The cadet appears to be expected to improve in conduct as well as knowledge; for, according to the rules, after his first year is completed, the number expressing his absolute demerit is increased by one-sixth during the second year, by one-third during the third year, and by one-half during the fourth year.

For Frenching he was punished with twenty-five demerits; for the assault on a civilian, considering all the circumstances, he was let off with ten additional demerits.

I once heard a Russian and an American discussing the comparative demerits of their respective lands, and I am bound to say that the former held his own very well.

I was still entirely eager to "do her behest in pleasure or in pain"; but this particular enterprise I was beginning to view apart from its inspiration, on its intrinsic demerits, and the more clearly I saw it in its own light, the less pleasure did the prospect afford me.

Later they flocked there by way of paying indirect homage to a governor who, whatever his obvious demerits, had at any rate never been answered back or thwarted with impunity.

There is nothing which he looks back on with so much satisfaction in his writings as on this, that he has "ventured to characterise that hateful and fearful type of Antichrist in terms not wholly inadequate to its prodigious demerits.

The chauffeur's sole demerit in the eyes of the others was his tremendous egotism.

Let no one suppose that such abortions arise merely from technical demerit.