embarked might be intercepted, and those left behind might be attacked by the whole American army. To obviate the difficulty, it required that we should build a passable road through the swamp, to Lake Borgne, some twenty miles away. The task was burthened with innumerable difficulties. There was no firm foundation on which to work, and no trees to assist in forming hurdles. All we could do was to bind together large quantities of swamp weeds and lay them across ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... "The title is an old one, and Sir Eustace is evidently a rich man. I had the opportunity for a little talk with the brother yesterday evening. A very courteous little chap—quite unusually so. I think we may regard them as quite passable." His eyes also wandered to the graceful, lounging figure on the balcony. "At the same time I shouldn't let Dinah accept hospitality from them, anyhow at this stage. She is full young. She must be content to stay in the background—at least for ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... Arrowsmith is of opinion that such a junction is improbable, if the author is alluding to the creek, called Palm Tree Creek, which he fell in with about 60 miles to the S.E.—ED.] to the south-east, which might be shut by a fence not thirty yards long; and of the passable ranges to the north-west, which lead into a new country, and which form the pass seen by Roper and Murphy, it is everywhere surrounded by impassable barriers. Beautiful grass, plenty of water in the lower part of the creek, and useful timber, unite to recommend this ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... insignificance. It is not probable that other books will under present conditions repeat the history of these books. There is now no wide region of fertile country rapidly filling with settlers and separated from their former sources of supply by great distance and by mountain ranges unprovided with passable roads. Even the more newly settled regions of the country are reached by railroads and the parts early settled are covered by a network of railroads, of telegraph and telephone wires which bring the consumer and ...
— A History of the McGuffey Readers • Henry H. Vail
... passable, no doubt; And as you pull the strings, my clever Showman, 'Tis clear that you know what you are about, Sense's sworn friend, and babbling folly's foeman. The slides, as worked by you, seem mighty fine, A trifle vague, perhaps, in composition, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... respectfully the frozen hand of the dead. On the 8th, his household, the governor, the admiral, and all the civil and military authorities of the place, attended him to the grave—the pall spread over his coffin being the military cloak which he wore at Marengo. The road not being passable for carriages, a party of English grenadiers bore Napoleon to his tomb. The admiral's ship fired minute guns, while Vignali read the service of his church. The coffin then descended amidst a discharge of three volleys from fifteen cannon; and a huge stone was lowered ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the advantage of having attended to his business closely, so as to learn thoroughly the work he was to do. Some boys perform their work in just a passable way, not caring particularly whether it is well done, if they can only "pass muster." But not so with Benjamin. He sought to understand the business to which he attended, and to do as well as possible the work he undertook. The consequence was that he was a thorough workman, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... resort. But, when you place a boot-leg—or two of them—under your head, they collapse and make a headrest less than half an inch thick. Just why it never occurs to people that a stuffing of moss, leaves, or hemlock browse, would fill out the boot-leg and make a passable pillow, is another conundrum I cannot answer. But there is another and better way of making a pillow for camp use, which I will ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... the senior lieutenant, in passable English, declined the invitation to enter. He unconcernedly kept his cigar alive at such times that the mob drowned his voice. "We are on the way back to our ship. Our commander conferred with the English and Dutch ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... this afternoon at Quebec; I am told the roads will not be passable for carrioles above three days longer: let me therefore see you as often as I can before we are ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... verses from Metastasio in support of my assertion. Metastasio was both a better critic and a better poet, although of the second order in each quality; his tyrants are less philosophical, and his chambermaids less dogmatic. Voltaire was, however, a man of abilities, and author of many passable epigrams, beside those which are contained in his tragedies and heroics; yet it must be confessed that, like your Parisian lackeys, they are usually the smartest ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... his lyrical and his satirical thoughts were broken at his death. The style neither of Persius nor of Juvenal has the faintest resemblance to that of their common master. Statius, whose hendecasyllables are passable enough, has given us one Alcaic and one Sapphic ode, which recall the bald and constrained efforts of a modern schoolboy. I am sure he could not have written any two consecutive stanzas of Horace; and if he could not, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... parquetry is not formidable in a moderate-sized hall. Prices range from 20 to 40 cents per square foot, according to design. We shall be wisely guided in choosing a simple square arrangement that will not protest against any passable decoration of the walls. Unless the hall is spacious borders would better be omitted. They need to have the effect of running into hearths and stairways, and in a narrow passage the center will ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... and his staff, with other gentlemen, rode on ahead to prepare for their reception. Donald wondered how vehicles with wheels could make their way amid the stumps of trees, along the track which then formed the only road to the settlement. Here and there were swamps, which were made passable by huge trunks of trees laid across the track, and bridges of timber, of a primitive, though of a strong character, had already been thrown across ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... if it was fit for the senorita to use. These common mirrors, you understand, they draw the countenance this way, that way,—" she expressed her meaning in vivid pantomime,—"one thinks one's visage of caoutchouc. But this is passable; I assure you, ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... Martin Halaja, had grazed his flocks in that vicinity for years. He told the king of a pass unknown to the enemy, by which the army might reach the table-land, and to prove his words led Lopez de Haro and another through this little-known mountain by-way. It was difficult but passable, the army was put in motion and traversed it all night long, and on the morning of the 14th of July the astonished eyes of the Mohammedans gazed on the Christian host, holding in force the borders of the plateau, and momentarily increasing ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... the wind had broken up the ice a good deal, and now there were lanes in all directions, which proved a great obstacle when I went out driving with the dogs. The temperature, however, was still so low that the channels were quickly frozen over again and became passable; but later on in the month the temperature rose, so that ice was no longer so readily formed on the water, and the channels became ever more ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... pine, and rewarded the dog, and drank the Dochfalla; when, having occasion to send the piper to the other side of the wood, and being so near home, I shouldered the roe, and took the way for the ford of Craig-Darach, a strong wide broken stream with a very bad bottom, but the nearest then passable. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... We met on the other side general Veterani, who invited us, with great civility, to pass the night at a little castle of his, a few miles off, assuring us we should have a very hard day's journey to reach Essek. This we found but too true, the woods being very dangerous, and scarce passable, from the vast quantity of wolves that hoard in them. We came, however, safe, though late to Essek, where we stayed a day, to dispatch a courier with letters to the bassa of Belgrade; and I took that opportunity of seeing the town, which is ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... the maids of old, but passable, As girls go now: nor am I much amaz'd That Clinia dotes upon her. But he has, Alas, poor lad! a miserable, close, Dry, covetous, curmudgeon to his father: Our neighbor here; d'ye know him?—Yet, as if He did not roll in riches, his poor ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... midst of all, who should make his appearance but—the gallant Sir Asinus! Sir Asinus, no longer intending for Europe, but satisfied with Virginia; no longer woful, but in passable good spirits; no longer melancholy, but surveying those around ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... At Sevres, which is celebrated for the beauty of its porcelain manufactory, I observed workmen employed in finishing a new and handsome bridge of nine arches over the Seine, in place of the old one which is hardly passable. Near the barrier of Passy is a carpet-manufactory, which was established there by Henry the Fourth. This barrier is thought to be the most striking entrance to Paris. In my excursions in the vicinity of Paris, I observed that the harvest was extremely abundant, ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... gulches of great size run, with heavy cascades, finer than Foyers at its best, and a native village is picturesquely situated between the two. The great white rollers, whiter by contrast with the dark deep water, come into the gulch just where we forded the river, and from the ford a passable road made for hauling sugar ascends to the house. The air is something absolutely delicious; and the murmur of the rollers and the deep boom of the cascades are very soothing. There is little rise or ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... along the Strand, a beautiful open road, with grassy borders shelving down to the Thames. They passed through the City of London. The Hospital lay beyond the walls, but the Marshes of Moorfields that protected them were not passable without a long circuit; and the fortified gates stood open at Temple Bar, where the Hospitaliers, looking towards the Round Church and stately buildings of the Preceptory, saluted the white-cloaked figures moving about it, with courtesy ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Poor men have become rich, the beggar has sat among princes, the sick have been made whole, the dead have been raised, the neglected man has awoke to find himself famous, rough and kindly beasts have been charmed by lovely ladies into very passable Princes, and it would be hard to say that the ugly have not seen themselves beautiful in the mirror of friendly eyes; but the old have never become young. The elixir of youth has intoxicated the imagination of many, but no drop of it has ever passed ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... steps they were still defeated, but, upon going forward once more, Yussuf found what was quite a crack in the rocks, some huge earthquake split which proved to be passable, in spite of the bushes and stones with which it was choked, and after a struggle they found themselves upon an extensive ledge of the mountain, ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... so much one of years, but they gave Mrs. Samstag, in spite of the only slightly plump and really passable figure, the look of one out of health. Women of her kind of sallowness can be found daily in fashionable physicians' outer offices, awaiting ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... answered Bazarov, also with a laugh, though he felt anything but cheerful, and had no more inclination to laugh than she had; 'I suppose you ought to give the young people your blessing. It's a good match in every respect; Kirsanov's position is passable, he's the only son, and his father's a good-natured fellow, he won't try ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... accordingly given him to do under contract. Simultaneously with the felling, a track should be cut right through the heart of the estate by the natives, to be afterwards ditched and drained and made passable for carts ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... ashore for the next week, by which time order had been completely restored, the fires extinguished, and the streets made, at least, passable. The sailors had been aided by a battalion of marines, which had been telegraphed for from Malta by the admiral, before the bombardment began. The Khedive had returned to Has-el-Teen, which had only been partly destroyed, as soon as the blue-jackets entered. His arrival put an end to ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... are very passable," said the voice. "Small, of course, and underfurnished, but some pictures and antimacassars would take off that bare look. And Marmaduke is adorable. Your cook would soon be devotion itself. Why, at my ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... his bar and asked for a drink of English ale, a passable quality of which was served in the original imported ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... communications throughout the Philippines. He established a comprehensive system of roads, and organised posts throughout the islands. Although most of the roads are now kept in most wretched order, yet being nearly always passable by horses, they are found to be of the utmost importance to the well-being of the country, even as they ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... while crossing over or mining or quarrying under any such road, a safe and