"Passable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as the crow flies, but Buck was no aviator. He was forced to take a most tortuous, roundabout route, and when he finally emerged on the first passable track heading approximately in the right direction, the sun was low and there seemed little chance of his accomplishing his purpose in the few hours ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... might as well keep her, Sargent," said Mrs. Severance placidly. "You will have to pay her blackmail, of course—but after all that's really your fault a little, isn't it?—and it seems as if that was more or less what you had to do with any kind of passable servant nowadays. And Elizabeth is perfection—as a servant. As police—" she smiled a little cruelly. "Well, we shan't go into that, but I think it would be so much better to keep her. Then we'll be getting something out of her in return for our blackmail, ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... hands hang over the arms of it—the picture of discontent. The gaslight showed her the possessor of bright brown eyes, under fine brows slenderly but clearly marked, of a pink and white skin slightly freckled, of a small nose quite passable, but no ways remarkable, of a dainty little chin, and a thin-lipped mouth, slightly raised at one corner, and opening readily over some irregular but very white teeth. Except for the eyes and eyebrows the features could claim nothing much in ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... can wear their own plain soft low-heeled slippers. The rich folk in the chancel wear their own slippers and draw on over them, socks dyed to match the tights; these socks if rolled down at the top make a very passable substitute for the Romeo shoe of the ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... you expire, we may teach you a little on these smoother paths; and hire one perhaps, by the time the stones are passable. Just at present, I think our own legs and Pixy's ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... nevertheless, to produce a single hymnwriter of outstanding merit. The leaders in the movement were able men, striving earnestly to satisfy a pressing need. But they were not poets. Their work consisted of passable translations, selections from Pre-Reformation material and a few original hymns by Claus Mortensen, Arvid Petersen, Hans Thomisson and others. It represented an honest effort, but failed to attain greatness. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... strings of pack-mules driven by women, 'trapesing' in zigzags down Woodisun Bank and Warm Lane, and occasionally falling, with awful smashes of the crockery they carried, in the deep, slippery, scarce passable mire of the first slants into the valley. Duck Square had witnessed the slow declension of these roads into mere streets, and slum streets at that, and the death of all mules, and the disappearance of all coaches and all ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... should not in all this time see, that Moorefields have houses two stories high in them, and paved streets, the City having let leases for seven years, which he do conclude will be very much to the hindering the building of the City; but it was considered that the streets cannot be passable in London till a whole street be built; and several that had got ground of the City for charity, to build sheds on, had got the trick presently to sell that for L60, which did not cost them L20 to put up; and so the City, being very poor in stock, thought it as good to do it themselves, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... was extreamly delighted with the extraordinary things I saw in those Countries, you cannot but imagine I was exceedingly mov'd, when I heard of a Lunar World; and that the way was passable from these Parts. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... when Antiochus had carried out of the temple a thousand and eight hundred talents, he departed in all haste unto Antiochia, weening in his pride to make the land navigable, and the sea passable by foot: such was the haughtiness ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... only five miles from Cherbury by a cross-road, which was scarcely passable for carriages. The rectory house was a substantial, square-built, red brick mansion, shaded by gigantic elms, but the southern front covered with a famous vine, trained over it with elaborate care, and of which, and his espaliers, the Doctor was very proud. ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... ground floor, which composed his lodgings, consisted of framed herbariums, and engravings of the old masters. The sight of a sword or a gun chilled his blood. He had never approached a cannon in his life, even at the Invalides. He had a passable stomach, a brother who was a cure, perfectly white hair, no teeth, either in his mouth or his mind, a trembling in every limb, a Picard accent, an infantile laugh, the air of an old sheep, and he was easily frightened. Add to this, that he had no other friendship, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... would have been the better name, if all the circumstances which we have heard relating to its composition be true; nevertheless it is undeniable that our facetious friends who are chargeable with this literary sin, have succeeded in producing a very passable imitation, and that their phraseology at least is faultless. A poet, again, neither can nor ought to imitate, and when he is writing in earnest the attempt is absolutely hopeless. For every poet has his own style, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... human eyes; woman eyes—alluring eyes. She did not say a word, and, after a brief stare which might have meant almost anything, she turned to her plate of toast and broke away the burned edges of a slice and nibbled at the passable center as if she had no trouble beyond a ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... language which "is not made, but grows." Like the governments which are in a similar case, it may be compared to a road which is not made but has made itself: it requires continual mending in order to be passable. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... on an engagement until they received further orders, but to hold their positions. From the heavy rains that had fallen for days and weeks preceding and from the constant use of the roads between the troops and the landing four to seven miles below, these roads had become cut up so as to be hardly passable. The intense cold of the night of the 14th-15th had frozen the ground solid. This made travel on horseback even slower than through the mud; but I went as fast as the roads ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... sign-painting, and of dramatic longings, which had thus far been satisfied with a diligent reading of Shakespeare and attending the theatre at every opportunity. Now, being regularly connected with the stage, both these tastes expanded, until through one of them he blossomed into a very passable scene-painter. Through the other he overwhelmed himself with despair, and convulsed an audience with laughter, by appearing once, and once only, as Captain Thomas Codringhampton in the popular sea drama ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... window, was the first to see him; and what she saw caused her to clutch at her throat to stifle a cry. He was not on horseback, though the roads were quite passable, but in a sleigh; and there was a jingle of sleigh bells on the frosty air. He had come with ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... a cigar? I don't smoke myself; my throat won't stand it; but I understand these are passable. Grant left them here. He's a chimney, that man Grant. ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... autobiography which precedes the journey itself was intended to be Tristram-like, but openly stigmatizes his own failure as "ill conceived, incoherent and not very well told!" After mentioning some few incidents and passages in this first section which he regards as passable, he boldly condemns the rest as "almost beneath all criticism," and the same words are used with reference to much that follows, in which he confesses to imitation, bad taste and intolerable indelicacy. He calls his pathetic attempts ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... to divert part of this ordnance to Buffalo because of the excessively bad roads, which were passable for heavy traffic only by means of sleds during the snows of winter. This obstacle spoiled the hope of putting a fighting force afloat on Lake Erie during the latter part of 1812. Chauncey consequently established his main base at Sackett's Harbor and lost ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... letters, always typewritten, were copied and objectionable matter omitted, and his signature reproduced by the photo-engraving process, separately each time. But before long, several letters came back to him rubber-stamped: "Not passable. Please revise." It took Benda two days to cool down and rewrite the first letter. But outwardly no one would have ever known that there was anything amiss ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... piper to the other side of the wood, and being so near home, I shouldered the roe, and took the way for the ford of Craig-Darach, a strong wide broken stream with a very bad bottom, but the nearest then passable. ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... precise and austere meaning. He thought the matter over seriously. But since his mind was not deeply religious, and since he was incapable of cherishing exaggerated scruples, he was conscious of only a passable degree of edification, which was steadily diminishing. Before long he decided that such scruples were out of place and that they could not possibly apply to the situation. "When we abandon ourselves to irregularities of conduct, even to those regarded as least ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... succeeded in ferrying across the river and in getting away with about 1000 officers and men, principally belonging to Floyd's old brigade. Some cavalry and small detachments and individual officers with Colonel Forrest escaped in the night by the river road, which was only passable, on account ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... outside, a very passable tenor took up the air just where a tenor should. Jacqueline was startled but not nonplussed; she had been hoping a miracle might occur that day. At seventeen, the age of miracles has not passed. She finished her share of the duet with a flourish, and on the last note of his, Percival Channing appeared ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... violins, or tambourines, playing wherever they can secure an audience. They become Americanized less easily than children of other nationalities, and both in dress and outward appearance retain their foreign look, while few, even after several years' residence, acquire even a passable ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... getting over the large range that I could have got round it had I kept south, and by travelling a circuitous route, but from the western side of the range the way I came was the only way visible that was passable, and it was nearly as impassable as it was possible for it to be. From the top of it you command a very extensive view in all directions. To the south in the distance is a fine long leading range, apparently running from west-north-west ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... reached the first water we had encountered since the start. This was a trout-stream, well known to some of us who were fond of fishing—nowhere more than half a foot deep, and in some places easily passable, dry shod, on stepping-stones. Birch, however, avoided these, and boldly splashing into the stream over his ankles, bade ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... beautiful, and was there ever a girl of fifteen who would not like to be beautiful if she could? This wish, and the thought and effort it would induce, were likely to be her great temptation. Passably pretty girls, who may, with care, make themselves often more than passable, have far the hardest of it with their consciences about these things; and Leslie had a conscience, and was reflective for her age,—and we have seen how questions had begun to ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... were dancing all together, dancing the Schuhplatteln, the Tyrolese dance of the clapping hands and tossing the partner in the air at the crisis. The Germans were all proficient—they were from Munich chiefly. Gerald also was quite passable. There were three zithers twanging away in a corner. It was a scene of great animation and confusion. The Professor was initiating Ursula into the dance, stamping, clapping, and swinging her high, with amazing force and zest. When the crisis came even Birkin was behaving manfully ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... mimic him when she repeated the passage herself, profiting by his instruction. It was the sort of music that rich amateurs used to write by the ream, subject to the unacknowledged 'corrections' of a well-paid professional; but the girl's sweet voice and genuine talent made the airs sound passable, while her dreamy eyes and her caressing pronunciation of the trivial words did the rest. It was mere talent, for she hardly understood what she was saying, or singing, and she felt not the least emotion, but she seemed to kiss the syllables ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... days, the possession by the Indians of the northern areas accentuated the southern connections of Illinois. At the same time the absence at the North of navigable waterways and passable highways between East and West, left the Ohio and its tributaries the only connecting lines of travel with the remote northern Atlantic States. Had Illinois been admitted into the Union with the boundaries first proposed, it would have been, by all those subtle influences which ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... it, he thought, sinking back. "Dorita, I want you to run ahead and see what the trail's like," he said. "See if the ledge is passable. And find a place, not too far ahead, where we can block the trail by exploding that demolition-bomb. It has to be close enough for a couple of you to carry or drag me and get me there in ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... you must content yourself with my good intentions, as you, I hope, will with this speculative campaign. Pray, for the future, remain at home and build bridges: I wish you were here to expedite ours to Richmond, which they tell me Will not be passable these two years. I have ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... distance to the Rio Platte, and G—G assured them that within a week they would see its muddy waters and be relieved. Thus encouraged they held the lead, but several times vaqueros dropped back to make inquiries of drives and the water. The route was passable, with a short dry drive from the head of Stinking Water across to the Platte River, of which they were fully advised. Keeping them in sight, we trailed along leisurely, and as we went down the northern slope of the divide approaching the Republican River, we were ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... beauty of his face even more remarkable than it had been in his morning dress. Sitting with the lay clerks behind the choristers, he looked like the representative of another and a higher race, and even those of them whose personal attractions had hitherto been considered more than merely passable when they appeared beside him were suddenly seen to be hopelessly commonplace. But, although the interest he excited was evident enough, it was equally evident that he himself remained quite unaware of it. In his whole bearing there was not the slightest assumption. He entered with the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... who is a haggard melancholy man, speaking in a weak voice of querulous complaint, 'to what to attribute it, Mr Wegg. I can't work you into a miscellaneous one, no how. Do what I will, you can't be got to fit. Anybody with a passable knowledge would pick you out at a look, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the wrecks, as also the sand bank, on the morning after our disaster, and must have known that the reef was not all connected, since it is spoken of by him as lying in patches; but he did not seek to ascertain whether any of the openings were passable for the Bridgewater, and might enable him to take those on board who had escaped drowning. He bore away round all; and whilst the two hapless vessels were still visible from the mast head, passed the leeward extremity of the reef, and hove to for the night. The apprehension of danger to himself must ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... to loaf along a passable road mounted on a light-footed horse, and Hazel enjoyed it if for no more than the striking contrast to that terrible journey in and out of the Klappan. Here were no heartbreaking mountains to scale. The scourge of flies was well-nigh past. They took the road in ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... one look twice. Mrs. Wagoner used to say she did not know where that boy got all his ugliness from, for she must admit his father was rather good-looking before he became so bloated, and Betty Duval would have been "passable" if she had had any "vivacity." There were people who said Betty Duval had been a beauty. She was careful in her limitations, Mrs. Wagoner