Refining Quotes

We fail to see the purifying and refining effect wrought by the flames of adversity. These flames are not meant to consume but only to purify us. Disguised as adversity, blessings are showered upon us. ~ A. Theodore Tuttle

Worship helps us to get rid of a lot of life's spiritual and natural frustrations. Through worship God brings to us a wholeness of body, mind and spirit. God is refining our understanding of true worship. True worship comes from the heart, in love and adoration unto the Lord. ~ Ruth Heflin

Suffering related to circumstances beyond my control, suffering related to consequences of my besetting sin, and suffering caused by others who refused to see their own sin. In all these instances, the Lord has been at work, refining my focus upon personal holiness, amplifying my ministry through very humbling experiences, and reminding me repeatedly to extend grace not just to the gracious but to those who lack a grace I took too long to come to myself. ~ James MacDonald

Our democracy is not a product but a continual process. It is preserved not by monuments but deeds. Sometimes it needs refining; sometimes it needs amending; sometimes it needs defending. Always, it needs improving. ~ Lee H. Hamilton

She wrote poetry constantly; that was her "work". She was a slow bleeder and she slaved over it for long, exhausting hours, and many a middle of a night I could hear her creaking around the dead house with a pen in one hand, a clipboard and a flashlight in the other, refining her poems, jotting down the lines of a conceit. Writing never came easy for her; it gave her calluses. She never courted the muses, she wrestled them, mauled them all over the house and came up, after weeks of peripatetic labor, with a slim Spencerian sonnet, fourteen lines of imagistic jabberwocky. ~ Millard Kaufman

Our Lord has sovereignly ordained that our refining process take place as we go through difficulties, not around them. The Bible is filled with examples of those who overcame as they passed through the desert, the Red Sea, the fiery furnace and ultimately the cross. God doesn't protect Christians from their problems - he helps them walk victoriously through their problems.4 ~ Gary L. Thomas

There is no way of cutting ourselves free of our conceptual inheritance: all we are required to do is use our experience critically and discriminatingly, refining and improving our inherited ideas, and determining more exactly the limits to their scope. ~ Stephen Toulmin

In products of the human mind, simplicity marks the end of a process of refining, while complexity marks a primitive stage. Michelangelo 's definition of art as the purgation of superfluities suggests that the creative effort consists largely in the elimination of that which complicates and confuses a pattern ~ Eric Hoffer

Only human beings can reorder their lives any day they choose by refining their philosophy. ~ Jim Rohn

Everything in life worth achieving requires practice. In fact, life itself is nothing more than one long practice session, an endless effort of refining our motions. When the proper mechanics of practice are understood, the task of learning something new becomes a stress-free experience of joy and calmness, a process which settles all areas in your life and promotes proper perspective on all of life's difficulties. ~ Thomas M. Sterner

Refining is inevitable in science when you have made measurements of a phenomenon for a long period of time. ~ Charles Francis Richter

Bells Ring, Drums Resound

When a bell is struck it rings, when a drum is beaten it resounds. This is because they are solid outside and empty within. It is because they have nothing inside that they are able to ring and resound.

What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of true emptiness and ineffable existence.

True emptiness is like the inner openness of a bell or a drum; ineffable existence is like the sounding of a bell or a drum when struck. If people can keep this true emptiness as their essence, and utilize this ineffable existence as their function, ever serene yet ever responsive, ever responsive yet ever serene, tranquil and unstirring yet sensitive and effective, sensitive and effective yet tranquil and unstirring, empty yet not empty, not empty yet empty, aware and efficient, lively and active, refining everything in the great furnace of Creation, then when the dirt is gone the mirror is clear, when the clouds disperse the moon appears; revealing the indestructible body of reality, they transcend yin and yang and Creation, and merge with the eternity of space. ~ Liu Yiming

I'd say "what are the odds?", but I don't believe in odds anymore. I believe in a universe with a very specific and occasionally cruel sense of humor. But its cruelty is refining, if you survive it.
(Upon learning a housemate was related to Guy Fawkes) ~ Adrian Lamo

I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on. ~ Isaac Rosenberg

Something happens inside of us when we are courteous and deferential toward others. It is all part of a refining process, which if persisted in, will change our very natures. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

