"Inefficiency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... four additions were made. Two causes operated toward the disappointing outcome. One was an epidemic of influenza which prevailed during the greater part of the winter and caused much embarrassment to the singers; the other was the inefficiency of the chorus—a defect which has not yet been remedied, but was greater in the season 1907-08 than a decade earlier. "Otello" was in readiness so far as the principals were concerned, but the chorus consumed ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... as a cause of connubial discord is the general inefficiency of a woman at the business of what is called keeping house—a business founded upon a complex of trivial technicalities. As I have argued at length, women are congenitally less fitted for mastering these technicalities ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... when prosperity came, paid all of them with scrupulous exactness. It was in these early days of teaching that Miss Anthony saw with indignation the injustice practiced towards women. Repeatedly she would take a school which a male teacher had been obliged to give up because of inefficiency and, although she made a thorough success, would receive only one-fourth of his salary. It was the custom everywhere to pay men four times the wages of women for exactly the same amount of work, often not so ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... frank hospitality; both are sunk in bigotry and broils; they resemble one another in their love of dirt, disorder and display, in their enthusiastic and adventurous spirit, their versatile brilliance of mind, their incapacity for self-government and general (Keltic) note of inspired inefficiency. And both profess a frenzied allegiance to an obsolete tongue which, were it really cultivated as they wish, would put a barrier of triple brass between themselves and the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... government, commerce, and prosperity, beyond anything she had enjoyed and manifested under the first Charter—so much so, that the neighbouring colonies would have gladly been favoured with her system of government. It is possible there may have been individual instances of inefficiency, and even failure of character, in some officers of the Government during a period of seventy years, as is the case in all Governments, but such instances were few, if they occurred at all, and such as to afford no just pretext for the rhapsody and insinuations of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... The inefficiency of most works of this kind are well known to all experienced housekeepers, they being generally a mere compilation of receipts, by those who have no practical knowledge of the subject, and are consequently unable to judge of their correctness, or to give ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... street, on his way home, at two o'clock in the morning, was knocked down and robbed of his watch and money. He was struck with such violence by the highwayman that his jaw was permanently injured. He was very eloquent in his complaints of the inefficiency of a police system which left one of the principal streets of the city so unguarded, and was loud in his demands for the punishment of his assailant, and the recovery of the property stolen from him. The best Detectives in the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... He does not even attempt to show how the effect is peculiar to classical teaching. The whole of this part of the paper is, in fact, addressed, by way of remonstrance, to the writer's own friends, the classical teachers. He reproaches them for their inefficiency, for their not being Arnolds. It is not my business to interfere between him and them in this matter. So much stress does he lay upon the teacher's part in the work, that I almost expected the admission—that a good teacher in English, German, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... some of them, no doubt, had whispered that this bringing home of Sir Marmaduke was part of the payment made by the Colonel for the smiles of the Governor's daughter. But no one alluded openly to the inefficiency of the evidence given. No one asked why a Governor so incompetent had been sent to them. No one suggested that a job had been done. There are certain things of which opposition members of Parliament complain loudly;—and ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... wretched change had overtaken him in clothes, body, and bearing; he looked sick and shabby. He who had once rejoiced in his day's employment, like a horse among pastures, now sat staring on a column of accounts, idly chewing a pen, at times heavily sighing, the picture of inefficiency and inattention. He was sunk deep in a painful reverie; he neither saw nor heard me, and I stood and watched him unobserved. I had a sudden vain relenting. Repentance bludgeoned me. As I had predicted to Nares, I stood ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... battle was, notwithstanding these precautions, fought in Hanover, where Adolphus Frederick, duke of Cambridge, had, in the name of his brother, William IV., king of England, established a new constitution, which had received many ameliorations notwithstanding the inefficiency of the liberals, Christiani, Luntzel, etc., to counteract the overpowering influence of the monarchical and aristocratic party. William IV., king of England and Hanover, expired in 1837, and was succeeded on the throne of Great Britain by Victoria Alexandrina, the daughter of his younger and ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... doubly refracting nature of Mr. Britling's mind that while he was deploring his inefficiency in regard to his son, he was also deploring the ineffectiveness of all his generation of parents. Quite insensibly his mind passed over to the generalised point ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... fallen away a little from her friends in Thurston Square. In three years Fanny Eliott and her circle had grown somewhat unreal to her. She had been aware of their inefficiency before. There had been a time when she felt that Mrs. Eliott's eminence had become a little perilous. She herself had placed her on it, and held her there by a somewhat fatiguing effort of the will to believe. She had been partly (though ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... fun and jollity over the reversal of the usual order of things, and we carried out our programme to the farthest; while our gentlemen displayed a degree of inefficiency and helplessness which would have disgraced a six-year-old girl with a ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... his parents. This you will say is not his duty. That may be; but it is Nature; and whilst you