was. Some women will not admit others are pretty, no matter what the difference in their ages: ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... must see something wherever they go, there are the unimportant remains of the castle and the church, an edifice that would be quite passable were it not for the thick coat of paint that covers it. The chapel of the Virgin was a bower of flowers; bunches of jonquils, pansies, roses, jessamine, and honeysuckle were arranged in blue glasses or white china vases and spread their bright colours over the altar and upward between the ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... but two days to Christmas and the gaiety of the season, forced or genuine, rang out everywhere. Christmas shopping, with its anxious solicitude or self-centred absorption, overspread the West End and made the pavements scarcely passable at certain favoured points. Proud parents, parcel-laden and surrounded by escorts of their young people, compared notes with one another on the looks and qualities of their offspring and exchanged loud hurried confidences on ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Lawrence, and encamped below the Montmorency. It was an ill-judged position, for there was still that tumultuous stream, with its rocky banks, between him and the camp of Montcalm; but the ground he had chosen was higher than that occupied by the latter, and the Montmorency had a ford below the falls, passable at low tide. Another ford was discovered, three miles within land, but the banks were steep, and shagged with forest. At both fords the vigilant Montcalm had thrown up breastworks, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... been here long enough now to discover the differences between this front and the old fighting-line in Gallipoli. The rain has been heavier in March than for thirty-five years, and April until yesterday seemed almost as bad. The trenches are made passable by being floored with a wooden pathway which runs on piles—underneath which is the gutter of water and mud which is the real floor of the trench. Sometimes the water rises in the communication trenches ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... disperses the clouds with which it had overspread them before; it advances not the traveller one step in his journey, but conducts him back again to the spot from whence he wandered. Thus the land of Philosophy consists partly of an open champaign country, passable by every common understanding, and partly of a range of woods, traversable only by the speculative, and where they too frequently delight to amuse themselves. Since then we shall be obliged to make incursions into this latter tract, ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... was a delicate one. Somehow, she could not help thinking, as she looked at the face before her, that, arrayed in its pleasantest smiles, it could, by the barest possibility, be only passable, and now looked really hideous in its disgusting and futile rage. Really, if there could be any excuse for such domestic infidelities as had been pictured so graphically, Mr. Burton certainly ought to have the benefit of them, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... the fellow, tapping him upon the arm with his pistol barrel, "and a very passable coat it is—fine velvet, I swear, and as I'm a living sinner, a flowered waistcoat!—come, take ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... necessary for any gourmet [Footnote: Any gentleman or lady, who may please, is at perfect liberty to translate the word gourmet into any other tongue. I cannot. As much may be said of gourmand.- -TRANSLATOR.] to say, "It is good, passable, or bad. It is Chambertin, ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... the word: "Stolen?" but Carrie declined to answer. As there was no help for it, Max dressed his friend in such of the clothes as were a passable fit for him, while Carrie went out to watch for the expected carriage. When she returned to the kitchen, Dudley was ready for the journey. He was lying back in a chair, looking very white and haggard and exhausted, casting about him glances full of expectancy and ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... got on excellently together, so we had furnished our pleasant little six-roomed, second-floor flat quite comfortably, and as Harry had looked after the artistic side of its furnishings—aided by a pal of his, an impecunious artist who lived in Chelsea—it certainly was a very passable ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... chance!" said the Major exultingly. "One of their big guns clear in the open, and moving at a crawl. I want you to take the battery along the road here, sharp to the right at the cross-road, and through the wood. The Inf. tell me there is just a passable road through. Take guns and firing battery wagons only; leave the others here. When you get through the wood, turn to the right again, and along its edge until you come to where I'll be waiting for you. ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... here much upon the method I took to make my life passable and easy with the most incorrigible temper in the world; but it is too long, and the articles too trifling. I shall mention some of them as the circumstances I am to relate shall necessarily bring ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... toleration of this joke as being a passable quality of joke. And then she smiled in the same sense, hastening to agree with him that as a joke it was not a ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... grain of contempt for women compelled by their delicacy to spoil that kind of story which demands the piquant accompaniment to flavour it racily and make it passable. For to see insipid mildness complacently swallowed as an excellent thing, knowing the rich smack of savour proper to the story, is your anecdotal gentleman's annoyance. But if the anecdote had supported him, Sullivan Smith would have let ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... king of a pass unknown to the enemy, by which the army might reach the table-land, and to prove his words led Lopez de Haro and another through this little-known mountain by-way. It was difficult but passable, the army was put in motion and traversed it all night long, and on the morning of the 14th of July the astonished eyes of the Mohammedans gazed on the Christian host, holding in force the borders of the plateau, and momentarily increasing in numbers and strength. Ten miles before the eyes ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... image of the Almighty hand launching worlds into space is very fine until you try to form a mental picture of it, when it is found to be utterly irrealisable. In the same way, the Creation Story is passable until you image the Lord making a clay man and blowing up his nose; or the story of Samson until you picture him slaying file after file of well-armed soldiers with the ...
— Comic Bible Sketches - Reprinted from "The Freethinker" • George W. Foote
... history." We often find that the public discover virtues and good qualities in a man after his death, which they had previously given him no credit for; let this be as it may, 1828 may be deemed a very "passable" year. To use a simile, a sick man when recovering from a fever, makes slow progress at first; and we should fairly hope that the gallant ship is at last weathering the hurricane of the "commercial crisis," and that the trade-winds of prosperity will again ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... tone of soothing sympathy. You don't know what you mean any more than the cat does, but the sentiment seems to imply a proper spirit on your part, and generally touches her feelings to such an extent that if you are of good manners and passable appearance she will stick her back up and rub her nose against you. Matters having reached this stage, you may venture to chuck her under the chin and tickle the side of her head, and the intelligent creature will then stick her claws into your legs; and all is friendship ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... built up from a metal disc about 3/4 inch diameter and two slightly larger discs soldered concentrically to the sides. The width of the middle disc should be the same as that of the eccentric rod. A careful filer could make a passable eccentric by sinking a square or semicircular groove in the edge of a wide disc. The centre of the eccentric must be found carefully, and a point marked at a distance from it equal to half the travel of the valve. To ascertain this, pull the valve ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... and consisted of a cluster of wooden huts erected just off a narrow muddy road. At one time I am told, the mud was thigh deep; but now duck boards had been laid down, and though