I believe in the me God made and in the me God can make. I believe he made me on purpose and didn't make any mistakes when it came to my creation. I believe he is doing a good work in me, and in you. And that though I am flawed, God is loving me and refining me and reminding me that God in me is where I can place my trust. And that is the place where I find my courage. ~ Annie F. Downs

For me, success was finding the courage to be true to myself, and holding on to a sense of humor along the way while refining my craft. Sean ~ Jewel

On the pediment of the town hall, Death turns his sunglasses to mark the hours. No one takes any notice. it is eternal, this present. The world will gain little by continuing to evolve. This civilisation has reached its peak. A few details may need to be sorted out. some drugs could do with refining. ~ Patrick Deville

DID STAND-UP COMEDY for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success. ~ Steve Martin

Bahya Kumbhaka Introduce bahya kumbhaka after students are at ease doing antara kumbhaka. Guide them into ujjayi, bringing attention to the natural pause when empty of breath. Do several rounds of ujjayi, refining awareness of the movement in and out of that pause. With the first few retentions of the exhalation, hold for just one count and then do several rounds of seamless ujjayi before repeating. Gradually expand the count, staying with simple retention. Encourage students to keep their eyes, face, throat, and heart center soft and not to grip in their belly. Unlike inhalations, exhalations naturally stimulate mula bandha and uddiyana bandha. ~ Mark Stephens

At least twice a week, I pause in the rush of work and have a meeting with myself. (If I were part of a team, I'd call a team meeting.) I ask myself, again, of the project: "What is this damn thing about?" Keep refining your understanding of the theme; keep narrowing it down. ~ Steven Pressfield

I'd also like to do a play. I've never done theater, and constantly changing and refining a performance is something I'd like to do, even though it may sound like work to some people - and it probably is work. ~ Nastassja Kinski

testing out models, and then refining everything further, I developed a set of ideas that was transforming people's ability ~ David Rock

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

You create a blueprint of your best performance, and you're happiest the night you surpass that blueprint. That won't happen that often, but it will happen. It's like sculpting: you keep refining. When you have a piece that is yours, that is just you, that becomes obsessive; you think about it all the time. ~ Kenneth Cranham

Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first. ~ Wayne Cordeiro

The principal object of your reading should be for the acquisition of useful knowledge , and the strengthening, refining, and ennobling of your character. ~ Grenville Kleiser

Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics. ~ Neil Diamond

Sorrow has a great refining influence on our sacred souls. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

Cultivate the habit of defining, refining, redefining and redeeming your opportunities. Failure is a temporal event, not a permanent trademark. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls. ~ Gaston Bachelard

I get excited about what the Holy Spirit is doing now through all the people he is refining and raising up all over this planet. I love connections and relationship and networking but it must be led by the Spirit. ~ Daniel Smith

We talk about defining moments, but I think nothing can define you. They're all refining moments. You're constantly refining yourself and refining your life. ~ Sheryl Crow

When people meet you, I guarantee they're not thinking, There goes a divorced woman. They may see a tired woman, a hurt woman. But divorce isn't a banner or a badge you carry. It's not who you are; it's just a piece of your story. And it's not where the story ends ... This is not your defining. It is your refining. ~ Denise Hildreth Jones

What do I do when we're not taping? Sit in a dark room and refine my plans for someday ruling Earth from a blimp. And chess. ~ Ryan Stiles

Qigong is the art and science of refining and cultivating internal energy. ~ Ken Cohen

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic. ~ Steve Martin

The Americans ... are almost ignorant of the art of music, one of the most elevating, innocent and refining of human tastes, whose influence on the habits and morals of a people is of the most beneficial tendency. ~ James F. Cooper

The refining influence is the study of art, which is the science of beauty; and I find that every man values every scrap of knowledge in art, every observation of his own in it, every hint he has caught from another. For the laws of beauty are the beauty of beauty, and give the mind the same or a higher joy than the sight of it gives the senses. The study of art is of high value to the growth of the intellect. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perhaps because of the special nature of the TIA, or perhaps because of the limitless human capacity for technical fascination, programmers have continued to hack at and develop original VCS games. There is a thriving hobbyist community that has picked up the Atari VCS, using and refining emulators, writing disassemblers and development tools, and even manufacturing cartridges and selling them, complete with boxes and manuals. This "homebrew" scene could be seen, strictly speaking, as continuing the commercial life of the Atari VCS, but the community is not very corporate. It operates on the scale of zines and unsigned bands, with most recent ROMs offered for free online - even if they are also sold in limited releases of a few hundred copies in cartridge form. ~ Nick Montfort