pique Nature against you, you do unwisely to trust to duty. In this futile scheme of polity, the state nurses in its bosom, for the present, a source of weakness, perplexity, counteraction, inefficiency, and decay; and it prepares the means of its final ruin. In short, I see nothing in the executive force (I cannot call it authority) that has even an appearance of vigor, or that has the smallest degree of just correspondence or symmetry or amicable relation with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Area, 255 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 32,264, showing a decrease of 9% in the decade; estimated revenue L6400, of which a large portion is alienated in grants to junior branches of the family; no tribute. The excessive expenditure of the nawab, Syed Fateh Ali Khan, and the general inefficiency of the administration caused much anxiety to the government, and in February 1905 he was temporarily removed from the administration of the state. The town of Banganapalle is not far from the branch of the Southern Mahratta railway ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... judgement on Waller. They had been friends in their early days when Waller was little more than an opulent poet who could make a good speech in parliament; but his behaviour on the discovery of 'Waller's plot', the purpose of which was to hold the city for the king, his inefficiency in any action but what was directed to his own safety and advancement, and his subsequent relations with Cromwell, definitely estranged them. To Clarendon, Waller is the time-server whose pleasing arts are transparent. 'His company was acceptable, where his spirit was odious.' ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... principles of liberty and equality. Discipline accordingly became more and more relaxed; and the dissolution of several of the old corps, under the pretext of their being tainted with an aristocratic feeling, aggravated the confusion and inefficiency of the war department. Many of the most effective regiments during the last period of the monarchy had consisted of foreigners. These had either been slaughtered in defence of the throne against insurrections, like the Swiss; ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... under the same rule, 'no son of theirs succeeding.'" And Lord Lyndhurst closed his argument by drawing a comparison between the House of Lords and the French Senate: "It was but a few weeks since he had read an official comment in the Moniteur, coming from the highest source, on the inefficiency, the want of patriotism, energy, and the backwardness to fulfil the high destinies to which they were called, that characterized that illustrious body, the Senate of France. He had no disposition to cut down our tribunal to that life interest on which the Senate ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... that Gen. Currie believed his army to be rebellious against that march. He was too much of an insurgent to fear insubordination. He had packed many a pipe-clay parade officer home for inefficiency. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... of loose array, continuous distant missiles, and almost exclusive employment of cavalry, with an increase in the number of their own horse, a larger employment of auxiliary irregulars, and a greater use of the sling. At the same time they learnt to take full advantage of the Parthian inefficiency against walls, and to practice against them the arts of pretended retreat and ambush. The result was, that Parthia found she could make no impression upon the dominions of Rome, and, having become persuaded of this by the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... "But the mere suspicion did Shirley a great deal of harm. Partly, perhaps, for this reason, but much more on account of his inefficiency as a general, he was deprived of his command, in 1756, and recalled to England. He never afterwards made ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Among ministers there is, as we all know, a great difference, not only in talent and attainment, but also in love, zeal, wisdom, and endurance—in every quality which their work demands. Similar is the variety among missionaries. There are many degrees of efficiency and, it must be acknowledged, of inefficiency. They, as well as their brethren at home, can go through the routine of their work in a very perfunctory and unsatisfactory manner; while they, too, can consecrate all their powers to the service of their Lord. It would be easy to select from the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... the Middle Ages ran the forces of competition. The inefficiency of customary services and the high prices charged by selfish privilege were constant invitations to men to become competitors. Men strove to break over the barriers of custom and of prejudice. Their efforts to attain freedom ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... with pathetic inefficiency, passed the fingers and inward-turned thumb of his paralyzed hand across his mouth, as if to calm himself. "Three years ago I was a miner, but not a miner like you! I had experience, I had scientific knowledge, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... that each area is divided into halves by a narrow white line. This is to emphasize the fact that the first halves of areas below the X-Y line are really reactions from the extravagance, inefficiency and corruption which existed during the latter half of the preceding "prosperity" area. Contrariwise, the first halves of areas above the X-Y line are really reactions from the economy, industry and righteousness developed during the hard times just preceding. The ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... military tribunal and the man justified. The result was every way satisfactory. Assaulting soldiers lost its attractiveness to town bullies, and the case in which the civilian had been left to the action of the civil courts was a standing proof of the inefficiency of those tribunals in matters where partisan passions entered, and where the unanimity of a ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... rendered by the Y. W. C. A. in its hostess-house work in the American camps; that work alone would have entitled it to the support of the American people. That of the Y. M. C. A. was on so large a scale that naturally its inefficiency was often in ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... far as Nancy was concerned, had been very dull indeed. To be bored, in her creed, was a confession of complete failure; it indicated the most contemptible inefficiency, since she designed the whole fabric of her life with the unique object of keeping herself amused. Nothing bored her more than to have the general attention centered on some one else, as all that