decidedly muddy the camp was quite passable. When we arrived it was quite late, and we found the camp in total darkness and every one asleep. But some of the batmen (or officers' servants) were roused, and they not only showed us a place to sleep in, but got us some tea and a scratch meal, very ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... Napoleon; a broad carriage road, wide enough for three carriages to go abreast, and cut zig-zag with so gentle a slope as to allow a heavy French diligence to pass, with the utmost ease, across a mountain where it was formerly thought impossible a wheel could ever run. This chaussee is passable at all seasons of the year; the mountain is not so high as that of the Simplon and is less liable to impediments from the snow; the obstacles from nature are less, and you can descend in a sledge from the Hospice by gliding down the side ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... have become more or less vast lodging-houses, all built on the same plan and managed according to the same regulations, one as passable as the other, with apartments in them which, more or less good, are more or less dear, but at rates which, higher or lower, are fixed at a uniform tariff over the entire territory, so that the 36,000 ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... which is said to be twenty leagues in circuit. At Sevres, which is celebrated for the beauty of its porcelain manufactory, I observed workmen employed in finishing a new and handsome bridge of nine arches over the Seine, in place of the old one which is hardly passable. Near the barrier of Passy is a carpet-manufactory, which was established there by Henry the Fourth. This barrier is thought to be the most striking entrance to Paris. In my excursions in the vicinity of Paris, I observed that the harvest was extremely abundant, but the ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... perhaps, more readily reach him from New-York than from any part of New-England that you maybe at. I have said that if I am mistaken in directing the within letter, you should cover it and give it the proper address. Do, dear Burr, get somebody who can write at least a passable hand to back it, for you give your letters such a sharp, slender, and lady-like cast, that almost every one, on seeing them, would conclude there was a correspondence kept up between my honest friend Spring ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... more glance from the window; for there is a mighty jingling and rattling, the children are all running to see something, and the carriage is approaching. "The carriage": it is said advisedly; for there is but one street on the island passable to such an equipage, and but one such equipage to enjoy its privileges,—only one, that is, drawn by horses, and presentable in Broadway. There are three other vehicles, each the object of envy and admiration, but each drawn by oxen only. There is the Baroness, the only lady ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... cadaverous faces that tell of hardships and strife and sin in the eager pursuit of riches. Ballarat was at first only a mining-camp of immense size, and its environs are still occupied by tents, where transient visitors find very passable accommodations. But the city proper, now some sixteen years old, with a population already of thirty thousand, is an exact transcript of Melbourne, with beautiful dwellings, and broad streets thronged with carriages by day and lighted with gas by night. It boasts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... "My dear girl," he said, "your father's tailor estimated that he might make me a very passable dress suit for one hundred and seventy-five dollars. Brett's ties were stunning, just as you say, but the prices ranged from five to eight dollars, which was more stunning still. For a young person from the country out of a job, which is my condition at present, such things may be ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... exclaimed. "The state of things in my place here is passable. I've got no outside outlay. The main thing I have to mind is to make provision for a year's necessary expenses. If I launch out into luxuries, I have to suffer hardships, so I must try a little self-denial and manage to save something. It's the custom, besides, at the end of the year ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... returned during the noon hour, the former having found, by swimming, a passable ford near the mouth of Monday Creek, while the latter reported the ferry in "apple-pie order." No sooner, then, was dinner over than the wagon set out for the ferry under Forrest as pilot, though we were ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... thoroughly. She proved, too, wonderfully quick at detecting mistakes, and Barry, who had petitioned the heads of the office they had selected not to send him any Council School product, was pleased to find that her spelling was admirable, her grammar passable, and ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... French exercise. She was fairly good at French, and her German was also passable, but as she read and worked and struggled through a difficult piece of translation her thoughts wandered again and again to the subject of the English theme. What would it be? History, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... colonel—"passable, my good Clement. But do you know, I could send you to prison for providing this excellent leveret at this time of year. Are there no game ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... tons must have been landed all round the beach; and the pandemonium at the gangway, the crush and jostle in the trade room, and the steady hoisting out of fresh merchandise from the main hold, made a very passable South Sea imitation of a New York department store. At any rate, there was the same loss of temper, the same harassed expression on the faces of the purchasers, and the same difficulty in getting change. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... ashore for the next week, by which time order had been completely restored, the fires extinguished, and the streets made, at least, passable. The sailors had been aided by a battalion of marines, which had been telegraphed for from Malta by the admiral, before the bombardment began. The Khedive had returned to Has-el-Teen, which had only been partly destroyed, as soon as the blue-jackets entered. His ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... thoughts, my best wishes and tenderest affections will inseparably attend you till we meet again. the Bearer will also deliver you the March. I am very Sorry I could not write it Sooner, nor better, but I hope my D. you will excuse it, and if it is not passable I will send you the Dear original directly. If my H. would employ me oftener to write Music I hope I should improve and I know I should delight in the occupation, now my D.L. let me intreat you to take the greatest care of your health. I hope to see you Friday ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... unless he had said (what in effect he did say), 'I did it ignorantly.' When a man has a glimpse of Jesus exalted to heaven, and is summoned by Him to give a reason for his life of alienation, that life looks very different from what it did, when seen by dimmer light. Clothes are passable by candle-light that look very shabby in sunshine. When Jesus comes to us, His first work is to set us to judge our past, and no man can muster up respectable answers to His question, 'Why?' for all sin is unreasonable, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... they were called, are notoriously poor eating, but in the hands of the Confederate soldier were made to do good duty. When on the march and pressed for time, a piece of solid fat pork and a dry cracker was passable or luscious, as the time was long or short since the last meal. When there was leisure to do it, hardtack was soaked well and then fried in bacon grease. Prepared thus, it was a dish which no Confederate had the weakness or the ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... been so anxiously looking forward to is anything but an encouraging picture—a picture of insurmountable obstacles on every hand. The deep sand and burning heat of the dreadful Lut Desert intervenes between me and the Mekran coast; the route through Beloochistan, barely passable with camels and guides and skins of water in the winter, is not only impracticable for anything in the summer, but there is the additional obstacle of the spring floods of the Helmund and the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... from the sun by the thick growths it supported, it was still treacherously soft. But the giant marine vegetation that had retained something of its vigor provided a highway, difficult and dangerous and uncertain, but passable. ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... out of sheer astonishment. To illustrate Haeckel's "love of truth" let it suffice to observe that in the second chapter he asserts that man is not only a true vertebrate, a true mammal, etc.—which indeed is passable—but even a true ape (having "all the anatomical characteristics of true apes"). With a wonderful elasticity he passes over the differences. What, indeed, is to be said, when he states as a "fact" that "physiologically compared (!), the sound-speech of apes is the preparatory stage to articulate ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... resistance, letting themselves be taken as a butcher takes a sheep, and that surrounded as they were by a population of upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand souls, cut off by countless leagues from the outside world, defended on three sides by virgin forests and by marshes hardly passable to European troops. One word from the Provincial would have set the missions in a blaze. A word would have brought clouds of horsemen — badly armed, 'tis true, but knowing every foot of marsh and forest, all the deep-beaten tracks which wind in the red earth across the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... of purchasing groceries and extras. On paper the scheme looked excellent but in practice was execrable. In the first place the A.S.C. procured their supplies from the local Supply Depot. Although the meat was passable, the bread—heavy, sodden, and often mildewy—was a source of daily and indignant protest. Complaint after complaint was lodged with the Supply people but improvement was almost despaired of, especially after verbal intimation had been received through ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... to furbish up any intellectual entertainment for readers from the excessively dry bones of my subsequent blockading, especially off the mouth of the Sabine. Only a French cook could produce a passable dish out of such woful material; and even he would require concomitant ingredients, in remembered incidents, wherein, if there were any, my memory fails me. Day after day, day after day, we lay inactive—roll, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... proceeded upwards, our prospect more gloomy than ever. The path, which still lay up steep ridges, was very slippery, owing to the rain upon the clayey soil, and was only passable from the hold afforded by interlacing roots of trees. At 8000 feet, some enormous detached masses of micaceous gneiss rose abruptly from the ridge, they were covered with mosses and ferns, and from their summit, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... from a grand centre, issues twelve roads, that point to as many towns; some of these, within memory, have scarcely been passable; all are mended, but though much is done, more is wanted. In an upland country, like that about Birmingham, where there is no river of size, and where the heads only of the streams show themselves: the stranger would be surprised to hear, that through most of these twelve roads he cannot ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... be said of many more pretentious volumes of verse. His pieces are mostly of the kind called verses of society, a variety whose range is all the way up from Concanen to Horace. It is enough, if they are only passable; but good specimens are easy and sprightly,—their philosophy not worldly precisely, but man-of-the-worldly,—their morality an elegant Poor-Richardism,—their poetry whatever may be reached by the fancy and understanding. Sometimes, if the author have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... visitors? Well, the sisters and cousins of an undergraduate seldom seem more passable to his comrades than to himself. Altogether, the instinct of sex is not pandered to in Oxford. It is not, however, as it may once have been, dormant. The modern importation of samples of femininity serves to keep it alert, though not ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... high cape, beyond which was a deep and wide bay. On this the sun shone apparently on what appeared to be open water. For one moment a look of alarm flitted over the wizard's face, as he glanced quickly shoreward to see whether the ground-ice was passable; but it was only for a moment, for immediately he perceived that the light had dazzled and deceived him. It was not water, but new ice—smooth and refulgent as a mirror. The fringe of old ice on shore was disrupted ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... the creek "fell," and the bridge became again passable to Miles and his waddling horse. The operators disconnected their wires, put their apparatus in order, locked the wooden cases over their instruments, and rode in triumph (Mr. Loudon had come in the buggy for ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... was middling, Eugene played very well, Lauriston was rather heavy, Didelot passable, and I may venture to assert, without vanity, that I was not quite the worst of the company. If we were not good actors it was not for want of good instruction and good advice. Talma and Michot came to direct us, and made us rehearse ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a comfortable little restaurant, where they cooked well, while the Tischwein was really most passable. We stopped there for a couple of hours, and dried ourselves and fed ourselves, and talked about the view; and just before we left an incident occurred that shows how much more stirring in this world are the influences of evil ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... than pretty: a soft peachy skin neither dark nor fair, with a creamy tint; deep lustrous hazel eyes, that seemed to change with her moods; hair that had barely shaken off the golden tint, and clustered in rings about the low broad forehead; a passable nose of no particular design, but a really beautiful mouth and chin, the latter dimpled, the former with a short curved upper lip, displaying the pearly teeth at the faintest smile; barely medium height, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... window glanced disapprovingly at the menu card. Then she looked round the dining-room, and, while admiring the diners, decided that the room itself was rather small and plain. Then she gazed through the open window, and told herself that though the Thames by twilight was passable enough, it was by no means level with the Hudson, on whose shores her father had a hundred thousand dollar country cottage. Then she returned to the menu, and with a pursing of lovely lips said that there appeared to ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... bad bit, as I suspected—posted on both sides of the track. But—and here comes in the possibility of strategy—there's another path besides that one, and I told my scouts to investigate its practicability. They report that it's passable for hotties, which is what I was inclined to doubt, but they don't think we shall ever get the guns up there. Here's your problem, then, my budding Wellington. Do we fight our way through by the ordinary track—in view of the condition of our guns ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... was divided from Quebec by this and another river called St. Charles, he explained in a letter to the secretary of state. He observed, that the ground which he had chosen was high, and in some measure commanded the opposite side on which the enemy was posted: that there was a ford below the Falls passable in every tide for some hours, at the latter part of the ebb and beginning of the flood; and he hoped that means might be found of passing the river higher up, so as to fight the marquis de Montcalm upon less disadvantageous terms than those of directly attacking his intrenchments. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... part of the world; he told us he began it three years ago with a force of but nine men; that it would be extended to San Cristobal and San Bartolome; that he was no engineer, but that he could tell quite well when a road was passable for a cart. We found him greatly interested in a congress which he had called of persons interested in labor questions. Among the questions which he hoped to see considered was the abolition of the system of peonage, which still exists in full ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... each side with a cross-bar on the top, gipsy fashion, and by night our supper was hot and well done. As is perhaps well known, dough-boys cannot be very greasy without fat or suet of any kind, but they were quite passable in the hungry state we were then in, and as we had no bread, we used some more of the mutton to help them down. Our fires were then made up the same as the night before, and at the proper time we again retired ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... have a real "story" up your sleeve and know how to word it in passable English, the next thing to learn is the way to prepare a manuscript in professional form for marketing. In the non-fiction writer's workshop only two machines are essential to efficiency and economy. The first of these, and absolutely indispensable, is a typewriter. The sooner you learn to type ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... United States Customs officers were deceived. With pictures it was their usual method to coat the genuine picture with a certain varnish, over which one of the organization, an old artist living in Chelsea, would paint a modern and quite passable picture and add a new ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... Stanwix, as Utica was still generally called, was taken. Our travellers reached it on the evening of the third day; the 'Sands, which are now traversed in less than an hour, then occupying more than half of the first day. When at Fort Stanwix, a passable country road was found, by which the travellers journeyed until they reached a tavern that united many of the comforts of a coarse civilisation, with frontier simplicity. Here they were given to understand they had only a dozen miles to go, in order ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... was on many a huge beer wagon drawn about those streets by showy Clydesdales. Also he had plenty of money; and, while Redmond—for his friend was the son of Redmond, well known as a lawyer-politician in Chicago—had nothing like so much as Gulick, still he had enough to make a passable pretense at keeping up his end. For Etta and Susan the city had meant shabby to filthy tenements, toil and weariness and sorrow. There was opened to their ravished young eyes "the city"—what reveals itself ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... mum,' observed the housekeeper. 'Wouldn't some o' them old ones at home be passable, if they was made ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Esquire, who connected Port Phillip with Adelaide by a direct road running nearly parallel to the coast, so that the portion of the continent of Australia which lies between Moreton Bay and Adelaide is now connected by a passable route. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... grounded, bounded, and founded, that by force of man it can never be confounded; the foundation and walls are unpenetrable, the rampiers impregnable, the bulwarks invincible, no way but one it is or can be possible to be made passable. In a word, I have seen many straits and fortresses, in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and England, but they must all give place to this unconquered Castle, ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... from cape Verde in Gynny being parte of Africa, vnto cape Saint Augustine in Brasill beeing parte of America, it wanteth but little of 500 leagues the neerest distance betweene Africa and America. Likewise from the sayd North Cape to Noua Zemla by the course of East and West neerest, there is passable sayling, and the North partes of Tartaria are well knowne to be banded with the Scithian Seas to the promontory Tabin so that truely it is apparant that America is farre remooued and by a great sea diuided from any parte of Africa or ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... doesn't get dark very early now, and one meets so many people on the street, especially on Saturday evening, one must look passable," Sadie returned, but the flush on her cheeks grew brighter ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... my methods. They know how I like things to be done. They are fully competent to conduct the business of the department in my absence. Let us, as you say, scud forth. We will go to a Mecca. Why so-called I do not know, nor, indeed, do I ever hope to know. There we may obtain, at a price, a passable cup of coffee, and you shall tell ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... the North River just above the junction, carrying the Harrisonburg road into Port Republic; but the South River, which cuts off Port Republic from the Luray Valley, is passable ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... sluggishness by the sight of a gold piece, which Blaise displayed, the old couple succeeded in getting for us a passable supper, which we had served to us on the end of an old wine-butt outside the inn, as the kitchen ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... indeed, in such a gathering, and his companion only served to accentuate the anachronisms of his appearance. She was, above all things, a woman of the moment—fair, almost florid, a little thick-set, with tightly-laced, yet passable figure. Her eyes were blue, her hair light-colored. She wore magnificent furs, and, as she threw aside her boa, she disclosed a mass of jewelry around her neck and upon her bosom, almost barbaric ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... are joking then," said I; "this is a very passable skull—indeed, I may say that it is a very excellent skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology—and your scarabaeus must be the queerest scarabaeus in the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the weather unfavourable. In laying out and verifying the work of the surveyors employed, he was usually out from daybreak to sunset, often fifteen hours without food, traversing on foot, with great bodily exertion, wastes and deserts of bog, so wet and dangerous as to be scarcely passable at that season, even by the common Irish best used to them. In these bogs there frequently occur great holes, filled with water of the same colour as the bog, or sometimes covered over with a slight surface of the ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... was decided that a cage of white leghorn fowls, colored with aniline dyes, could be shown even in these barren times as "Royal South American Witherlicks"; that Joachim could be converted into a passable zebra, and "Plug" Avery still had in his van the celluloid lemon peel as well as the glass cube that created the illusion of ice in the pink lemonade. The village painter was set at work on the new gilding of the chariots in the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... your lordship and all my better sort of judges, when you take up my version, and it will appear a passable beauty when the original muse is absent; but like Spenser's false Florimel, made of snow, it melts and vanishes when the ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... figurative manner of expression hitherto employed, by which we spoke of sources of sexual excitement, we may now assume that all the connecting ways leading from other functions to sexuality must also be passable in the reverse direction. For example, if the lip zone, the common possession of both functions, is responsible for the fact that the sexual gratification originates during the taking of nourishment, the same factor offers also an explanation ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... are delivered out whole. The only fruits to be met with are apples, nuts, and small walnuts. When the Russians have a mind to travel, especially if the distance is very great, they prefer the winter season, when the whole country is covered over with frozen snow, and all the rivers are passable on the ice. They then travel with great convenience and expedition, being only subjected to the severity of the cold. At this season, they use sledges, which are to them as waggons are to us; and in them they take every thing along with them, with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... south that they found a natural and inviting pathway into the heart of Africa. The desert of the north and west, the fever-haunted swamps and jungle of the Guinea Coast only left narrow inlets of more healthy and passable country, and these the Portuguese did their best to close by occasional acts of savage cruelty and impudent fraud in their ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... pair of trousers which he threw to the girl. A sweater, too shrunken and misshapen for him to wear again, came next. Dismayed, she inspected the battered loot; then was inspired to quick alterations. Pant-legs cut off well above the baggy knees made passable shorts; the sweater bulged a trifle at the shoulders, it fit adequately elsewhere—and something ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... squire would have grieved over the capture of his almost son-in-law was never known, for events gave him no opportunity. Spring was now come, and with it the breaking up of winter quarters. The moment the roads were passable, the garrison of Brunswick, under the command of Cornwallis, marched up the Raritan to Middle Brook, driving back into the Jersey hills a detachment of the Continental army. In turn Washington's whole force was moved to the support ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... trenches was a dense wire entanglement at least twenty yards broad, and although it had suffered much from artillery fire it was still an obstacle which was only passable by infantry in certain places where lanes had been made. Anyone who saw this entanglement did not wonder why the British attack on the Somme on the 1st July, 1916, failed. Several graves of the fallen could be seen here and ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... paper-chase, and as for running an errand, why, before anyone could finish saying something was wanted he would have utterly disappeared. He was rather small for his age;-and I don't think had ever been seen with a clean face. Even at church, though the immediate front turned to the minister might be passable, the people in the next pew had always an uninterrupted view of the black rim where ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... in gineral don't think o' them, 'cept ter git out o' thar way; an' nobody keers fur them, but kase Jesus is Gawd He makes somebody remember them wunst in a while! An' they did seem passable glad." ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... steadily, and when drunk they are only too often dangerous. Their type of face is often very low, and I never saw but one handsome man among the half-breeds, though the women, especially the Hydahs, are passable in looks. This man was a pilot, and a good one, on the lakes; but he was perpetually being discharged ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... The German slipped into the real owner's place. So far as appearances went, he was a very passable sweetmeat and lemonade seller, and Ranjoor Singh proved competent to guard ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... the effect is the same. This costume, which prevails more or less through all Italy, but here is general, gives something of beauty to the plainest face, and something of elegance to the most vulgar figure; it can make deformity itself look passable: and when worn by a really graceful and beautiful female, the effect is peculiarly ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... guard the baggage. Before daybreak, a large party of pioneers, or road-cutters, with a small guard of regulars, numbering in all about three hundred, had gone on before to open a passage for the army through the woods, and make the fords more passable by levelling ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... and the National Provincial, had done a lot of thinking. He foresaw that even if he were to give in a passable imitation of Rochester's signature, all cheques signed in future would have to tally with that signature. Now a man's handwriting, though varying, has a personality of its own, and he very much doubted as to whether he would be able to keep up that personality ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the Minch; and the Mull of Kintyre. These works were to be attempted against obstacles, material and financial, that might have staggered the most bold. Smith had no ship at his command till 1791; the roads in those outlandish quarters where his business lay were scarce passable when they existed, and the tower on the Mull of Kintyre stood eleven months unlighted while the apparatus toiled and foundered by the way among rocks and mosses. Not only had towers to be built and apparatus transplanted; the supply of oil must be maintained, and the men fed, ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cosy offices and ante-rooms. There is also attached a lunch-room for the use of members, much frequented in term-time, when at the mid-day hour one may meet many of the great practitioners at the English bar. Passable portraits of William and Mary, Queen Anne, Lord Chief-Justice Coke, and Sir Thomas Littleton look upon the visitor, and the arms of the successive treasurers of the Inn are blazoned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... determined to have the gout properly and fully. Indulgence in port made him somewhat rubicund and "portly,"—he who had once been a pale little counter-jumper; and by means of shooting-coats, tight gaiters, and the right shape of hat he turned himself into a passable imitation of the fine old English gentleman. His tone altered, too, and instead of being uniformly diplomatic, it varied abruptly between a sort of Cheeryble philanthropy and a sort of Wellingtonian ferocity. During an ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... and sit on Allen's and on the Clarks' porch and we can have Chas. too. I suppose he will have had his holiday but he can come up for a Sunday. We expect to move up on Santiago the day after to-morrow, and it's about time, for the trail will not be passable much longer. It rains every day at three o'clock for an hour and such rain you never guessed. It is three inches high for an hour. Then we all go out naked and dig trenches to get it out of the way. It is very rough living. I have to confess that I never knew how well off ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Webster defines a job as being an undertaking. Neurasthenia is certainly an "undertaking," therefore it must be a job—a big one at that. It interferes with the holding of any more remunerative job and consumes most of one's time in trying to keep his health in a passable condition. I have had positions of some importance handed to me, which I discharged with eminent satisfaction to all concerned until I got ready to go off at some new tangent. If I did not imagine myself in the actual embrace of some grave physical or mental disease, I feared that ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... something phenomenal. Matyas found Count Vavel with his troop already at Eszterhaza, and apprized him at once of De Fervlans's arrival at the bridge-inn. The Volons had not yet rested, but they had traveled over passable roads, and were not so exhausted. Their leader at once gave orders ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... months up here, not having been allowed to go to the Virginia springs, on account of the difficulty of carrying my children there; but I am promised that we shall all go there next summer, when there is to be something like a passable road, by which the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... thousand feet, by which the beasts of burden pick their way over the Cordillera. And this is open only six months in the year. Should a box designed for Quito arrive at Guayaquil at the beginning of the rainy season, it must tarry half a year till Nature makes the road passable. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... in a great measure covered by a deep marsh, commencing near the river on the upper side and continuing into it below. Over this marsh there was only one crossing place, but at its junction with the river was a sandy beach passable at low tide. On the summit of this hill stood the fort which was furnished with heavy ordnance. Several breastworks and strong batteries were advanced in front of the main work, and about half way down the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Saskatchewan, up the Red Deer, up the Bow, up the Athabaska, up the Smoky, up the Pembina, and to press over the mountains wherever any river led oceanwards through the passes. This duty of finding new passable ways to the sea was especially incumbent on the company's surveyor and astronomer, David Thompson. He was formerly of the Hudson's Bay Company, but had come over to the Nor'westers, and in their service had surveyed from the Assiniboine to the Missouri and ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... for all that, I could not bear the thoughts of going back again. I told them we had marched 700 miles of our way, and it would be worse than death to think of going back again; and that, if they thought the desert was not passable, I thought we should rather change our course, and travel south till we came to the Cape of Good Hope, or north to the country that lay along the Nile, where, perhaps, we might find some way or other over to the west sea; for sure all ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... (not being able to sleep) I composed a couplet, as my first essay in poetry. It was passable; better, or at least composed with more taste than it would have been the preceding night, the subject being tenderness, to which my heart was now entirely disposed. In the morning I showed my performance to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... schools, but six school matches. The school that they played twice in the season was Ripton. To win one Ripton match meant that, however many losses it might have sustained in the other matches, the school had had, at any rate, a passable season. To win two Ripton matches in the same year was almost unheard of. This year there had seemed every likelihood of it. The match before Christmas on the Ripton ground had resulted in a win for Wrykyn by two goals and a try to a try. But the calculations of the school had been upset ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... him! His body's a passable carcass, if he be not hurt; it is a throughfare for steel, if it be ...
— Cymbeline • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... In considering this whole matter we must never forget that there is no wall of demarcation between those whose conduct clearly betokens insanity and those who are not insane. There are plenty of instances where the easily passable border between the two is permanently occupied ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... suffered hitherto, was nothing to the difficulties we were now entering upon, and which God had decreed us to undergo for the sake of Jesus Christ. Our way now lay through a region scarce passable, and full of serpents, which were continually creeping between our legs; we might have avoided them in the day, but being obliged, that we might avoid the excessive heats, to take long marches in the night, we were every moment ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... therefore, to appease the other creditors with tranquillising assurances, and railed, or pretended to rail, against their indecent conduct with great vigour. Thus at last we succeeded, though not without some difficulty, in making the corridor outside my door once more passable. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... roads, which were passable at all seasons, brought a new era in correspondence and business. Lines of stages and wagons, as well known at that time as are the great railways of today, plied the new thoroughfares, provided some of the comforts of travel, and assured the safer ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... a passable wench. But I have no faith in them, lording. They are all as the Yellow One of Gamewell. They smile upon you that they may work their will; and evil comes of their favor, if not death. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Norte (Passage of the North), so called because of the ford on the river and the pass which nature here constructed between the mountains. The town extends along the west bank of the river some three miles, and back from it about one mile. The Rio Grande water is passable for drinking purposes, and good for general use, though it is ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Shields? Answer me that, Aunt 'Becca. I say it's a lie, and not a well told one at that. It grins out like a copper dollar. Shields is a fool as well as a liar. With him truth is out of the question; and as for getting a good, bright, passable lie out of him, you might as well try to strike fire from a cake of tallow. I stick to it, it's ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... sister Dora and myself making our own beds—she said it would straighten our backs—and she liked us to run up and down stairs and make ourselves useful, because the exercise would improve our carriage and complexion. Dora had such a pretty figure, poor girl! and I think mine is passable,' drawing herself up to give effect to ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Jumalpore, the banks are about a mile apart, but the distance between the extreme banks, leaving the island opposite the cantonment out of the question, is much more. During the dry weather this part of the river is passable, and indeed is in some places nothing but a dry bed of sand, so that people walk across it. During our stay at the above place we met with many interesting and new plants, among which a new species of Villarsia occupied the most prominent place. Cyperaceae, Gramineae, and aquatic ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... many of the points that are used as arguments. For our tradition does not rank this god amongst those that were born, and then made immortal, as Hercules and Bacchus, whom their virtue raised above a mortal and passable condition; but Apollo is one of the eternal unbegotten deities, if we may collect any certainty concerning these things, from the statements of the oldest and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... his preceding lounges he had noticed there an old garden haunted by an old man and an old woman, and in that garden, a passable apple-tree. Beside the apple-tree stood a sort of fruit-house, which was not securely fastened, and where one might contrive to get an apple. One apple is a supper; one apple is life. That which was Adam's ruin might ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sorts of men: He who says, that which is mine is mine, and that which is thine is thine, is a passable custom, and some say this was the custom of Sodom. He who says, what is thine is mine, and what is mine is thine, is the custom of the ignorant. He who says, what is mine is thine, and what is thine is also thine, ...
— Hebrew Literature
... how admirably the columns and buildings are disposed for producing effect in combination. Of two bridges, a good deal of the one to the east remains, and the arches reach across the river, though it is not passable, owing to the destruction of the upper part. There is a paved road between the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... their right at the river Weisle; the rest of their army extended along a rising ground, at the foot of a mountain covered with wood, which protected their left; and before their front, at the bottom of the hill on which they were drawn up, was a small brook, passable only in three places, and for no more than four or five men a-breast. Towards the left of their army was an opening, where three or four battalions might have marched in front; but behind it they had placed three lines of infantry, and on a hill which flanked this opening, within musket-shot, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... tile appeared amidst and presently prevailed over the original Bromstead thatch, the huge space of Common to the south was extensively enclosed, and what had been an ill-defined horse-track to Dover, only passable by adventurous coaches in dry weather, became the Dover Road, and was presently the route first of one and then of several daily coaches. The High Street was discovered to be too tortuous for these awakening energies, and a new road cut off its ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... he be imaginative as well as sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the amount of his imagination. It is perfectly true that what we call the world, in these affairs, is nothing more than a mere Brocken spectre, the projected shadow of ourselves; but as long as we do not know it, it is a very passable giant. We are not without experience of natures so purely intellectual that their bodies had no more concern in their mental doings and sufferings than a house has with the good or ill fortune of its occupant. But poets are not built on this plan, and especially poets like Keats, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... were invited, and lovers came and were made welcome by the dozen. Lovers of every description—rich and poor, old and young, handsome and ugly—so long as they were of passable birth and fair character, King Brave-Heart was not too particular—in the forlorn hope that among them one fortunate wight might rouse some sentiment in the lovely statue he desired to win. But all in vain. Each prince, or duke, or simple ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... over the pass and we had proceeded down the opposite side as far as an out-station of McLean's, on whose run we now were. Here we learned to our joy that we were within twenty-five miles of the reported diggings, with a fairly passable track all the way. ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... was—something different entirely from that pallid flame of affection and esteem, of which alone she was capable. Mary loved him for certain qualities of mind, because his station in life was decent, his manners passable, his morals beyond reproach. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... a very agreeable residence; the sandy roads are passable, and it has a bi-weekly communication with the neighbouring continent. Shooting and fishing may be enjoyed in abundance, and the Indians are always ready to lend assistance in these sports. Bears, which used to be ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Southwest Fork of St. Mary's River.—The road follows a narrow trail, crossing the river frequently, and is not passable for wagons. The valley is narrow, and shut ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy |
