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More "Untenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those places God must have meant for a field from all time, lying very level at the foot of the slope that crowds up against Kearsarge, falling slightly toward the town. North and south it is fenced by low old glacial ridges, boulder strewn and untenable. Eastward it butts on orchard closes and the village gardens, brimming over into them by wild brier and creeping grass. The village street, with its double row of unlike houses, breaks off abruptly at the edge of the field in a footpath that goes up the ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... being forced to take tricks of words such as this (and there are too many of them in even the best Greek writers) for subjects of daily study and admiration; the theory of the Ethics being, besides, so hopelessly untenable, that even quibbling will not always face it out,—nay, will not help it in exactly the first and most important example of virtue which Aristotle has to give, and the very one which we might have thought his theory would ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Chillicothe (now Westfall). Here they were met, early on the 24th, by a messenger from his lordship, ordering them to halt, as a treaty was nearly concluded at Camp Charlotte. But Lewis's army had been fired on that morning, and the place was untenable for a camp in a hostile country, so he concluded to seek better ground. A few hours later another messenger came, again peremptorily ordering a halt, as the Shawnees had practically come to terms. Lewis now concluded to join the northern division in ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... this point of view as untenable and anti-republican, and taking the opposite, that suffrage is a natural right—as necessary to man under government, for the protection of person and property, as are air and motion to life—we hold the talisman by which to show ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... having been transported hither by ice at some former period; especially as the Mont Blanc granite, in crossing the lake of Geneva to the Jura, must have performed a hardly less wonderful ice journey: but this hypothesis is clearly untenable; and unparalleled in our experience as the results appear, if attributed to denudation and weathering alone, we are yet compelled to refer them to these causes. The further we travel, and the longer we study, the more positive becomes the conviction that the part played ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... smiles, "You don't mind my looking, do you?" Why on earth do people look over the shoulders of persons painting, when they would never dream of looking over the shoulder of any one writing? Notwithstanding the crowd and polite requests to be "allowed to look," and the untenable effort required to give soft answers, I did manage to make a sketch or two at Aden—one of stony hills and government houses in the background, and in the front green water and the vendors of fans and beads, and curious brown, naked, active fellows in sharp ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... scheme of defence was that the shore of Long Island opposite the city was much higher than that of Manhattan. If this height were seized, the city, and all below it, became untenable. Here, therefore, was the key of the position and the chief station for the American troops. For its protection a line of works was thrown up, the flanks of which rested upon Wallabout Bay and Gowanus Cove, two indentations in the shores of Long Island. ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... disquieting reports had arrived as to the situation on my right. These were confirmed later in a telegram from French Headquarters, which arrived at half-past eleven at night. It clearly showed that our present position was strategically untenable; but this conclusion had been forced upon me much earlier in the evening when I received a full appreciation of the situation as it then appeared at French General Headquarters. General Joffre also told me that his ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... without a name, it is a constitutional monarchy without a crown and without a constitution. For what kind of a constitution is it if it has not the necessary confirmation by oath and won the general approval of nations because it was found to be untenable? It is a state without patriots and without patriotism, it is a state which arose by the amalgamation of eight irredents—the German one included—it is a state which had no future and in which the dynasty ... (suppressed) ... in a word, it is a state ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... declares that his critics have obviously confounded the origin of a thing and that which originates from it. "Here we have a striking example of the way in which an hypothesis is made to appear untenable by representing it as being something which it does not profess to be," he says. "I gave an account of the origin of music, and now I am blamed because my conception of the origin of music does not include ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... follows, by way of corollary, that Vasquez's opinion,(200) that there can be no good work without supernatural aid in the shape of a cogitatio congrua, is untenable, as is also the assertion of Ripalda(201) that in the present economy purely natural good actions are so invariably connected with the prevenient grace of Christ that they practically never ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... royalist cause had claims to distinction. The atmosphere of it clinging to one who was presumably in the heart of its counsels restored him to that view of his marriage as an alliance between high contracting powers which events in Boston had made so lamentably untenable. If he was disconcerted, it was by her odd way ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... beyond question how readily the wishes and the instincts of the person may take the form of the fighting pattern. On the other hand, the notion that tradition, culture, and collective representations have no part in determining the attitudes of nations toward war seems equally untenable. The significant sociological inquiry is to determine just in what ways a conjunction of the tendencies in original nature, the forces of tradition and culture, and the exigencies of the situation determine the organization of the fighting pattern. We have historical examples of warlike peoples ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... refuge, but to provide them with all necessaries of life, sure of being doubly repaid by the service they would do them, if but in the mischief they would do the English, to whom it was a great point with our government to make Acadia as uncomfortable, and as untenable as possible. It was no wonder then, that the savages, ill-used by the English, and still dreading worse from them, being constantly plied by our caresses, presents, and promises, should prefer our nation to that. I have before said, that religion ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... silent. He saw that the reason which he had given for disbelief was untenable, and he was too straightforward ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... whisper a few words to him, explaining how the matter at issue stood, and he would rise to his feet and extemporize a long and ingenious argument, or perhaps retreat with dexterous grace from a position which the course of the discussion or the private warning of the "whips" had shown to be untenable. No one ever saw him at a loss either to meet a new point raised by an adversary or to make the most of an unexpected incident. Sometimes he would amuse himself by drawing a cheer or a contradiction from his opponents, and would then suddenly turn round and ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... an advance on Bloemfontein must draw the Free Staters back from Kimberley and Natal, and that the occupation of their capital would render the Boer positions to the south of the Orange river untenable. To carry out this scheme, as large a force as could be collected was necessary, as the enemy had through railway communication (about two days' journey) between Natal and Bloemfontein, and could transfer a considerable portion ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... precision into the Island Battery that the French soldiers were sometimes seen running into the sea to escape the explosions. Many of the Island guns were dismounted, and the place was fast becoming untenable. At the same time the English batteries on the land side were pushing their work of destruction with relentless industry, and walls and bastions crumbled under their fire. The French labored with energy under cover of night to repair the mischief; closed the shattered West Gate with a wall of ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... again, steeply, to its summit. This was too far back for the fire of guns placed upon it to injure the castle or town. Guns placed, however, at the foot of the rocky wall, would dominate the castle and render it, at last, untenable. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... simply to have been paying double the ordinary shop price, that he pulled up the soi-disant smuggler to Bowstreet, even at the certain price of exposure to himself. The charge he alleged against the man was the untenable one of not being a smuggler. My mother, on the contrary, pronounced all such attempts at cheating the king, or, as I less harshly termed it, cheating the tax-gatherer, as being equal in guilt to a fraud upon one's neighbor, or to direct ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the evolution of religion, and even to regard the Australian black-fellows as exemplifying, within the region of our observation, a pre-religious period in the process of human evolution. This latter view may safely be dismissed as untenable, whether we do or do not believe totemism to have a religious side. There is sufficient mythology, still existing amongst the Australian tribes, to show that the belief in gods survives amongst them, even though, as seems to be the case, no worship now attaches to the gods, with ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... will, to which every life is subordinated, renders the cruder conception of aristocracy, the idea of a select life going on amidst a majority of trivial and contemptible persons who "do not exist," untenable. It abolishes contempt. Indeed to believe at all in a comprehensive purpose in things is to abandon that attitude and all the habits and acts that imply it. But a belief in universal significance does not altogether preclude a belief in an aristocratic method of progress, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... called the ancient church in the interpretation of Scripture, is impracticable, inasmuch as, with regard to the greatest part of the Scripture, the church, properly speaking, has said nothing at all; and if it were practicable, it would be untenable, because neither the old councils, nor individual writers, could give any sign that they had a divine gift of interpretation; and if such a gift had been given to them, it would have been equivalent ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... that old ground and took another. I deliberately quitted the old Anglican ground as untenable; but I did not do so all at once, but as I became more and more convinced of the state of the case. The Jerusalem bishopric was the ultimate condemnation of the old theory of the Via Media; from that time the Anglican Church was, in my mind, either not a normal portion ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Word was brought to me to that effect, and I felt as if I had lost my own son. Sergeant Flood of the machine gun section stood by his piece as long as possible, but finally a shell smashed the mount and this piece of trench became untenable. The pitiful remnant of the platoon, now consisting of seven men with Major Marshall, had to find a place to the right of the supporting trenches where they kept on fighting. The Germans had broken through on our left and were trying to ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... Mr. King ploughed them on Sunday, after having kept the Sabbath the day before. He was arrested under the Sunday law, and in order to make it effective against him it was alleged that his work on his own farm on Sunday created a public nuisance. On this entirely untenable ground he has been harassed from court to court. He was a poor man, but he has been supported by the friends of religious liberty. Mr. King has been greatly wronged, but his only remedy at law is under the law and Constitution of Tennessee. It appears that for the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... 23rd the boat lay snugly under the shelter of the rocks, where Bass intended to remain until the weather moderated. But at about one o'clock in the morning the wind shifted to the south, blowing "stronger than before," and made the place untenable. At daybreak, therefore, another resting place was sought, and later in the morning the boat was beached on the west side of a sheltered cove, "having passed through a sea that for the very few hours it has been blowing was incredibly high." When the wind ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... beg further to inform you that the rebels are now practically in an embarrassing predicament on account of internal differences, the warning of the friendly Powers, and the protest of the Southwestern provinces. Their position is becoming daily more and more untenable. If Your Excellency strongly holds out for another ten days or so, their movement ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... at the Sault in the lake region. By the irony of fate, La Salle failed to discover the mouth of the river when he came direct from France to the Gulf of Mexico in 1685, but landed somewhere on Matagorda Bay on the Texan coast, where he built a fort for temporary protection. Finding his position untenable, he decided in 1687 to make an effort to reach the Illinois country, but when he had been a few days on this perilous journey he was treacherously murdered by some of his companions near the southern branch of Trinity River. His body ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... there is no documentary evidence to support the contention. However, the story of the Huguenot immigration into England is clearly bound up with Norwich and the adjacent district. And so we may well take the name of 'Perfrement' as conclusive evidence of a French origin, and reject as utterly untenable the not unnatural suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne, that Borrow's mother was 'of gypsy descent.'[9] She was one of the eight children of Samuel and Mary Perfrement, all of whom seem to have devoted ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... whose sublimity it was impossible to be altogether blind, were at best but tolerated as rude and wild natural geniuses. But the unqualified separation of genius and taste on which such a judgment proceeds, is altogether untenable. Genius is the almost unconscious choice of the highest degree of excellence, and, consequently, it is taste ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... argument from the general consent of mankind is so clearly fallacious, both as to facts and principles, that I shall pass it over and proceed at once to the last of the untenable arguments—that, namely, from the existence of a First Cause. And here I should like to express myself indebted to Mr. Mill for the following ideas:—"The cause of every change is a prior change; and such it cannot but be; for if there were no new antecedent, ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... light in the domain of Old Testament criticism. He had taken a firm stand against the views of the younger school, who seek to banish the Exodus of the Jews from the province of history and represent it as a later production of the myth-making popular mind; a theory we both believed untenable. One of his remarks on this subject has lingered in my memory ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which rendered her position in Gosnold House positively untenable, however firmly it might seem to have been re-established by the events of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... untenable the hypothesis of a clandestine withdrawal from local creditors. By way of clearing up the last vestige of doubt, however, and also for the sake of appearances (seeing that a wise magistrate is supposed to take nothing ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... which reduces the people to a dead level of social depression, despotism, and semi-barbarism would be abhorrent from the first principles of philanthropy. With the believer, who holds the Gospel to be "good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,"[o] such a notion is on higher grounds untenable; but even in view of purely secular considerations it is not only untenable, but altogether unintelligible. As ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... of the Greek philosophers the subject of inspiration and revelation has been fertile theme for discussion and dispute among scholars and theologians. Many different theories have been advanced, and ultimately abandoned as untenable. In its simplest meaning and use, inspiration describes the personal influence of one individual upon the mind and spirit of another. Thus we often say, "That man inspired me." What we are or do under the influence of ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... by the beard. I am not prepared to contend that the nephew was always in the right, but I know he always got the worst of it, which amounts to about the same thing. At the end of eight or ten months he saw that the position was untenable, packed his trunk one night, and quitted the MENAGE—the menagerie, as ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... no hesitation in saying that, as compared with the ancient and stereotyped conceptions of the "Taking down from the Cross," there is a living feeling in that picture which is of great price. It may perhaps be weak, nay, even superficial, or untenable—that will depend on the other conditions of character out of which it springs—but, so far as it reaches, it is pure and good; and we may gain more by looking thoughtfully at such a picture than at any even of the least ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... freedom, no morality; and without a Deity, no religion. Of special interest is the solution of the third antinomy, which is accomplished by means of the valuable (though in the form in which it is given by Kant, untenable) conception of the intelligible character.[1] Man is a citizen of two worlds. As a being of the senses (phenomenon) he is subject in his volition and action to the control of natural necessity, while as a being of reason (thing ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... in incisively. "The name was Daverill. He's mixed it up with the old lady in the country he calls his granny." She was the more certain this was so owing to a recent controversy with Dave about this name, ending in his surrender of the pronunciation "Marrowbone" as untenable, but introducing a new element of confusion owing to Marylebone Church, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of argument, ever claimed for them [the MS. readings] a right of acceptance beyond the emendations of Theobald, Malone, Dyce, and Singer, (that is, a right not justified by their obvious utility or beauty,) such a claim must have been untenable, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... air itself, filled with all these flaming masses, became so heated that it could no longer be breathed. The atmosphere itself was burning, the glass of the windows cracked,' and apartments became untenable. The Emperor stood for a moment immovable, his face crimson, and great drops of perspiration rolling from his brow, while the King of Naples, Prince Eugene, and the Prince de Neuchatel begged him to quit the palace, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... made the position of Prevost's army wholly untenable. With the control of Lake Champlain in Macdonough's hands, the British line of communication would be continually menaced. For the ten thousand veterans of Wellington's campaigns there was nothing to do but retreat, nor did they ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... company of good and bad; and an inner and invisible Church which is known to God alone, and which consists of the good only? A moment's consideration of what has been pointed out in previous chapters to be the teaching of Holy Scripture, about "The Kingdom of Heaven," will show that the idea is untenable; because it is "The Kingdom of Heaven" which is distinctly described as imperfect in its present state here on earth; and we cannot conceive the idea of two universal Kingdoms of Messiah. What then is the teaching of Holy Scripture respecting ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... this matter, as in their notion of the nominative absolute. If Wright's theory of the verb is correct, the only just form of the foregoing expression is, "all virtue is being lost." If this central position is untenable, his management of the nominative absolute falls of course. To me, the inserting of the word being into all our passive verbs, seems the most monstrous absurdity ever broached in the name of grammar. The threescore ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... field-pieces, the surrounding villages concentrated their quotas of auxiliaries upon the place, and attacked Lieutenant Bunbury's detachment on all sides. He had taken possession of the village; but finding it untenable against so large and increasing a body of assailants, he commenced his retreat. He had scarcely reached the outskirts when he found himself surrounded by overwhelming numbers of these auxiliaries, through whom ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Rindfleisch's doctrine as untenable, since the process which he observed is chiefly the result of a severe injury of the blood from the sodium chloride solution and the teasing. If a method of preparation be chosen which protects the blood as far as possible, and avoids every chemical and physical alteration, the exit of the ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... Cold Harbor, especially, the Federal works are veritable forts. In face of them, the theory that General Grant uniformly acted upon the offensive, without fear of offensive operations in turn on the part of Lee, will be found untenable. Nor is this statement made with the view of representing General Grant as over-cautious, or of detracting from his merit as a commander. It was, on the contrary, highly honorable to him, that, opposed to an adversary of such ability, he should have ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... of Lieutenant-Colonel Mercer, an officer of courage and experience; but the situation of the forts was very ill-chosen; the materials mostly timber or logs of wood; the defences wretchedly contrived and unfurnished; and, in a word, the place altogether untenable against any regular approach. Such were the forts which the enemy wisely resolved to reduce. They assembled a body of troops, consisting of 1,300 regulars, 1,700 Canadians, and a considerable number of Indian auxiliaries, under the command of the Marquis de Montcalm, a vigilant ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... redemption by incarnation, which maintains that since God gave his Son to the world, all the world has the Son, consciously or unconsciously, and that therefore all the world will be saved. It need not be said that a true evangelical teaching must reject this theory as utterly {68} untenable, since it ignores the necessity of individual faith in Christ. But some orthodox writers have urged an almost identical view with respect to the Holy Ghost. They have contended that the enduement of the Spirit is "not any special or more advanced ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... They attempt, too, in like fashion, to give the weight of morality to their doctrines. Unfortunately for them, inasmuch as everyone likes to be moral at some one's else expense, their position is untenable. Adam Smith's distinction was a broad and sound one; and deeply important as political economy and questions of tariff are, they are in no sense matters of morals. They are purely questions of self-interest, of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... convinced that Edestone possessed some wonderful invention or discovery which the United States intended to use as a final argument for peace, and, with the aid of this discovery, render untenable any position in opposition to its will taken by England or any of the other Powers. Had he dreamed that the United States was as ignorant as to the nature of this invention as he himself was, the history of the ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... human nature. Unless indeed it be true, as I have heard it maintained, that in the Middle Ages every one did go mad—every one was mad. The theory that this was a period of general dementia is not altogether untenable. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... truths. The first class I will deal with are the indifferent. To them, Theosophy presents the widest possible field of, and reasons for, activity that can be desired. It shows that no action is without its direct permanent result, and that consequently the position of the indifferent is absolutely untenable. No one who has studied Theosophical literature can ever find there a justification for mere laissez-faire. It points out the enormous value of what we call trifles, and the comparatively trifling value of what the indifferent would take most ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... then by the aeroplane, their use in time of war has been a fruitful theme for discussion. But their arrival was of too recent a date, their many utilities too unexplored to provide anything other than theories, many obviously untenable, others ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... 1867 to the Galileo documents at the Vatican, he published several of the most important, without suppression or pious-fraudulent manipulation. This made all the intrenchments based upon Marini's statements untenable. Another retreat had to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... bred in the Virginians, who worked for nothing besides their daily pay of eightpence. Washington, already a leader of men, possessed himself in a patience extremely difficult to his passionate temper; but the position was untenable, and the presence of the military drones demoralized his soldiers. Therefore, leaving Mackay at the Meadows, he advanced towards Gist's settlement, cutting a wagon road as ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the enemy, who it turned out was only making a strong demonstration to learn the object of our movement on Dandridge, seemed satisfied with the results of his reconnoissance, and began falling back toward Bull's Gap. Meanwhile Parke and Granger concluded that Dandridge was an untenable point, and hence decided to withdraw a part of the army to Strawberry Plains; and the question of supplies again coming up, it was determined to send the Fourth Corps to the south side of the French Broad to obtain subsistence, provided we ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... knowing well that the five-and-twenty men outside would be incompetent to avenge their master, confident in her narrow-minded, ignorant pride that no one could take Schloss Adlerstein, and incapable of understanding the changes in society that were rendering her isolated condition untenable, was certain to scout any representation of the dire consequences that the crime would entail. Kasimir had no near kindred, and private revenge was the only justice the Baroness believed in; she only saw in her crime the satisfaction of an old feud, and the union of the Wildschloss ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the settlement was soon proved to be untenable, and de Monts was certainly to blame for this unhappy state of affairs. Why did he abandon Port Royal, where he had found abundant water? Champlain, however, defends the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... buckets, and hastened to fill them; soon a line was formed from the well to the burning tree. Quickly as this was done, the progress of the flames was still more rapid, and Picardet soon found his post untenable. On first perceiving the fire, the smith had climbed, like a frightened cat, to the very top of the poplar, at risk of breaking the tapering stem by the weight of his body; but the refuge was a very precarious one, for the fire followed him, and he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... imagination in it," said Everard. "I have personal reason to know there is some conspiracy carrying on, to render the house untenable by the Commissioners. I acquit my uncle of accession to such a silly trick; but I must see it ended ere I can agree to his and my cousin's residing where such a confederacy exists; for they are likely to be considered ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... with the British and the Turks against Russia, and sent an army to the Crimea, which played an effective part in the great struggle in that peninsula. The troops of France had the honor of rendering Sebastopol untenable, carrying by storm one of its two great fortresses and turning its guns ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... thought by earlier commentators to allegorise an event known to have happened in 1358, by later critics another which occurred in 1364. Clearly, the assumption that the period from 1340 to 1345 includes the date of Chaucer's birth, suffices of itself to stamp the one of these conjectures as untenable, and the other as improbable, and (when the style of the poem and treatment of its subject are taken into account) adds weight to the other reasons in favour of the date 1381 for the poem in question. Thus, backwards and forwards, the disputed points in Chaucer's ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... greatest rogue in London, taken from him eight thousand pounds of ill gotten money, and freed himself of an incubus that would have made his position untenable. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Franco-Prussian War and probably ten for every one that was fired in the Civil War. The only time the soldiers exposed themselves on the army frontiers were when they were storming trenches, and this was not attempted until the trench had suffered bombardment so it was made untenable. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... with a large proportion of altered blood. That such is the true nature of this substance, on which so much has been said and written, I have had sufficient reason to be convinced. The opinion that it consists of altered bile, I deem totally untenable, for the following reasons: The matter is occasionally voided in large quantities, in cases in which the liver is not at all affected, and in which, after death, the gall bladder is discovered to be more or less filled with natural bile. ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... the formation was accomplished, and the Division stood in an irregular line along the San Juan River, the Second Brigade on the right. We were subjected to a heavy fire from the forces on San Juan Ridge and Kettle Hill; our position was untenable, and it became necessary to assault the enemy or fall back. Kettle Hill was immediately in front of the Cavalry, and it was determined to assault that hill. The First Brigade was ordered forward, and the Second Brigade was ordered to support the attack; personally, I accompanied ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... when Beatrice's position in the house came nearest to being untenable, was one morning in January, when the whole party were assembled on the steps to see the sportsmen off for ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... latest theory is altogether untenable and only entitled to consideration on account of the authority under which it is ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... assaults upon the Spanish quarters, in which both sides suffered severely. At last Montezuma, at the request of Cortes, tried to interpose. But his subjects, in fury at what they considered his desertion of them, gave him a wound of which he died. The position became untenable, and Cortes decided on retreat. This was carried out at night, and owing to the failure of a plan for laying a portable bridge across those gaps in the causeway left by the drawbridges, the Spaniards were exposed to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... the House. The position there would be untenable. A man is known there as he is known in his own club." He drew away from ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... destroyed by our musketry fire as soon as they reached it; shells were dropped down upon those waiting below, hand-grenades thrown, and after suffering severe loss they drew off. The French erected fresh batteries, and at last the place became absolutely untenable; so we took to the boats, blew up the castle, and got safely on board the Imperieuse. After capturing some more prizes and doing other service the Imperieuse returned to Plymouth, and Cochrane was appointed to go out and take the command of some fire-ships, and to attack the French fleet ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... long as it is tenable is not heroic. It is simple duty. To defend it after it has become untenable, and even to die in so doing, is not heroic, but a noble madness, unless an advantage is to be gained thereby for one's own side. Then, indeed, it rises towards, if not into, the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... it was very expensive, and had a glossy sheen, like satin. Some antiquaries have supposed it to be an old name for satin; but as several Wardrobe Rolls contain entries relating to both in immediate sequence, this supposition is untenable. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... their origin to animal sources; that they are formed from animal remains in a manner strictly analogous to that of the formation of ordinary coal from wood and other vegetable debris. For geological as well as chemical reasons, the author holds that Mendeleeff's theory of their igneous origin is untenable, pointing out that the hydrocarbons could not have been formed by the action of water percolating through clefts in the gradually solidifying crust until it reached the molten metallic carbides, as these clefts could only occur where complete solidification had taken place, and between ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... happy, that was it; very, very happy, and full of faith in our ability to fight our way through, come what might. Nor did it require the gift of a prophet to make out that trying days were coming; for my position, again as the paid editor of my once "owners," the politicians, was rapidly becoming untenable. It was an agreement entered into temporarily. When it should lapse, what then? I had pledged myself when I sold the paper not to start another for ten years in South Brooklyn. So I would have to begin life over again in a new place. I gave the matter but little thought. ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... It would bring him to town by mid-day, in comfortable time to lunch and adorn himself before the permissible hour of calling in Pont Street. Rapid movement excited his imagination; he clung now to the hypothesis which at first seemed untenable; he built hopes upon it. Could he win a confession from May Tomalin, why should it be hopeless to sway the mind of Lady Ogram? If that were deemed impossible, they had but to wait. Lady Ogram would not live till the autumn. To be sure, she looked better since her return ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... astronomical researches depending on an accurate knowledge of the latitude, but theoretical investigations show that the periods of this variation are incompatible with the assumption that the earth is an absolutely rigid body. Though this assumption has in other ways been found to be untenable, the confirmation of this view by the discovery of Dr. Chandler ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... time, at the Easter festivities of 1497, when, as Alexander's son-in-law, he assumed his official place during the celebration in S. Peter's, and, standing near Caesar and Gandia, received the Easter palm from the Pope's hand. His position in the Vatican had, however, become untenable; Alexander was anxious to dissolve his marriage with Lucretia. Sforza was asked to give her up of his own free will, and, when he refused, was ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... animals should have migrated from water to dry land at all when great difficulties were involved in the transition. The answers must be: (a) that local drying up of water-basins or elevations of the land surface often made the old haunts untenable; (b) that there may have been great congestion and competition in the old quarters; and (c) that there has been an undeniable endeavour after well-being throughout the history of animal life. In the same way with mankind, migrations were prompted by the setting ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... imagined it as an actual fact! You were always full of surprises, but this! this! Nothing manlier, nothing more gentlemanly has ever been done: nothing: nothing that so completely changes an untenable situation into a comfortable and proper footing for everybody. It is what I like: it is what I love:—sound sense! Men are so selfish: one cannot persuade them to be reasonable in such positions. But you, Sir Willoughby, have shown ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... body, give off such effluvia, but the theory on the whole is manifestly absurd. The Doctrine of Signatures, which we have already encountered in our excursions,(1) may also be mentioned in this connection as a complementary and equally untenable hypothesis. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... about a machine which de Medici had invented for cleaning out the harbour of Leghorn. He said it was as useless as it in fact turned out to be. Through the influence of the mortified inventor he lost favour at Court; and his enemies took advantage of the fact to render his chair untenable. He resigned before his three years were ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... following in the capital. He had definitely excited the jealousy and opposition of the leading men of his nation. Even such popular enthusiasm as had followed his mighty works was of a sort that Jesus could not encourage. The situation in Judea had at length become so nearly untenable that he decided to withdraw into seclusion in Galilee, where, as a prophet, he could be "without honor." He had gone to Jerusalem eager to begin there, where God should have had readiest service, the ministry of the kingdom of God. Challenge, cold criticism, and ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... says Mr. Mill, "what it is that, in our author's opinion, we are bound to believe concerning the unknowable." Why, this was the very thing he ought to have considered, before pronouncing the position to be untenable, or to be irreconcilable with something else. Meanwhile, it is instructive to observe that Mr. Mill himself believes, or requires his readers to believe, something concerning the unknown. He does not know, or at any rate he does not tell his readers, what Hamilton ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... job, even with some assistance from the 10th Division on Tahta Ridge, to bring away his wounded who were very numerous. About 3 P.M. the last of them came out, having had a terrible day, only four or five officers remaining unwounded. They stuck to it well, but it was an untenable position. The Turk contented himself with driving them off the Foka Heights, and did not attempt to advance farther—if he had, it might have proved just as bad for him as Foka had been ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... body also, as he had fallen among the enemies' troops: but the Romans instantly dismounted, and the Samnites were obliged to do the same; and lines being thus formed suddenly but, at the same time, untenable through scarcity of necessaries: "for all the country round, from which provisions could be supplied, has revolted; and besides, even were the inhabitants disposed to aid us, the ground is unfavourable. I will not therefore mislead you by leaving a camp here, into which ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... almost offensive publicity of the traditional spot, in the full view of the whole city of Jerusalem, is wholly inappropriate, and (in the absence, as it now appears, of even traditional support) wholly untenable." ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... proverb, namely, which affirms, against all experience, that whatever is good for the goose is good for the gander. Viewing the goose as the type of woman, and the gander as the type of man, no adage could be more preposterous or untenable. Such a maxim flies dead in the very face of society, and is calculated to introduce disturbance into the orderly sequence and subordination of the sexes. Who first invented it, it is difficult to conceive, unless it was some rustic Mrs. Poyser, full of the consciousness of ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Maddox has entirely dropped his alias. Mr. Grey is convinced that was only a bold stroke to gain time and prevent the committal, so as to be able to escape, and that he 'reckoned upon bullying a dense old country magistrate;' but that he knew it was quite untenable before a body of unexceptionable witnesses. Altogether the man looked greatly altered and crest-fallen, and there was a meanness and vulgarity in his appearance that made me wonder at our ever having credited his account of himself. He had ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of May 1813, the Americans, after having hotly bombarded Fort George on the Niagara frontier, for two successive days, crossed the river and succeeded in establishing themselves in that post which was evacuated as untenable. The British loss on this occasion was considerable, and General Vincent, who commanded the army of the centre, retreated with much precipitation towards Burlington Heights, withdrawing at the same time the garrison ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... now lay a deep, sheer-sided gash, down at the bottom of which the Jihun brawled and boiled. I did not envy any army faced with the task of crossing it, even supposing the bridge should not be destroyed. But they would not need to cross in order to make the town untenable. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... a blind man denying the existence of light," said that gentleman, "but never before of a sensible being like yourself urging the most untenable theories in face of such evidence as has been brought before us during this inquiry. If your wife committed suicide, or if the entrance of the point of a hat-pin into her spine was effected by accident, how comes ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... no time to discuss such a matter as this now, Mr Terry," said Syd. "You are to hold this gun in readiness to cover the retreat if the lower work becomes untenable; and now you must keep yourself and men hidden, ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Jeremiah Cobb after supper in the orchard. Uncle Jerry was the person who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make a story; and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that assertion at once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded (quite truly) as untenable, though why she certainly never could have explained. Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted for the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... had now reached a serious point, at once apparent to Sir Neville Chamberlain; for the possession of the Crag picquet by the enemy made untenable the whole British position. He therefore immediately ordered to the assault the 101st Royal Bengal Fusiliers.[16] This gallant regiment aided by three companies of the Guides, and the line swelled by Major ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... decided that the stranger could be in nowise the associate or accomplice of the Viscount, for the latter had communicated with no one, had not even gone a dozen steps from the Solara cabin during his entire period of convalescence. The idea of collusion was untenable. Esperance resolved to watch and wait. There was no telling what a few hours might bring forth; but at the worst he would fight; if he fell he would not regret it, and, if Giovanni perished at his hands, his death would be due to his own headlong ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... tirade was very unjust,—though it pleased the protectionists,—for Sir Robert Peel was great enough to listen to arguments and reason, and give up his old sentiments when he found them untenable, even if he broke up his party. His country was greater in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... he went up to the top of St. Bride's steeple to see the awful spectacle of the conflagration of the Fleet Prison, but the flakes of fire, even at that great height, fell so thickly as to render the situation untenable. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... viz., that if it succeeded in throwing light upon some problems, it created new ones of a particularly insoluble character. The old deistic notion which interposed a distance between the Creator and His creation, and in particular represented God as there and man as here, might be untenable in philosophy, but it was at least intelligible and practically helpful to ordinary minds; but does not the idea of God's immanence in the world and in man tend to efface that distinction, and thus to introduce confusion where confusion is least to ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... generally thought that his stay at Rome was a short one. Clough, in his excellent Preface, says on this subject, "The fault which runs through all the earlier biographies, from that of Rualdus downwards, is the assumption, wholly untenable, that Plutarch passed many years, as many perhaps as forty, at Rome. The entire character of his life is of course altered by such an impression." He then goes on to say that in consequence of this ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... her with the Stanley project, and while she realized that she might be compelled to resort to the storming process in a degree thitherto uncalled for, she believed that the storm she would raise would blow her father entirely out of his absurd and utterly untenable position. On the other hand, while Sir George anticipated trouble with Dorothy, he had never been able to believe that she would absolutely refuse to obey him. In those olden times—now nearly half a century past—filial disobedience was rare. The refusal of a child to obey ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Ontario at Oswego, and on the 25th of August, landed within one mile of the fort. In two days, his batteries were opened at so short a distance that almost every shell took effect; and the governor, finding the place absolutely untenable, surrendered at discretion. The Indians having deserted, the prisoners amounted only to one hundred and ten men. A great quantity of military stores, together with nine armed vessels, mounting from eight to eighteen guns, also fell into the hands of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Maitland astonished, and the more so because of the season. At any other season of the year he would readily have accounted for the phenomenon that now fell under his observation, on the hypothesis that the woman was somebody's sister or cousin or aunt. But at present that explanation was untenable; Maitland happened to know that not one of the other men was in New York, barring himself; and his own presence there was ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... jurisdiction "in all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which a State shall be party." These words, urged the Chief Justice, must be given an exclusive sense "or they have no operation at all." This position is quite untenable, for even when given only their affirmative value these words still place the cases enumerated beyond the reach of Congress, and this may have been their only purpose. However, granting the Chief Justice his view of Article ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... height, poured down such an effective volley that their assailants sought a truce, and acknowledged twelve dead and thirteen wounded, though not one of the Vaudois was the least hurt. Their victory did not, however, relieve them for long. Although their refuge was secure, the extreme cold made it untenable, and they were compelled to seek a milder climate. Saddened by suffering, and resolved to protect themselves, they met on their way an armed band. Assuming that they were enemies, they fired and killed one of the party, when, to their great grief, blended with unutterable ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... White had received some intelligence which would, in his opinion, justify his undertaking an expedition into the Indian country with so small a force as he could command, he was at once to evacuate the place and fall back with his force on the settlement, as the position was quite untenable, and every man was needed for the ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... of Leonardo da Vinci to stand as 'the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record." "Unpublished MSS. by Leonardo contain discoveries and anticipations of discoveries," says Mr. Hallam, "within the compass of a few pages, so as to strike us with something ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... "We must therefore take it for granted, my good M. Ratichon, that your man of all work is—of his own free will—keeping out of the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon it. The total disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument against it. Would you care to offer a reward for information leading to the ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Styles was the first to reach the stone wall, and with Lieutenant Jackson cleared it of such of the enemy as remained. Five or six men were wounded in the charge, and others fell in the sungar. The advanced position of this company was soon seen to be untenable, and they were ordered to fall back to the edge of the village, where the ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... perceived the difference between the leading principle of the twelve and that of Paul, they had some far-seeing glimpses of the origin and differences of the New Testament writings,(384) but they propounded them in an unsystematic way along with untenable conjectures. It was reserved for the Tuebingen professor to elaborate the hypothesis of an Ebionite or primitive christianity in contra-distinction from a Pauline, applying it to the origin and constitution ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... then stated boldly his conviction of the practicability of the subdivision of the electrical current. The above extracts are good illustrations, however, of scientific opinions up to the end of 1879, when Mr. Edison's epoch-making invention rendered them entirely untenable. The eminent scientist, John Tyndall, while not sharing these precise views, at least as late as January 17, 1879, delivered a lecture before the Royal Institution on "The Electric Light," when, after pointing out the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... himself with the British and the Turks against Russia, and sent an army to the Crimea, which played an effective part in the great struggle in that peninsula. The troops of France had the honor of rendering Sebastopol untenable, carrying by storm one of its two great fortresses and turning its guns ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... familiar with Browning's concrete and humanised dialectic it seems cold and artificial. But it's really his sincerest and deepest thought, and he deliberately rejects the rebel position as intellectually and morally untenable: and adopts a position of aquiescent agnosticism on the problem of evil subject to an unshakeable faith in immortality and the Love of God. This is a red rag to your Swinburnes. That is why I asked you to send me Swinburne, as I want ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... and the causes which were assigned for it, Henry pre-occupied the ground of the conflict; he entrenched himself in the "debateable land" of legal uncertainty; and until his position had been pronounced untenable by the general voice of Christendom, any sentence which the pope could issue would have but a doubtful validity. It was, perhaps, but a slight advantage; and the niceties of technical fencing might ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... ecclesiastical historians [607:1] have asserted that synods commenced about the middle of the second century. But the statement is unsupported by a single particle of evidence, and a number of facts may be adduced to prove that it is altogether untenable. There is no reason to doubt that synods, at least on a limited scale, met in the days of the apostles, and that the Church courts of a later age were simply the continuation and expansion of those primitive conventions. We know very little ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... from the neighbourhood, in the hope of escaping from the violence and rapine of the patriot army. Their expectations, however, were disappointed, as the Roman general deemed it more prudent to evacuate an untenable post, than to risk the dominion of the entire island on the event of a battle fought under adverse circumstances. At the same time the slaughter of the inhabitants justifies the inference that they were foreigners rather than natives, some being traders from Gaul, but the majority either Roman ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... many deeds of heroism, wherein the Italian soldier showed all his accustomed valour. And it was only by the valour of the Italian soldier that the retreat was stayed on the Piave line, which the High Command pronounced to be untenable and wished to abandon, but which the Cabinet at Rome, pinning their faith to the qualities of the Italian soldier rather than to the opinions of the High Command, ordered to be held at all hazards. And the Cabinet at Rome was right. The Italian ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... as 'the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record." "Unpublished MSS. by Leonardo contain discoveries and anticipations of discoveries," says Mr. Hallam, "within the compass ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... herself," returned the Baron. "She has forgotten where the peril lies. True, we have received encouragement on every hand; but my Princess knows too well on what untenable conditions; and she knows besides how, in the publicity of the diet, these whispered conferences are forgotten and disowned. The danger is very real"—he raged inwardly at having to blow the very coal he had been quenching—"none the less real in that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deep, sheer-sided gash, down at the bottom of which the Jihun brawled and boiled. I did not envy any army faced with the task of crossing it, even supposing the bridge should not be destroyed. But they would not need to cross in order to make the town untenable. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... whortleberry, with its waxen bells. Light exhalations seemed to rise from the damp hollows, and drift towards us; but they resolved themselves into swarms of mosquitoes, and would have made the hill-top untenable, had they not been dispersed by a sudden breeze. We sat down upon a rock and contemplated the widespread panorama. It was nine o'clock, and the sun, near his setting, cast long gleams of pale light through the clouds, softening ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the position of Prevost's army wholly untenable. With the control of Lake Champlain in Macdonough's hands, the British line of communication would be continually menaced. For the ten thousand veterans of Wellington's campaigns there was nothing to do but retreat, nor did they linger until they had marched across the Canada border. ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... If these rumblings and minor earthquakes, which I have noticed of late—and the latest of which you have just experienced—are the precursors of another explosion, my home here may be rendered untenable." ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... day, after an extra heavy nocturnal bombardment, we went out in search of a melon. A shell had shattered her impromptu showcase, dislocated a wall on one side of the archway, which menaced immediate collapse. In fact, the place had become untenable. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... theory adopted in this work of the subterranean origin of the hypogene formations would be untenable, if the supposed fact here alluded to, of the appearance of tertiary granite at the surface, was not a rare exception to the general rule. A considerable lapse of time must intervene between the formation ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... practice of serving several dishes at a meal as troublesome and expensive. The first objection may hold good; but the best results in any direction are never gained without trouble. The second is wholly untenable; soup, fish, vegetables, and bread, are all less costly than heavy joints of meat; if hunger can be partly satisfied on them, and it is true that a thick slice of bread and a bowl of soup will content the hungriest stomach, less meat will be required, and consequently less expense incurred. ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... What specious argument! And why must every bright delightful fruit be forbidden by dull care or justified by flagrantly untenable artifice? Who but a fool would boggle over this chance, this gloriously deserved crown of the adventure, this gay, random ride over the deserts with Arlee?... To her it was nothing but a prolonging of the lark into which the ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Peruvian expression (so Smyth avers), the sun shone on the pyramid 'with all his rays.' Such conditions as these might have been regarded as very suitable for a temple devoted to sun-worship. Yet the temple theory is as untenable as the tomb theory. For, in the first place, the pyramid form—as the pyramids were originally built, with perfectly smooth slant-faces, not terraced into steps as now through the loss of the casing-stones—was entirely ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... the product of a mere exaggeration of actual events, or is an allegorical picture, either of the operations of nature or of human traits, is an untenable and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... opinion I hear a student deliver I feel a certain lowering of my regard. He who studies, he who is yet employed in groping for his premises, should keep his mind fluent and sensitive, keen to mark flaws, and willing to surrender untenable positions. He should keep himself teachable, or cease the expensive farce of being taught. It is to further this docile spirit that we desire to press the claims of debating societies. It is as a means of melting down this museum of premature petrifactions into living and impressionable ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hypotheses, living beings, such as now exist, have existed from all eternity upon this earth. We tested that hypothesis by the circumstantial evidence, as I called it, which is furnished by the fossil remains contained in the earth's crust, and we found that it was obviously untenable. I then proceeded to consider the second hypothesis, which I termed the Miltonic hypothesis, not because it is of any particular consequence whether John Milton seriously entertained it or not, but because it is stated in a clear and unmistakable manner in his great poem. I pointed out ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... understood. Others, basing their opinion on the length of De Gonneville's voyage, have surmised that he might have landed on some part of the coast of Tasmania or of New Zealand, but this conclusion is equally untenable, as these islands are not situated within calm latitudes, and are not near or even in the direction of the "true course to the East Indies," which the French sailor was satisfied he was not far off, as, under this belief, he, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... angry flush crept over the Master's rather pale face, and lost itself in the roots of his thick, black hair. Perfectly well he saw that he was being cornered in an untenable position of half-command, half-intimacy. Without apparently exercising any wiles, this woman was none the less involving him in bonds like those the Lilliputians threw ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... supports a date about A.D. 80; some prefer 75 to 80; while a date between 70 and 75 seems no less possible. Of the reasons for a date in one of the earlier decades of the 2nd century, as argued by the Tubingen school and its heirs, several are now untenable. Among these are the supposed traces of 2nd-century Gnosticism and "hierarchical'' ideas of organization; but especially the argument from the relation of the Roman state to the Christians, which Ramsay has reversed and turned into proof of an origin prior to Pliny's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hand, many of us know Longfellow's grim poem of the Hunted Negro. It is a true picture of the life led in the Dismal Swamps of Virginia by numbers of skulking fugitives, till the industry of negro-hunting, conducted with hounds of considerable value, ultimately made their lairs untenable. The scenes in the auction room where, perhaps on the death or failure of their owner, husbands and wives, parents and children, were constantly being severed, and negresses were habitually puffed as brood mares; the gentleman who had lately sold his half-brother, to be sent far south, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... are certainly older than the MS., although the old opinion as to their high antiquity is untenable. The majority probably date from the tenth century in their present form; this dating does not necessitate the ascription of the shape in which the legends are presented, still less of their substance, to that period. With regard to the place of their composition opinions ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... one paper were to be considered, I might be thought to have erred by giving undue prominence to the favourable side, as I had done in the case of Bentham to the unfavourable. In both cases, the impetus with which I had detached myself from what was untenable in the doctrines of Bentham and of the eighteenth century, may have carried me, though in appearance rather than in reality, too far on the contrary side. But as far as relates to the article on Coleridge, my defence is, that I was writing for Radicals and Liberals, and it was my business to dwell ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... at the suggestion that the living quarters were untenable. But there! The representative could see for himself. With every semblance of complete complaisance the representative was escorted into the camp. With unassumed unconcern, but with deliberate intention, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... selection, which, as I have already shown, must, with him, be regarded as a synonym for luck pure and simple. This, for reasons well shown by Mr. Spencer in the articles under consideration, is so untenable that it seems only possible to account for its having been advanced at all by supposing Mr. Darwin's judgment to have been perverted by some one or more of the many causes that might tend to warp them. What the chief ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Eddington's more elaborate description of this fact in his New Pathways in Science. The above statement, like others of Eddington's, has been Contested from the side of professional philosophy as logically untenable. Our own further discussion will show that ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... is untenable, for Romish prelates of the present day do most unquestionably defend the theory of the annual occurrence of miracles. Bishop ——, whose intellectual endowments are the constant theme of encomiums, has recently ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... their nations' glory, and to whose sublimity it was impossible to be altogether blind, were at best but tolerated as rude and wild natural geniuses. But the unqualified separation of genius and taste on which such a judgment proceeds, is altogether untenable. Genius is the almost unconscious choice of the highest degree of excellence, and, consequently, it is taste in its ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... in which he denounced baptismal regeneration as "a part of papistical superstition" and the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine as "consubstantiation," and "just as untenable and absurd as transubstantiation." (L. u. W. 1860, 384.) Considering the Constitution of the General Synod together with the fact that the Platform synods had not been molested, the admission of the Melanchthon Synod, advocated by Krauth, cannot be construed ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... the French Convention that Paoli should go to Paris, had rallied to the dictator's side; and the aged chief made overtures to England for alliance. The partisans of France, now menaced by England's naval power, were in an utterly untenable position. Even the steel-like will of Buonaparte was bent. His career in Corsica was at an end for the present; and with his kith and kin ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... virile members" which David and his companions had cut off from the Philistines, the word orloth meaning the virile member, and not the prepuce. That Israelitish circumcision could have originated from either phallic worship or any of the hero-warrior usages is untenable as a proposition, as regards the living prisoners, and is contrary to the monotheistic idea which ruled Israel, or to the benign nature of their God. The strict opposition of the religion of Judaism to any other mutilation except ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... intelligent life, whereas elsewhere, such conditions do not prevail, and that on no other sphere can such physical habitudes be found as will enable life to originate or to exist. It can be easily shown that such reasoning is based on untenable foundations. Other worlds have to go through processes of evolution, and there can be no doubt that many are in a state similar to our own. It required hundreds of thousands, perhaps hundreds of millions of years, before this earth was fit to ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... been absolutely that of a woman surprised by insinuations she was too innocent to rate at their real importance. And yet, if she did not take away that letter, who did? Mrs. Couldock? Impossible. Miss Dawes? The thought was untenable, even for an instant. I waited in great depression of spirits for the call I knew Taylor would not fail to make ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... them. Still more so that, when they once started, they should not have come on with the greatest possible speed. I doubt whether we shall be able to hold these cowardly curs together till tomorrow. If they bolt, the sepoys will be sure to do so, too; in fact, their position would be altogether untenable, for the Burmese could march round this flank ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... regard whatever could be urged against me as of no value. I therefore became cautious. As a human creature, I did not relish the being held up to others' or to myself, as rash, inconsiderate and headlong, unaware of difficulties the most obvious, embracing propositions the most untenable, and "against hope believing in hope." And, as an apostle of truth, I distinctly perceived that a reputation for perspicacity and sound judgment was essential to my mission. I therefore often became less a speaker, than a listener, and by no means made it a law with myself to defend principles and ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... court, whence his febrile energy, his roughnesses, his want of the true gloss of courtiership, soon lost him the good-will of his old friend Madame de Pompadour. He then tried Berlin, finding it equally untenable ground; eventually he withdrew to Ferney in the territory of Geneva, whence he kept up incessant war against all the injustices which touched his heart. His defence of Calas, of Servin, of the luckless Lally, all date from this time. In these days he animated the Encyclopaedists ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the validity of his principles. He enunciates one brilliant generalization after another. Sometimes he reveals the mind of a seer or poet, throwing out conclusions which are highly suggestive, on the face of them convincing, but which on examination prove untenable, or at best must be set down as unproven or needing qualification. But these were just the slag from the great furnace of his mind, slag not always worthless. Brilliant and far-reaching as were his conclusions, he did not execute a well-ordered ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... been carried," said the captain. "They are taking us on the left flank. Madame," he added, "should go at once; this place will be untenable ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... terrestrial event in Denmark or elsewhere. Torfaeus, learned and cautious, some centuries later, assigns by calculation a date for it: Odin, he says, came into Europe about the Year 70 before Christ. Of all which, as grounded on mere uncertainties, found to be untenable now, I need say nothing. Far, very far beyond the Year 70! Odin's date, adventures, whole terrestrial history, figure and environment are sunk from us forever ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... preparation for the king's palace. The throne to which he was called was no soft seat for repose. The Philistine invasion had torn away all the northern territory. He took the helm in a tempest. What was he to do? Ziklag was untenable; where was he to take his men? He could not stop in the Philistine territory, and he saw ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... boiling pot rises to the top, and makes itself seen, concealing the pure liquid beneath, until it is skimmed off. And so we have political demagogues shouting the untenable fallacy that all men are equal, together with other flamboyant nonsense; and hooligan suffragists smashing windows. But all these are only the scum upon the outside of a great upward movement in mankind, and are not to ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... then that Lord George Bentinck would deem it wise, proper, and expedient; but if after Easter, then the complexion and character of the bill were, in the noble lord's judgment, utterly transformed, and it was declared to be quite untenable and unconstitutional. Was that the kind of support on which the government calculated ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... expired with the Congress which adopted it, but it was observed as a regulation (no one raising a question against it) in counting the electoral votes of 1868 and 1872. Certain Democrats now put forth the untenable claim that a joint rule adopted twelve years before and never renewed should be considered in full force. On the other hand, certain Republicans held that the Vice-President was clothed with the power to open and count the electoral votes and declare the result, the two ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... lakes under a more lustrous sky; but the healthy activities of life demand a scene brilliant without languor, and a beauty which can refresh and satisfy rather than lull or overpower. Without advancing any untenable claim to British pre-eminence in the matter of scenery, we may, perhaps, follow on both these points the judgment which Wordsworth has expressed in his Guide to the Lakes, a work which condenses the results of ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... today," was casually remarked when an extra fluffiness and imbecility was noticeable in the passing Bones. At first it was believed that he drank also, but when careful investigation proved this hypothesis untenable, he was freely called a "derned time-servin', yaller hypocrite." Not a few advanced the opinion that if Bones did not actually lead Uncle Billy astray, he at least "slavered him over and coddled him until the old man ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... against the antiquity of a very celebrated earth-work, the Devil's-Ditch, in Cambridgeshire, whose agger is of about the same elevation, but of whose modern origin nobody ever yet dreamed;—that the ramparts opposite Dieppe could only be of use against cannon, another position equally untenable;—that, were the camp Roman, there would be platforms on the agger for the reception of wooden towers, as if time would not wear away vestiges of this nature;—that the disposition is not in regular order like that of a Roman encampment, a matter ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... the window, with the reluctant conviction that he had been nursing an untenable theory, a last ray of sunshine shot through the open window, causing the dust he had raised by his entrance to quiver and gyrate like a host of mad bacilli dancing a jig. The shaft of light, falling athwart the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... took them to an hotel in the Rue de Rivoli. As they drove along Pilar leaned silently in her corner, only heaving a deep sigh from time to time; and Wilhelm, too, found nothing to say, oppressed as he was by the consciousness of being in an untenable situation, the eventual end of which he could not foresee. Arrived at the hotel, they retired at once to their rooms and to rest, scarcely touching the supper which Pilar had ordered rather for Wilhelm than ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... quit, and he had a hard job, even with some assistance from the 10th Division on Tahta Ridge, to bring away his wounded who were very numerous. About 3 P.M. the last of them came out, having had a terrible day, only four or five officers remaining unwounded. They stuck to it well, but it was an untenable position. The Turk contented himself with driving them off the Foka Heights, and did not attempt to advance farther—if he had, it might have proved just as bad for him as Foka had ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... bawling for the emancipation of women from the yoke of men, nevertheless considered the only distinction a woman could achieve was through their favourable notice—an attitude of mind produced by moral and social codes so effectively calculated to foster immoral and untenable inconsistency! ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... had begun ill; eleven hours divided us from sunset; and at any moment, on the most trifling chance, the trouble might begin. The Wightman compound was in a military sense untenable, commanded on three sides by houses and thick bush; the town was computed to contain over a thousand stand of excellent new arms; and retreat to the ships, in the case of an alert, was a recourse not to be thought of. Our talk that morning must have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... opening might well have been that of discharge of a stream, now choked, for the Baumes Chauds and its adjoining fissures, one is led at first to suppose that water had brought down these logs that had fallen into some pot-hole. But this hypothesis is untenable, for it can be seen that these poles have been artificially pointed at each end, and that they have been made firm by cross pieces of metal, either bronze or iron. This may be the remains of a roof or a floor destined to supplement the insufficiency of the overhanging ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... many valuable thoughts not previously published, he declares that his critics have obviously confounded the origin of a thing and that which originates from it. "Here we have a striking example of the way in which an hypothesis is made to appear untenable by representing it as being something which it does not profess to be," he says. "I gave an account of the origin of music, and now I am blamed because my conception of the origin of music does not include a conception of music as fully developed. If to some one who said that ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... "by figuring out that they couldn't well be elsewhere—unless on the untenable hypothesis that our friend, Mr. Greene here, was ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... me justice, Mr. Underwood. You know that my faith and hope are at the core the same as your own. All our question is what outworks are untenable.' Again he spoke hotly, but Mr. Underwood's ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... narrowed his subjects so as to present matters of purely national interest. In the succeeding works (Mariucha to Amor y ciencia), he strove to unite Spanish color with philosophic breadth, and to lay aside even the appearance of polemic. Such a classification is ingenious, but, we feel, untenable. Aside from the fact that M. Martinenche was not acquainted with Galds' third play, Gerona, which does not fit into his scheme, it seems apparent that there is no essential difference in localization between La de San Quintn ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... work upon the solution of a problem growing out of the affairs of daily life, it often happens that two minds will pursue different paths and perhaps come to different results. Not infrequently neither result can fairly be pronounced untenable. An English judge has said that nine-tenths of the cases which had ever gone to judgment in the highest courts of England might have been decided the other way without any violence to the principles of ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... to Rattazzi's genuine loyalty, and Cavour hesitated no longer to come to an agreement which every day proved to be more imperative. After the Coup d'etat, the Extreme Right, led by the Count de Revel and General Menabrea, adopted the tactics of professing to believe untenable the position of a free State wedged in between the old despotism of Austria and the new one of France. The argument was ingenious and was likely to make converts. It was urgently necessary to form a new political combination which should ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Diego stands upon the high bank, and, though commanding the entrance to the harbor, is itself commanded by the surrounding high lands, and has so often been taken by assault during the last thirty years as to be considered untenable. The harbor appears like a nest scooped out of the mountains, into and out of which the tide ebbs and flows through a double channel riven by an earthquake in the solid rock. Tradition says it once had another entrance, but that an earthquake closed it up and opened the present ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... I learned from Bakunin that the provisional government had passed a resolution, on his advice, to abandon the position in Dresden, which had been entirely neglected from the beginning, and was consequently quite untenable for any length of time. This resolution proposed an armed retreat to the Erzgebirge, where it would be possible to concentrate the reinforcements pouring in from all sides, especially from Thuringia, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... that the phrase, "Young in years, but old in vice," had ever had a more appropriate application than in the present case! For the credit of human nature, he trusted not. The point upon which his learned friend had mainly relied having been thus proved wholly untenable—the fact of Richard's taking the money having been incontestably brought home to him—it only remained for him (Mr. Smoothbore) to notice what had been said with respect to motive. If the prisoner ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... has been spreading. To defend or fully expound this heretical dogma would take too much space. The 'late-dinner' theory, however, as held by Wordsworth and Landor, is subject to one less questionable qualification. It is an utterly untenable proposition that great men have been generally overlooked ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... July 27, 1895, p. 141, this gentleman writes in defence of craniotomy: "The question is a legal one per se against which any conflicting view is untenable. The subdivisions under which the common law takes consideration of craniotomy are answers in themselves to the conclusions quoted above, under the unfortunate necessity which demands the operation." Next he quotes the Ohio statute law, which, he remarks, was enacted ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... have no fresh provisions in port. The men, of course, naturally retaliated by measuring their work according to the food they got; and then it was seen that the game was to be too costly and too perilous. The common-sense commander would find a judicious retreat from an untenable position, and the blockhead would persevere with it during a whole voyage, and boastfully retail a sickening story of meanness to an audience who, he cherished the idea, would regard him as a hero! How much bitterness and loss was ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Court original jurisdiction "in all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which a State shall be party." These words, urged the Chief Justice, must be given an exclusive sense "or they have no operation at all." This position is quite untenable, for even when given only their affirmative value these words still place the cases enumerated beyond the reach of Congress, and this may have been their only purpose. However, granting the Chief Justice his view of Article III, still we are ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... we marched to Gupis. Gupis is a fort built by the Kashmir troops last year, on the most scientific principle, the only drawback being that it is commanded on all sides, and would be perfectly untenable if attacked by three men and a boy armed with accurate long-range rifles. Here we picked up Stewart, who was turning catherine wheels at the thought of taking his beloved guns into action. He expressed a desire ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... were commenced, it was for the purpose of showing, by means of a passage not generally referred to, what the ancients conceived the "black broth" to be, and that consequently, all idea of coffee entering into its composition was untenable. How far this has been accomplished the reader must decide: but I cannot quit the subject without expressing my sincere persuasion, founded upon a view of the authorities referred to, that the account given by Athenaeus is substantially ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... men now on the long ladder, Marsh, Eugene Madrillon, and Will Cummings, found their position untenable; for the flames, reaching all along the wall, were licking at the ladder itself, between Marsh and Eugene. "I can't stand this any longer," gasped Tappingham, "but I can't leave those two ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... has been conjectured that the lower portions of these two towers formed the transepts of Gundulf's church. This would have greatly reduced the length of its choir, while adding, to the same amount, to that of its nave. Such a theory is, however, quite untenable now, as the real lines of the transept have been traced. In 1872, when the south end of the present transept was underpinned, parts of the foundations of its predecessor's east and south walls were uncovered, and the footings of the clasping pilaster buttress of its ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... came fresh envoys to treat for peace. They were now required to furnish twice as many hostages as before; but Caesar could not wait to receive them. They must be sent after him to the Continent. His position had become utterly untenable; the equinoctial gales might any day begin; and he was only too glad to find wind and weather serve that very night for his re-embarkation. Under cover of the darkness he huddled his troops on board; and next morning the triumphant Britons beheld ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... by the headquarters staff of the Guards Division that Puits 14 was untenable, owing to its enfilading by heavy artillery, and the order was given for a retirement to the chalk-pit, which was a place of sanctuary owing to the wonderful work done throughout the night to strengthen its natural defensive features by sand—bags and barbed ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... cold from delay), and next day Drummle appeared with a polite little avowal in Estella's hand, that she had had the honor of dancing with him several times. This left me no course but to regret that I had been "betrayed into a warmth which," and on the whole to repudiate, as untenable, the idea that I was to be found anywhere. Drummle and I then sat snorting at one another for an hour, while the Grove engaged in indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the promotion of good feeling was declared to have gone ahead ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the Japanese army under Kato, who had occupied the west coast, found its position untenable with a superior Chinese army threatening it. It also was compelled to retreat towards the south. But the veteran army of Kato was not content to yield all that it had gained without a struggle. A bloody engagement followed near Pachiung, in which the Chinese and Korean army ...
— Japan • David Murray
... whatever miserable pittance may have been served out to him. For these reasons it is maintained that the starting-point for any further discussion on this question is that the plea that slavery no longer exists in the West African dominions of Portugal is altogether untenable. It still exists, though under another name. There remains the question of how its existence can ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... for the purpose, and, before the little grotto had become so filled with smoke as to be absolutely untenable, its entrance was closed by a curtain of broadcloth, held so hermetically over the aperture that even the fumes of Assafoetida could not possibly have found ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... at the same time taken advantage of the heights which bordered the river on their side; their fire traversed the low ground in the bend of the river, in which were Delzons and his troops. The position was untenable, and hesitation would have been fatal. It was necessary to get out of it either by a prompt retreat, or by an impetuous attack; but it was before us that our retreat lay, and the viceroy gave orders for ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Ireland 'exceeds the wants of the population, and ought to be reduced.' This proposition was elbowed out of the way by the appointment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the revenues of the Irish Church; but Stanley felt that his position in the Cabinet was now untenable, and therefore retired from office in the company of the Duke of Richmond, Lord Ripon, and Sir James Graham. The Radicals made no secret of their glee. Ward, they held, had been a benefactor to the party beyond their wildest dreams, for he had exorcised the evil ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... fortune which kept me invulnerable; I always concealed my dangers in mystery." The hypothesis of his insignificance appears unlikely when we examine the memoirs written by his contemporaries, and consider the precise traditions of a later generation; it becomes untenable in view of what happened on the next day, when the commissioners nominated him for the office of general of brigade, a rank which in the exchange of prisoners with the English was reckoned as equal to that of lieutenant-general. In a report ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... that the position of the Government was untenable, resorted to a method which since 1848 has been for decades practised by the capitalists in order to befog, divide, and finally overpower the working-class. This method is the so-called Coalition Ministry, composed of bourgeois and of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... happened in 1358, by later critics another which occurred in 1364. Clearly, the assumption that the period from 1340 to 1345 includes the date of Chaucer's birth, suffices of itself to stamp the one of these conjectures as untenable, and the other as improbable, and (when the style of the poem and treatment of its subject are taken into account) adds weight to the other reasons in favour of the date 1381 for the poem in question. Thus, backwards and forwards, the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... level of social depression, despotism, and semi-barbarism would be abhorrent from the first principles of philanthropy. With the believer, who holds the Gospel to be "good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people,"[o] such a notion is on higher grounds untenable; but even in view of purely secular considerations it is not only untenable, but altogether unintelligible. As ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... the greatest rogue in London, taken from him eight thousand pounds of ill gotten money, and freed himself of an incubus that would have made his position untenable. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... valuable services had been rendered for so much more than nothing that Lady Hannah found herself in the condition her Bingo was wont to describe as "stony." She had sent for Van Busch to tell him that the position was untenable. She would evacuate it, when he could manage to get hold of Nixey's mouse-coloured trotter and the spider, left in the care of Van Busch's good friend Bough, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Either the just would sin by doing good; or good works performed without charity would not be deserving of eternal beatitude; or, finally, there would be no strict equality between service and reward. All three of these suppositions are untenable. The first would lead to Bajanism or Jansenism.(1300) The second and third overlook the fact that the requisite proportion (condignitas) between service and reward is furnished by sanctifying grace or habitual charity, which, as deificatio, adoptive sonship, and union with the Holy Ghost, ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... warrior, one should expect dubar to represent some kind of a weapon that he carries. On seal cylinders Gilgamesh appears armed with a large lance.[850] However this may be, Jeremias' proposition to render the name as "divine judge of earthly affairs"[851] is untenable, and the same may be said of ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... organisms. At the beginning of the century, it was supposed to be impossible to manufacture by artificial means any of the compounds which animals and plants produce as the result of their life. But chemists were not long in showing that this position is untenable. Many of the organic products were soon shown capable of production by artificial means in the chemist's laboratory. These organic compounds form a series beginning with such simple bodies as carbonic acid ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... dashed over me; nothing could be more gloomy and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was therefore untenable, and but three plans presented themselves to me: first, to leave a notice of my intentions on the island, then to make for some known point on the main and there endeavour to subsist ourselves until we ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... researches depending on an accurate knowledge of the latitude, but theoretical investigations show that the periods of this variation are incompatible with the assumption that the earth is an absolutely rigid body. Though this assumption has in other ways been found to be untenable, the confirmation of this view by the discovery of Dr. Chandler is ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... with a multitude of facts all regarded during a long course of years from the old point of view. This is nearly our case. So, owning no call to a larger faith than is expected of us, but not prepared to pronounce the whole hypothesis untenable, under such construction as we should put upon it, we naturally sought to attain a settled conviction through a perusal of several proffered refutations of the theory. At least, this course seemed to offer the readiest way of bringing to a head the various objections to which the theory is ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... to the living God and hurtful to themselves, because we affirm that Christ is the one Saviour and the rightful Lord, they are eager to find something in our books and views which they can assail, and by which they can show our position to be untenable. ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... to divert her attention by a continuous volley of small pebbles. But somehow Sally managed to distinguish the hammer-strokes from the noise of the bombardment, and at once made up her mind that the roof had become untenable. The only question was how to get down; for by that time the house was surrounded by a cordon of sentries. As a preliminary measure she then retreated to the top of the chimney, and one of our strategists proposed to dislodge her by loading the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... boiling over!" The warning was distinctly audible and, with a gesture of one who abandons an untenable position, Mrs. Sykes retreated ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... charge of a loafer, and the horse and the whip were adorned with white favours, and the back seat was confused but not untenable with hampers. "Up we go," said Mr. Voules, "old birds in front and young ones behind." An ominous group of ill-restrained rice-throwers followed them up ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... regarded as more authoritative, and those is which direct perception is regarded as more authoritative. In 5, the speaker refers to the atomic and other theories of the creation derived from Reason. Bhishma declares it as his opinion that all such theories are untenable or groundless. In the first line of 6, the word Ekam implies Brahma. The sense is, if thou thinkest that Brahma alone is the cause of the universe and in thinking so becomest landed on doubt. The reply to this is that Yoga for a long course of years will enable thee to comprehend the sufficiency ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
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