unobstructed passageway or road shall be kept open by such person, firm or corporation for public use, and as soon as practicable such road shall be fully restored to its original safe and passable condition. When such crossing is made by excavation at a depth of more than thirty feet below the surface of such road, the person, firm or corporation making same shall be liable to the county commissioners or township trustees for any damage that may accrue by reason ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... what happened. There was no particular mystery in the presence of the agile animal among the down logs. But when it started off at a leisurely and smooth trot, winding in and out and upward, he leaped joyously to the only conclusion possible. The deer was following a passable trail through the jungle and ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... Lambert. "The steady way is the best way. The world is a passable place, if a fellow has a decent income by inheritance, or can earn a big one, but to be really contented to earn money it must be a big one, otherwise he is far better pleased to take the small inherited income. It has a lot of dignity, which the other can only ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... unless naturally curling fair hair, that would be fairer when it was washed, could make her so. The long, thin legs that came below her torn dress made her too tall for her age, and what might have been a passable mouth was spoiled by the departure of two of the front "baby" teeth and the tardy arrival ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... surveys, were the most accurate obtainable, but even then they left much to be desired. Subsequent knowledge of the country showed that frequently roads and native paths were indicated that had no actual existence, while on the other hand passable tracks were discovered that were not shown on the maps. More than likely the wily Huns allowed what were presumed to be official maps to fall into the hands of the British, having taken particular care to make ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... and on the Clarks' porch and we can have Chas. too. I suppose he will have had his holiday but he can come up for a Sunday. We expect to move up on Santiago the day after to-morrow, and it's about time, for the trail will not be passable much longer. It rains every day at three o'clock for an hour and such rain you never guessed. It is three inches high for an hour. Then we all go out naked and dig trenches to get it out of the way. It is very rough living. I have to confess that ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... had suffered hitherto, was nothing to the difficulties we were now entering upon, and which God had decreed us to undergo for the sake of Jesus Christ. Our way now lay through a region scarce passable, and full of serpents, which were continually creeping between our legs; we might have avoided them in the day, but being obliged, that we might avoid the excessive heats, to take long marches in the night, we were every moment treading upon them. Nothing ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... weren't to talk now, and I must tell you everything afterwards. Oh, I got on better than I expected, though most of the people were rather starchy. How did my dress look? Well—promise you won't breathe a word to darling Mother—it was just passable, and that's all. Some girls had lovely things. I didn't care. The second part of the evening was far nicer than the first, and I enjoyed the dances that I sat out the most. The conservatory was all hung ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... machete in clearing away the brushwood that obstructed the path. This did not turn out such a task after all. It was only at the brow of the ridge, where the undergrowth had choked up the way. A little farther down it was quite passable, and the party, animals and all, were soon winding down the Sierra towards the valley. Half-an-hour's travelling brought them to their destination; and then a shout of joy, coming simultaneously from all of them, announced their arrival upon ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... however, can be expected from stocking-weavers and such like? Well, well! I was speaking of that worthy man Deane. There is his wife, a good dame and a careful mother, and his two daughters. You know them better than I do—passable girls though, they seem to me; not exactly such as I might have chosen as your companions; but tempora mutantur, as we used to say at college! I'faith, most of my Latin has slipped out of my memory. ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... men to go sailing is in spring when a man first sees leaves on the topmost shoot of a fig-tree as large as the foot-print that a cow makes; then the sea is passable, and this is the spring sailing time. For my part I do not praise it, for my heart does not like it. Such a sailing is snatched, and you will hardly avoid mischief. Yet in their ignorance men do even this, for wealth means life to poor mortals; but it is fearful to die among the waves. ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... notes and replied—"The thumb-print on square one is evidently a forgery, as is also number two, though it is a passable imitation. Three and four are genuine; five is an obvious forgery. Six is a genuine thumb-print; seven is a forgery, though a good one; eight is genuine; nine is, I think, a forgery, though it is a remarkably good imitation. Ten and eleven ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... good and even polished French; and La Salle, turning, found that Regnar stood beside him. An air of education which he had never noticed before seemed to pervade this youth, who spoke English almost execrably, and had shown little more than a passable knowledge of the coast of Labrador, and a keen insight into all the varied ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... monstrous the last two letters are is a matter of taste,—how impossible, a matter of knowledge; but we submit that any man with a passable degree of either taste or knowledge is able to decide, and will decide that No. 6 is not more impossible than No. 1, or No. 4 more monstrous than No. 2; while in Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, there is exhibited a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... long enough now to discover the differences between this front and the old fighting-line in Gallipoli. The rain has been heavier in March than for thirty-five years, and April until yesterday seemed almost as bad. The trenches are made passable by being floored with a wooden pathway which runs on piles—underneath which is the gutter of water and mud which is the real floor of the trench. Sometimes the water rises in the communication trenches so that the boards float or disappear, and if you happen ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... meant, when, after about half an hour's walk, I came to a turn in the road, and a post with a metal sign: "Rogers's I.—1/2m." Here was another causeway across a marsh, not as well kept, nor as much used, as that from Bailey's Harbor, but quite passable. The island was in plain sight at the end of the road,—a rocky hummock of land, with two patches of trees. At the edge of one of these groups of trees I could see a chimney and one corner of a house. A big, pink poster, stuck up on the sign-post, had caught my eye. It was like several others ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... for the sake of simplicity, had lately been heavily shelled, and it was therefore decided to open up Boyau 1, 2, 3, as an alternative route to trenches, calling it "Wortley Avenue," in honour of the Major General. Parties from all companies worked day and night at this, soon making it passable, though it would always be dangerously exposed to view. Unfortunately "A" Company were shelled one day while at work, and we lost 2nd Lieut. Pickworth, who had to be sent to Hospital, and eventually to England, with a ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... there were quite enough on the ground. However, two substantial poles had been felled, and these were laid over the deepest and most dangerous part of the current. The bridge was soon declared passable, and loud shouts from the opposite side proclaimed that luncheon was quite ready. I was called, as having a most undeserved reputation for "pluck," to make trial of the aerial-looking fabric. I did not like it at all, and entreated some one else to lead the forlorn ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... backs—and she liked us to run up and down stairs and make ourselves useful, because the exercise would improve our carriage and complexion. Dora had such a pretty figure, poor girl! and I think mine is passable,' drawing herself up to give ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... materialize, and it was not long before the expected began to happen. Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy's business appeared outwardly passable, but curiously enough it almost always seemed—after the loss—that the risk was one on which the company should never have been committed. And there were two unpleasant incidents where the Guardian was "caught on a binder"—where the loss occurred before the agents ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... of his intellect (which at this point seemed to taste a little of decrepitude), Strauss declared [1] that the doctrine of immortality has recently lost the assistance of a passable argument, inasmuch as it has been discovered that the stars are inhabited; for where, he asks, could room now be found for such a multitude of souls? Again, in view of the current estimates of prospective population for this earth, some ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... during the next four days. Without tents, with thin and ragged clothes, most of them without shoes, "many hundreds of the soldiers tracking the ground with their bloody feet," they retreated at the rate of seventeen miles a day along barely passable roads, the wagon-wheels sinking deep in the mud, and every creek swollen with the rains. In these four days of anxiety Greene slept barely four hours, watching every detail with a vigilant eye, which nothing escaped. On the 14th they reached the ford, hurrying the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... neither.—Then, pray sir, said I, not in my hearing, I hope.—Sure, Pamela, returned he, you would not write what is not fit to be heard!—But, sir, said I, there are particular cases, times, and occasions, that may make a thing passable at one time, that would not be tolerable at another. O, said he, let me judge of that, as well as you, Pamela. These ladies know a good part of your story; and, let me tell you, what they know is more to your ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... cryptic, waiting for the other to gather the thing he had not spoken. Keith, simulating two of Conniston's tricks at the same time, shrugged a shoulder and twisted a mustache as he rose to his feet. He smiled coolly down at the iron man. For once he gave a passable imitation ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... dear girl," he said, "your father's tailor estimated that he might make me a very passable dress suit for one hundred and seventy-five dollars. Brett's ties were stunning, just as you say, but the prices ranged from five to eight dollars, which was more stunning still. For a young person ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the inclement state of the weather and the badness of the roads, he entered the province of Andaguaylas. It was a fair and fruitful country, and since the road beyond would take him into the depths of a gloomy sierra, scarcely passable in the winter snows, Gasca resolved to remain in his present quarters until the severity of the season was mitigated. As many of the troops had already contracted diseases from exposure to the incessant rains, he established a camp hospital; and the good president personally visited the ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... Jones's set is very exclusive, and I was greatly complimented, of course. I went. Jones has taste. I noticed the plaster walls. Jones had them colored to marble. The wainscoting of the library was pine, but the pine lied itself into a passable walnut. The folding doors of the parlor were pine, too, when I came near. They pretended to be solid oak while I stood at the other end of the room. Jones had succumbed to the demands of his time, and had made his dwelling among lies. His 'elegant ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the coach-box, but I look, as I pass, at all the women ear, for the box; but not none I see. "Well," I tell myself once more, "never mind, we shall see;" and we drive on very passable and agreeable times till we approached ourselves near London; but then come one another coach of the opposition to pass by, and the coachman say, "No, my boy, it shan't do!" and then he whip his horses, and made some traverse upon the road, and tell to me, all the times, a long explication what ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... the amount of travel of late weeks, the snow in the street had been trodden to a passable condition. But blinded by the darkness every now and then, with a gasp and a flounder, she would step out of the path into the deep snow on either side, and once hearing a sleigh coming along, she had to plunge into a drift nearly as high ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... kampong we traveled by a much-grown-up elephant track, needing the constant use of the parang and the strength and wisdom of the elephant to make it passable, saw several lairs and some recent tiger tracks, crossed a very steep hill, and, after some hours of hard riding, came down upon the lovely Perak, which we crossed in a "dugout" so nearly level with the water that at every stroke of the paddle of the native who crouched in the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... thoroughly. She proved, too, wonderfully quick at detecting mistakes, and Barry, who had petitioned the heads of the office they had selected not to send him any Council