Nearly every business collects metrics on inventory, sales, and workplace process. Health care has been slow to measure these kinds of outcomes. Increasingly, general medicine, via either managed care or large practice settings, is improving by collecting data through electronic records and refining practice based on what works. ~ Thomas R. Insel

I believe the ultimate goal of living and refining your values is to identify and achieve congruence with universal principles. ~ Steve Pavlina

On woman Nature did bestow two eyes, Like Hemian's bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining, Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise And wary heads, made rare by art's refining. ~ Robert Greene

Perfect refining is for another world, ~ Richard Sibbes

An honorable human relationship ... is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. ~ Adrienne Rich

Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability. ~ Roy L. Smith

Developing fewer features allows you to conserve development resources and spend more time refining those features that users really need. Fewer features mean fewer things to confuse users, less risk of user errors, less description and documentation, and therefore simpler Help content. Removing any one feature automatically increases the usability of the remaining ones. ~ Jakob Nielsen

Repeatedly place your pet opinions and prejudices before God. He will surprise you by showing you that the best of them need refining and some the purification of destruction. ~ Charles Brent

From the starch-heavy 'food pyramid' to ethanol fuel, the government adopts programs not because they are right but because they gains votes, money or political power or solve problems that politics has already created, such as silos full of subsidized wheat or a shortage of gasoline due to the maze of controls on refining. ~ Robert Prechter

The more refined one is, the more unhappy. ~ Anton Chekhov

Life is a refining process. Our response to it determines whether we'll be ground down or polished up. On a piano, one person sits down and plays sonatas, while another merely bangs away at "Chopsticks." The piano is not responsible. It's how you touch the keys that makes the difference. It's how you play what life gives you that determines your joy and shine. ~ Barbara Johnson

Do you expect to suffer long nights of languishing and days of pain? O be not sad! That bed may become a throne to you. You little know how every pang that shoots through your body may be a refining fire to consume your dross
a beam of glory to light up the secret parts of your soul. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose-well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words "Not to be published" drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed, "What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness! ~ Aldous Huxley

To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails ~ James Joyce

The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing th orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist's work. ~ Edward W. Said

The thankful heart sees the best part of every situation. It sees problems and weaknesses as opportunities, struggles as refining tools, and sinners as saints in progress. ~ Francis Frangipane

By the 1830s, when the British emancipationists finally put an end to the slave trade, some twelve and a half million Africans had been shipped off as slaves to the New World; two-thirds of them worked and died growing and refining sugar. ~ Gary Taubes

You see, I was born in the slums, that was before the ghetto. The ghetto was kind of refined; the slums was right there on the ground. ~ Della Reese

Learning's purest form," Jones replied, "is realized by the individual who continues a quest beyond the classroom, fueled by a passion to discern wisdom. Wisdom - genuine truth - holds the key to refining one's thinking. ~ Andy Andrews

Anticipating this loss had a way of refining memory, filing it down to the purest, rawest form of itself. My clouded perceptions grew clearer. And someday soon I'd have to confront that. But not yet. ~ Wendy Paine Miller

Whilst your memory is as sharp as the most reliable computer, it is always wiser to write things down. Pre-meditation helps the refining process, taking out the undesirable elements from a dream or vision, even mounting the courage to face and overcome challenges before they appear in reality. ~ Archibald Marwizi

It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes - make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. ~ Aldous Huxley

No refining of one's taste in matters of art or literature, no sharpening of one's powers of insight in matters of science or psychology, can ever take the place of one's sensitiveness to the life of the earth. This is the beginning and the end of a person's true education. ~ John Cowper Powys

Try as we will to take the "cure" of ineffectuality; to meditate on the Taoist fathers' doctrine of submission, of withdrawal, of a sovereign absence; to follow, like them, the course of consciousness once it ceases to be at grips with the world and weds the form of things as water does, their favorite element - we shall never succeed. They scorn both our curiosity and our thirst for suffering; in which they differ from the mystics, and especially from the medieval ones, so apt to recommend the virtues of the hair shirt, the scourge, insomnia, inanition, and lament.
"A life of intensity is contrary to the Tao," teaches Lao Tse, a normal man if ever there was one. But the Christian virus torments us: heirs of the flagellants, it is by refining our excruciations that we become conscious of ourselves. Is religion declining? We perpetuate its extravagances, as we perpetuate the macerations and the cell-shrieks of old, our will to suffer equaling that of the monasteries in their heyday. If the Church no longer enjoys a monopoly on hell, it has nonetheless riveted us to a chain of sighs, to the cult of the ordeal, of blasted joys and jubilant despair.
The mind, as well as the body, pays for "a life of intensity." Masters in the art of thinking against oneself, Nietzsche, Baudelaire, and Dostoevsky have taught us to side with our dangers, to broaden the sphere of our diseases, to acquire existence by division from our being. And what for the great Chinaman was a symbol o ~ Emil M. Cioran

I will give technology three definitions that we will use throughout the book.

The first and most basic one is that a technology is a means to fulfill a human purpose. For some technologies-oil refining-the purpose is explicit. For others- the computer-the purpose may be hazy, multiple, and changing. As a means, a technology may be a method or process or device: a particular speech recognition algorithm, or a filtration process in chemical engineering, or a diesel engine. it may be simple: a roller bearing. Or it may be complicated: a wavelength division multiplexer. It may be material: an electrical generator. Or it may be nonmaterial: a digital compression algorithm. Whichever it is, it is always a means to carry out a human purpose.

The second definition I will allow is a plural one: technology as an assemblage of practices and components. This covers technologies such as electronics or biotechnology that are collections or toolboxes of individual technologies and practices. Strictly speaking, we should call these bodies of technology. But this plural usage is widespread, so I will allow it here.

I will also allow a third meaning. This is technology as the entire collection of devices and engineering practices available to a culture. Here we are back to the Oxford's collection of mechanical arts, or as Webster's puts it, "The totality of the means employed by a people to provide itself with the objects of material culture." We use this coll ~ W. Brian Arthur

Learning is a process of refining errors to the point where they no longer prevent our desired goal. ~ Dan Millman

I'm not an academic; I'm not an archaeologist. I'm a writer, communicating ideas to the public. There is a model of how the past is, and a lot of academic archaeology is about refining the model. It's not about changing the model radically. I'm not aware of any current which is about radically changing the model. It's just me, really. ~ Graham Hancock

Most people traffic in abstractions and generalizations because they are grossly incompetent at culturing their intuition or powers of evidency, refining it to grasp the Thisness (Haecceitas) of what is before them. Thinking is like a Stradivarius that has more potential variations in how it is played than any human can finitely perform or capture. ~ Kenny Smith

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. ~ Willa Cather

To me, getting notes, honing the part, and refining the role is the real fun of the play. ~ Swoosie Kurtz

It's important to get in the habit of growing as a human being, developing and refining leadership and management skills and entrepreneurial instincts and changing to accommodate the times. ~ Ivanka Trump

wasn't a storm meant to destroy - but it was the perfect storm of God's purifying and refining grace. ~ Kimberly Wagner

He'd obviously spent his college years refining the art of adolescence... ~ Jenifer LeClair

It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose - well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes - make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. ~ Aldous Huxley

For me, being in front of a camera is a matter of practicing and refining your art. I think, if you're telling a story worth telling, it's worth investing the time into developing. ~ Danny Pino

I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it. ~ E.B. White

The central industry of modern civilisation, tending, because of its control over materials, to spread into and ultimately incorporate older industries such as mining, smelting, oil- refining, textiles, rubber, building, and even agriculture in respect to fertilizers and food processing. ~ John Desmond Bernal

In refining their senses and aesthetic judgement, blind tasters become much more conscious of the richness not only of wine but also of other potentially complex beverages such as tea, coffee, and spirits, and, by extension, the flavours in food, the scents in the air, and the play of light in the world. For life is consciousness, and consciousness is life. ~ Neel Burton

Are you conscious of a growing failure of your bodily powers? Do you expect to suffer long nights of languishing and days of pain? O be not sad! That bed may become a throne to you. You little know how every pang that shoots through your body may be a refining fire to consume your dross
a beam of glory to light up the secret parts of your soul. Are the eyes growing dim? Jesus will be your light. Do the ears fail you? Jesus' name will be your soul's best music, and His person your dear delight. Socrates used to say, "Philosophers can be happy without music;" and Christians can be happier than philosophers when all outward causes of rejoicing are withdrawn. In Thee, my God, my heart shall triumph, come what may of ills without! By thy power, O blessed Spirit, my heart shall be exceeding glad, though all things should fail me here below. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Difference making, by its very nature, is the art of taking something good and making it better. It's an act of fine-tuning, improving, and refining, not starting from zero. ~ David Sturt

I travel a ridiculous amount, so I've thought a lot about, and spent a lot of time refining, what I carry and how I carry it. ~ David Pogue

How could there be refining fires without our enduring some heat? ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Simon Koertig took no pleasure from the act of murder.
That wasn't true, exactly. He took tremendous pleasure from the art of murder. Of honing his skills, refining his craft, pursuing his quarry, and staging their perfect and elegant demise. Some murders were quick and brutally simple, others long and drawn-out affairs, but they were all handcrafted and beautiful acts. The relationship between executioner and victim, he believed, was more sacred than the bond between lovers. ~ Craig Schaefer

So, while I gave up the notions of publishing at that time, I never stopped editing and refining that book. A few years later, in 1987, I thought I had it ready to go out again. ~ R.A. Salvatore

moral character gets formed through hardship, through overcoming obstacles, through enduring despite difficulties. Courage, for example, would be impossible in a world without pain. The apostle Paul testified to this refining quality of suffering when he wrote that 'suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.'13 ~ Lee Strobel

I have noticed that this hell we are in is purifying and refining the edges of my mind and heart. And then it made me think: what if that's what hell really is? What if everyone who goes to hell, goes there to come out purified and refined? What if it's just a stopover? What if nobody is ever really left there? What if everything, at one point, becomes, or is, utterly holy? (Don't chastise me for my thoughts, for I am never afraid to think.) ~ C. JoyBell C.

What oil companies don't want you to know is that refineries use a huge amount of electricity in refining gasoline. And that's usually not even figured into reports about gas cars' overall energy use. ~ Chris Paine

Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

An honorable human relationship – that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" – is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us. ~ Adrienne Rich

Look around you. Everything changes. Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing ... changing. You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant. ~ Steve Maraboli

Yoga is the technology of upgrading, activating, and refining these inner energies for the highest possibilities. Suddenly, your capabilities reach a level of brilliance that you never imagined possible. An accidental and limited life turns near-miraculous. But ~ Sadhguru

The more refined and subtle our minds, the more vulnerable they are. ~ Paul Tournier

We all say data is the next white oil. [Owning the oil field is not as important as owning the refinery because what will make the big money is in refining the oil. Same goes with data, and making sure you extract the real value out of the data.] ~ Maurice Levy

I would have any one, who really and truly has leisure and ability, make verses. I think it a more refining and happy-making occupation than any other pastime accomplishment. ~ Sara Coleridge

Sometimes, "never let them see you sweat," is truly bad advice. The work of an individual who cares often exposes the grit and determination and effort that it takes to be present.
Perfecting your talk, refining your essay and polishing your service until all elements of you disappear might be obvious tactics, but they remove the thing we were looking for: you. ~ Seth Godin

Before all else I learned that these playthings were not mere idle trifles invented by manufacturers and dealers for the purposes of gain. They were, on the contrary, a little or, rather, a big world, authoritative and beautiful, many sided, containing a multiplicity of things all of which had the one and only aim of serving love, refining the senses, giving life to the dead world around us, endowing it in a magical way with new instruments of love, from powder and scent to the dancing show, from ring to cigarette case, from waist-buckle to handbag. This bag was no bag, this purse no purse, flowers no flowers, the fan no fan. All were the plastic material of love, of magic and delight. Each was a messenger, a smuggler, a weapon, a battle cry. ~ Hermann Hesse

My message to the serious programmer is this: spend a part of your working day examining and refining your own methods. Even though programmers are always struggling to meet some future or past deadline, methodological abstraction is a wise long term investment. ~ Robert W. Floyd

The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle- making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. ~ O. Henry