evening it had been ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... altar-fire, a miraculous and beautiful phenomenon, than which nothing is more miraculous nor more beautiful over the whole earth. Whence had it suddenly sprung, that flame? After years of muddy inefficiency, of contentedness with the second-rate and the dishonest, that flame astoundingly bursts forth, from a hidden, unheeded spark that none had ever thought to blow upon. It bursts forth out of a damp jungle of careless habits and negligence that could not possibly ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... naturally be expected, therefore, the teaching in the average rural school is a dreary round of inefficiency. Handicapped to begin with by classes too small to be interesting, the rural teacher is mechanically hearing the recitations of some twenty-five to thirty of these classes per day. Lacking at the beginning the breadth of education ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... in this strictly business presence Mayo did not presume to voice any of his doubts or his opinion of his inefficiency. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... The inefficiency of many workers was very clear and training schemes resulted—for typing, shorthand, in leather work, chair seat willowing, in cookery, dressmaking and dress-cutting, ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... more impartially, and from a more elevated point of view, and recognise in the number of trophies taken by the enemy, and their relation to the number of killed and wounded, only too easily and well, the measure of their own weakness and inefficiency. ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... confident in our strength to make the preparation necessary properly to repel them. With such experience on our part, after two years of constant efforts to invade our territories successfully met and more than merely repelled, it would be evidence of gross inefficiency and weakness in us, to permit the enemy to gain even a temporary foothold in any one of the loyal States, or even to attempt it, without the complete overthrow and destruction of the invading force. Our manifest policy is to attack them in their own country, and to hold them there, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the command. While he had undoubted ability, his whole career shows him to have been wanting in the tact and temper without which no one can successfully lead men; and in this venture his own defects were aggravated by the inefficiency of his officers. He took in his cargo of bread-fruit trees at Tahiti, and there was no active insubordination until he reached Tonga on the homeward voyage. At sunrise on April 28th, 1789, the crew mutinied under the leadership of Fletcher Christian, the ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... been expended on the Great Roads of this Province; but their condition shows the inefficiency of the present system, in appropriation and execution. This arises, chiefly, from having tried too much, and in such attempts dispersing limited means, to superficial and endless labor; on works far too ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... a long emotional strain the brain is beaten down; if the number of "low-efficiency" cells increases, the driving power of the brain is correspondingly lessened and therefore the various organs of the body may escape through the very inefficiency of the brain to produce in them forced activity. On the other hand, if the brain remains vigorous, the kidneys may take the strain and break down; if the kidneys do not break, the blood-vessels may harden; if the blood-vessels are not affected, the thyroid may become hyperplastic ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... the last Congress, that it was a system which never wrought efficiently, which never gave final satisfaction, and which generally brought in a set of adventurers. The department and members of Congress had experienced the annoyance and inefficiency of the system in the contract for carrying the mails between Key West and New-Orleans through the Gulf. It was several times given to the lowest bidder, and as often fell through; being finally awarded by private arrangement ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... present instance, had been provoked by the rough treatment from the military, which the waggoners and others of the yeomanry had experienced when employed in Braddock's campaign, and by the neglect to pay them for their services. Much of Washington's difficulties also arose, doubtlessly, from the inefficiency of the military laws, for an amendment of which he had in vain made repeated ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... of the tenement by the moat. It was a ramshackle, two-story affair with shiftless tenants and ragged children. Looking back now, I think likely it was the contrast of its desolation with the green hill and the fields I loved, of its darkness and human misery and inefficiency with the valiant fighting men of my boyish dreams, that so impressed me. I believe it because it is so now. Over against the tenement that we fight in our cities ever rises in my mind the fields, the woods, God's open ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos did not lead to the rapid successes which Wellington had hoped. The French generals, on hearing of the loss of the latter fortress, again fell back, and Wellington was so much hampered by shortness of money, by the inefficiency, obstinacy, and intrigues of the Portuguese Government, and by want of transport, that it was nearly three months before he could get everything in readiness for an advance into Spain. At last all was prepared, and on the 13th of ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... is a naturally rich one, having on the highlands a splendid temperate climate, and everywhere great mineral and agricultural resources. We were fortunate to see a parade of some of the State troops; and such a comical picture of military imbecility and inefficiency could surely not be found elsewhere. The officers swaggered in the gayest of uniforms; the men were shoeless, dirty and slovenly. On approaching the city one passes near by the famous volcanoes Fuego, Aqua and Picaya (14,000 feet), and ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... fault with them is, they labor under an idea that nothing can be done without an extraordinary number of officers, soldiers, policemen, and employes of every description—upon the principle, I suppose, that if two heads are better than one, the ignorance or inefficiency of a small number of employes can be remedied by having a very great number of the same kind. In other words, they seem to think that if five hundred men can not be industrious, skillful, and economical, five