School product, was pleased to find that her spelling was admirable, her grammar passable, and ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... of bang of brown hair coming over one temple, and a large silk bow under his chin and a little towards one ear, such as artists and artistic men of letters affect. His profile was regular and fine, his eyes expressive, his mouth, a very passable mouth. His features expressed at first only the naive horror ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the original Mexican government, and they paid no wages to their peons. These Spaniards, with the priests, however, are to be credited with whatever progress civilization made in the early days of California. They built the first passable roads, they completed rough surveys and they first discovered the wonderful fertility of the California soils. The towns they built were built solidly, with an eye to the future ravages of earthquakes and of Time, which ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... for their laziness. There are many ample stretches of meadow-land at a short distance from the coast, completely covered with bog, and passable only with great precautions, which the construction of a few ditches would thoroughly drain. Capital grass would then spring up in abundant crops. It is well known that such will grow in Iceland, for the hillocks which rise above the swamps are luxuriantly overgrown with herbage and ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... is the wife of a mechanic, mother of two children, a woman of merely passable English education, but of fine wit, with all her sex's grace and intuitions, who exhibits, indeed, such a noble female personality, that I am fain to record it here. Never abnegating her own proper independence, but always genially preserving it, and what ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... port made him somewhat rubicund and "portly,"—he who had once been a pale little counter-jumper; and by means of shooting-coats, tight gaiters, and the right shape of hat he turned himself into a passable imitation of the fine old English gentleman. His tone altered, too, and instead of being uniformly diplomatic, it varied abruptly between a sort of Cheeryble philanthropy and a sort of Wellingtonian ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... some urgent business to be transacted in the capital—Caesar Augustus, me-thinks, would have desired his company. And even so, I have suddenly woke up to the fact that Taranto, my next resting-place, besides possessing an agreeably warm climate, has some passable restaurants. I will pack without delay. Mount Vulture must wait. The wind alone, the Vulturnus or south-easterly wind, is quite enough to make one despair of climbing hills. It has blown with objectionable persistency ever since my ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... locker and found a worn pair of trousers which he threw to the girl. A sweater, too shrunken and misshapen for him to wear again, came next. Dismayed, she inspected the battered loot; then was inspired to quick alterations. Pant-legs cut off well above the baggy knees made passable shorts; the sweater bulged a trifle at the shoulders, it fit adequately elsewhere—and something more ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... increase my facility of saying nothing with grace, and improve my manners, even as I doubt not that under the tuition of Monsieur Pied, the aforesaid countryman might, in time, be taught to make a passable bow. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... could finish saying something was wanted he would have utterly disappeared. He was rather small for his age;-and I don't think had ever been seen with a clean face. Even at church, though the immediate front turned to the minister might be passable, the people in the next pew had always an uninterrupted view of the black rim where washing operations had ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... their reports. This blizzard that had seized Milton in its grasp, however, forced the Board of Education to announce in the Post that pupils of all grades would be excused until the streets were moderately passable. ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... Bagneres brought us to Sainte Marie, where the roads separate,—one leading to Luchon, the other, to the right, across the Tourmalet, to Bareges; the latter, which we followed, here makes a very sensible ascent, but continues passable for carriages till we arrive at the little village of Grip—the last cluster of habitations on this side of the chain which divides the valley of Campan from ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... of communication between the countries of Central Asia and Sinde; and as far as the Pass is concerned itself, it is quite guiltless of the bad character it holds. It is merely the bed of a winter torrent, and is an easy ascent the whole way through; and during the greater part of the year quite passable for any description, of conveyance; but in consequence of the great number of robbers, from all parts of Beloochistan and Sinde, who infest it, no one thinks of travelling this route, unless with a very strong escort. A great number, ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... General. I have just sent for some chairs, and when they arrive we will sit and discuss the matter in comfort. Meanwhile, may I offer you and Captain Morillo a glass of wine? We have some very passable champagne down ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... hand; sixty written slips of the kind of paper he habitually used would represent—thanks to the astonishing system which prevails in such matters: large type, wide spacing, frequency of blank pages—a passable three-hundred-page volume. On an average he could write four such slips a day; so here we have fifteen days for the volume, and forty-five ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... of several of these I found that the plundered camp was only seventeen miles distant; and as the ground was so soft that we could not move farther with the carts until fair weather had again rendered it passable, I resolved to halt the party here until after my ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... of little account, of small account, of no account, of little importance, of no importance &c. 642; immaterial; unessential, nonessential; indifferent. subordinate &c. (inferior) 34; mediocre &c. (average) 29; passable, fair, respectable, tolerable, commonplace; uneventful, mere, common; ordinary &c. (habitual) 613; inconsiderable, so-so, insignificant, inappreciable. trifling, trivial; slight, slender, light, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... restaurant, where they cooked well, while the Tischwein was really most passable. We stopped there for a couple of hours, and dried ourselves and fed ourselves, and talked about the view; and just before we left an incident occurred that shows how much more stirring in this world are the influences of evil compared with those ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... himself to be covered round with snow, except a small hole which he leaves for the convenience of breathing. In this manner he lies, with his dogs around him, who assist in keeping him warm, sometimes for several days, till the storm is past, and the roads again become passable, so that he may be able to ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... settlement of Partridge Bay, but as the space which lay between was a particularly rugged part of the wilderness, with only a portion of road—unworthy of the name—here and there, and the greater part of the way only passable on foot or by means of dog-sledges, none but an occasional red man or a trapper went to and fro; and as the nature of the fur-trader's business called for very little intercourse with the settlements—their furs being sent by water to Quebec in summer—it followed ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... Stevenson says: 'I am so often filled with wonder that so many marriages are passable successes, and so few come to open failure, the more so as I fail to understand the principle on ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... a grand centre, issues twelve roads, that point to as many towns; some of these, within memory, have scarcely been passable; all are mended, but though much is done, more is wanted. In an upland country, like that about Birmingham, where there is no river of size, and where the heads only of the streams show themselves: the stranger would be surprised to hear, that through most of these ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... sweet cassava (manioc). Saavedra gave us to understand that we were not only most welcome to anything he had, but that he would do everything to enable us to see the ruins, which were, it seemed, at Espiritu Pampa, some distance farther down the valley, to be reached only by a hard trail passable for barefooted savages, but scarcely available for us unless we chose to go a good part of the distance on hands and knees. The next day, while our carriers were engaged in clearing this trail, Professor Foote collected a large number of insects, including ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... have become more or less vast lodging-houses, all built on the same plan and managed according to the same regulations, one as passable as the other, with apartments in them which, more or less good, are more or less dear, but at rates which, higher or lower, are fixed at a uniform tariff over the entire territory, so that the 36,000 communal buildings ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... telling you that for a woman of twenty-seven, with a face still passable, but with a form a little too much like that of the Emperor Nicholas for the humble part I play, I am happy! Let me tell you why: Adolphe, rejoicing in the deceptions which have fallen upon me like a hail-storm, smoothes over the wounds in my self-love by so much ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... budding them. Sowing a quantity of the stones, they are sure to pick out from among the seedlings as many good sorts as they may wish to cultivate: few of these may be exactly like the parent; some may be superior, but all are passable, especially if the young trees have been selected by a skilful hand; and this he is enabled to do, merely from the appearance of the wood and leaves. Many new sorts have lately been obtained and brought into notice ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... a fair penman; I'm a good mechanic; I could be a passable druggist if I tried, and I wouldn't shy at taking a hand at running a bank, if it was ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... you have provided your self with a Man, you take no Care for poor me— Prithee tell me, what dost thou see about me that is unfit for Love— have not I a world of Youth? a Humour gay? a Beauty passable? a Vigour desirable? well shap'd? clean limb'd? sweet breath'd? and Sense enough to know how all these ought to be employ'd to the best Advantage: yes, I do and will. Therefore lay aside your Hopes of my Fortune, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... German slipped into the real owner's place. So far as appearances went, he was a very passable sweetmeat and lemonade seller, and Ranjoor Singh proved ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... culture; the separate areas to be devoted to these three classes were carefully calculated, described and marked on the plat. The number of roads required to connect the various fields and subdivisions with the village, were laid out and made passable by building the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... here, and kept from means of death. I've heard a spirit's force is wonderful; At whose approach, when starting from his dungeon, The earth does shake, and the old ocean groans, Rocks are removed, and towers are thundered down; And walls of brass, and gates of adamant Are passable as air, and fleet ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... her daughter. She wanted to see nothing less than a ducal coronet upon the child's brow, British preferred. If ordinary chorus girls and vaudeville stars, possessing only passable beauty and no intelligence whatever, could bring earls into their nets, there was no reason why Nora could not be a princess or a duchess. So she planned accordingly. But the child puzzled and eluded her; and from time to time she ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... be carried on the shoulders, nor are there beasts of burden here which could be used for this purpose: nor are the roads and passes sufficiently prepared, although I have commenced to get them in readiness so as to be passable: and also it was very inconvenient to leave the sick here in an open place, in huts, with the provisions and supplies which are on land: for although these Indians may have shown themselves to the discoverers and show themselves every day, to be very ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... large kettle; and a mule being killed here, his head was boiled in it for several hours, and made a passable soup for famished people. ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... who is a haggard melancholy man, speaking in a weak voice of querulous complaint, 'to what to attribute it, Mr Wegg. I can't work you into a miscellaneous one, no how. Do what I will, you can't be got to fit. Anybody with a passable knowledge would pick you out at a look, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Jem Bottles, his clothes were well enough, and indeed he was passable in most ways unless it was his habit, when hearing a sudden noise, to take a swift dark look to the right and to the left. Then, further, people might shrewdly note his way of always sitting with his back to the ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... out and verifying the work of the surveyors employed, he was usually out from daybreak to sunset, often fifteen hours without food, traversing on foot, with great bodily exertion, wastes and deserts of bog, so wet and dangerous as to be scarcely passable at that season, even by the common Irish best used to them. In these bogs there frequently occur great holes, filled with water of the same colour as the bog, or sometimes covered over with a slight surface ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... cigar? I don't smoke myself; my throat won't stand it; but I understand these are passable. Grant left them here. He's a chimney, that man Grant. At ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... statues and marbles that are now admired in European museums are examples of this industrialised art, inexpensive, creating nothing original, but furnishing to families in comfortable circumstances passable copies of works of art—once ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... without repulsion. Nor did Mary, he said, really love him. He knew what love was—something different entirely from that pallid flame of affection and esteem, of which alone she was capable. Mary loved him for certain qualities of mind, because his station in life was decent, his manners passable, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... sometimes hardly known whether I was a hurdy-gurdy or an explosion of cats, and the future female jester has even been known to lie down on the floor and cry in her dumps of despair or some such devilry. However, Mr. Koenig begins to believe that I am passable, and my first appearance is to be made immediately after Lent, at the house of the Home Secretary, where it is not improbable, dear Aunt Rachel, that I may meet Mr. Drake, although that is no part ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... danger, edged his way along the wall to the east, and I to the west, to see if there might not be some favourable point; but we both returned with the belief that the precipice in front of us was as passable as any of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... attempt to furbish up any intellectual entertainment for readers from the excessively dry bones of my subsequent blockading, especially off the mouth of the Sabine. Only a French cook could produce a passable dish out of such woful material; and even he would require concomitant ingredients, in remembered incidents, wherein, if there were any, my memory fails me. Day after day, day after day, we lay inactive—roll, roll; not wholly ineffective, I suppose, for our presence stopped blockade-running; ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... protest to me, that the revenue, as it now stands, will not serve him and me too. One of us must pinch for it, if you do not help me. I must speak freely to you: I am under bad circumstances, for besides my harlots in service, my reformado concubines lye heavy upon me. I have a passable good estate, I confess, but, God's-fish, I have a great charge upon 't. Here's my Lord Treasurer can tell, that all the money designed for next summer's guards must, of necessity, be applyed to the next year's cradles and swadling-cloths. What shall we do for ships ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... behind, and I may add from inefficient service, much more than we had formerly done. On reaching Almora we mentioned to a friend the route we had taken, and he said, "Surely you have not come in a wheeled conveyance, for I am told that road is impassable." I told him the road was passable, for we had passed it, but if we had previously known what it was we should not have attempted it. Amidst the tracks we saw, we often had difficulty in deciding which was the road. Between unbridged streams with high banks, ditches, and deep ruts which caught ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... twenty-three miles distant. It was flat-bottomed, growing wider and more valley-like with every mile, but not especially interesting to one who had seen the glory of all the canyons. Floods had spoiled what had once been a very passable stage road, dropping 4000 feet in twenty miles, down to the very depths of the Grand Canyon. Some cattle, driven down by the snows, were sunning themselves near the building. Our appearance filled them with alarm, and they "high tailed it" to use a cattle man's expression, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... clink the cannikin?' The story of Julia and her Romeo, like all other stories, had found its end, and merged a little later into the history of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Reddy. The family feud was buried, and Samson and Abel made very passable grandfathers and dwelt in peace one with another. Dick never told a living soul, not even Julia herself, of the stratagem by which Mrs. Jenny had succeeded in uniting them, and Mrs. Jenny, by complete reticence on the subject, disproved the time-worn calumny ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... imaginative as well as sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the amount of his imagination. It is perfectly true that what we call the world, in these affairs, is nothing more than a mere Brocken spectre, the projected shadow of ourselves; but as long as we do not know it, it is a very passable giant. We are not without experience of natures so purely intellectual that their bodies had no more concern in their mental doings and sufferings than a house has with the good or ill fortune of its occupant. But poets ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... sand banks; opposite Jumalpore, the banks are about a mile apart, but the distance between the extreme banks, leaving the island opposite the cantonment out of the question, is much more. During the dry weather this part of the river is passable, and indeed is in some places nothing but a dry bed of sand, so that people walk across it. During our stay at the above place we met with many interesting and new plants, among which a new species ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... as the crow flies, but Buck was no aviator. He was forced to take a most tortuous, roundabout route, and when he finally emerged on the first passable track heading approximately in the right direction, the sun was low and there seemed little chance of his accomplishing his purpose in the few hours of ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... over the barbarians; but winter weather came on, contrary to expectation, as early as the autumnal equinox, with storms and frequent snows and, even in the most clear days, hoar frost and ice, which made the waters scarcely drinkable for the horses by their exceeding coldness, and scarcely passable through the ice breaking and cutting the horses' sinews. The country for the most part being quite uncleared, with difficult passes, and much wood, kept them continually wet, the snow falling thickly on them as they marched in the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... six school matches. The school that they played twice in the season was Ripton. To win one Ripton match meant that, however many losses it might have sustained in the other matches, the school had had, at any rate, a passable season. To win two Ripton matches in the same year was almost unheard of. This year there had seemed every likelihood of it. The match before Christmas on the Ripton ground had resulted in a win for Wrykyn by two goals and ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... only twenty-six miles. By a good road, in easy marches, an army should be there in two days; in an exigency, in one. It was mostly a wilderness country, and, though generally level, much of it was a bog, which could only be made passable by laying down a corduroy road. There were miles of such road to be repaired or built before wagons or artillery could be dragged over it. Indeed, a worse country to march through can hardly be imagined. On the other hand, of this twenty-six miles, Wood Creek, a tributary of ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... however, and led him to devote the following evening to making certain additions to the sense and alterations in the style of Elfrida's views on "The Nemesis of Romanticism," which enabled him to say, at about one o'clock in the morning, "Enfin! It is passable!" He took it to Elfrida on his way from his lecture next day. She met him at the door of her attic with expectant eyes; she was certain ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... girl whom we find new charms in after making her mother's acquaintance. You know how some young people would be passable enough if it were not for a lurid light thrown upon their identity by other members of their family. You know the sister you thought was a beauty and dear, until you met her sister, who was gristly and a jade. But it's a great shame in Tishy's case, because we do honestly believe her ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... shouldn't wonder," Franks went on. "The fact is, you know, they're very poor. It's a miserable sort of a life for a girl like Bertha Cross. She's clever, in her way; did you ever see any of her work? Children's book-illustrating? It's more than passable, I assure you. But of course she's wretchedly paid. Apart from that, a ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... language which "is not made, but grows." Like the governments which are in a similar case, it may be compared to a road which is not made but has made itself: it requires continual mending in order to be passable. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... whole was passable. In March there were days of strong west wind which were really chilly. In April it began to warm up, and the thermometer in the tents—and a tent with flaps gave us the best shade temperature we could find—reached 100 deg. before ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... 8,000 feet and rough of access, had capitulated to lawn- tennis. To a traveller this Anglo-Indian hubbub was intolerable, and I left Srinagar and many kind friends on June 20 for the uplifted plateaux of Lesser Tibet. My party consisted of myself, a thoroughly competent servant and passable interpreter, Hassan Khan, a Panjabi; a seis, of whom the less that is said the better; and Mando, a Kashmiri lad, a common coolie, who, under Hassan Khan's training, developed into an efficient travelling servant, and later into a ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... mean time made haste to get the horse and his burden beyond the reach of bullets. They toiled up the bed of the brook until it was no longer passable. Huge bowlders lay jammed and crowded in clefts of the mountain before them. Penn remembered the spot. He had been there in spring, when down over the rocks, now covered with lichens and dry scum, poured ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... was not asking for commiseration. "Tell Elspeth not to worry about me. If I have no big ideas just now, I have some very passable little ones, and one in particular that—" He drew a great breath. "If only Grizel were better," that breath said, "I think Tommy Sandys could find a way of making the public remember ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... high civilization; but the broad divans and velvet cushions of the cabin brought us back to luxury in spite of ourselves. The captain, smoothly shaven and robust, as befitted his station,—English in all but his eyes, which were thoroughly Russian,—gave us a cordial welcome in passable French. P. drove up presently, and the crowd on the floating pier rapidly increased, as the moment of departure approached. Our fellow-pilgrims were mostly peasants and deck—passengers: two or three officers, and a score of the bourgeois, were divided, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... excise as when goods remain in the Prussian territory, or return back until we came again into the Zoll-strasse. It took some time to consider which was best to be done. To be sent about we knew not whither, and on roads scarcely passable, would prove a serious inconvenience; and on the other hand it was exceedingly mortifying to pay for such a trifle so enormous an excise. The officer was very civil, but told us it was not in his power to do otherwise. We concluded it would be best and cheapest to pay dearly for our error rather ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... the road. When it was still I could hear a cart or wagon, coming or going, rattling and pounding over the logs for nearly a mile. But it was so much better than water and mud that we thought it quite passable. We threw some clay and dirt on to the logs and it made quite an improvement, especially in a dry time. But in a wet time it was then, and is now, a very disagreeable road to travel, as the clay gathers on the feet of the pedestrian, ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... of hills at the back of the French Army lay a gap, just as there is a gap through the hills behind Leatherhead. Not only was that gap easily passable by an army—easily, at least, compared with the hill country on either side—but it had running through it the great road from Metz to Paris, so that advance along it ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... to give him an account of the Crusades. This was not the most difficult part of her task. Thanks to the stores of information derived from the abbe and to his prodigious memory for facts, Patience had a passable knowledge of the outlines of universal history. But what he had great trouble in grasping was the connection and difference between epic poetry and history. At first he was indignant at the inventions of the poets, and declared that such impostures ought ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... seemed droll enough to me then, and it is odd even now that I have become familiar with it in the talk of old-fashioned people. Interpreting it as they do, I dispute it stoutly. Parsnips may be only passable to most palates even when buttered. They would be intolerable with vinegar. Furthermore,—before we drop the figure,—if anything can butter them, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... title is an old one, and Sir Eustace is evidently a rich man. I had the opportunity for a little talk with the brother yesterday evening. A very courteous little chap—quite unusually so. I think we may regard them as quite passable." His eyes also wandered to the graceful, lounging figure on the balcony. "At the same time I shouldn't let Dinah accept hospitality from them, anyhow at this stage. She is full young. She must be content to stay in the background—at least for ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... they are now. In this case the temptation was great, and the punishment, even in case of detection, was not likely to be very severe, as Will came of a loyal stock, and his uncle was in good repute, and a passable tale to account for his possession of the body and his ignorance of the identity might ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... the last two letters are is a matter of taste,—how impossible, a matter of knowledge; but we submit that any man with a passable degree of either taste or knowledge is able to decide, and will decide that No. 6 is not more impossible than No. 1, or No. 4 more monstrous than No. 2; while in Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, there is exhibited a variation in the form of capital letters, instances of which Dr. Ingleby intimates ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... necessary to convince them [76] that the cosmos works through the lower nature of man, not for righteousness, but against it. And it finally drove them to confess that the existence of their ideal "wise man" was incompatible with the nature of things; that even a passable approximation to that ideal was to be attained only at the cost of renunciation of the world and mortification, not merely of the flesh, but of all human affections. The state of perfection was that "apatheia"[Note 17] in which desire, though it may still be felt, is powerless ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... looks both widely and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme of a Whole: to select these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, a passable Bridge be effected: this, as heretofore, continues our only method. Among such light-spots, the following, floating in much wild matter about Perfectibility, has seemed worth ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... journey westward of Bammakoo; and as there were not any canoes large enough to receive his horse, he could not possibly get him over for some months to come. Mr. Park consulted with his landlord how to surmount this difficulty, who informed him that one road which was very rocky, and scarcely passable for horses, still remained, but if he procured a proper guide over the hills to a town called Sibidooloo, he had no doubt but he might travel forwards through Manding. Being informed that a jilli-kea, or singing-man, was about to depart for ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... they are more than passable," replied he. "We have had many offers, but not such as come up to my expectations. Baronets are cheap now-a-days, and Irish lords are nothings; I hope to settle them comfortably. We shall see. Try this claret; you will find it excellent, not a headache in a hogshead of ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... weather near the Pole, and had sailed 300 leagues to the east of Nova Zembla. The first argument only proved, that there was sea between Nova Zembla and Japan; but not that it was navigable, though passable for whales: the other two positions were unfounded. Wood, however, persuaded the Duke of York to send him out in 1676. He doubled the North Cape, and reached 76 degrees of north latitude. One of the ships was wrecked off the coast ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... been a torture that she could not bear. It wanted but two days to Christmas and the gaiety of the season, forced or genuine, rang out everywhere. Christmas shopping, with its anxious solicitude or self-centred absorption, overspread the West End and made the pavements scarcely passable at certain favoured points. Proud parents, parcel-laden and surrounded by escorts of their young people, compared notes with one another on the looks and qualities of their offspring and exchanged loud hurried confidences on the difficulty or success which each had experienced ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... little over an hour brought us to some well-known rapids, or "kihams," as they usually are called in Borneo. Formerly this Kiham Raja had a bad reputation, Dayaks being killed here occasionally every year, but of late the government has blasted out rocks and made it more passable. However, even now it is no trifle to negotiate these rapids. Below them we halted and threw explosive Favier into the water in the hope of getting fish, and as soon as the upheaval of the water began the Kenyahs, as if by a given signal, hurried all the prahus out to the scene. ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... drank the Dochfalla; when, having occasion to send the piper to the other side of the wood, and being so near home, I shouldered the roe, and took the way for the ford of Craig-Darach, a strong wide broken stream with a very bad bottom, but the nearest then passable. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... of the island have within the last twenty years been rendered passable for vehicles of all kinds, even to stage coaches, yet by far the best mode of inspecting this English Arcadia is to travel through it on foot, commencing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 570, October 13, 1832 • Various
... preparing to accost them. Never was dislike more instinctive and hearty. Vandermere, an ordinarily intelligent but unimaginative Englishman, of the normally healthy type, a sportsman, a good fellow, and a man of breeding—and Saton, this strange product of strange circumstances, externally passable enough, but with something about him which seemed, even in that clear November sunshine, to ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wanted to give a feast—said he had heard it was a cheap land, and he was bound to have a grand banquet. He invited nine of us, and we ate an excellent dinner at the principal hotel. In the midst of the jollity produced by good cigars, good wine, and passable anecdotes, the landlord presented his bill. Blucher glanced at it and his countenance fell. He took another look to assure himself that his senses had not deceived him and then read the items aloud, in a faltering voice, while the roses in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... account for a good deal, we admit, but not for all that. We are acquainted with the ordinary condition of the Rhine, and although muddy, and at times unpleasant, it is passable. As it is this summer, however, we would prefer not to travel upon it. We will wait ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... immediately in rear of the Windward Passage that its command of the latter can scarcely be considered less than that of Santiago. The analogy of its situation, as a station for a great fleet, to that for an army covering a frontier which is passable at but a few points, will scarcely escape a military reader. A comparatively short chain of swift lookout steamers, in each direction, can give timely notice of any approach by either of the three passages named; while, if entrance ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... asked the editor, "rendering none? But let that pass. You at least, I am told, are among the passable players. But Ebenezer Brown abhors plays and players; he detests billiards and cards; strong drink is anathema to him. How can you expect to keep your position—an actor, a billiard player, exponent of bridge, and one who ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... on the end of a long stone sticking vertically from the rubbish, and another on one of the stones projecting from the wall, his head was already through the break in the roof; and in a minute more he was climbing a small, broken, but quite passable spiral staircase, almost a counterpart of that already described as going like a huge augerbore through the house from top to bottom—that indeed by which he had just descended. There was most likely more of it buried below, probably communicating with an outlet in some ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... you are joking then," said I, "this is a very passable SKULL,—indeed, I may say that it is a very EXCELLENT skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology—and your scarabaeus must be the queerest scarabaeus in the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... adventurous C. Bonney, Esquire, who connected Port Phillip with Adelaide by a direct road running nearly parallel to the coast, so that the portion of the continent of Australia which lies between Moreton Bay and Adelaide is now connected by a passable route. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... the same material Then I arranged joints, so the jaw and the tongue could move. It was a great day for us when we fitted the two parts of the device together. Did it speak? It squeaked and squawked a good deal, but it made a very passable imitation of "Mam-ma—Mam-ma." It sounded very much like a baby. My father wanted us to go on and try to get other sounds, but we were so interested in what we had done we wanted to try it out. So we proceeded to use it to make people think there was a baby in the ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... Londoner who appreciates a quiet holiday. As a centre for the exploration of East Sussex Lewes has no equal; days may be spent before the interest of the immediate neighbourhood is exhausted; for those who are vigorous enough for hill rambling the paths over the Downs are dry and passable in all weathers, and the Downs themselves, even apart from the added interest of ancient church or picturesque farm and manor, are ample recompense for the small toil ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... good points; they're so refreshingly sure of themselves and their views, while the rest of us don't believe in anything. You can't be a fanatic without being thorough, and in renouncing the world and the flesh you may gain more than a passable figure. Among other things, the ascetic life means straight shooting, steady hands, and an eye you can depend upon. The overcivilized man who does nothing to counterbalance his luxuriousness is generally ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... will make a passable Darby and Joan, no doubt. Still, it always vexes me to see people, who pretend to any sense, acting ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... lips Max formed the word: "Stolen?" but Carrie declined to answer. As there was no help for it, Max dressed his friend in such of the clothes as were a passable fit for him, while Carrie went out to watch for the expected carriage. When she returned to the kitchen, Dudley was ready for the journey. He was lying back in a chair, looking very white and haggard and exhausted, casting about him glances full of expectancy ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... of roses, approached the Yates house. It was late in the afternoon. There had been a warm day, and the trees were clouds of green and more bushes had blossomed. Eudora had put on a green silk dress of her youth. The revolving fashions had made it very passable, and the fabric was as beautiful ...
— The Yates Pride • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... original Mexican government, and they paid no wages to their peons. These Spaniards, with the priests, however, are to be credited with whatever progress civilization made in the early days of California. They built the first passable roads, they completed rough surveys and they first discovered the wonderful fertility of the California soils. The towns they built were built solidly, with an eye to the future ravages of earthquakes and of Time, which is something ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... cord he had been keeping dry within the breast folds of his tunic. He fitted an arrow to the string, grateful to be a passable marksman. The slash on his arm smarted in protest as he moved, and he noted that Ashe did ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... A West-end cut is not achieved, but for flannels, light tweeds and all such clothes as are worn in the tropics, they are very passable. ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... tip-toe to see the sport. I had some distance to go; and as I turned up one street and down another, the throng of people increased, until my arrival at Smithfield, where the fair was held, and where the crowd became so dense as to be hardly passable. The spectators consisted of both sexes, of all ages and degrees. But how shall I describe the scene that presented itself? A large field of several acres was filled with tents, stages and booths, with Punch and Judys, quack doctors, mountebanks and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... we find new charms in after making her mother's acquaintance. You know how some young people would be passable enough if it were not for a lurid light thrown upon their identity by other members of their family. You know the sister you thought was a beauty and dear, until you met her sister, who was gristly and a jade. But it's a great shame in Tishy's case, because we do honestly ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... low wall without the doors and awaited the exit of this devotee who was not of his flock. For though, as he often said, the good God had intended him for a soldier, his own strong will and simple faith had in time produced a very passable priest who, with a grim face, ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... order that none might suspect me of being other than Willis Morgan. But if any one had seen me I do not believe the deception would have been discovered, so close is my resemblance to my brother. Always having been a passable mimic, I imitated my brother's voice. It was a voice that had often stirred me to wrath, because of its cold, cutting qualities. The first time I imitated my brother's voice, Wong came in from the kitchen looking frightened beyond measure. ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... "My dear girl," he said, "your father's tailor estimated that he might make me a very passable dress suit for one hundred and seventy-five dollars. Brett's ties were stunning, just as you say, but the prices ranged from five to eight dollars, which was more stunning still. For a young person from the country out of a job, which is my condition at present, such things may ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... fully. Indulgence in port made him somewhat rubicund and "portly,"—he who had once been a pale little counter-jumper; and by means of shooting-coats, tight gaiters, and the right shape of hat he turned himself into a passable imitation of the fine old English gentleman. His tone altered, too, and instead of being uniformly diplomatic, it varied abruptly between a sort of Cheeryble philanthropy and a sort of Wellingtonian ferocity. During an attack of gout he was terrible ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... non-resistance, and that there still is grave doubt whether the peoples of these Western nations are at present in a sufficiently tolerant frame of mind, or can in the calculable future come in for such a tolerantly neutral attitude in point of national pride, as to submit in any passable fashion to ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... money, mum,' observed the housekeeper. 'Wouldn't some o' them old ones at home be passable, if they was made over ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... at the first encounter were put to the worsse, and Labienus the tribune slaine. In the second conflict he vanquished the Britains, not without great danger of his people. After this, he marched to the riuer of Thames, which as then was passable by foord onelie in one place and not else, as the report goeth. On the further banke of that riuer, Cassibellane was incamped with an huge multitude of enimies, and had pitcht and set the banke, and almost all the [Sidenote: The stakes remained to be seene in Bedes daies.] foord vnder the ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed
... valuable. He has made the greatest improvements I have anywhere met with. The whole country twenty-two years ago was a waste sheep-walk, covered chiefly with heath, with some dwarf furze and fern. The cabins and people as miserable as can be conceived; not a Protestant in the country, nor a road passable for a carriage. In a word, perfectly resembling other mountainous tracts, and the whole yielding a rent of not more than from three shillings to four shillings an acre. Mr. Forster could not bear so barren a property, and determined to attempt ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... creditors with tranquillising assurances, and railed, or pretended to rail, against their indecent conduct with great vigour. Thus at last we succeeded, though not without some difficulty, in making the corridor outside my door once more passable. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was taken. Our travellers reached it on the evening of the third day; the 'Sands, which are now traversed in less than an hour, then occupying more than half of the first day. When at Fort Stanwix, a passable country road was found, by which the travellers journeyed until they reached a tavern that united many of the comforts of a coarse civilisation, with frontier simplicity. Here they were given to understand they had only a dozen miles to go, in order ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... tell you everything afterwards. Oh, I got on better than I expected, though most of the people were rather starchy. How did my dress look? Well—promise you won't breathe a word to darling Mother—it was just passable, and that's all. Some girls had lovely things. I didn't care. The second part of the evening was far nicer than the first, and I enjoyed the dances that I sat out the most. The conservatory was all hung with lanterns. There; I'm dead tired ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... of having attended to his business closely, so as to learn thoroughly the work he was to do. Some boys perform their work in just a passable way, not caring particularly whether it is well done, if they can only "pass muster." But not so with Benjamin. He sought to understand the business to which he attended, and to do as well as possible the work he undertook. The ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... its hide proved a passable supper, and Rolf curled up to sleep. The night would have been pleasant and uneventful, but that it turned chilly, and when the fire burnt low, the cold awakened him, so he had a succession of ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... is a paucity of wagon-roads in the Archangel district, and those that are passable in the summer are many miles apart, with infrequent cross-roads. Roads which are good for "narrow-gauge" Russian sleds in the winter when frozen and packed with several feet of snow, are often impassable even on foot in the summer. And dirt or corduroy roads which are good in dry summer ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... surveyors employed, he was usually out from daybreak to sunset, often fifteen hours without food, traversing on foot, with great bodily exertion, wastes and deserts of bog, so wet and dangerous as to be scarcely passable at that season, even by the common Irish best used to them. In these bogs there frequently occur great holes, filled with water of the same colour as the bog, or sometimes covered over with a slight surface of the peat heath or grass, called by the common people a shakingscraw. 'In traversing ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... him back near the extensive ruins of the destroyed city: they soon found tolerably passable roads, the few unobstructed tracks of the former principal streets of the large royal city; but they were often obliged to scramble over the rubbish of overthrown buildings, across pillars, and the remains of mighty columns. His guide turned now right, now left, to seek the easiest road; ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... praise. The reason of all this is twofold; partly in the book, and partly in the reader. The backbone dislikes the raising of any question which it deems to have been decided: a peculiarity which at once puts it in opposition to all fine work, and to nearly all passable second-rate work. It also dislikes being confronted with anything that it considers "unpleasant," that is to say, interesting. It has a genuine horror of the truth neat. It quite honestly asks "to be taken out of itself," unaware that to be taken out of itself is the very last thing it ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... a very self-possessed young man, to all appearances, who moved sedately round the end of the counter to greet these possible customers. His bow was a very passable imitation of the real thing, he flattered himself; and there's no manner of doubt but that it flattered the two prettiest and most forward young women in Radville ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... severe march, rendered particularly fatiguing by the inclement state of the weather and the badness of the roads, he entered the province of Andaguaylas. It was a fair and fruitful country, and since the road beyond would take him into the depths of a gloomy sierra, scarcely passable in the winter snows, Gasca resolved to remain in his present quarters until the severity of the season was mitigated. As many of the troops had already contracted diseases from exposure to the incessant rains, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... dear fellow, you are joking then," said I, "this is a very passable SKULL—indeed, I may say that it is a very EXCELLENT skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology—and your scarabaeus must be the queerest scarabaeus in the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition upon this ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... bearing the writer sped eastward, the reports at each stop grew more appalling. At Derry a group of railway officials were gathered who had come from Bolivar, the end of the passable portion of the road westward. They had seen but a small portion of the awful flood, but enough to allow them to imagine the rest. Down through the Packsaddle came the rushing waters. The wooded heights of the Alleghanies looked down in wonder at the scene ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... untaught females.' The same young girl, he says, accompanied them to the boat, carrying on her shoulders, as a present, a large basket of yams, 'over such roads and down such precipices, as were scarcely passable by any creatures except goats, and over which we could scarcely scramble with the help of our hands. Yet with this load on her shoulders, she skipped from rock to rock like a ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... serve you right." She went off to dance with someone else, and Bud turned smiling to find a passable partner amongst the older women—for he was inclined to caution where strange girls were concerned. Much trouble could come to a stranger who danced with a girl who happened to have a jealous sweetheart, and Bud did not court trouble of that kind. He much preferred to fight ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... from the summit of the hill on June 30th were very poor, and indeed, little better than bridle paths, except between El Caney and San Juan River and the city. Within this region, a distance of from four to four and a half miles, the roads were passable. El Caney lay about four miles northeast of Santiago, and was strongly fortified, and, as events proved, strongly garrisoned. This position was of great importance to the enemy, because from it a force might come to attack the right flank and rear ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... at one of the numerous cold drink stands where for a few kopecks you could get raspberry syrup fizzed up with soda water. While he sipped it, a teen-ager came up beside him and said in passable English, "Excuse me, are you a tourist? Do you ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... has been occupied again by the Turks. It gives then little annoyance, being distant, I should think, five miles from the head of the lake. All was now water, but the principal channels above were passable, the rest being overgrown with weeds. At several of these, long consultations occurred as to our best route. It began to rain a little, and the place of our destination seemed doubtful. At length we emerged on the broad ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Some interesting details may be learned from a letter written about that time by a German officer in charge of a heavy munition train: "From Czestochowa we advanced in forced marches. During the first two days roads were passable, but after that they became terrible, as it rained every day. In some places there were no roads left, nothing but mud and swamps. Once it took us a full hour to move one wagon, loaded with munitions and drawn by fifteen horses, a distance ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... method of spinning, grinding corn, and in the construction of their boats. The forests are so impenetrable that the land is nowhere cultivated except near the coast and on the adjoining islets. Even where paths exist, they are scarcely passable from the soft and swampy state of the soil. The inhabitants, like those of Tierra del Fuego, move about chiefly on the beach or in boats. Although with plenty to eat, the people are very poor: there is no demand for labour, and consequently the lower orders cannot scrape ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the squire would have grieved over the capture of his almost son-in-law was never known, for events gave him no opportunity. Spring was now come, and with it the breaking up of winter quarters. The moment the roads were passable, the garrison of Brunswick, under the command of Cornwallis, marched up the Raritan to Middle Brook, driving back into the Jersey hills a detachment of the Continental army. In turn Washington's whole force was moved to the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... tassels, a bunch of violets in a glass vase, and green plants in the jardinieres. Everything is arranged exactly as in the Fromonts' apartments on the floor below; but the taste, that invisible line which separates the distinguished from the vulgar, is not yet refined. You would say it was a passable copy of a pretty genre picture. The hostess's attire, even, is too new; she looks more as if she were making a call than as if she were at home. In Risler's eyes everything is superb, beyond reproach; he is preparing to say so as he enters the salon, but, in face of ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... there is a communication with the inlet at the south side of Moreton Bay, insulating the land whose north extremity is Point Lookout. The entrance of this inlet is shoal and only passable for boats. ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... were lanes in all directions, which proved a great obstacle when I went out driving with the dogs. The temperature, however, was still so low that the channels were quickly frozen over again and became passable; but later on in the month the temperature rose, so that ice was no longer so readily formed on the water, and the channels became ever more ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... have a real "story" up your sleeve and know how to word it in passable English, the next thing to learn is the way to prepare a manuscript in professional form for marketing. In the non-fiction writer's workshop only two machines are essential to efficiency and economy. The first of these, and absolutely indispensable, is a typewriter. The ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... These drop from them, but stagnate here. We, you perceive, have no tears, not even at moments—' Then, 'You will soon be accustomed to all this,' he said. 'You will fall into the way. Perhaps you will be able to amuse yourself to make it passable. Many do. There are a number of fine things to be seen here. If you are curious, come with me and I will show you. Or work,—there is even work. There is only one thing that is impossible, or if not impossible—' ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... they at last approached sunny regions which produced the herbs the woman had brought away. Going further, they came on a swift and tumbling river of leaden waters, whirling down on its rapid current divers sorts of missiles, and likewise made passable by a bridge. When they had crossed this, they beheld two armies encountering one another with might and main. And when Hadding inquired of the woman about their estate: "These," she said, "are they who, having been slain by the sword, declare the manner ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... post gave him the leisure to write plays. But for the fact that it brought him into such frequent contact with the Lord Loudwater it would have been a really pleasant post: the food was excellent; the wine was good; the library was passable; and the servants, with the exception of James Hutchings, liked and respected him. He had the art of making himself valued (at far more than his real worth, said his enemies), and his air of importance continuously ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... for a considerable distance, he came to a spot where it was passable, and made his way down to the river bank. Here he indulged in a long drink of fresh water, and then began to examine the caves which perforated the rocks. These caves Cuthbert knew had formerly been the abode of hermits. It was supposed to be an essentially sacred locality, and between the third ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... wanderings; nay, that my footsteps must needs pass through this Mizricz, the political stronghold of Chassidism. This discovery did not displease me, for I felt that thus I should reach the Master better prepared. In my impatience I could scarcely wait for the roads to become passable, and it was still the skirt of winter when, with a light heart and a wild hope, I set my face for the wild ravines of Severia and the dreary steppes of the Ukraine. Very soon I came into parts where the question of the Chassidim ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... no impatience to see the neighboring ruins of Susa. He was not one, this young man who was out for a bit of a lark, to sentimentalize about antiquity or the charm of the unspoiled. Yet even such young men are capable of finding the rumness of strange towns a passable enough lark, to say nothing of the general unexpectedness of life. And Dizful turned out to be quite as unexpected, in its way, as Bala Bala. Matthews found that out before he had been three days in the place, when a sudden roar ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a quietening effect on the temper of the men, and the squabbles and brawls among them notably diminished. One of the Frenchmen unearthed an old fiddle, and though one of its strings was wanting, a man named Ben Tolliday contrived to scrape very passable melody out of it. Old John Dilly announced that he had played the cornet in his youth, and before very long an instrument was found for him, and after a few days' practice (during which we had to suffer a variety of discordant and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... hands hang over the arms of it—the picture of discontent. The gaslight showed her the possessor of bright brown eyes, under fine brows slenderly but clearly marked, of a pink and white skin slightly freckled, of a small nose quite passable, but no ways remarkable, of a dainty little chin, and a thin-lipped mouth, slightly raised at one corner, and opening readily over some irregular but very white teeth. Except for the eyes and eyebrows the features could claim nothing much in the way of beauty. Yet at this moment of seventeen—thanks ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... perfection, Caroline was middling, Eugene played very well, Lauriston was rather heavy, Didelot passable, and I may venture to assert, without vanity, that I was not quite the worst of the company. If we were not good actors it was not for want of good instruction and good advice. Talma and Michot came to direct us, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of the Python and Tityus are in like manner appropriated by these localities. I omit many of the points that are used as arguments. For our tradition does not rank this god amongst those that were born, and then made immortal, as Hercules and Bacchus, whom their virtue raised above a mortal and passable condition; but Apollo is one of the eternal unbegotten deities, if we may collect any certainty concerning these things, from the statements of the oldest and wisest in ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... failed to materialize, and it was not long before the expected began to happen. Sternberg, Bloom, and McCoy's business appeared outwardly passable, but curiously enough it almost always seemed—after the loss—that the risk was one on which the company should never have been committed. And there were two unpleasant incidents where the Guardian was "caught ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... a nightmare, lunch was rather worse, and as for dinner, it was quite unspeakable. Miss Beezley seemed to gather force during the day. It was not the actual presence of the lady that revolted the Babe, for that was passable enough. It was her conversation that killed. She refused to let the Babe alone. She was intensely learned herself, and seemed to take a morbid delight in dissecting his ignorance, and showing everybody the pieces. Also, she persisted in calling him Mr MacArthur in a way that seemed ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... European explorers reached the Congo on their coasting voyages to the south that they found a natural and inviting pathway into the heart of Africa. The desert of the north and west, the fever-haunted swamps and jungle of the Guinea Coast only left narrow inlets of more healthy and passable country, and these the Portuguese did their best to close by occasional acts of savage cruelty and impudent fraud in their dealings with ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... roads, which were passable at all seasons, brought a new era in correspondence and business. Lines of stages and wagons, as well known at that time as are the great railways of today, plied the new thoroughfares, provided some of the comforts of travel, and assured the safer and more ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... better than it has been for the last few days, and this is the principal thing that matters. The route, however, lay over very hummocky floes, and required much work with pick and shovel to make it passable for the boat-sledges. These are handled in relays by eighteen men under Worsley. It is killing work on ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... at last, and that day, about noon, we reached a ford of the Tugela which luckily was quite passable. Here Kambula bade me farewell, saying that his mission was finished. Also he delivered to me a message that I was to give from Dingaan to the English in Natal. It was to this effect: That he, Dingaan, had killed the Boers who ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... away of hindrances. 'Crooked things straight.' A careful guide lifts stones out of a blind man's way. How far is this true? There will be plenty of crooked things left crooked, but still so many straightened as to make our road passable. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... bed betimes, and as I felt in passable good case, I went up to the castle to see whether I might peradventure get to my daughter. But I could not find either constable, albeit I had brought a few groats with me to give them as beer-money; neither would the folks that I met tell me where they ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... letters, always typewritten, were copied and objectionable matter omitted, and his signature reproduced by the photo-engraving process, separately each time. But before long, several letters came back to him rubber-stamped: "Not passable. Please revise." It took Benda two days to cool down and rewrite the first letter. But outwardly no one would have ever known that there was anything amiss ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... doings is true. "In the course of these last months great stretches of French territory have been turned by us into a dead country. It varies in width from 10 to 12 or 13 kilometres, and extends along the whole of our new positions. No village or farm was left standing, no road was left passable, no railway track or embankment was left in being. Where once were woods, there are gaunt rows of stumps; the wells have been blown up.... In front of our new positions runs, like a gigantic ribbon, our Empire of Death" ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... stopped, and I saw Mr Hay. I durst not speak, but he instantly said, "He is alive. I sent my servant to Waterloo this morning; he is just returned, and Sir William is better than they expected. I have horses standing harnessed, and you will soon be there if the road is passable, though it was ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... opposite Jumalpore, the banks are about a mile apart, but the distance between the extreme banks, leaving the island opposite the cantonment out of the question, is much more. During the dry weather this part of the river is passable, and indeed is in some places nothing but a dry bed of sand, so that people walk across it. During our stay at the above place we met with many interesting and new plants, among which a new species of Villarsia occupied the most prominent place. Cyperaceae, Gramineae, and aquatic Scrophularineae ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... stipulated quantum of manuscript each four-and-twenty hours. He wrote a very small hand; sixty written slips of the kind of paper he habitually used would represent—thanks to the astonishing system which prevails in such matters: large type, wide spacing, frequency of blank pages—a passable three-hundred-page volume. On an average he could write four such slips a day; so here we have fifteen days for the volume, and ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... up here!" was the interruption which my suggestion met from our practical little guide. "Horses couldn't climb those stairs," she added, somewhat scornfully; and I then observed that I had unconsciously ascended a rough, angular stairway, passable only to foot-passengers. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... what was not the shortest path, but went inland to Armenia in order that such action, coupled with the truce, might enable him to find them not expecting him. And the Cyrnus, too, he crossed at a point where it had become passable because of summer, ordering the cavalry to cross down stream with the baggage animals next, and the infantry afterward. The object was that the horses should break the violence of the current with their ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... the winter of 1911-12 shut down, David Drennen had found a nugget which he had concealed, saying nothing about it. The snows came and he went back to MacLeod's Settlement to wait for the coming of springtime and passable trails. The first man to pack out of the Settlement prospecting, he had come to the spot which last year he had marked under the cliffs known locally as Hell's Lace. The trail had been rotten underfoot and he had slipped and fallen into one of ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... what he still eagerly desires, and that he must beware of being ridiculous. It is indeed a very unpleasant discovery. If he has done anything well which was worth doing, or has made himself a name, he may be treated by women with respect or adulation, but any passable boy of twenty is really more interesting to them, and, unhappily, there is perhaps so much of the man left in him that he would rather see the eyes of a girl melt when she looked at him than be adored ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... but he has his peculiarities. Belden is your real enemy. He is blue with malignity—so are most of the cowmen I met up there. I wish I could do something for the Service. I'm a thoroughly up-to-date analytical chemist and a passable mining engineer, and my doctor says that for a year at least I must work in the open air. Is there anything in this Forest Service for ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... whilst he was prating to the great king of celestial, sublime, and transcendent things, the lacqueys and footboys of the court, upon the upper steps of stairs between two doors, jumbled, one after another, as often as they listed, his wife, who is passable fair, and a pretty snug hussy. Thus he who seemed very clearly to see all heavenly and terrestrial things without spectacles, who discoursed boldly of adventures past, with great confidence opened up present cases and accidents, and stoutly professed the presaging of all future events and contingencies, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... mode of communication was by water, but there was a road along the whole coast of Massachusetts. In the interior of the colony, as Johnson boasted, "the wild and uncouth woods were filled with frequented ways, and the large rivers were overlaid with bridges, passable both for horse ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... commander back to rail-head, we retraced our steps with all speed to Hit, and thence the eight miles up-stream to Salahiyeh. The road beyond Hit was in fearful shape, and the engineers were working night and day to keep it open and in some way passable. In the proposed attack we were to jump off from Salahiyeh, and it was here that the armored cars were assembled. Our camp was close to a Turkish hospital. There were two great crescents and stars laid out for a signal to warn our aeroplanes not to ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... certainty, it behoves us not to go beyond what we really know. I am beginning to have a passable acquaintance with insects, after spending some forty years in their company. Let us question the insect, then: not the first that comes along, but the most gifted, the Hymenopteron. I am giving my opponents every advantage. Where will they ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... ask me so pointedly, I am free to say that I think him a very good preacher on the whole. But, you know, he is far from perfect. I have again and again perceived his false logic, his weak metaphors, and his unsound expositions. Still, he is passable, and you may go a long way before you hear ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... to mankind, produced an equal impression? I can scarcely analyze these feelings; but it must be partly owing to the free scope given to the imagination. The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely passable, and hence unknown; they bear the stamp of having lasted, as they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time. If, as the ancients supposed, the flat earth was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... bridge across James Bay has been built, giving access to the newly-erected Government offices for public lands and to Government House, which are of an ornamental character. Streets leading to the bridge have been graded and metalled over and are passable at all times. A temporary want of funds alone prevents more being done in this way, as also the completion of two embankments (in lieu of bridges) in a ravine [Johnson Street, I think, E. F.]. Wooden buildings have ceased to be the order of the day. We have been fortunate in hitherto escaping with ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... much in classes. Sometimes he recited in the police court, sometimes to his Pa back home, and sometimes the whole college took a hand in looking over his examination papers. He used to pass medium fair in Horace; sub-passable in Trig., and extraordinary mediocre in Polikon. But his marks in Imagination, the Psychological Moment and Dodging Consequences were plus perfect, extra ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... the crow flies, but Buck was no aviator. He was forced to take a most tortuous, roundabout route, and when he finally emerged on the first passable track heading approximately in the right direction, the sun was low and there seemed little chance of his accomplishing his purpose in the ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... as a very passable imitation of Dickens's pathetic writings, was a poser. In default of language, I looked Miss Sawley straight in the face, and attempted a substitute for a sigh. I was rewarded with a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... months up here, not having been allowed to go to the Virginia springs, on account of the difficulty of carrying my children there; but I am promised that we shall all go there next summer, when there is to be something like a passable road, by which the health-giving region ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... a bright and transparent cold morning in Gloversville, N.Y., November, 1919, and passing out of the Kingsborough Hotel we set off to have a look at the town. And if we must be honest, we were in passable good humour. To tell the truth, as Gloversville began its daily tasks in that clear lusty air and in a white dazzling sunshine, we believed, simpleton that we were, that we were on the road toward making our fortune. Now, we will have to ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... of his intellect and the suppression of his soul. Because his mother had been a religious woman, he reasoned that faith was merely an amiable feminine weakness, and because he himself was clever enough to make passable Latin verses, he argued that no Supernatural Being could have been clever ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... were quite ready, but what were their cousins of Devonshire doing? And so it came to pass that the King's Commissioner returned without any army whatever; but with promise of two hundred men when the roads should be more passable. And meanwhile, what were we to do, abandoned as we were to the mercies of the Doones, with only our own hands to help us? And herein I grieved at my own folly, in having let Tom Faggus go, whose wit and courage would have been worth at least ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... went six miles further to the northeast. At first the trail followed the little river, whose clear and rapid water is about a foot deep and on an average six feet wide. Frequently its bed had to be cleared of palm trees to make it passable for the pack train, and big boulders and heavy undergrowth made travel rough. Then, ascending a cordon which led directly up to the main range, we followed for a while a dim trail on which the Apaches used to drive the herds of cattle they had stolen, and which ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... the siege-guns, to put them in position to bombard Savannah, and to prepare for the general assault. The country back of Savannah is very low, and intersected with innumerable saltwater creeks, swamps, and rice-fields. Fortunately the weather was good and the roads were passable, but, should the winter rains set in, I knew that we would be much embarrassed. Therefore, heavy details of men were at once put to work to prepare a wharf and depot at Grog's Bridge, and the roads leading thereto were corduroyed in advance. The Ogeechee Canal was ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Well, the sisters and cousins of an undergraduate seldom seem more passable to his comrades than to himself. Altogether, the instinct of sex is not pandered to in Oxford. It is not, however, as it may once have been, dormant. The modern importation of samples of femininity serves to keep it alert, though ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... five schools, but six school matches. The school that they played twice in the season was Ripton. To win one Ripton match meant that, however many losses it might have sustained in the other matches, the school had had, at any rate, a passable season. To win two Ripton matches in the same year was almost unheard of. This year there had seemed every likelihood of it. The match before Christmas on the Ripton ground had resulted in a win for Wrykyn by two ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... to be somebody on the Force close enough to Salgath Trod's anthropometric specifications that our cosmeticians could work him over into a passable impersonation. Our story is that Salgath is on PolTerm, undergoing narco-hypnosis. We will produce an audio-visual of him as soon as he is out of narco-hyp. That will give us time to fix up an impersonator; We'll need a lot of sound-recordings of ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... MOUNT, an islet, forming a precipitous granite mass, in Mount's Bay, Cornwall, connected with the mainland by a low causeway passable only at low tides; a fine old castle crowns its rocky height, and a small fishing village lies sheltered ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Hudson which washes three-fourths of its base. The remaining fourth was in a great measure covered by a deep marsh, commencing near the river on the upper side and continuing into it below. Over this marsh there was only one crossing place, but at its junction with the river was a sandy beach passable at low tide. On the summit of this hill stood the fort which was furnished with heavy ordnance. Several breastworks and strong batteries were advanced in front of the main work, and about half way down the hill were two rows of abattis. The batteries were calculated to command ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... officers were deceived. With pictures it was their usual method to coat the genuine picture with a certain varnish, over which one of the organization, an old artist living in Chelsea, would paint a modern and quite passable picture and ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... have to do is simply to follow the beaten path. Nature has conveniently left narrow shelves, crevices, and less precipitous slopes here and there, which need only the application of the pick and shovel to be made passable even for pack animals. Where the trail winds into shady recesses, we find stunted fir and pine trees clinging to the crevices and stretching their roots down into the waste rock ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... infinitely. The paintings of Pompeii and many statues and marbles that are now admired in European museums are examples of this industrialised art, inexpensive, creating nothing original, but furnishing to families in comfortable circumstances passable copies of works of art—once a privilege only ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... in the woods of Itching field, and were permitted to reside with their countryman Alexander Hay; indeed we can hardly imagine a more suitable place for concealment, than the parsonage house, situated as it was at that time, in the centre of a dense forest, through which there was hardly any passable road. ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... a comfortable little restaurant, where they cooked well, while the Tischwein was really most passable. We stopped there for a couple of hours, and dried ourselves and fed ourselves, and talked about the view; and just before we left an incident occurred that shows how much more stirring in this world are the influences of evil ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... looks like a thick, or, if you please, a corpulent sweet potato, in shape, but is of a light purple color when boiled. When boiled it answers as a passable substitute for bread. The buck Kanakas bake it under ground, then mash it up well with a heavy lava pestle, mix water with it until it becomes a paste, set it aside and let if ferment, and then it is poi—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from Victoria,) we had three bad boggy brooks to cross; besides a great deal of cutting to do with axes in order to open the road; and many bad ravines and gullies to render passable. To make a bridge, across a boggy stream, with no other material than the short, knotty, hard and crooked chaparral bush, was no easy matter. The first day's march was about ten miles—we encamped about sunset after a ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... instruction. It was the sort of music that rich amateurs used to write by the ream, subject to the unacknowledged 'corrections' of a well-paid professional; but the girl's sweet voice and genuine talent made the airs sound passable, while her dreamy eyes and her caressing pronunciation of the trivial words did the rest. It was mere talent, for she hardly understood what she was saying, or singing, and she felt not the least emotion, but ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... of the puppets is only passable, and the matter of the entertainment stupid and tiresome, consisting in a great part of worn-out old English songs, such as "The death of Nelson"! Colonel Phipps considers "Punch" a much more amusing performance. Lady Mount Edgecumbe, who was in a box there, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... meagreness of the intellectual results. They have waited on the visitors from another world, notebook in hand, plying them with careful questions intended to increase our modest store of knowledge. The replies were unsatisfactory, commonplace, sometimes ludicrous. Attempts to write a passable textbook on life in the spirit world have failed lamentably. The indignation of the sorely disappointed scientist was voiced by the late Professor Hugo Muensterberg, of Harvard, in his ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... to be thought of, so we visited the theatre and cafe chantants, ending the evening with a supper at the Metropole (previously ordered by the fur merchants) which proved that money, even in Irkutsk, will convert a culinary bungler into a very passable chef. Our departure for the North took place very early on the morning of January 19, and I have since heard that nothing would induce our merry little hostess to seek her couch until the tingle of our sleigh bells had died out ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... tramping the hills, about the comrades that have added to the joys of my former existence. Let me hear from you occasionally, because a letter from you seems to revive some of the old feeling that formerly made life passable.' ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... not expected till the tenth of January; but the kind soul could not wait, and, as soon as the road was passable, he came with 300,000 francs in his hands to see what he could do for his poor Romans. He arrived at 4 A.M., and though unexpected, the news flew through the city, and a crowd turned out with torches to escort ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... well keep her, Sargent," said Mrs. Severance placidly. "You will have to pay her blackmail, of course—but after all that's really your fault a little, isn't it?—and it seems as if that was more or less what you had to do with any kind of passable servant nowadays. And Elizabeth is perfection—as a servant. As police—" she smiled a little cruelly. "Well, we shan't go into that, but I think it would be so much better to keep her. Then we'll ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... contrive another; which finding himself unable to do, Cardinal du Bellay was constrained to perform that office. The pleader's part is, doubtless, much harder than that of the preacher; and yet, in my opinion, we see more passable lawyers than preachers, at all events in France. It should seem that the nature of wit is to have its operation prompt and sudden, and that of judgment to have it more deliberate and more slow. But he who remains ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... passed. Mrs. Friend at ten o'clock in the morning had just been having a heart to heart talk with the landlady of the inn on the subject of a decent luncheon for three persons, and a passable dinner for four. Food at the inn was neither good nor well-cooked, and as criticism, even the mildest, generally led to tears, Mrs. Friend's morning lot, when any guest was expected, was not a happy one. It was a difficult ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
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