thousand trained in ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... XVI., a mere boy, began to reign, the whole French administrative body was corrupt, self-seeking, and in the hands of lawyers, a class that dominated almost every phase of government. In general, inefficiency, idleness, and dishonesty had obtained a ruling place in the governing body; the few honest men who had a minor share in the administration either fell into a sort of disheartened acquiescence or lost their fortunes and reputations in ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... God! Penhallow, my life is one to kill the toughest. What with army mishaps, inefficiency, contractors backed by Congressmen—all the scum that war brings to the top. Do you know why ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Inefficiency! Ineptitude garbed as woman! Must I then teach thee the elements of thy business? Hast thou not observed the pump? Go to it, and draw water. Cause the water to flow into buckets. Carry these buckets—need I go on? Will not Nature herself teach thee what ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... uncertain,—hovering, after dropping the cards, aimlessly about Tommy, and being only recalled by a strong nervous effort. Yet, notwithstanding this incapacity for even honest manipulation, Mr. Johnson covertly turned a knave from the bottom of the pack with such shameless inefficiency and gratuitous unskilfulness, that even Tommy was obliged to cough and look elsewhere to hide his embarrassment. Possibly for this reason the young gentleman was himself constrained, by way of correction, to add a ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a little," she replied, "and I've been a governess and a companion. But I'm really a victim of the English method of educating girls. That's my chief profession—being a monument to its inefficiency," and ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... department, or a Guild, than that the management should content themselves with results which in the lump seem satisfactory, and regard losses here or there with an indifferent eye. That way lies stagnation, waste, progressive inefficiency and ultimate disaster. To inquire searchingly into every nook and cranny of the business, to construct, as it were, for each part a separate balance-sheet of profit and loss, to expand in those directions where further development promises ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... processes of production become more efficient, they would have been rendered useless by the inefficiency of the means of distribution. The older main roads, which had lasted fairly through the Middle Ages, had broken down in later times before the growth of traffic and the increase of wagons and carriages. The ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... there?" roared Kie Wicks. And as the man turned he recognized the little professor whom he had met at Judge Breckenridge's ranch the previous day. Kie laughed to himself. Here was one man he need never fear. Inefficiency and irresponsibility were stamped upon ever line of the little ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... face, the abrupt speech, he was very much American. He was neat—neat in his way of dressing, and in his compact phrases, as hard and well-rounded as a pebble. The world to him was a place full of slackers, of lazy good-nature, of inefficiency. Into that softness he had come with a high explosive and an aim. He moved through life as a hunter among a covey of tame partridges—a brief flutter and a tumble of soft flesh. He had the cunning lines about the mouth, ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... augmented the alarm of the people, who began to urge the magistrate to listen to their prayers, and coerce the sordid corn- dealers, who had, no doubt, numerous pits yet unopened. The alarm became still greater in the cantonments, where the commanding officer attributed all the evil to the inefficiency of the commissariat and the villany of the corn-dealers; and Major Gregory was in dread of being torn to pieces by the soldiery. Only one day's supply was left in the cantonment bazaars—the troops had become clamorous almost to a state of mutiny—the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a great nation with vast resources," he went on, "but these have been largely wasted, owing to the inefficiency and corruption inevitable ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... vast, unobvious work" [Footnote: See Sordello.] of the world, here amending a law, here building a settlement house, and so on. Thus the reformer charges the poet. Mrs. Browning, in Aurora Leigh, makes much of the issue, and there the socialist, Romney Leigh, sneers at the poet's inefficiency, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... been said, as Lord Raglan has been given to understand, in private letters, of the inefficiency of the officers of the Staff, he considers it to be due to your Majesty, and a simple act of justice to those individuals, to assure your Majesty that he has every reason to be satisfied with their exertions, their indefatigable zeal, and undeviating, close attention to ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... a moment darkened the face of the sleeper as he thought of his own inefficiency. But it soon passed away. There was wisdom for the asking; and his bright red lips moved in ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... responsibility, and seemed paralyzed into complete inefficiency. He took nearly the whole of the 25th to move slowly to Cross Lanes, though he met no opposition. He did nothing that evening or night, and his disposal of his troops was so improper and outpost duty so completely neglected ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... public interest passionately at its heart, and it will be practically beyond interference and it will be as inefficient as hell! And the more inefficient it is, the more it will have to take in to allow for its inefficiency—and for your patents it has to give us a flat cut of its gross! And meanwhile we'll get ours from the planets we've landed on and publicized. We've got customers. We've built up ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... take any proper pride in his work: from plumbers who were simply thieves to, say, newspaper men (he seemed to think them a specially intellectual class) who never by any chance gave a correct version of the simplest affair. This universal inefficiency of what he called "the shore gang" he ascribed in general to the want of responsibility and to a ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... giving the last finish to the marble, for removing from the surface a quantity so small that no chisel could be trusted to do the work, it is obvious enough to suggest the use of a file. And no doubt files are used for the purpose, but they are liable to a special and very troublesome source of inefficiency. They become clogged with the excessively fine dust of the marble in a very few minutes to such an extent as to be rendered useless, especially as the file must be of an exceedingly fine description. Powers therefore set his mind to the problem of inventing some means ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... coming'—Marshall took the pipe out of his mouth and spoke with perceptible sarcasm—'the inefficiency of merely external remedies, the folly of any attempt at improvement which does not begin with the improvement of individual character, and that those to whom we intend to give power are no better than those from whom we intend to take it away. All very well, Mr Cohen. My answer is ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... public spirit and indisputable devotion to the furtherance of the Colony's interests, been able to grapple successfully with the giant evil? Has he effectually gained the ear of our masters in Downing Street regarding the inefficiency and wastefulness of Governor Irving's pet department? We presume that his success has been but very partial, for otherwise it is difficult to conceive the motive for [59] retaining the army of officials radiating from that office, with the chief under whose supervision ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... dulness, Ada's inattention, and the interruption of work to do for Emily, and often was she baffled by interference from Jane or Emily. She was conscious of her unfitness to teach the children, and often saw that her impatience, ignorance, and inefficiency, were doing mischief; but much as this pained her, she could not speak to her father without compromising her sister, and to argue with Emily herself was quite in vain. Emily had taken up the principle of love, and defended herself with it on every occasion, so that poor Lily was continually punished ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... officers and crew of the Banshee, that while they did not hold themselves aloof from the passengers in the disdainful American manner, they were of feeble mind, and not only did everything very slowly (in the usual Canadian fashion), but with an inefficiency that among us would have justified them in being insolent. The people sat down at several successive tables to the worst dinner that ever was cooked; the ladies first, and the gentlemen afterwards, as they made conquest of places. At the second table, to Basil's ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... He blamed America and Americans for his loss of work, for Anna's disappearance. He searched his mind for grievances and found them in the ore dust on the hill, which killed his garden; in the inefficiency of the police, who could not find Anna; in the very attitude of Clayton ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... inefficiency of the existing provisions regarding importation can be found in the figures on the growth of the slave population during this period when it is borne in mind that legally slaves could not be imported, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... produced in London alone by the mere failure to prevent a few million chimneys from belching soot on the great city and choking all the activities of the vastest focus of activity in the world. Find the official whose inefficiency is responsible for this neglect, improvise a court to try him, and with all the deliberate solemnity and pageantry you can devise put him to death in the presence of all officialdom. And then picture the ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... United States; and the republic of the West, hitherto so apathetic and unwieldy, but already stung by German nonchalance, leaped to its feet for the first time at the news of this fresh insult. As though to make the inefficiency of the war-ships more apparent, three shells were thrown inland at Mangiangi; they flew high over the Mataafa camp, where the natives could "hear them singing" as they flew, and fell behind in the deep romantic valley of the Vaisingano. Mataafa ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the conquerors in race, religion, and speech, no colony containing men of European stocks had been acquired by conquest. Canada held some sixty or seventy thousand settlers, French and Catholic almost to a man. Despite the inefficiency of French colonial methods the plantation had taken firm root. The colony had developed a strength, a social structure, and an individuality all its own. Along the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu the settlements lay close and compact; the habitants' whitewashed cottages lined ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... True, they had obtained, after all those years of training, a declaration for which they had so eagerly waited. France was in their power, conquered already, they told themselves, for was she not utterly unprepared for war? And as for Russia, Russia the Colossus, the steam-roller, inefficiency reigned in her ranks, and she, too, in her turn, would be most ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... century, and think themselves Liberal when they are defending the ideas of Henry VII, and gentlemanly when they are opposing to them the ideas of Richard III. Thus the educated man is a greater nuisance than the uneducated one: indeed it is the inefficiency and sham of the educational side of our schools (to which, except under compulsion, children would not be sent by their parents at all if they did not act as prisons in which the immature are kept from worrying the mature) that save us from being dashed on the rocks of false doctrine instead of ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... it usually is with industrial inefficiency in the man, bad housekeeping in the woman, and lack of self-control in both, is of course, a potent factor in non-support and probably ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... independent of the mother country, is a reflection which must produce strong and ungenial suspicions of the prudence of those methods which have been pursued to accelerate such a desirable end; and the continuance of the late system, the inefficiency of which has been amply illustrated by recent events, and facts which are incontrovertible, is, of all evils, the most sincerely to be deprecated and guarded against. Of the capability of the settlement to produce adequate means for the subsistence of its members, there can be but a ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... The Athenians, finding that the Lacedaemonians would lose fewer partisans by such a measure than themselves, and would become masters of the public deliberations, vigorously opposed and defeated the attempt. This piece of history proves at once the inefficiency of the union, the ambition and jealousy of its most powerful members, and the dependent and degraded condition of the rest. The smaller members, though entitled by the theory of their system to revolve in equal pride and majesty around the common center, had become, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... to hinder them. The great trench, on which so much labor had been expended, was, therefore, not only useless as a defence to Artaxerxes, but it was a positive encouragement to Cyrus and his men, for it revealed the inefficiency and the cowardice of the Persians. The whole army now moved rapidly forward, confident of an easy victory, many even supposing that Artaxerxes would make no stand at all, but abandon his capital to them. The Great King, however, was not so hopelessly pusillanimous as that; ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... was a bad plan to combine men and dogs on a sledge, because the dogs have their own pace and manner of pulling, and neither of these is adapted to the unequal movement caused by the swing of marching men. And on this occasion another reason for the inefficiency of the dogs was that they were losing their coats, and had but little protection against the bitterly cold wind. 'As a matter of fact, our poor dogs suffered a great deal from their poorly clothed ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... pain attacks. At times, the cause being intangible, it may be necessary to change the whole life and metabolism of the patient, as so often necessary in hysteria, neurasthenia, gout, intestinal fermentation and kidney inefficiency. Besides a rearrangement of the diet and measures for causing proper activity of the bowels, massage, exercise and hydrotherapy should lie utilized toward the end of improving ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... everywhere outnumbered, which was another surprise,—the manifest inferiority of the Imperial artillery, also a surprise,—the manifest inferiority of the Imperial generals, still a surprise. Above these was a prevailing inefficiency and improvidence, which very soon became conspicuous, and this was a surprise. The strength of Germany, as now exhibited, was a surprise. And when the German armies entered France, every step was a surprise. Wissembourg was a surprise; so was Woerth; so ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... mismanagement. More than half the trouble with the world to-day is the "soldiering" and dilution and cheapness and inefficiency for which the people are paying their good money. Wherever two men are being paid for what one can do, the people are paying double what they ought. And it is a fact that only a little while ago in the United ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... over again expressed on this point and are well known to differ widely. The commission can neither reconcile nor change these variant opinions resting on conviction, nor will it be authorized to decide the difference. Under these impressions of the inefficiency of such a commission was the inquiry made in the letter of the undersigned of 5th March, 1836, as to the manner in which the report of the commission, as proposed to be constituted and instructed by Her Majesty's Government, was expected to lead to an ultimate settlement of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... community in return for what they consume; they have no understanding of any relation of service to the community, they have never been trained nor their imaginations touched to any social purpose. A great proportion of small shopkeepers, for example, are people who have, through the inefficiency that comes from inadequate training and sheer aimlessness, or improvements in machinery or the drift of trade, been thrown out of employment, and who set up in needless shops as a method of eking out the savings upon which they count. They contrive to make sixty or seventy per cent, of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... your far-sightedness in that instance will keep the Shanghai office out of the red ink this year," Matt Peasley replied. "However, we face this situation, Cappy. Henderson has drunk and gambled and signed chits in excess of his salary. He hasn't attended to business and he's capped his inefficiency by absconding with our bank account. We couldn't foresee that. When we send a man out to the Orient to be our manager there, we have to trust him all the way or not at all. So there is no use weeping over spilled milk, Cappy. Our job is to select ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... the rising power of his brother. He no longer dared to treat him ignominiously, lest his brother should be provoked to some desperate act of retaliation. On the other hand, Matthias despised the weakness and superstition of Rhodolph. The increasing troubles in the realm and the utter inefficiency of Rhodolph, convinced Matthias that the day was near when he must thrust Rhodolph from the throne he disgraced, and take his seat upon it, or the splendid hereditary domains which had descended to them from their ancestors would ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... subject—the ease with which the extraordinary and unprecedented increase of crime in the empire might be arrested by proper means and the total inefficiency of all the remedies hitherto attempted, from the want of practical knowledge on the part of those at the head of affairs, and an entirely false view of human nature in society generally, that we shall direct the attention of our readers in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... marvellous accounts in the daily papers—of combats between a single Belgian platoon and entire regiments of enemies, putting them to disorderly flight; of the German fear of the bayonet that made them run like hares the instant that the charge sounded; of the inefficiency of the German artillery whose projectiles always ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... English Student,' Haydon not only exposed the inefficiency of the Academy, but advocated numerous reforms, chief among them being an improved method of election, the establishment of schools of design, a reduction in the power of the Council, and an annual grant of public ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Cilicia, we shall see something in another chapter. There is plenty of other gossip in these letters, and gossip often about unsavoury matters which need not be noticed here. It lets in a flood of light upon the causes of the general incompetence and inefficiency; the life of the Forum was a ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... the Congo. I did not like the looks of the English-speaking barbarian so I took a chance on Number Two, whose name was Gerome. He was a so-called "educated" native. I was to find from sad experience that his "education" was largely in the direction of indolence and inefficiency. I thought that by having a boy with whom I had to speak French I could improve my command of the language. Later on I realized my mistake because my French is a non-conductor ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... our country towns are, in mental culture, much in advance of the males of the same household; but with this comes a physical delicacy, the result of an exclusive use of the brain and a neglect of the muscular system, with great inefficiency in practical domestic duties. The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country places, and made the bright, neat, New-England kitchens of old times—the girls that could wash, iron, brew, bake, harness ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be fairly levied without a change in the Constitution. But such a change may be made in direct accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, and the necessity for such an alteration cannot be held as proving any inefficiency in the original document ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... characteristics, isn't it?" returned the elder lady, with unaccustomed tartness. "A minor branch of the root of inefficiency." ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... she had been North several weeks, "I have a theory that every woman ought to know how to earn her own living. I believe that a great amount of sin and misery springs from the weakness and inefficiency of women." ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper
... silk or stockinette knickerbockers which in the 1910 woman replaced the piteously laughable drawers of the Victorian period. Then the suspenders clutched the rims of the stockings with an arrangement of nickel and rubber which no man would have tolerated for its inefficiency but would have thrown back in the face of the shopman and have been charged with assault. In times of stress, at public meetings the suspenders would release the stockings from their hold, and the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... conduct, and the history of the league more than justified the disapprobation of Orange. The nobles thus banded together, achieved little by their confederacy. They disgraced a great cause by their orgies, almost ruined it by their inefficiency, and when the rope of sand which they had twisted fell asunder, the people had gained nothing and the gentry had almost lost the confidence of the nation. These remarks apply to the mass of the confederates and to some of the leaders. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Intelligence Service, Naval Intelligence Service, Neutrality Squads of the Customs, and the Postal Inspection. Then there's the State Service and the police and several other services. And there is no proper co-ordination, no single head for all these agencies. The result is a ghastly confusion and shameful inefficiency. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... is a friend of the Administration? The Administrator is a broken shard; the British will summon him home for inefficiency. Besides, there is only one man in Jerusalem of whom Noureddin is in the least afraid—that Major Grim, the American. And whoever would give the price of a cup of coffee for a lease of the life of Major Grim in the circumstances ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... nervous structures, and so taking the reverse order of the process of evolution.[67] And thus, we may say that throughout the mental life of the most sane of us, these higher and more delicately balanced structures are constantly in danger of being reduced to that state of inefficiency, which in its ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... in their reception of the great theory first given to the world by Mr. Diogenes Dottle in a letter to The Daily Mandate. But the POSTMASTER-GENERAL is content to treat the question with the airy scepticism and obstructive complacency that have rendered the London Telephone service a byword of inefficiency, and refuses even to make a grant in aid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... mutineers was followed by the convocation of the states-general, and the government thus hoped to maintain some show of union and some chance of authority. But a new scene of intestine violence completed the picture of executive inefficiency. On the 4th of September, the grand bailiff of Brabant, as lieutenant of the Baron de Hesse, governor of Brussels, entered the council chamber by force, and arrested all the members present, on suspicion of treacherously maintaining intelligence with the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... of human wastage to the unemployed, thence to the unemployable, and so to the gutter and the grave. The poor we have always with us; but the wastrel—like the pauper—"is a work of art, the creation of wasteful sympathy and legislative inefficiency." ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... touches a man on the shoulder and says, "Stop!" he stops. The penalty of frayed nerves, overworked brains, and underworked bodies is failure of body and mind. The premonitory symptoms are irritability, quarreling, depression, fierceness and inefficiency of effort, and finally complete breakdown. Three to four hours a week physical exercise under a scientifically tested plan and arrangement will keep these men fit. Is the price in this ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... wave. The erection of the great abattoir, which had replaced the more primitive structure built in 1883, gave an impression of great prosperity. Actually, however, it was a symptom of failure. It had, in fact, been erected only because of the irremediable inefficiency of the original smaller structure. By the end of 1884 the Marquis had discovered that the slaughtering of twenty-five head of cattle a day could not, by the most painstaking application of "business methods," be made profitable. It took more than butchers, the Marquis found, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... raised in several quarters as to the inefficiency of Pantheism (which term is intended to include Esoteric Buddhism, Adwaitee Vedantism, and other similar religious systems) to supply a sound basis ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... of what had really happened did not account to the master for the indifference of her long silence, and albeit conscious of some inefficiency in his present unheroic attitude, he continued sarcastically, "May I ask WHAT you imagined would happen ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... inefficiency of labor is by no means the fault of the individual laborer alone. Heredity has bankrupted him before he started on his career. His parents were probably as inefficient as he is—and most likely their parents also. One who sees much of ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... a stupendous failure. It cost us about four thousand men, mostly, however, captured; and all due to inefficiency on the part of the corps commander and the incompetency of the division commander who was ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... SIMON'S case with added instances the Government found an unexpected champion in Mr. HEALY. He was amazed to hear the late HOME SECRETARY—"one of the Ministers who made the War"—gloating over the inefficiency of the War Office at a moment when round Verdun was raging a battle in which the fate of Paris, and perhaps of London, was involved. Why had he not imitated the monumental silence of Mr. BURNS? Instead, he, the suppressor of obscure Irish newspapers, had done more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... did become Communist either did so at the point of the Red Army's bayonet or under the stress of complete collapse such as in China. But tomorrow, and the New Russia? Freed from the inadequacy and inefficiency of the bureaucrats who have misruled us, we'll develop a productive machine that will be the envy of the world!" Her voice had all ...
— Revolution • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... mortgage; should they be forced to consider the probability of foreclosure eventually, he knew they would not consider the loan. Don Mike was bitterly aware of the fact that the history of his family bad been one of waste, extravagance, carelessness and inefficiency. In order to place the ranch on a paying basis and take up John Parker's mortgage, therefore, he would have to have a new loan of not less than half a million dollars, and at six per cent., the lowest rate ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... This was not through idleness but physical weakness. They are small men, and they are a class who are not well fed. They live entirely on vegetable food, and they scarcely ever taste meat." It is natural to suppose that the want of meat is the cause of their inefficiency. Yet the common farm labourer in England, who does a very hard and long day's work, hardly tastes meat, in many counties, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... very well have been content to accept you for what you seem. But there have been times, Anna, when your work has startled me. Ill-drawn, without method or sense of proportion, you have put wonderful things on to canvas, have drawn them out of yourself, notwithstanding your mechanical inefficiency. God knows how you did it. ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wife these things were all like oil on fire; but it never occurred to her to try to develop in herself any of the qualities he seemed to find attractive in Edith. Instead, she thought of that June day in the meadow by the river when he said he loved her inefficiency—he loved her timidity, and, oh, how he had loved her love! He had made her promise to be jealous! Eleanor was not a reasoning person—probably no jealous woman is; but she did recognize the fact that what made ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... leads to inquiry, and results in understanding and mastery. Poor questioning leaves the mental powers unawakened, cripples thought, and results in inefficiency ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... West Coast Trading Company of the German steamer Valkyrie, had, to Cappy's mind, atoned for the loss and humiliation he had suffered in that grape stake deal. His honor was clean again and for weeks he taunted Redell with the latter's inefficiency, insufficiency and general business debility, until, having extracted the last shred of triumph from the affair, a vague sympathy for Redell commenced to surge up in Cappy's kindly heart and he commenced casting about for an opportunity to do the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... the inefficiency of the machine that led the applicant to make his invention of 1847, which, by a modification of pre-existing elements, provided an advantageous location for the raker's seat. Upon this his fame as an ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... matter, the investigation of which should be included in Mr Lloyd George's Land Campaign. There is an obvious connection between the status of the agricultural labourer and the inefficiency ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... a duty to sin against her father's wishes, and to assist in profaning his house and abusing his hospitality after this fashion? Then her mind again went back to the troubles of Mrs. Parker, and her absolute inefficiency in that matter. It seemed to her that she had given herself over body and soul and mind to some evil genius, and ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... demand made for the removal of officials in any of the Departments. This order has been made to give to the accused his right to be heard but without in any way impairing the power of removal, which should always be exercised in cases of inefficiency and incompetency, and which is one of the vital safeguards of the civil service reform system, preventing stagnation and deadwood and keeping every employee keenly alive to the fact that the security of his tenure depends ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... possible maximum; limiting factors; cost of equipment; life of the mine; mechanical inefficiency of patchwork plant; overproduction of base ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... inefficient, or defective, places a burden upon those who are mentally and physically capable and renders them liable to results which are the outgrowth of weakness or viciousness. The fact that alcohol causes pauperism, crime, and general inefficiency, thereby rendering the social environment less conducive to what is best in life, is plainly evident. To realize how alcohol harms the individual through its effects upon society in general, one has only to take into account his dependence upon society ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... in our own behalf, but for the benefit of others. If we discharge the obligations of our trusteeship, we shall enjoy present strength, usefulness, and length of days; but if we fail in their performance, then inefficiency, incapacity, and sickness, will follow, the sequel of which is pain and death. Let us, then, prove worthy of this generous commission, that we may enjoy the sweetest of all pleasures, the delicious fruitage of honest ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce |
