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More "Pastime" Quotes from Famous Books



... alone murder that can be traced directly to the war psychology. Robbery and burglary have rapidly increased, and much of this is due to the emotions of boys. The robbing of country banks has grown to be almost a pastime, and often one or more participants in these ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... boy. She dried my mop of hair for me once so my stepmother would not know I'd been in swimming. Tell her I sent the cream to her. Say, you were right about Miss M'ri making the best cream in the country. It used to be a chronic pastime with her. That's how I guessed what you had when you said you came from there. Whenever there was a picnic or a surprise party in the country she always furnished the ice cream. Isn't ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... attainable, able to make rapid detours, and if they study the wind, and are familiar with the “lay” of the country, likely to see almost as much of the sport as the best-mounted. All are bent on the healthy enjoyment of this thoroughly English pastime. Their thoughts might find echo in the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... professional player improved the game itself goes without saying as being a business with him instead of a pastime, and one upon which his daily bread depended, he went into it with his whole soul, developing its beauties in a way that was impossible to the amateur who could only give to it the time that he could spare after the business ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... question, turning from her post between the curtains of Robin's sitting-room. Not in a tone of complaint did she speak, rather as though weighing which pastime would be most ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott

... lacking in decision, superstitious and cruel, he passed a life of idleness amid the luxury of a corrupt court, surrounded by pages, women, and eunuchs, with no more serious pastime than the chase, pursued within the limits of his own parks or on the confines of the desert. But if the king was weak, his empire was vigorous, and Nebuchadrezzar, brought up from his youth to dread the armies of Media, retained his respect for them up to the end of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... thou base, thou baffled traitor! Six trusty slaves wait but my call to bind And bear thee to the king. Ay, rage, rage, rage, For I'll invent such tortures to despatch thee, Such racks, such whips, such baths of boiling sulphur, The damned shall think their pains mere mirth and pastime, And envying furies own their skill outdone. I go to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... seventy shillings was put down without a murmur. How much farther the bidding would have gone will never be known, for a vicious little bird must needs tell the Colonel all about it. That gentleman happened to be engaged in his favourite (proclaiming) pastime; he sat ruminating on the high price of coal, and evolving schemes to bring wood back to its proper level. The latter article was what the poorer classes used as fuel. The Colonel had no scruples ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... not spoken of his boyhood for years, but he never ceased to think of those happy days. And although he tried hard, he could not believe that it was all a dream. Whenever he played a game of chess, which was his one pastime, he seemed to see himself in his old room at Mayence, and he sighed. His fellow priests wondered why he did this, and he laughingly told them it was because he had no idea how ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... king never permitted any pastime to interfere with the duties of state, which he considered to be superior to (54) all other claims and of paramount importance, and (a) (37) kept himself so far under control that he allowed no one ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott

... God disposes, the posts were either careless, or God ordained it thus; for suddenly the enemy rushed upon our men, who could not unite, as they were by that time scattered through the forest. The enemy, having caught them off their guard, made a pastime of it, killing twenty-six men, and carrying off arms, powder, balls, and fuses. I regard that event as the greatest of all our losses. Among those of our men killed there by the enemy was Captain Lopez Suarez, a fine soldier. Our men were not disheartened by these reverses, except such and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... kind were more rigorous, used to shake his head, and groan grievously, when he espied the tables lying in the parlour, or the children playing with the dice boxes or backgammon men. Indeed, Mrs. Butler was sometimes chidden for removing these implements of pastime into some closet or corner out of sight. "Let them be where they are, Jeanie," would Butler say upon such occasions; "I am not conscious of following this, or any other trifling relaxation, to the interruption of my more serious studies, and still more ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... about, and those of the best Quality; who were equally charm'd with her Sweetness of Temper, as the Men were with her outward Beauties. But in a Month's time, or thereabout, observing that he was continually solicited and courted to some Sport or Pastime with those Gentlemen of his Neighbourhood, she was forc'd to do her self the Violence to beg of him that he would divert himself with 'em, as before their Marriage he us'd: And she had so good Success, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... business, during one season, enables a man who left home a beggar to return with his fortune made! He marries, sets his wives to hoe the mealies and milk the cows, and thereafter takes life easy, except when he takes a fancy to hunt elephants, or to go to war for pastime. Ever after he is a drone in the world's beehive. Having no necessity he need not work, and possessing no principle he ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... The children, playing noisily in the back yard on the wood-pile, paused for a moment to gaze with callow interest at them; but the spectacle of "The'dosia's sweetheart" was too familiar to be of more than fleeting diversion, and they resorted once more to their pastime. Mrs. Blakely too, who with rolling-pin in her hand had turned to gaze out of the window, went back to rolling out the dough vigorously, with only the muttered comment, "Wish The'dosia didn't know how much I'd like that man fur a son-in-law, then ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... your hand no longer strong, and your foot no longer fleet? How many of them, young woman! when the light is out of your eye, and the beauty and freshness out of your face and figure, when you are no longer able for parties, when it is no longer a pastime to read novels, and when the ballroom is not exactly the place for you,—how many of your pleasures will survive? Young man! how many of yours will last when you can no longer go into dissipation, and stomach and system will no longer ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... ships," too, says the Psalmist, in this 104th Psalm, "and there goeth that leviathan, whom Thou hast made to take his pastime therein." This leviathan is no doubt the whale—the largest of all living things—often a hundred feet long, and as thick as a house. And yet even of him, the monster of all monsters, does God's Word stand true, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... occasion in these pages—the aristocracy of the Campagna. And it is likely that dancers on the Piazza Navona on a Befana night should belong to this class, for the Campagna shepherd is probably too poor, too abject and too little civilized to indulge in any such pastime. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... was to procure fresh meat for my crew. Here it would be killing for killing's sake. I know that is a privilege reserved for man, but I do not approve of such murderous pastime. In destroying the southern whale (like the Greenland whale, an inoffensive creature), your traders do a culpable action, Master Land. They have already depopulated the whole of Baffin's Bay, and are annihilating a class of useful ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... night, he came no more, nor for more than a month could I catch a glimpse of him in the street or in church, while I wearied myself with watching for one; although I knew he was in the town, and almost every day went out hunting, a pastime he was very fond of. I remember well how sad and dreary those days and hours were to me; I remember well how I began to doubt as they went by, and even to lose confidence in the faith of Don Fernando; and I remember, too, how my maid heard those ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... if surprised at such ignorance. "Why, humans is their favorite pastime! Humans is just pie to a Hydrophoby Skunk. It ain't really any fun to be bit by a Hydrophoby Skunk neither." He raised his coffee cup to his lips and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... the bee-hunter was, to produce an impression on the minds of his untutored observers, by resorting to a proper amount of mummery and mystical action. This he was enabled to do with some effect, in consequence of having practised as a lad in similar mimicry, by way of pastime. The Germans, and the descendants of Germans in America, are not of a very high class, as respects education, taken as a body, and they retain many of the most inveterate of the superstitions of their Teutonic ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... permit such discourse only, such shows, such merriment, as promote the particular end and design of such entertainments; and that is, by pleasant conversation either to beget or maintain friendship and good-will among the guests; for an entertainment is only a pastime table with a glass of wine, ending in ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... a threefold embrace on a slippery stair was hardly a safe pastime, and before Jasper had time to utter more than' Holloa there! take care!' there descended suddenly on him an avalanche of little girls, 'knocking him off his feet, so that all promiscuously rolled down two or three steps together. Fergus and Primrose, who had somehow been holding on behind,' ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... techniques of making bark-cloth and felt. Unfortunately nothing remains of the actual works that were the first examples of what the Chinese everywhere were beginning to call "art". "People", that is to say the gentry, painted as a social pastime, just as they assembled together for poetry, discussion, or performances of song and dance; they painted as an aesthetic pleasure and rarely as a means of earning. We find philosophic ideas or greetings, emotions, and experiences represented by paintings—paintings with ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... thawing in the sun, I left the hut and walked about the mountains for some hours. I had lately been thinking of writing some children's verses, addressed to a certain little girl, but nothing had come of it. Now as I walked on the mountainside, I felt again a desire for this pastime, and worked at it on several occasions, but could not get it into shape. The night, when one has slept an hour or two, is the time when such things come ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... Jacobin and a nun, who went secretly to an orchard to enjoy pleasant pastime under a pear-tree; in which tree was hidden one who knew of the assignation, and who spoiled their sport for that time, ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... smell'st the breath of great-eyed kine, Sweet as the blossoms of the vine. Here thou behold'st thy large sleek neat Unto the dew-laps up in meat: And, as thou look'st, the wanton steer, The heifer, cow, and ox draw near, To make a pleasing pastime there. These seen, thou go'st to view thy flocks Of sheep, safe from the wolf and fox, And find'st their bellies there as full Of short sweet grass, as backs with wool: And leav'st them, as they feed and fill, A shepherd piping ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... had a good deal of pastime with him in the cool garden, while Felix was being walked over the schoolyards in the sun; and they were excellent friends, though Ethel certainly had a certain repugnance to the discovery of how big a boy it was with whom Gertrude had danced barefooted on the rocks. Of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of our boys, was that of imitating the noise of every bird and beast in the woods. This faculty was not merely a pastime, but a very necessary part of education, on account of its utility in certain circumstances. The imitations of the gobbling, and other sounds of wild turkeys, often brought those keen-eyed, and ever-watchful ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... town of Troy; they are all twisted, broken, and charred, bearing witness to the fierceness of the flames in which the town perished. These discoveries reveal to us the daily life of the people of Troy. Judging from the number of boars' tusks found, hunting must have been a favorite pastime with them. The bones of oxen, sheep, and goats, of smaller species than those of the present day, have also been found. Horses and dogs were rare, and cats unknown. The domestic poultry of the present day was also wanting, no remains of birds having been found except a few bones of the wild swan ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... be remembered that the favourite recreation of the Chinese is to sit and meditate on the tombs of their ancestors, and though in these mortuaries this pastime cannot be carried out in its entirety, this modified form is universally regarded as a very satisfactory substitute. In one chapel containing the remains of the wife of the Chinese Ambassador in Rome, there was a curious ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... unconsciously slipping back to her favourite pastime, to that alluring compound of friendship and etherealised flirtation which she had likened to fencing with the buttons off the foils. The outcome of her last fencing-bout might have awakened glimmerings ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... her less than mind as recorder, reasoner, and ruler; and for one gem of poetry or other beauty of purely literary value which she quotes, there are fifty records of principles of action. The acquisition of knowledge was her favourite pastime, her principal pleasure in life, and there were no doubts of her own ability to disturb her so long as there was no self-consciousness. Unfortunately, however, for her tranquillity, the self-consciousness had to come. She approached the verge of womanhood. She was made to do ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... thronged for a few moments, but owing to the extraordinary strength of the tobacco which the faithful Richard shovelled into the furnace, it developed no enduring popularity, Xanthippe, with a suddenly acquired pallor, being the first to renounce the pastime as revolting. ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs

... in all cases to the motive of impulse, but might be compared to the sped of a stone, which rushes with like fury down the hill whether it was first put in motion by the arm of a giant or the hand of a boy. He felt, therefore, in no ordinary degree, the headlong impulse of the chase, a pastime so natural to youth of all ranks, that it seems rather to be an inherent passion in our animal nature, which levels all differences of rank and education, than an acquired habit ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... if it will do any good. People devour books but, when they have finished one, they never ask themselves what is to be done. It is immediately followed by another on a different subject, and reading becomes nothing but a pastime or a narcotic. Judith may be admired, but it is by those who will not undergo the fatigue of a penny journey in an omnibus to see their own Judith, perhaps nearly related to them, and will excuse themselves ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... instinct with life. From the seeds of this gourd, preserved with great care, and fed with ghee, come forth in due time the sixty thousand boys. The son of Cesina was a youth of the most malicious and cruel disposition; his pastime was to throw little infants into the river, and solace himself with their cries. He is sent into exile by his just and humane father, where he has a son, Ansuman, as gentle and popular as Asamanja was malignant and odious. King Sagara prepares to offer the Aswameda, the famous ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman

... for Eileen's supervision of his movements, which was usually marked by an officious severity, was sensibly relaxed on these days and Excalibur found himself at liberty to range abroad amid the heath and through the coppices, engaged in a pastime that he imagined ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay

... a pastime and pleasure, as there is nothing that so much delights the old soldier as to revisit the scenes and battlefields with which he was once so familiar, and to recall the incidents, though trifling they may have been at ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... garbs of directors of corporations or financial magnates, the legal briefs and sermons underwent a similar change. Social amenities displaced Calvinistic theology; dancing, which had been a crime against the Church, became mere frivolity and finally an innocent pastime. Leading lawyers ceased to plead in petit courts to inferior magistrates, and learned to devise forms of contracts, to lobby in legislatures, or appear with the great Maryland and Virginia practitioners ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... "is a caddy's occupation. Both the caddies are now busy. Let us sit down here. These sand hummocks are delightful. It is perfectly sheltered, and the sun is in our faces. Golf is an overrated pastime. Let us sit and watch that little streak of blue find its way ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... shrink from a similar task; should he, who had so often for mere amusement's sake plunged to the bottom of the sea to fetch up the bright coral branch, hesitate to entertain the same project? He could do it in an hour, and how many times had he, for pure pastime, continued in the water for more than twice as long! At once Dantes resolved to follow the brave example of his energetic companion, and to remember that what has once been ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... This is a dismal place in some moods of the mind. Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the brink gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have been what few can be—sufficient to our own pastime. Yes, say the word outright: self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks the recess now, and dreary too, like all other spots where happiness has been! There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine with its head upon the sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in August, when Henry Hamilton left school to go home and spend the Sabbath with his mother. This he frequently did, as it was but ten miles distant, and such a walk was only pastime to the vigorous youth, now glowing with health and strength in every vein. On this day however, the walk appeared unusually long to him; and he sat down twice by the road-side to rest himself. This was very uncommon; but he said nothing of fatigue when he reached home about ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous

... V. was put to flight, leaving the bones of his army in Provence, the dauphin was returning to Lyon by the Rhone. He stopped to sleep at Tournon, and, by way of pastime, practised some violent physical exercises,—which were nearly all the education his brother and he, in consequence of their detention as hostages, had ever received. The prince had the imprudence—it being the month of August, and the weather very hot—to ask for a glass ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... and I dare say that most of those who read this will wonder that such a search should be a pastime for any man, but I confess it is a pastime for me. To discover these things, to recreate them, to dig out on foot the base upon which two thousand years of history repose, is the ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... pastime, amusement, recreation, diversion, sport, disport, gambols, frolic, jest, merriment; action, use, employment, practice, exercise; comedy, drama, melodrama, farce, burlesque; dalliance, toying, twiddling; liberty, scope, swing. Associated Words: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... sheltered, like that, from the ocean winds, they noticed one or two little objects, jumping up and down out of holes in the ground and then scuttling back again—not from any alarm at their appearance, but as if only in play, for they did not interrupt their pastime for a moment as the ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... crime, except in seasons of famine, has been enormously overstated. The prevalent idea with us Westerns appears to be, that the murder of their children, especially of their female children, is a kind of national pastime with the Chinese, or, at the best, a national peculiarity. Yet it is open to question whether the crime, excepting in seasons of famine, is, in proportion to the population, more common in China than it is in England. H. A. Giles of H.B.M. Chinese Consular ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... where they were sure to find Lord Stockheath playing a hundred up with his cousin, Algernon Wooster—a spectacle of the liveliest interest—or they could, if fond of golf, console themselves for the absence of links in the neighborhood with the exhilarating pastime of clock golf; or they could stroll about the terraces with such of their relations as they happened to be on speaking terms with at the moment, and abuse their host and the rest of ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... Marguerite of Valois said of her: "I did not dare to speak to her, and when she looked at me I trembled for fear of having done something that displeased her." Ladies who had been delinquent were stripped and beaten with lashes; for correction—frequently for mere pastime—she would have them undressed and slapped vigorously with the back of the hand. Francoise of Rohan, cousin of Jeanne ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... your own ease and advantage, as to commit, perfectly, the signs of the moods and tenses before you proceed farther than to the subjunctive mood. If you do, the supposed Herculean task of learning to conjugate verbs, will be transformed into a few hours of pleasant pastime. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... is not in such deadly earnest, but merely indulging in a harmless pastime, such an effort of concentration need not be made. The 'willing' is, of course, akin to 'wishing' when cutting the cards in another ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'

... fruitlessly with that in which there is no delight; all night he embraces the shirt, and when he beholds the hair he thinks he is lord of all the world. Truly Love makes a wise man a fool: since he has joy, he will change his pastime before the bright dawn and the sunlight. The traitors are holding counsel as to what they will be able to do and what will become of them. Long time they will be able to defend the castle; that is a certainty if they ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... This out-door pastime is of comparatively modern creation, and until quite lately was very much in vogue. It nay be played by persons of all ages and of either sex; but it is especially adapted for ladies and young persons, as it demands but slight personal exertion, while it affords ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... those who listened to him. Nor was it easy, scarcely possible, to deceive him. Information reached him from so many, and such contrary quarters, that with his discrimination and experience, he could almost instantly distinguish the truth. The secret history of the world was his pastime. His great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive, with ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... books is to some men a pastime; to others it is a passion; but to the librarian and the intelligent book collector it is both a business and a pleasure. The man who is endowed with a zeal for knowledge is eager to be continually adding to the stores which will enable him to acquire and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... you calmly survey all this array and war, you would see, not torrents of blood or dead bodies, but fallen souls! You would see wounds so grievous, that human war, with all its horrors, is mere child's play or idle pastime, in comparison to the sight of so many souls struck down every day by Satan.' Thus this learned Greek father very eloquently represents the great battle of Satan and his hosts, against all mankind. But for a description of the internal conflict, Diabolus and his army of Doubters and Bloodmen arrayed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... wicked exercises are usually practised (for they have their courts, gardens, and yards for the same purpose), when they were all come together and mounted aloft upon their scaffolds and galleries, and in the midst of all their jolity and pastime, all the whole building (not one stick standing) fell down with a most wonderful and fearful confusion. So that either two or three hundred men, women, and children (by estimation), whereof seven were killed dead, some were wounded, some lamed, and otherwise bruised and ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... fashionable eye beheld the awful deed, and finding all safe, settled her freight, and spun away down hill, feeling all over the delightsome excitement of swift motion which makes coasting such a favorite pastime with the more sensible portion of the child-world. One after another, she took the little girls down the hill and dragged them up again, while they regarded her in the light of a gray-coated angel, descended for their express benefit. Polly was just finishing off with one delicious ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... Bunyan's bad conduct in his youthful days. In 1644, when The Book of Common Prayer was abolished, an Act was passed for the better observance of the Lord's-day; all persons were prohibited on that day to use any wrestlings, shooting, bowing, ringing of bells for pastime, masques, wakes, church-ales, dancing, game, sports or pastime whatever; and that 'the Book of Sports shall be seized, and publicly burnt.' During the civil war this Act does not appear to have been strictly enforced; for, four years after it was passed, we find Bunyan and his dissolute companions ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... oft, full oft, they thee ignite, I oft a pastime prove for tongues with folly rife; By wasting of thyself thou yieldest others light, And I in self same way must ...
— Grimmer and Kamper - The End of Sivard Snarenswayne and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise

... called him in cardroom circles at the "store," where men were fiercely intolerant of other pursuits than poker, for which pastime Mr. Blakely had no use whatever—no more use than had its votaries for him. He was a dreamy sort of fellow, with big blue eyes and a fair skin that were in themselves sufficient to stir the rancor of born frontiersmen, and they of Arizona in the days of old were an exaggeration ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... platform, where guests have been alighting for a generation or more, the drive passes to an old-fashioned carriage-house, in which are the great family sleigh and a light and gayly painted cutter, revealing that the home is not devoid of the young life to which winter's most exhilarating pastime is so dear. A quaint corn-crib is near, its mossy posts capped with inverted tin pans much corroded by rust. These prevent prowling rats and mice from climbing up among the golden treasures. Still further beyond are the gray ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... not usually the best qualified to do so; and it is not to be forgotten that Balzac was a real countryman of Rabelais and a legitimate inheritor of Gauloiserie. Unluckily no man can "throw back" in this way, except now and then as a mere pastime. And it is fair to recollect that as a matter of fact Balzac, after a year or two, did not waste much more time on these things, and that the intended ten dizains never, as a matter of fact, ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac

... languished as a popular pastime; the demand for morning cocktails had unaccountably fallen off; the bar-keeper would fall asleep at the club-room from sheer lack of employment during the afternoons and early evenings, for many of ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... and pleasure of an afternoon was to come and sit with the sick man's company in the sunny autumn evenings; and he had the honour more than once of giving Miss Bell his arm for a walk in the Temple Gardens; to take which pastime, when the frank Laura asked of Helen permission, the Major eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad—of course you go out with him—it's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody in the Gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of thing—everybody ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... silencing the scruples of his reason, the noble prejudices of his faith, in presence of the necessity of granting that bread of falsehood which poor humanity requires in order to be happy? Doubtless, he begged the pardon of Heaven for allowing it to be mixed up in what he regarded as childish pastime, for exposing it to ridicule in connection with an affair in which there was only sickliness and dementia. But his flock suffered so much, hungered so ravenously for the marvellous, for fairy stories with which to lull the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... his back. He hoped that it was not because of her mishap that she was not in a habit. He could hardly be expected to divine the true reason. This was, shortly, that the lady, who had expected to see him, could not enjoy a pastime from participation in which footmen are for a variety of reasons so rigorously debarred. Incidentally, she had seen Anthony before he had seen her, and the smile with which he had credited her companion's bonhomie was due to his presence alone. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... General Howe received the honour of knighthood, as did General Carlton for similar success in Canada—the one becoming Sir William Howe, and the other Sir Guy Carlton; but neither did much afterwards to merit the honour. The English officers seemed to have anticipated a pastime in America instead of hard fighting and severe service, and the German mercenaries anticipated rich ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... The rule was that if a boy sat down, he was let alone, but as long as he remained standing within the field, he was open to an attack. No one struck with the hand, but all manner of tripping with legs and feet and butting with the knees was allowed. Altogether it was an exhausting pastime—fully equal to the American game of football and only the young athlete ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... were, generally, in easy cannon range, in most places within musket range, and the pickets of the two armies were, for the most part, in speaking distance, and the men often indulged in talking, for pastime. Except in rare instances the sentinels did not fire on each other by day, but sometimes at night firing was kept up by the Confederates at intervals to prevent desertion. During the last months of the siege, circulars ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... acquired the dignity of a science, is one that Europe owes to India, where it was probably invented not earlier than five centuries before Christ; the triumphant progress of Islam aided in the extension of this oriental pastime. It was known at the courts of Nicephorus at Conftantinople and his contemporary Haroun-al-Rashid at Bagdad. One would like to add that Charlemagne also was acquainted with it, but there is no good evidence for that legend. It was known in Spain in the ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

... famous for wakes, the wakes of Whalley were famous even in Lancashire. The men of the district were in general a hardy, handsome race, of the genuine Saxon breed, and passionately fond of all kinds of pastime, and the women had their full share of the beauty indigenous to the soil. Besides, it was a secluded spot, in the heart of a wild mountainous region, and though occasionally visited by travellers journeying northward, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... temporarily at the Palace and at once set about locating on Sutter Street. He had recourse again to Brunt, who furnished him with a long list of vacancies in that neighbourhood. Apartment-hunting was an agreeable pastime to Vandover, though in the end it began to bore him. Altogether, he visited some fifteen or twenty suites, in each case trying to fit himself into the rooms, imagining how the window-seat would look in such a window, how the pipe-rack would show over such a mantel, just where ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... of this tragedy, which Giles Headley pronounced to be very dreary pastime, indeed he was amusing himself with an exchange of comfits with a youth who sat next him all the time—for he had found Stephen utterly deaf to aught but the tragedy, following every gesture with eager eyes, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistol practice should distinctly be an open-air pastime; and when Holmes in one of his queer humours would sit in an arm-chair, with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... been injured in the pastime known as the "double roll." Especially has this been the case with persons not native to the land of Heart's Desire or the equivalent thereof. Even those born to the manner, and possessed of the freedom of a vast landscape whose every particular was devoted to the behoof of any man seized ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... ruddy face of the Squire, and Miss Lavinia's dignified and stately figure, solemn and imposing, flanked by the silver jug and urn—and on the old ticking clock, and antique furniture, and smiling portraits, and recumbent Caesar, did it shine, merry and laughing, taking its pastime ere it went away to other lands, like a great, cheerful simple soul, smiling at ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke

... in their minds until it became a very strong probability. Visions of arrow heads, Indian pottery and ornaments were before them constantly, until nothing would do but they must investigate. The elders were much amused over the excitement, but voted it a harmless pastime and gave their full consent to an attempt at ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... gratitude for their exertions. There is nothing to be urged against this method of applauding the performers when kept within reasonable bounds. Sometimes it is to be feared, however, the least discreet of the audience indulge in calls rather for their own gratification—by way of pastime during the interval between one play and another—than out of any strict consideration of the abilities of the players; and, having called on one or two deserving members of a company, proceed to require the presence before the curtain of others who have done little to merit the compliment. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... consideration on my aunt's part. I have not alluded to Harry all this time, but of course, whenever his mother and I were occupied in amorous alliance, he was equally engaged in the same delicious pastime with Ellen. And, I may add, that once or twice I had seized a favourable opportunity of gratifying the little lecherous creature with what she called a feast of my noble prick. She, of course, was delighted at ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... nation, every citizen of which was not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-play and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, in like manner, assumed a show of life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and half deceive ourselves with the pastime of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... extraordinary regret for his loss. But, sir, I am unable to do justice to all these qualities; and of the fruit of his own studies it had not entered into his mind to leave any proof to posterity; all that remains, is the little which, as a pastime, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... clothes. Here and there you would find some genius playing dreamy, monotonous Spanish airs on the guitar, in the midst of a merry group of dancing and singing young Mexicans, many of whom were not older than I. Card-playing seemed, however, to be their favorite pastime; all Mexicans are inveterate gamesters, who look upon the profession of gambling as an honorable and ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... place for everything, doing his work promptly, will accomplish twice as much and with half the trouble of him who does it carelessly and slipshod. By introducing system into all your transactions, doing one thing at a time, always meeting appointments with punctuality, you will find leisure for pastime and recreation; whereas the man who only half does one thing, and then turns to something else, and half does that, will have his business at loose ends, and will never know when his day's work is done, for it never will be done. Of course, there is a limit ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... his hand, alwayes in feare least he should catch him: and if once in a yere he bites him, he sets it so close, that he is paid for a long time after. Such is the ende of all princes fauorites. When a Prince after long breathings hath raised a man to great height, he makes it his pastime, at what time he seemes to be at the top of his trauaile, to cast him downe at an instant: when he hath filled him with all wealth, he wrings him after as a sponge: louing none but himself, and thinking euery one made, but to serue, and please him. ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay

... Hicks, Jr., standing by his open window at 3 P. M. one afternoon a week after his sensational return to Bannister College, with the "Prodigious Prodigy" in tow, indulged in the soul-satisfying pastime of twanging his banjo, and roaring, in his subterranean voice, a parody on "I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier." It was actually the first Caruso-like outburst of the pestersome youth that year, but his saengerfest brought vociferous howls of ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... confidence in Sir John Lubbock and Frederick Harrison, they make excellent progress and do much to keep up the reading habit. Fourth—The "Oh, just-anything-good-you-know" reader. Her name is legion. She never knows what she has read. Yet the social student who failed to take into account the desultory, pastime reader, would miss a great factor in the spread of ideas. Fifth—The person who does not read. He is commoner than most suppose. He is often young, more often boy than girl, oftener young man than young woman. He commits eternally what Mr Putnam aptly calls the great crime against the library of ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... An edifying pastime for an adult woman! I did not utter this sentiment, for she would rightly have styled me the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... feature which the authors of the romances themselves either did not always understand, or were at pains to obscure by the introduction of the obviously post hoc "motif" above referred to, i.e., that he was called the Fisher King because of his devotion to the pastime of fishing: a-propos of which Heinzel sensibly remarks, that the story of the Fisher King "presupposes a legend of this personage only vaguely known ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... the age of three-score years and twelve; I can not say, Vixi, and I could not procure a more agreeable pastime than to relate my own adventures, and to cause pleasant laughter amongst the good company listening to me, from which I have received so many tokens of friendship, and in the midst of which I have ever lived. To enable me to write well, I have only to think ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... left! In order that to-morrow the next man may find his pastime where I have shuddered from cleft to chasm, suicide upon me and thou before me! You dare suggest that? That part of my life I have poured into you I am to see thrown before wild beasts? Do you see your bed with the sacrifice—the victim—on it? ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind

... other through the water, and flap their wings and dive about, in evident enjoyment of their pastime, it is a sign that rain is not ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... religious Sikhs and the little, nervous, high-strung Dyak pagans get on very well together, eating, sleeping and drilling in perfect harmony. Though the Dyak members of the constabulary are recruited from the wild tribes of the interior, most of them having indulged in the national pastime of head-hunting until they donned the company's uniform, they make excellent soldiers, courageous, untiring, and remarkably loyal. Upon King Edward's accession to the throne a small contingent of Dyak police was sent to England to march in the coronation procession. When, owing to the serious ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... would think it all my generosity; or, if she could not, she would take and die. Oh no! I'll not fail her. No, I won't; not if I have to spend seven years after the model of old Bill, whose liveliest pastime is a good long sermon, when it ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... an organized pastime, a function of social idleness ministering to the vanity of certain wealthy inhabitants of these isles nearly as much as to their inborn love of the sea. But the writer of the article in question goes on to point out, with insight and justice, that for a great number of people (20,000, I think he ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... ascended—imaginary papers were glanced at, imaginary scandal was discussed with elderly shakings of the head, and—regrettable to say—imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards. Heaven only knows how the germ of this dreary pastime first found way into his small-boyish being. It was his own invention, and he was proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile, Charlotte and I, crouched in the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl and eddy and drive of the innumerable snow-flakes, wrapping our cheery little ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... artillery, and his reserves. Crossing the Alps here (pointing to the Great Mont St. Bernard) I shall fall upon Melas, cut off his communications with Austria, and meet him here in the plains of Scrivia" (placing a red, pin at San Giuliano). Finding that I looked on this manoeuvre of pins as mere pastime, he addressed to me some of his usual compliments, such as fool, ninny, etc., and then proceeded to demonstrate his plans more clearly on the map. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour we rose; I folded up the map, and thought no more of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... asked, rather astonished, for in common with many men he imagined chess to be almost purely a masculine pastime. ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... altogether, or be fed by his friends. The instruments of achievement may be adorned, and made delightful in the using, but they must not {197} on that account be mistaken for the achievement; leisure may be made a worthy pastime through the cultivation of the sensibilities, but it must not be substituted for vocation, or allowed to infect a ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... she, Beatrice O'Valley, do with Gay if she tried—seriously tried? He would not linger beside Trudy if Beatrice gave him to understand there was a place for him at her own hearth. She knew Gaylord too well; he suddenly assumed the figurative form of a goal, as she had once assumed to Steve—a play pastime—in the true sense. A real man would not play off property doll in the hands of any woman, not excepting his own wife; which Beatrice realized. Living with a cave man had taught her many things. Yet it would be rare fun to have a property doll all one's own, different from the impersonal, ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... Cuzco, the central region of Peru, was the cradle of their civilisation. According to tradition among the Peruvians, there had been a time, long past, when the land was held by many tribes, all plunged in barbarism, who worshipped every object in nature, made war as a pastime, and feasted upon the flesh of their slaughtered captives. The Sun, the great parent of mankind, pitying their degraded condition, sent two of his children, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo Huaco, to govern and teach them. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... passing, with no will For life or death, for all that made life dear Was fled like summer when the leaves fall sere. And Arthur spoke, misreading Gawayne's thought: "Heaven send we have not all too dearly bought Our evening's pastime, Gawayne. You have done As fits a fearless knight, and nobly won Our thanks in equal measure with our praise. Be both remembered ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... were once common in China which have long since passed out of the national life, and exist only in the record of books. Among these may be mentioned "butting," a very ancient pastime, mentioned in history two centuries before the Christian era. The sport consisted in putting an ox-skin, horns and all, over the head, and then trying to knock one's adversary out of time by butting at him after the fashion of bulls, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... certainly not the Head. What I refer to is the pursuit and collection of decapitated human heads, belonging generally to personal enemies of the collector; it is a sport common in Borneo, and among other interesting, if primitive, nationalities. This pastime is, I understand, a favourite one with some students of the college. It is practised, I need hardly say, under the very strictest supervision; there must be a certificate signed by the British Resident, and a special ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... Princess desired to make a stay more or less long in every town en route. If, on the way, she noticed a convent of any importance, she at once asked to be taken thither, and, in default of other pastime or pretext, she requested them to say complines ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... boys were by no means alone upon the ice. The afternoon was so fine that men, women, and children, bent upon enjoying the holiday, had flocked to the grand canal from far and near. Saint Nicholas had evidently remembered the favorite pastime; shining new skates were everywhere to be seen. Whole families were skimming their way to Haarlem or Leyden or the neighboring villages. The ice seemed fairly alive. Men noticed the erect, easy carriage of women, and their picturesque variety of costume. ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... and the little pair of babies, by their mere soft helplessness, gave him an indescribable sense of fondness and refreshment. His little ones were all the world to him, and he could not see how a pattern mother should ever be so happy as with them around her. He forgot the difference between the pastime of an hour and the employment of a day. The need of such care on her part was the greater since the nursery establishment was deficient. The grand nurse had almost abdicated on the double addition ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... for pastime, If June be refulgent With flowers in completeness, All petals, no prickles, Delicious as trickles Of wine poured at mass-time, And choose One indulgent To redness and sweetness; Or if with experience of man and of spider, She ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... thou wight yeman, And Robin thou soone shalt see; But first let us some pastime find Under the ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards

... third year I took pleasure in crawling under the bed with my boy-cousin who was nine months my senior, and after we had taken down our drawers, in kissing each other's nates. I do not remember which of us first thought of this pastime. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... our scanty years are told, It seems like pastime to grow old; And as Youth counts the shining links That Time around him binds so fast, Pleased with the task, he little thinks How hard that chain will press at last. Vain was the man, and false as vain, Who said—"were he ordained to run "His long career of life again, "He would do all that ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... first, but I afterward forgave her, when a more careful examination taught me to know this adorable woman's character. Coquetry was with her not a vice of the heart or of an unscrupulous mind; having nothing better to do, she enjoyed it as a legitimate pastime, without giving it any importance or feeling any scruples. Like all women, she liked to please; her success was sweet to her vanity; perhaps flattery turned her head at times, but in the midst of this tumult her heart ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... the one pastime which could be practiced without making a noise of any sort to attract undesirable attentions, the boy took to it in self-defence. But before long it had become his passion. He read, by stealth, everything that fell into his hands, a weird melange of newspapers, illustrated ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... as yet undreamed of by either of them. The causes which start men upon their careers are often seemingly the most slight and causal. Mildred meant nothing more than to find a brief and kindly-natured pastime in softening the hard lives and in rounding the sharp angles of the Atwood family, and Roger merely came in for his share of her attention. Flesh and spirit, however, are not wood and stone, and she might learn in deep surprise that her light aesthetic touches, while producing pleasing changes ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... when leaves grow green, And blossoms bedeck the tree, King Edward would a hunting ride, Some pastime ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... dark alley at midnight, in an opium den, at the entrance to a theater, or in the victim's bed. If the assassin is arrested the society furnishes witness to prove an alibi and money to retain a lawyer. Another favorite pastime of the Highbinder who is usually a loafer, is to levy blackmail on a wealthy Chinaman. If the sum demanded is not paid the victim's life is not worth 30 cents. One of the famous victims of the Highbinders in recent ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... shame, no injury attached, still he prefers war; when he may live at home at ease, he insists on toil, if only it may end in fighting; when it is given to him to keep his riches without risk, he would rather lessen his fortune by the pastime of battle. To put it briefly, war was his mistress; just as another man will spend his fortune on a favourite, or to gratify some pleasure, so he chose to squander ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... endless sea-yarns about their voyages under famous admirals, and about gale and calm, battle and chase, and all that class of incident that has its sphere on the deck and in the hollow interior of a ship, where their world has exclusively been. For other pastime, they quarrel among themselves, comrade with comrade, and perhaps shake paralytic fists in furrowed faces. If inclined for a little exercise, they can bestir their wooden legs on the long esplanade that borders by the Thames, criticising the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... was moved to a very acute feeling of annoyance; he condemned Madame Zephyrine unmercifully; he even blamed himself; but when he found, next day, that she had taken no means to baulk him of his favourite pastime, he continued to profit by her carelessness, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Even in this pastime the cousins were rivals. Sir Charles's favorite horse was a magnificent thoroughbred, who was seldom far off at the finish: over good ground Richard's cocktail had no chance with him; but sometimes, if toward the close of the run they came to stiff ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... make the last great effort; and afterward the triumph, the waving of handkerchiefs, the great cheer that greets the victor, and the smiles of merry lips and laughing eyes. Those were the prizes we raced for, when racing was the pastime of gentlemen, and not an excuse for blackguardism and gambling, as to-day it is fast becoming. So my kind hosts and I made our little bets, and enjoyed ourselves right thoroughly, until the last race, which was won ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... patrician, and his bosom friend, Hell-Roaring Bill Jones; and if they were fertile in invention, they were no less energetic in carrying their inventions into execution. To shoot over the roofs of the cars was a regular pastime, to shoot through the windows was not unusual, but it was a genius who thought of the notion of crawling under the dining-car and shooting through the floor. He scattered the scrambled eggs which the negro waiter was carrying, but did no other damage. These ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... abhorrence of the pastime of angling has been already noticed. See vol. iii. p. 70, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... his house there, as also that the Mountainers had made much in a readinesse; I requested that he would sende downe, which he promised to doe. The eighteenth day I was with him againe, and so continued there till night; and he shewed me his house, with pastime in ducking with water spaniels, and baiting bulls with his English doggs. At this time I moved him againe for the sending downe to Sus, which he granted to doe; and the 24th day there departed Alcayde Mammie, with Lionell Egerton, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... him, will suffice to raise him above the ordinary degree of human happiness and pleasure, half animal though it be; his only resources are his sensual appetite,—a cozy and cheerful family life at the most,—low company and vulgar pastime; even education, on the whole, can avail little, if anything, for the enlargement of his horizon. For the highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind, however much our youth may ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer

... believe it will prevent my ever rising very high. But pastime for pastime is it any idler ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... was literally filled with game, and the region in the immediate vicinity of La Pena contained its full proportion of deer, antelope, and wild turkeys. The temptation to hunt was therefore constantly before me, and a desire to indulge in this pastime, whenever free from the legitimate duty of the camp, soon took complete possession of me, so expeditions in pursuit of game were of frequent occurrence. In these expeditions I was always accompanied by a soldier named Frankman, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... quite uniquely, not founded on any great depth of love for Anne. His appropriation of the three sisters had been a pretty and pleasant pastime. When he had finally decided upon Anne as the pivotal center of his universe he had contemplated a future in which the other sisters also figured—especially Amy. He had, indeed, not thought of a ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... and chevaliers," said William, gaily, as he closed his helmet, and took from his squire another spear; "now, I shall give ye the day's great pastime. Pass the word, Sire de Tancarville, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... singleness of purpose Beddoes never possessed. Inheriting from his father the qualities of both poet and physician, the faculties of the scientific man, trained and cultivated through a long life by Dr. Thomas Beddoes (with whom poetry was but an occasional pastime), seem to have overbalanced and diverted the poetic genius of his son. The hereditary instinct overcame the individual bent. And in spite of Lovell Beddoes' opinion that "the studies of the dramatist and physician are closely, almost ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... regime, there was one lonely idle telephone in the White House, used by the servants several times a week. But with McKinley came a new order of things. To him a telephone was more than a necessity. It was a pastime, an exhilarating sport. He was the one President who really revelled in the comforts of telephony. In 1895 he sat in his Canton home and heard the cheers of the Chicago Convention. Later he sat there and ran the first presidential telephone ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... largely and so persistently made merry. It has been a stock subject with them. It is as if they had said to themselves, 'When at a loss, revile the connubial condition.' Married life has been the sport of every wit, and, sorrowful to relate, society has been well content to join in the pastime. There is nothing so common as sarcasm on matrimony, and nothing, apparently, so welcome, even ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... very entertaining, and instructive pastime, with a book giving 64 colored illustrations of the "Harlequin Circle." Put up in handsome ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... know you, Philip de la Mole," pursued the old woman with knitted brows and flashing eyes; "you, who, to amuse your hours of idleness, could talk of love to a poor trusting girl, heedless how you destroyed her peace of mind, had you but your pastime and your jest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... a favourite species of dog in the middle ages. In the ancient pipe-rolls, payments are frequently made in greyhounds. In Hawes' "Pastime of Pleasure," (written in the time of Henry VII.) Fame is attended by two greyhounds, on whose golden collars, "Grace" and "Governaunce" are ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... when Napoleon could unbend from the cares of state, the family amused themselves, with such guests as were present, in the game of "prisoners" on the lawn. For several years this continued to be the favorite pastime at Malmaison. Kings and queens were often seen among the pursuers and the pursued on the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... when Mr. Severance came in to say that a grand display of the national sport of surf-bathing was going on, and a large party of us went down to the beach for two hours to enjoy it. It is really a most exciting pastime, and in a rough sea requires immense nerve. The surf-board is a tough plank shaped like a coffin lid, about two feet broad, and from six to nine feet long, well oiled and cared for. It is usually made of the erythrina, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... you!" says I. "It's a pastime I ain't up in at all; but if you can ever find use for me behind the scenes anywhere, just ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... my memoirs I had determined never to do so, nor to write anything for publication. At the age of nearly sixty-two I received an injury from a fall, which confined me closely to the house while it did not apparently affect my general health. This made study a pleasant pastime. Shortly after, the rascality of a business partner developed itself by the announcement of a failure. This was followed soon after by universal depression of all securities, which seemed to threaten the extinction of a good part of the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... him on his visit, which ended earlier than he had expected, the boy-cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, youngest of red-hatted fathers, who has since presented his broad dark cheek very conspicuously to posterity as Pope Leo the Tenth, having been detained at his favourite pastime of the chase, and having failed to appear. It still wanted half an hour of sunset as he left the door of the Scala palace, with the intention of proceeding forthwith to the Via de' Bardi; but he had not gone far when, to ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... town and sometimes he got an answer, for there were other scouts over there. He did it just for pastime. Usually it was the wigwag that he used. But on this morning, noticing the dried leaves all about, he said, "We'll try a smudge, that's pretty good sport; Morse Code, you know." He looked about half-interestedly and began kicking leaves into a pile, ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... Cabin," "The House that Jack Built," "Park Row," "Devil's Inn," etc. To while away the long nights and cold days, the men had recourse to the soldier's game, "cards." Few ever played for the money that was in it, but more for an amusement and pastime. While almost all played cards, there were very few who could be considered gamblers, or who would take their comrades' money, if they even won it. There would be stakes played for, it is true, on the "credit system" generally, to be evened-up ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... gun came into use in 1840. The long matchlocks of the Arabs had been very worrying to the French in Algiers. It was a common pastime of the Ishmaelites to pick off the Gauls at a distance which left Brown Bess helpless. Protruded over an almost inaccessible crag, the former primitive instrument would plump its ball into the ranks of the Giaour in the dell below ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... Citadels: Maids at the Wheel, the Weaver at his Loom, Sit blithe and happy; Bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness Fells, Will murmur by the hour in Foxglove bells: In truth, the prison, unto which we doom Ourselves, no prison is: and hence to me, In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground: Pleas'd if some Souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find short solace there, as I ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth

... various reasons the project was never carried out. Treasure Island was finished; the greater part of the Silverado Squatters written; so were the essays Talk and Talkers, A Gossip on Romance, and several other of his best papers for magazines. By way of whim and pastime he occupied himself, to his own and his stepson's delight, with a little set of woodcuts and verses printed by the latter at his toy press—"The Davos Press," as they called it—as well as with mimic campaigns carried on between the man and boy with armies of lead soldiers in the spacious loft ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... desired to make a stay more or less long in every town en route. If, on the way, she noticed a convent of any importance, she at once asked to be taken thither, and, in default of other pastime or pretext, she requested them to say complines with full ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... experience a good effect from this day's battle and destruction. The story will be remembered in the black man's traditions, and will have its due weight in many a palaver. Nevertheless, though the burning of villages be a very pretty pastime, yet it leaves us in a moralizing mood, as most pleasures are apt to do; and one would fain hope that civilized man, in his controversies with the barbarian, will at length cease to descend to the barbarian level, and may adopt some other method of proving his superiority, than by his greater ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... which was epidemic among the politicians of that age appeared in its most malignant type, but variously modified by greet diversities of temper and understanding. Buckingham was a sated man of pleasure, who had turned to ambition as to a pastime. As he had tried to amuse himself with architecture and music, with writing farces and with seeking for the philosopher's stone, so he now tried to amuse himself with a secret negotiation and a Dutch war. He had already, rather from ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... young, dissipated courtiers, loitering by the gateway of a house which was open for the favourite pastime of the day,—the resort of the wealthier and more high-born gamesters,—made way for him, as with a courteous inclination he ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... faithless breast And made thee false to my behest. An arrow speeding from my bow Has laid the treacherous giant low, Who lured me eager for the chase Far from my hermit dwelling-place. The string with easy hand I drew, The arrow as in pastime flew, The wounded quarry bled. The borrowed form was cast away, Before mine eye a giant lay With bright gold braceleted. My arrow smote him in the chest: The giant by the pain distressed Raised his loud voice on high. Far rang the mournful sound: mine own, It ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... fairly hidden by the boats, and there was a grand state bark all trimmed with silk and velvet for the Queen to be in to see the pastime. But as for that, all Nick could make out was the high carved stern of the bark, painted with England's golden lions, and the bark was so far away that he could not even tell ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... rendezvous of soldiers, and told them that an attempt would be made to abduct his sister by force, and if they heard a shriek from the women, to hasten to his house. The rabble of soldiers wanted no better pastime than such a melee among the infidels, and promised to come. When they heard the noise they started on a run. Raheel, having suspected something of the kind, induced Dr. De Forest to take another ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... believe it wise to allow tiny tots like that to play with such a huge, clumsy animal. He was sure that their mother would be horrified if she knew it. He loved children, and felt that it was madness to allow these babies to continue their dangerous pastime. ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... for that, You must not thinke That we are made of stuffe, so flat, and dull, That we can let our Beard be shooke with danger,[4] And thinke it pastime. You shortly shall heare more,[5] I lou'd your Father, and we loue our Selfe, And that I hope will teach ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... to fulfil my promise. I expect an opportunity to-morrow or next day, for I saw a great many carriages pass this way to the tavern, as I suppose, from New York. It is a common thing with some to come here on Saturday and return on Monday, to spend this blessed day in pastime. You would not, I know, exchange situation's with them; you would rather be ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... him, that her audience had looked on with roars of laughter. From that time she would be put up every day, and as time went on showed such unchildish courage and spirit that she furnished to her servant companions a new pastime. Soon she would not be held on, but riding astride like a boy, would sit up as straight as a man and swear at her horse, beating him with her heels and little fists if his pace did not suit her. She knew no fear, and would ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Almost as soon as Uncle Moses could have done so he had landed his first catch and left it floundering on the bank. Katharine had never thought about the cruel side of angling. It was left for this forlorn creature to teach her that of this pretty pastime there is something else than lounging beside charming waterways and beneath green boughs. Angleworms might not suffer much, might even get used to being tortured, as Montgomery averred; but how about that beautiful shining thing done to slow death on the sward beside her? A new pity for this humbler ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... original fitness, as well as by constant practice, she became an excellent markswoman. She had her well-trained horse, and her vaulting bars, and made nothing of flying over a high fence or a wide ditch. But her last whim was the most eccentric of all. She had her lance. And, her favorite pastime was to have a small ring suspended from a crossbeam, and while riding at full speed, with her light lance balanced in her hand, to catch this ring and bear it off upon the point of that lance. In feats of agility alone she excelled, not in those of strength—that airy, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... of Chrysostom refers to the inordinate use of fun, especially by those who make the pleasure of games their end; of whom it is written (Wis. 15:12): "They have accounted our life a pastime." Against these Tully says (De Offic. i, 29): "We are so begotten by nature that we appear to be made not for play and fun, but rather for hardships, and for occupations of greater ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... happily limited by their obtuseness. We remember that French baron—Gilbert de Retz, we believe, was his name—who, like Isegrim, had studied at the universities, and passed for learned, whose after-dinner pastime for many years, as it proved at last, was to cut children's throats for the pleasure of watching them die. We may well feel gratitude that a Reineke was provided to be the scourge of such monsters as these; and we have a thorough pure, exuberant satisfaction in seeing the intellect in that ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... passionately fond of the chase, and used to neglect attendance on divine worship for this amusement. While he was once engaged in this pastime, a stag appeared before him, having a crucifix bound betwixt his horns, and he heard a voice which menaced him with eternal punishment if he did not repent of his sins. He retired from the world and took orders... Hubert afterwards became Bishop of ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... Hilary's remarks. Though they would not acknowledge there was anything derogatory to the dignity of intermediates in indulging in the pastime of jumping, they knew full well that should the noise penetrate to the precincts of the study Miss Todd would issue forth like a dragon. But Diana was cross, and not disposed to take reproof lightly. She pulled one of her most impossible ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... early canoes were already moving aimlessly upon its placid bosom. A shout and a laugh and a sudden splash, sounding faint in the distance, told him that some uninitiated new arrivals were diving from the springboard before breakfast. They would soon be checked in that pastime, Tom knew. ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... Certainly the dedicated women you usually found in Party ranks seldom were of the type that inspired you to romance but he wondered now, looking at this new assistant of his, if he hadn't let too much of his youth go by without more investigation into the usually favorite pastime of youth. ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... great frost, did see people sliding with their skates, which is a very pretty art." It is remarkable that it was the German poet Klopstock who made skating fashionable in Germany. Until his time, the art was considered a pastime, only fit for ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... or God ordained it thus; for suddenly the enemy rushed upon our men, who could not unite, as they were by that time scattered through the forest. The enemy, having caught them off their guard, made a pastime of it, killing twenty-six men, and carrying off arms, powder, balls, and fuses. I regard that event as the greatest of all our losses. Among those of our men killed there by the enemy was Captain Lopez Suarez, a fine soldier. Our men were not disheartened by these reverses, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... minister's voice seemed to come from farther off. The sunlight through the stained glass projected colored splotches here and there. I wondered if the people knew how homely they looked with those splotches on their faces, like great birth-marks. That suggested a pastime to relieve the monotony. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... for ever! Once we talked of cares And deemed that we were sad. Men fancy sorrows Until time brings the substance of despair, And then their griefs are shadows. Give me exile! It brought me love. Ah! days of gentle joy, When pastime only parted us, and he Returned with tales to make our children stare; Or called my lute, while, round my waist entwined, His hand kept chorus to my lay. No more! O, we were happier than the happy birds; And sweeter were our lives than the sweet flowers; The stars were not more tranquil ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... eye could reach were seen scattered herds of horses. These were tended by little boys who were totally destitute of clothing, and who seemed to enjoy with infinite zest the pastime of shooting-practice with little bows and arrows. No wonder that these Indians become expert bowmen. There were urchins there, scarce two feet high, with round bullets of bodies and short spindle-shanks, who could knock blackbirds off the trees at every shot, and ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... look, as the experienced will readily conceive, did the business. The young soldier dreamed only of a love affair like twenty others which had made the pastime of his oft-changing quarters; but this "dear woman," Sophie Victoire Antoinette Delaborde, daughter of an old bird-fancier, was destined to become his wife, and the mother of his daughter, Aurore Dupin, whom the world knows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... was oblivious of this pastime of his master. The lash whistled narrowly by his red ears, but it never touched them. In the evening sunlight the Cardinal ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... hawking, hunting, or any other pastime, nor in hearing instruments or music, but setteth all his whole delight upon two things: first, to serve God, as undoubtedly he is very devout in his religion; and the second, how to subdue and conquer ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt

... inquiry on the Paper than there comes a strident "Arising out of that, Mr. SPEAKER-R." Fortunately the CHIEF SECRETARY possesses a Job-like patience, and is rarely betrayed into any departure from his polite if somewhat ponderous manner. To badger Mr. BIRRELL was an exciting pastime rather like punching the ball. To heckle Mr. DUKE ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... acquainted with, and of which a few words will suffice to remind him. The Puritans who founded the American republics were not only enemies to amusements, but they professed an especial abhorrence for the stage. They considered it as an abominable pastime; and as long as their principles prevailed with undivided sway, scenic performances were wholly unknown amongst them. These opinions of the first fathers of the colony have left very deep marks on the minds ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... not with love the printed page, Illuminating, as yon moon the night, Serenely shining on a world of beauty, Where love moves ever hand in hand with duty; And life, a long aspiring pilgrimage, Makes labour but a pastime ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... haughty that he abruptly diverted his attention to the upper north-east corner of the court-house, where, fortunately for him, a pair of pigeons had just alighted and were engaged in the interesting pastime ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... came her way. Naturally, she tried the effect of her good looks and wit on men. In fact, she was fond of flirting, and as it must probably have been impossible to flirt with Montagu, she indulged herself in that agreeable pastime with more than one other—to the great annoyance of that pompous prig of an admirer of hers. The following letter, dated September 5, 1709, written to Anne Wortley for her brother's perusal, was clearly an endeavour to sooth ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... perhaps with venom, that intrudes A visitor unwelcome into scenes Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove, The chamber, or refectory, may die. A necessary act incurs no blame. Not so when, held within their proper bounds And guiltless of offence, they range the air, Or take their pastime in the spacious field. There they are privileged; and he that hunts Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong, Disturbs the economy of Nature's realm, Who, when she formed, designed them an abode. The sum is this: if man's convenience, health, Or safety interfere, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... Cueto was another Spanish Minister, whom I regarded as an agreeable acquaintance. During his regime filibustering against Spanish possessions, and especially Cuba, was a favorite pastime of American citizens and rendered the position of the Spanish Minister in Washington one of delicacy and difficulty. Residing in Washington during De Cueto's tenure of office was a Cuban named Ambrosio Jose Gonzales, ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... a wonderful pair to live in the same town," Mitchell chuckled. "I have been in his office several times since we got home. Not having you to loaf with, I turned to him for pastime. He certainly is a cool hand in a deal. He doesn't get excited in a crisis, as you do, and when he wins big stakes he hardly seems to notice it. Ten minutes after he got the wire on his good luck the other day he could talk of nothing ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... spirit of resistance. The cowardly insults to which the soldiers were exposed after the reduction of their number led to various scuffles; but their discipline prevented them from effectually retaliating on their persecutors, and baiting the soldiers became a popular pastime. On the evening of the 5th Captain Preston of the 29th regiment and about a dozen soldiers went to the rescue of a sentinel who was being ill-treated by the mob. After some provocation his men fired ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... kill, to wench, to fight, Our pastime is, and daily sport; The gibbet claims us morn and night, So let's be ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... slavery when afloat, nothing about the tyranny they are frequently subjected to; and in his days, a man-o'-war was too often literally a floating pandemonium. He makes landsmen believe that Jack is the happiest, most enviable fellow in the world: storms and battles are mere pastime; lopped limbs and wounds are nothing more than jokes; there is the flowing can to 'sweethearts and wives' every Saturday night; and whenever the ship comes to port, the crew have guineas galore to spend on lasses and fiddles. In fine, both at sea and ashore, according ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... of which, I have given some account—chiefly occupied with external matters, with the accidents of daily life, with observations made during the long walks (often with his son), which formed his most valued pastime. His office, moreover, though Liverpool was not a delectable home, furnished him with entertainment as well as occupation, and it may almost be said that during these years he saw more of his fellow-countrymen, in the shape of odd ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... earliest ages of the world, hunting was a necessary labour of self-defence, or the first law of nature, rather than a pastime; while hawking could never have been adopted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... a popular pastime; the demand for morning cocktails had unaccountably fallen off; the bar-keeper would fall asleep at the club-room from sheer lack of employment during the afternoons and early evenings, for many of the married ladies had brought maiden ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... study was a pastime, or merely a necessity of their outdoor Scout training. With Louise it was becoming a ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook

... if I did not hasten to give you my warmest thanks for the splendid entertainment of last night. Such a performance is not a grand entertainment merely, or a glorious pastime, although it was all that. It was, too, an artistic display of the highest character, elevating in the vast audience their art instinct—as well as purifying any developed art in ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... be given by the members of the Ladies' Hockey Club (or such of them as had not been maimed for life in the pursuit of this noble pastime) on the very night after the conversation about murder. Vera belonged to the Hockey Club (in a purely ornamental sense), and she had procured a frock for the ball which was calculated to crown her reputation ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... hastily dismounted under the aged tree, though he was stiff and fatigued, for Hans was now utterly incapable of exertion. His sword quickly glanced in the moonshine—"Time was" said he, "when this had been the very pastime I desired." The murderous animal attacked him with such impetuosity that his well-tried skill failed him, and he was the next moment thrown under its feet. The struggle now became desperate, for the animal had no common foe to contend with. Before it could wound him with its tusks, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... wandered and wondered, longing for a fuller comprehension of their contents, yet unable to linger, and almost sated with the numerous beautiful objects demanding our attention on every side. Sight-seeing of this kind is the most fatiguing pastime both to body and brain that any one can indulge in; it is only possible to note the more important objects. We were much struck by the Scala Regia, a fine staircase by Bernini, in the centre of which is a gigantic equestrian ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... made hunting possible for women, more attention was paid to the breaking and training of hacks than at present, on account of the great demand for "complete ladies' horses." The advent of the bicycle for ladies has almost abolished hacking as a pastime and means of exercise, and hence the difficulty in finding a well-broken animal for this work. The best substitute is, I think, a good polo pony, because the requirements of that game demand that the animal should ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... long since given up these things. Don't you think it is a pity to make a pastime of an art? I soon saw that I was never likely really to do anything in music or drawing, and out of respect for them I ceased to—to potter. Please don't think I apply ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... not to the classical literature, but to the most modern and frivolous productions of the Greek mind; instead of moulding the Roman character in the Hellenic spirit, they contented themselves with borrowing that sort of pastime which set their own intellect to work as little as possible. In this sense the Arpinate landlord Marcus Cicero, the father of the orator, said that among the Romans, just as among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth, the more he ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... him self fruitlessly with that in which there is no delight; all night he embraces the shirt, and when he beholds the hair he thinks he is lord of all the world. Truly Love makes a wise man a fool: since he has joy, he will change his pastime before the bright dawn and the sunlight. The traitors are holding counsel as to what they will be able to do and what will become of them. Long time they will be able to defend the castle; that is a certainty if they apply themselves to the defence; but they know that the king is of so fierce ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... Mind, by way of pastime, used, out of dried, wild chestnuts, to carve little cats, bears, and other beasts, and this with so much art that these little dainty toys were shortly in no less request than his drawings. It is a pity that insects, such as frequently exist in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... alley with a stolid Oriental apathy on their yellow faces. Here and there came a stream of warm light through an open door, and within, the Mongolians were gathered round the gambling-tables, playing fan-tan, or leaving the seductions of their favourite pastime, to glide soft-footed to the many cook-shops, where enticing-looking fowls and turkeys already cooked were awaiting purchasers. Kilsip turning to the left, led the barrister down another and still narrower lane, the darkness and gloom of which made the lawyer ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... braw gaed out at e'en, For sport and pastime free; I seem'd like ane in paradise, The moments quick did flee. Like Venuses they all appear'd, Weel pouther'd were their locks; 'Twas easy dune, when at their hame, Wi' the shaking o' their pocks. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... fortune to lay by for the child, his pet and darling, to keep her from want if death should take him away. But of this little Nell knew nothing, or she would have implored him to give up the wicked and dangerous pastime. ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... spring came round, to form social gatherings in their own quarters for purposes of merry-making; that in this way Folco Portinari, a citizen of mark, had collected his neighbours at his house upon the first of May, 1274, for pastime and rejoicing: that amongst those who came to him was Alighiero Alighieri, father of Dante Alighieri, who lived within fifty yards; that it was common for children to accompany their parents at such merrymakings, and that Dante, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... Shafton interested in a girl who didn't care a row of pins about him. What a shouting joke! She must take it back to his friends at the shore, who would kid him unmercifully about it. The thing had never been known in his life before. Perhaps, too, she would amuse herself a little, just as a pastime, by opening the eyes of this village maiden to the opportunity she was missing? Why not? Just on the verge of ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... noon, which those of us that were pennyless (our scanty morning crust long since exhausted) had not the means of allaying—while the cattle, and the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us, and we had nothing to satisfy our cravings—the very beauty of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them!—How faint and languid, finally, we would return, towards nightfall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, half-reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... checked by the whirlwind of "Fairs." The Woman's Central, issued a Circular urging its Auxiliaries to continue their regular contributions, and to make their working for Fairs a pastime only. In no other way could it meet the increased demands upon its resources, for the sphere of the Sanitary Commission's usefulness had now extended to remotest States, and its vast machinery for distribution had become ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... German nation forced it into our everyday vocabulary. Michael Fenger was System. He could take a muddle of orders, a jungle of unfilled contracts, a horde of incompetent workers, and of them make a smooth-running and effective unit. Untangling snarls was his pastime. Esprit de corps was his shibboleth. Order and management his idols. And his war-cry ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... Hegel, is a philosopher, and in so far as it is the natural tendency of the human mind to connect and unify the manifold phenomena of life, the paradox of the German thinker is not without a measure of truth. But while this is only the occasional pastime of the ordinary individual, it is the conscious and habitual aim of the philosopher. In daily life people are wont to make assumptions which they do not verify, and employ figures of speech which of necessity are partial and inadequate. It is the ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... with its stories and riddles, and its title was handed down to other books of a similar nature. To children, however, the best-known volume of the series was Burton's illustrated versification of Bible stories called "The Youth's Divine Pastime." But the subjects chosen by Burton were such as belonged to a very plain-spoken age; and as the versifier was no euphuist in his relation of facts, the result was a remarkable "Pastime for Youth." The literature read by English children was, of course, the same; the little ones of both countries ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... convert a good deal of land and water into fields of ice, and skating is a very popular amusement of Christmastide. Sleighing is also very fashionable, and the large tracts of country covered with snow afford ample scope for the pastime. The jingle of the sleigh bells is heard in all the principal thoroughfares which at the season of the great winter festival present quite an animated appearance. The ears of the sleigh drivers are usually covered either by the cap or with a comforter, which in very cold weather is also wrapped ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... man who hunts panthers." Said Tartarin, with some disdain. "Do you know him?" Asked the little gentleman. "Ti!... Pardi!... To be sure I know him, we have hunted together more than twenty times." "You hunt panthers also M. Tartarin?" "Occasionally, as a pastime." Said Tartarin casually, and raising his head with a heroic gesture which went straight to the hearts of the two Cocottes, he added "They cannot be compared to lions." "One could say," Hazarded the photographer, ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... fellows, that roar deep in the quire, deeper in the tavern. They are the eight parts of speech which go to the syntaxis of service, and are distinguished by their noises much like bells, for they make not a concert but a peal. Their pastime or recreation is prayers, their exercise drinking, yet herein so religiously addicted that they serve God oftest when they are drunk. Their humanity is a leg to the residencer, their learning a chapter, for they learn it commonly ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... memories. I was chased by one in the park at Grantoun when I was a child. A fly had stung it, so it tried to kill me. This struck me as unreason run riot, and ever since then I have wished the Spaniards would go a step farther and make cow-fights the national pastime. I ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... purpose, but they employ it for dancing and card-playing, instead of girding up their loins to serious tasks. "You were willing," says the Master, in effect, "to rejoice, to dance and sing, in his light. You treated his ministry as a pastime. As long as he spoke to you about the coming Kingdom, you listened and were glad; but when he began to call you to repentance and warn you of wrath to come, you left him." He is now like an almost extinguished lamp. ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... muster-field. Here Lewis Willis, John Fitzhugh, William Bustle, Langhorn Dade, and other companions, marched and counter-marched, under the generalship of their young commander, George. Soldiering became the popular pastime of the region, in which the boys played the part of the Englishmen and Spaniards better than boys can do ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... the Duke and Dutchess smile, The court would do the same awhile, But call us after, low and vile, And that way make their sport: Nay, would you still more pastime make, And at poor we your purses shake, Whate'er you give, we'll gladly take, For that ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare

... the game itself goes without saying as being a business with him instead of a pastime, and one upon which his daily bread depended, he went into it with his whole soul, developing its beauties in a way that was impossible to the amateur who could only give to it the time that he could spare after the ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... to day Stockie produced liberal supplies of the desired article. No doubt most of it belonged to the boy whose innocent pastime was that of flying kites during recess. Paul wound this string firmly and tightly around the Chinese cracker until it had assumed considerable proportions. He argued on the principle that, if paper resisted the force of the explosion, the additional binding of string would ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... Bricks without straw were a child's pastime to the cures aunt Polly and the Springs effected without a pretense to the comforts of life in health, to say nothing of sickness. Modern conveniences are costly, and how are you to get the facilities for "pay patients" when you have no patients that pay! Prosperity had overlooked ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... mournful. 'Tis therefore, coz, that the wise do love the Comic Muse. Their own high food would kill them. You shall find great poets, rare philosophers, night after night on the broad grin before a row of yellow lights and mouthing masks. Why? Because all's dark at home. The stage is the pastime of great minds. That's how it comes that the stage is now down. An age of rampant little minds, my dear Austin! How I hate that cant of yours about an Age of Work—you, and your Mortons, and your parsons Brawnley, rank radicals all of you, base materialists! What does Diaper ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... girls who must and will have a sentimental flirtation with some young man always on hand. She, like those of her mischievous class, really meant no harm while doing a great deal of wrong. Such a girl, from mere vanity and pastime, will try to outshine a companion and even win the heart of a betrothed lover from his sweetheart, caring little for the broken vows and the ruined lives ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... tingling pleasure in it, . . I yield to it when it touches me, even as I yield to all other pleasant things,—but there are some who unwisely carry desire too far, and make of love a misery instead of a pastime. Many will die for love,—fools are they all! To die for fame, . . for glory, . . that I can understand, . . but for love! ..." he laughed, and taking up a crushed rose-petal he flipped it into ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... says St. John, "at this rate, she may keep you twenty years besieging her, and surrender by the time you are seventy, and she is old enough to be a grandmother. I do not say the pursuit of a particular woman is not as pleasant a pastime as any other kind of hunting," he added; "only, for my part, I find the game won't run long enough. They knock under too soon—that's the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... this was not to be had, he drank his own. The executioner Jean became so maddened by the sight of blood flowing beneath his lash, that guards were stationed to prevent undue prolongation of the punishment. Dippe wrote: "My chief pleasure is beheading. When I was young, stabbing was my sole pastime." ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... marry, my dear Frank?" said the dowager Lady Aveleyn, one day, when a thick fog debarred her son of his usual pastime. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... by discarding many of their preconceived ideas, and adapting their practice to agree with the peculiarities of our climate. When the public shall have learned that the culture of grapes under glass is only a plain and simple pursuit or pastime, which any one of ordinary capacity can comprehend and successfully carry out, then we shall have made ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward

... a formal skirmishing, a pastime to gain breathing-space. Like all people brought up in a tradition, Katharine was able, within ten minutes or so, to reduce any moral difficulty to its traditional shape and solve it by the traditional answers. The book of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... growing more perceptible than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, in like manner, assumed a show of life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and half deceive ourselves with the pastime of our own fancy. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Scuddamore was moved to a very acute feeling of annoyance; he condemned Madame Zephyrine unmercifully; he even blamed himself; but when he found, next day, that she had taken no means to baulk him of his favourite pastime, he continued to profit by her carelessness, and gratify ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play is often suspended while somebody or other hotly ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... indigenous to this country, and the dog-boy has none of them. He never does mischief for mischief's sake; he robs no bird's nest; he feels no impulse to trifle with the policeman. Marbles are his principal pastime. He puts the thumb of his left hand to the ground and discharges his taw from the point of his second finger, bending it back till it touches the back of the hand and then letting it off like a steel spring. Then ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... tedious, as indeed most young men are impatient when they are waiting for the accomplishment of any event they have set their hearts upon: the prince, therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would do any modest office to help ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... forms apart, In every scene had kept his heart; Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ For pastime, or to show his wit, But books and time and state affairs Had spoiled his fashionable airs; He now could praise, esteem, approve, But understood not what was love: His conduct might have made him styled A father and the nymph ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... hundred other pieces of knavery, but it must not be supposed that having begun by murder, Derues would draw back and remain contented with theft. Two fraudulent bankruptcies would have sufficed for most people; for him they were merely a harmless pastime. Here we must place two dark and obscure stories, two crimes of which he is accused, two victims whose death groans ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... admirable rule; and if the excellent Captain had never uttered another word, he might have passed for a profound philosopher. It is a rule which should shine in gilt letters on the gingerbread of youth, and the spectacle-case of age. Every man who reads with any view beyond mere pastime, knows the value of it. Every one, more or less, acts upon it. Every one regrets and suffers who neglects it. There is some trouble in it, to be sure; but in what good thing is there not? and what trouble does it save! Nay, what mischief! Half the lies that are current ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various

... Why should she refuse a kiss when she was asked? Her little mouth would grow neither larger nor smaller for it." But I stood still and wept, and looked on the ground. "Why should I weep?" she asked. Her cousin Clas had a bride of his own already, and only took a little pastime with her, and so she must cure me now with another ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... the framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a drowsy summer day. But gather all thy powers, and wreck them on the verse That thou dost weave. . . . The secret wouldst thou know To touch the heart or fire the blood at will? Let thine eyes overflow, Let thy lips quiver ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... general resemblance to Prometheus, as I said before—a resemblance which I share with the dollmakers—, that my modelling is in clay; but then there is no motion, as with him, not a sign of life; entertainment and pastime is the beginning and the end of my work. So I must look for light elsewhere; possibly the title is a sort of lucus a non lucendo, applied to me as to ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... to consume that day, Which without Pastime flies too swift away! See how they labour, as if Day and Night Were both too short to serve their loose Delight? See how their curved Bodies wreath, and skrue Such Antick Shapes as Proteus never knew: One rapps an Oath, another ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett

... indication of an awakening national taste for exercise. But there is need of caution. Most persons skate with too heavy clothes. The quick movements of the limbs in the changing evolutions of this pastime—though the practised skater is unconscious of much muscular effort—quicken the circulation enough to increase palpably the animal heat and produce a very sensible perspiration. In this exposed condition, the quiet walk home is taken without additional ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... exercise of her extraordinary faculty for grumbling and scolding seemed the sole occupation of her existence, her only pursuit, solace, and amusement; and really it would have been a great pity to have deprived the poor woman of a pastime so consolatory to herself, and which did harm to nobody: her family consisting only of an old labourer, to guard the house, take care of her horse, her cow, and her chaise and cart, and work in the garden, who was happily, for his comfort, stone deaf, and could not ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford

... awkward or in a tremble. I forget myself entirely, because I live in her. You will by this time think I am in love with her, so, before I go any farther, I will tell you that I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a tune of Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation with an imperial woman, the very yes and no of whose life is to me a banquet.... I like her and her like, because one has no sensation; what we both are is taken for granted.... ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... sped of a stone, which rushes with like fury down the hill whether it was first put in motion by the arm of a giant or the hand of a boy. He felt, therefore, in no ordinary degree, the headlong impulse of the chase, a pastime so natural to youth of all ranks, that it seems rather to be an inherent passion in our animal nature, which levels all differences of rank and education, than an acquired habit of ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... here," said the captain, pointing to Hayti. "At that time almost uninhabited, its wild shores and hidden inlets served as places of concealment for buccaneers. These pirates of the Spanish Main not alone indulged in the adventurous pastime of smuggling, but they attacked and plundered Spanish trading ships and even made forceful expeditions upon land, ravaging cities and towns. They were encouraged in their depredations by other nations unfriendly to Spain. Henry Morgan, one of these buccaneers, ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich

... only could find Adam at the stable, as she passed, and talk with him alone! Secretly, she well knew that the chief source of her dread of meeting her sister-in-law was that to her Agatha was so funny that ridiculing her had been regarded as perfectly legitimate pastime. For Agatha WAS funny; but she had no idea of it, and could no more avoid it than a bee could avoid being buzzy, so the manner in which her sisters-in-law imitated her and laughed at her, none too secretly, was far from kind. While she never guessed what was going on, she realized the antagonism ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... between the tropics, we saw various kinds of fish, in greater abundance than elsewhere. As the whale, or mighty Leviathan, whom God hath created to take his pastime in the seas; Dolphins also, and Albicores, with Bonitoes, flying-fishes, and many others. Some whales were of an exceeding greatness, which, in calm weather, would often rise and shew themselves above the water, appearing like vast rocks; and, while ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... Mena courted you. You love him truly, and in four long years he has been with you but a month or two; your mother remained with you, and you hardly observed that she was managing your own house for you, and took all the trouble of the household. You had a great pastime of your own—your thoughts of Mena, and scope for a thousand dreams in your distant love. I know it, Nefert; all that you have seen and heard and felt in these twenty months has centred in him and him alone. Nor is it wrong in itself. The rose tree ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... listened to him. Nor was it easy, scarcely possible, to deceive him. Information reached him from so many, and such contrary quarters, that with his discrimination and experience, he could almost instantly distinguish the truth. The secret history of the world was his pastime. His great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive, with the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... wicked revellings; and card-playing goes on as publickly then as on any other day; nor is this only among the young lads and damsels, who might be supposed to know no better, but men advanced in years, and grave matrons, are not ashamed of being caught at the same pastime. O tempora! O mores! ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... success. We had a spin after the hounds once or twice, and did a little shooting, but my superior officer appeared to enjoy the skating-parties most, when the frost would allow us to indulge in this pastime, and I could not help noticing how regularly we seemed to separate into two parties; the skipper invariably pairing off with Florrie, and leaving Amy ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... up on hearing this, and again I strode into the midst of them, and, eyeing them with threatening looks, they were so much confounded that they abandoned their sinful pastime, and ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... her boudoir when Beatrice arrived. Her pretty little ladyship was not looking quite so amiable as usual and there was the suggestion of a frown on her face. She had been losing a great deal at bridge lately, and that was not the kind of pastime that Rashborough approved. He was very fond of his empty, hard, selfish, little wife, but he had put his foot down on gambling, and Lady Rashborough had been forced to give her promise to discontinue it. The little woman cared nothing for anyone but herself, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... literature of the seventeenth century. It was a mirror of social conditions, or their natural outcome. The spirit of its social life penetrated its thought, colored its language, and molded its forms. We trace it in the letters and vers de societe which were the pastime of the Hotel de Rambouillet and the Samedis of Mlle. de Scudery, as well as in the romances which reflected their sentiments and pictured their manners. We trace it in the literary portraits which were the diversion of the ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... last touch in perfecting the beautiful is animation. Can we accept the saying, then these latter days, so tame in pastime and dull in sports, have scarcely anything to compare to the spectacle offered by the six contestants. Let the reader try to fancy it; let him first look down upon the arena, and see it glistening in its frame of dull-gray granite walls; let him then, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... a favorite place of his own, a small, nondescript joint called "Louie's Crab House" up the Choptank River, near the town of Denton. There, on wooden trestle tables covered with brown wrapping paper, he introduced them to a favorite Chesapeake Bay pastime ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin

... She never works without playing; and she plays even while man is working—plays so graciously and winningly that it takes the heart with joy. Who has ever looked upon an old-world wheat-field, where poppies and vetches are frolicking among the ears, and begrudged Nature her pastime? No one, we will venture, but the owner of the field, who is perhaps also too much of a philosopher to grieve over it. In the ideal world it is much the same. There, too, art having chosen a kind brings it to bear with all the other kinds which have been lurking in the unconscious soil of the mind ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... At pretty well all hours of the day, groups of nymphs may be seen washing clothes in the waters, exhibiting tableaux vivans of Nausicaa and her maidens. No vulgar washerwomen are these with corrugated hands at reeking tubs, but such as painters and poets might celebrate. Washing is with them a pastime, and an elegance: their laundry a studio of art. They go right into the water, and splash about their things like naiads sporting; and anon returning to the bank, put forth their little strength in beating out the clothes. It would be rash to say that the process ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... had at least one pastime which could be shared with none, and which bade fair to recompense him for all the childish sports he was denied. With a small block of wood and a few simple tools his skilful fingers wrought such wonders that Kala ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... children sang, danced, indulged in all sorts of fun and frolic, looked at picture-books which were explained to them, listened sometimes to fairy-tales and sometimes to instructive narratives, and played games, some of which were pure pastime and others channels of instruction. Among the little people, who enjoyed themselves right royally, there was a constant coming and going. Now one mother brought her little one, and now another fetched hers ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... of the hoary surf-line; and near them were spread vast stores of viands and sweet wine, which the cupbearers had drawn off in pitchers; afterwards they told tales one to another in turn, such as youths often tell when at the feast and the bowl they take delightful pastime, and insatiable insolence is far away. But here the son of Aeson, all helpless, was brooding over each event in his mind, like one oppressed with thought. And Idas noted him and assailed ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... the Merger, the Lutheran Companion, of the Augustana Synod, wrote: "We must hold ourselves aloof from spiritual fellowship with such churches or denominations, some of whose factors advocate and defend lodgism, dancing as a pastime for the young people under the auspices and sanction of the church, etc." (L. u. W., 1917, 522.) Disappointed on account of the withdrawal of the Augustana Synod, the Lutheran, of the General Council, commented: "The Augustana Synod has subordinated unity of faith to unity ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... passed the winter in the wilderness of northern Maine. I was passionately fond of skating, and the numerous lakes and rivers, frozen by the intense cold, offered an ample field to the lover of this pastime. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... acquired new powers of sight. I could see through the solid green plain, as if it were green glass, and the smooth surface of the earth were round as a globe, and within it I saw crowds of goblins, who were pursuing their pastime and making themselves merry with silver and gold. They were tumbling and rolling about, heads up and heads down; they pelted one another in sport with the precious metals, and with irritating malice blew gold-dust in one another's ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... heavy beast could elude him he had caught it by its shaggy coat and had bound it in such a manner that it was harmless; then, tying it across his horse's back, he brought it to the tryst-fire for pastime. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... which I have observed. These same flowers also varied much in the number of the petals, and occasionally in the number of the stamens and pistils; so that they were semi-monstrous in structure, yet they produced plenty of fruit. Mr. Thompson remarks that in the Pastime gooseberry "extra bracts are often attached to the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... to charge him with being above his business, and more anxious to be accounted a person of taste and learning than to be valued as a painter. Just as Congreve disclaimed the character of a poet, declaring he had written plays but for pastime, and begged he might be considered merely as a gentleman. There was no one to say to Ramsay, however, as Voltaire—nothing, if not literary—said to Congreve, 'If you had been merely a gentleman, I should not have come ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... kept both for profit and for pleasure. The old fashioned beekeeper with his hybrid bees, kept in immovable hives, logs or boxes, did not derive much profit from his bees. He kept them mostly for pastime. During the last fifteen years men with new methods of management and modern equipment have been rapidly superseding the picturesque old beekeepers. Modern beekeeping courses are now taught in connection with our institutions of learning, and young men full of energy ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... Washington fond of racing, and he not only subscribed liberally to most of the racing purses, but ran horses at them, attending in person, and betting moderately on the results. So, too, he was fond of riding to the hounds, and when at Mount Vernon it was a favorite pastime. From his diary ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... support. Some went so far as to wear a tiny bit of ribbon by way of asserting allegiance to this or that crew, which sported the same color in cap, uniform, or flag. This, strange to say, did not act in the least as "a damper" on the pastime; even the fact that girls became popular as coxswains did not take the life out of it; all of which, as Dorry said, served to show the great hardihood and endurance ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... thy Muse at once improved and marr'd Our sport in plays, by rend'ring it too hard! So when a sort of lusty shepherds throw The bar by turns, and none the rest outgo 20 So far, but that the best are measuring casts, Their emulation and their pastime lasts; But if some brawny yeoman of the guard Step in, and toss the axletree a yard, Or more, beyond the furthest mark, the rest Despairing stand; their ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... making towards from the beginning of its precipitate flight, it had dived out of sight. The excited and breathless runner was in a few moments close enough to see the disappointed hawk hovering and floating in the air as if waiting for the reappearance of its prey, upon which grim pastime it was so intent that by creeping along softly she was enabled to get very near the edge of the pool and witness the conclusion of the episode. Whenever the duck was under the necessity of showing its head to breathe, ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... positions. All Ken's life he had been accustomed to throwing. At his home he had been the only boy who could throw a stone across the river; the only one who could get a ball over the high-school tower. A favorite pastime had always been the throwing of small apples, or walnuts, or stones, and he had acquired an accuracy that made it futile for his boy comrades to compete with him. Curving a ball had come natural to him, and he would have pitched all his high-school games ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... polo has become a favourite pastime throughout Australia, especially in many country districts, and after the War will doubtless become one of its national games. At the close of the hunting season I had turned out Buckland and Satan for a long spell, and picked up four or five ponies. I ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... to the reader. This critical work—a combination of rapid reading and equally rapid written estimate of new publications—would have been deadly, save for a love of books, so deep and enduring that it has turned drudgery into pastime and an enthusiasm for discovering good things in every new book which no amount of literary trash was ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... insisted, "is a caddy's occupation. Both the caddies are now busy. Let us sit down here. These sand hummocks are delightful. It is perfectly sheltered, and the sun is in our faces. Golf is an overrated pastime. Let us sit and watch that little streak of blue find its way up between the ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... fine pastime to step out from the surge of Life for a minute and let it ebb and flow around one in the lobby of the St. Francis. Such a pageant of individual stories. An exquisitely dressed young girl meets another there, and soon two young chaps appear and they all begin talking silly nothings, and laughing ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... interposition of some Deus ex machina. But who that God was they could not tell: he was hidden in the womb of Fate. As Cadiz accepted its destiny with equanimity, I accommodated myself to the situation, and did as the natives did. I helped to fly kites from the flat housetops—a favourite pastime of mature manhood here; I opened mild flirtations with the damsels in cigar-shops, and discovered that they were not slow to meet advances; I expended hours every day cheapening a treatise on the mystery of bull-fighting, with accompanying engravings, in vain—its price ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... first met Mary Hollister at the house of his friend Pinney, whose wife was her sister. She had soft gray eyes, a pretty color in her cheeks, rosy lips, and a charming figure. In the course of the evening somebody suggested mind-reading as a pastime, and Lansing, who had some powers, or supposed powers, in that direction, although he laughed at them himself, experimented in turn with the ladies. He failed with nearly every subject until it came Mary Hollister's turn. As she placed her soft ...
— At Pinney's Ranch - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... up, we found all the inhabitants and guests assembled in the yard witnessing a cock-fight, their eager countenances and excited exclamations showing the interest they took in the brutal pastime. The birds, armed with steel spurs, flew at each other and fought desperately. When one was killed or hopelessly wounded, the owner tore his hair and swore fearfully at his misfortune—by which, probably, he had lost ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston

... a sudden, a shot or two, followed by loud voices and laughter reminded him he had promised, at that hour, and in that sequestered place, to decide a bet respecting pistol-shooting, to which the titular Lord Etherington, Jekyl, and Captain MacTurk, to whom such a pastime was peculiarly congenial, were parties as well as himself. The prospect this recollection afforded him, of vengeance on the man whom he regarded as the author of his sister's wrongs, was, in the present state of his mind, too tempting to be relinquished; and, setting spurs ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... flew at Hal, and would have soundly thrashed him, "for the thrick he had put upon him," had not Jerry interfered to prevent. This adventure, however, completely cured Patsey of boasting; for not once again during the entire trip did he indulge in what had heretofore been a favorite pastime. Nor was Patsey the only one who learned a lesson while at the Pimo villages. Master Hal, who was determined to try his hand at trading with the natives, found it anything but a profitable business; for he ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... to field sports, and as the "brawn of the tusked swine" was the first Christmas dish, it was provided by the pleasant preliminary pastime of hunting the wild boar; and the incidents of the chase afforded interesting table talk when the boar's head was brought in ceremoniously to ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... would probably promote marriage of able and ambitious young people. Walter Gallichan complains that "we do not even recognize love as a finer passion than money greed. It is a kind of luxury, or pleasant pastime, for the sentimentally minded. Love is so undervalued as a source of happiness, a means of grace, and a completion of being, that many men would sooner work to keep a motor ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... frolics he of course well knew, Rare pastime for the ragamuffin crew! Who welcome with the crowing of a cock, This hero of the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... delightful Silas Foster) by rinsing your fingers and the front part of your face in a little tin pan of water at the doorstep, and teasing your hair with a wooden pocket-comb before a seven-by-nine-inch looking-glass. Your only pastime will be to smoke some very vile tobacco in the black stump ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... there, furnished in regal splendour, are still kept just as she arranged them. The Earl of Shrewsbury was her custodian, and his wife, the countess, often sat and sewed with the unfortunate queen, both making pastime ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... the commonest misconceptions about angling is that it is just the pastime for an idle man. "The lazy young vagabond cares for nothing but fishing!" exclaims the despairing mother to her sympathetic neighbour of the next cottage listening to the family troubles. Even those who ought to know better lightly esteem the sport, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... predecessors had been before, received all his commissions and warrants by the name of master of the king's pastimes. Which gentleman so well supplied his office, both in show of sundry sights and devices of rare inventions, and in act of divers interludes and matters of pastime played by persons, as not only satisfied the common sort, but also were very well liked and allowed by the council, and other of skill in the like pastimes; but best of all by the young king himself, as appeared by his ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... usually supposed to be sinking, but he'd rallied again by the time the day-sister arrived. "Still here," he'd smile in a triumphant kind of whisper, as though bluffing death was a pastime. ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... lightly into the stake, the contestants shot at it from a distance as great as the eyesight permitted. To drive the nail hard and fast into the wood at one hundred yards was a feat seldom accomplished. By many hunters it was deemed more difficult than "snuffing the candle," another border pastime, which consisted of placing in the dark at any distance a lighted candle, and then putting out the flame with a single rifle ball. Many settlers, particularly those who handled the plow more than the rifle, sighted from a rest, and placed a piece of moss under the ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... Byron remained several days, and saw for the first time the Turkish pastime of the Djerid, a species of tournament to which he more than once alludes. I ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... Memoirs and a fifth canto of Don Juan were the pastime of the autumn, and in January 1821 Byron began to work on his second "historical drama," Sardanapalus. But politics intervened, and little progress was made. He had been elected capo of the "Americani," a branch of the Carbonari, and his time was ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... front of the hoary surf-line; and near them were spread vast stores of viands and sweet wine, which the cupbearers had drawn off in pitchers; afterwards they told tales one to another in turn, such as youths often tell when at the feast and the bowl they take delightful pastime, and insatiable insolence is far away. But here the son of Aeson, all helpless, was brooding over each event in his mind, like one oppressed with thought. And Idas noted him and assailed him ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... March the rein-deer made their appearance again, and every countenance brightened up at the thoughts of the approaching pastime. I fell on a plan, however, that divested the sport of much of its attractions, although calculated to ensure greater success. A favourable position being selected, a certain extent of ground was fenced in so as to form a "pound" of nearly a circular shape, a gap being left in ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... spent a hundred years in examining into the real state of mankind, and another century in devising and putting in execution remedies for his ills, until our maturer thought has time to perfect his cure, we shall then have earned a little playtime,—a century of pastime, in which we will search out whatever joy can be had by thoughtful people, and that childlike sportiveness which comes out of growing wisdom, and enjoyment of every kind. We will gather about us everything beautiful and stately, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... be annihilated by the big brother if I attempted any but the 'sincerest' admiration and respect. Have no fears on that score, but tell us what is to follow this superb dinner. An apple bee, spinning match, husking party, or primitive pastime of some sort, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... King was devoted to hunting, and often indulged in his favourite pastime, attended by the noblest youths in ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... drank singularly little; it was not their "form" ever to indulge in that way; and the Chief, as dashing a sabreur as ever crossed a saddle, though lenient to looseness in all other matters, and very young for his command, would have been down like steel on "the boys," had any of them taken to the pastime of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... much about it, for I went to sleep again, and when I woke the overseer was gone, and Mr. Parker was here in his place. I was chained like a wild beast under the garret stairs, and Miss Grundy's broad, stiff back was hung there for a door. Nobody asks me to work now, but occasionally, just for pastime, I go into Mrs. Parker's room and read to her, and tell her about ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... our fine ladies amusing themselves with giving parties, at which they, and their guests, take chloroform as a pastime? Lady Castlereagh set the example, and was describing to me her sensations under the process. I told her how imprudent and wrong I thought such experiments, and mentioned to her the lecture Brand gave upon the subject, in which the poor little guinea-pig, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... water in law; nevertheless, it is sufficient for me. I cannot offhand state the cost; but when the sketch and estimate are made, you shall see them; and if the cost exceeds your views, there will be no harm done; on the contrary, I shall have had the pleasure of scheming a little for you by way of pastime. ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... "Heyday! what's here? what a devil's the meaning of all these trangrams and gimcracks, gentlemen? What in the name of wonder, are you going about, jumping over my master's hedges, and running your lines cross his grounds? If you are at any field pastime, you might have asked leave: my master is a civil well-bred ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... know," responded her brother, who was beginning to feel that all this turtle business was a rather youthful pastime for a member of ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... a brilliant gifted mind could concentrate itself upon any object with equal fertility and power, but she had seen too much of the Sophisticates of late, and studied Clavering in too many of his moods to cherish the illusion any longer. Playwrighting seemed to her a contemptible pastime compared with the hideous facts of Life as exemplified in Europe, and she had restrained herself from an angry outburst more than once. But she was too philosophical, possibly too fatalistic, not to have dismissed this attitude ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... representing the town of Troy; they are all twisted, broken, and charred, bearing witness to the fierceness of the flames in which the town perished. These discoveries reveal to us the daily life of the people of Troy. Judging from the number of boars' tusks found, hunting must have been a favorite pastime with them. The bones of oxen, sheep, and goats, of smaller species than those of the present day, have also been found. Horses and dogs were rare, and cats unknown. The domestic poultry of the present day was also ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... expressed the desires of her mind and heart. If she was cautious in her sympathies she was excessively so in the sphere of thought and knowledge. She read books from the library in the old house, taking from the shelves at first without choice or system as a pastime whatever came into her hands; then she began to experience curiosity, and finally a definite desire for knowledge. She was keen-sighted enough to understand how aimless and unfruitful it was to wander among these other minds without any guiding ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... braceleted arms, and a strong cry involuntarily broke from him—so poignant, so bitter, so shrill, that it sounded high above the bleating flute, the guttural drone of the drum, the vibratory throb of the dancing feet, and brought the pastime to a sudden close. In another moment the "beloved square" was filled with crowds of the Cherokees and their huddling shadows, all a medley in the last red suffusions of the sinking sun. To the tumult of eager, anxious, polite questions, Tscholens faltered ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... of the lords returned to the city, and finding Launfal within his hostel, entreated him to take his pastime with them in that fair meadow. The Queen looked out from a window in her tower, she and three ladies of her fellowship. They saw the lords at their pleasure, and Launfal also, whom well they knew. So the Queen chose of her Court thirty damsels—the sweetest of face and ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France

... what remained on Wednesday, and the seventy shillings was put down without a murmur. How much farther the bidding would have gone will never be known, for a vicious little bird must needs tell the Colonel all about it. That gentleman happened to be engaged in his favourite (proclaiming) pastime; he sat ruminating on the high price of coal, and evolving schemes to bring wood back to its proper level. The latter article was what the poorer classes used as fuel. The Colonel had no scruples about dotting down a reasonable figure for ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... Chieftains world-famed! I hear the ancient blood That leaps against your hearts! What? Warriors ye! Danger your birthright, and your pastime death! Behold your foes! They stand before you plain: Ill passions, base ambitions, falsehood, hate: Wage war on these! A King is in your host! His hands no roses plucked but on the Cross: He came not hand of man in woman's tasks To mesh. In woman's hand, in childhood's hand, ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... believe all other rational Knowledge to be so; let us see how reasonably these same Men who willingly allow not to Ladies any employment of their Thoughts worthy of them as rational Creatures, do yet complain, that either Play is their daily and expensive pastime; or that they love not to be at home taking care of their Children, as did heretofore Ladies who were honour'd for their Vertue; but that an eternal round of idle Visits, the Park, Court, Play-houses and Musick Meetings, with all the costly Preparations to being ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... defeat of her hopes. If she only could find Adam at the stable, as she passed, and talk with him alone! Secretly, she well knew that the chief source of her dread of meeting her sister-in-law was that to her Agatha was so funny that ridiculing her had been regarded as perfectly legitimate pastime. For Agatha WAS funny; but she had no idea of it, and could no more avoid it than a bee could avoid being buzzy, so the manner in which her sisters-in-law imitated her and laughed at her, none too secretly, was far from kind. While she never guessed what was going on, she realized ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... and chance even here, young girls, for the beauty of kindness and generous thought. Even here, one may give a joy, may soothe a neglect, may make some heart conscious for a moment of the great warmth of a human welcome; and, though it be but to a pastime, I think it comes into the benison of the Master's words when, even for this, some spirit gets a feeling like them,—"I was a stranger, and ye ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... prove it on every other girl, and again on Martin one at a time, and he on them again. And in this delicious pastime the afternoon wore by, and evening fell, and they ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... the reading habit. Fourth—The "Oh, just-anything-good-you-know" reader. Her name is legion. She never knows what she has read. Yet the social student who failed to take into account the desultory, pastime reader, would miss a great factor in the spread of ideas. Fifth—The person who does not read. He is commoner than most suppose. He is often young, more often boy than girl, oftener young man than young woman. He commits eternally what Mr Putnam aptly calls the great ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... two miles off, between which and his residence this railway is intended to pass. His lordship is fond of amusing himself there in hunting down little animals called hares, and sometimes treats himself to a stag hunt. Not the slightest interference is contemplated with his lordship's pastime, or rather pursuit, for such it is, occupying nearly his whole time, and exercising all the ability of which he is possessed; but still he objects to the intrusion. The bridge that is to be constructed by the Company ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... delightful pastime, but it is also far more than this; it is of considerable scientific importance, for it admits of the living birds being studied in a way that would be quite impossible otherwise. There are hundreds of species of birds, from all parts of the world, the habits of which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... washing, ironing, etc., and the men cut fire wood, or worked in the garden, and special truck crops. Christmas? Christmas was a holiday, but the fourth of July meant very little to the slave people. Dances? There was lots of dancing. It was the pastime of the slave race. The children played shimmy and other games, imitating the white children, sometimes ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... of information, turned to join her traveling companions, Gladys and Hinpoha and Migwan, up in the other end of the car. She stood for a moment at the water cooler, looking down the car at the people facing her and indulging in her favorite pastime of trying to read their faces. The car was crowded with all kinds of people, from the stately, judicial-looking man who sat in front of the Winnebagos to a negro couple on their honeymoon. There was a plentiful sprinkling of soldiers throughout ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... the main outlines of this most amusing pastime. Many other agreeable features may, of course, be readily introduced by persons ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... Lewis Willis, John Fitzhugh, William Bustle, Langhorn Dade, and other companions, marched and counter-marched, under the generalship of their young commander, George. Soldiering became the popular pastime of the region, in which the boys played the part of the Englishmen and Spaniards better than boys ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... not ...? Again a hiatus. This time something snapped in his head. He sank back in his chair. Buddha! Was there ever a Buddha? And if there was not, was there ever such a personality as Christ's? Scholar that he was he knew that myth-building was a pastime for the Asiatic imagination, great, impure, mysterious Asia—Asia the mother of all religions, the cradle of the human race. To deny the objective existence of Christ would set at rest all his doubts, one overwhelming ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... them and are generally jolly under all circumstances, and so it was with me. One day, while longing for something to do, I discovered that the crew had been ordered to paint the ship outside; as a pastime I put on old clothes and joined the painting party. Planks were hung round the ship by ropes being tied to each end of the plank; on these the men stood to do their work. We had not been employed ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... on Sir Charles in a somewhat disappointed tone, "I am one who views with regret the decadence of a great national pastime." ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... some evasive reply and he did not urge her further, to her relief; for she did not care particularly about riding, whereas it had been more than a pastime—indeed almost a passion—with ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... splendid. There is an immense store of armour of all sorts, pennons, lances, trappings, and all the details of the wars of the middle ages. The display in Scotland will, certainly, be a gorgeous pageant, and a most extraordinary, if not most rational, piece of pastime." ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown: You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired: The daughter of a hundred Earls, You are not one to ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... have their evils, it is true; but if you cannot feel them all at once, you can at least see where they lie; on the other hand, society is insidious in this respect; as in offering you what appears to be the pastime of pleasing social intercourse, it works great and often irreparable mischief. The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... said to have been invented by His Majesty the Emperor Yao who lived about two thousand three hundred and fifty years before Christ, so that granting an error of a couple of thousand years or so, it is still a very ancient pastime. Dominoes are known, but not much patronised; cards, on the other hand, are very common, the favourite games being those in which almost everything is left to chance. As to open-air amusements, youths of the ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... Few and simple were the recreative interludes: a reunion of brother-artists or fellow-countrymen and their families,—an occasional journey, almost invariably with a professional intent,—a summer holiday or a winter festival; but, methodical in pastime as in work, his family and his books were his cherished resources. Often so weary at night that he returned home only to recline on a couch, caress his children, or refresh his mind with some agreeable volume provided by his vigilant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... king goes on a hunting expedition. Hunting is a favourite pastime with kings. It promotes health and courage and gives immense pleasure to all who engage in it. When the king enters a thick forest, he finds the great sage Viswamitra deeply engaged in religious austerities with the view of acquiring the three unattainable ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... consequence of this was the custom, which so largely prevailed, of young men, absolutely unknown to the parents, establishing correspondence or meetings with the objects of their adoration by means of a complacent doncella with an open palm, or the pastime known as pelando el pavo (literally, "plucking the turkey"), which consisted of serenades of love songs, amorous dialogues, or the passage of notes through the reja—the iron gratings which protect the lower windows of Spanish houses from the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... meaningless or untrue as soon as they became inconvenient for a political party to remember. English supporters of Home Rule, when reminded of such utterances, dismissed with a shrug the "unedifying pastime of unearthing buried speeches"; and showed equal determination to see nothing in speeches delivered by Nationalist leaders in America inconsistent with the purely constitutional ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... thing to remember is that art is not a mere pastime, but a great world force operating to lift mortals out of mortality. It is the striving of the ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger

... vttermost walles of his Islandish Monarchie, against all forreine encombrance possible. And in that fortification furthering and assuring to trust best his owne ouersight and iudgement, in yerely viewing the same in euery quarter thereof, and that as it were for his pastime Imperiall, also in Sommer time, to the ende that afterward in all securitie, hee might in Winter time (vacare) be at conuenient leisure on land, chiefly to set foorth God's due honour and secondly to vnderstand and diligently to listen to the causes and complaints ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... keep the books and Dorothy Hill-and-Dale, if ever your name gets on the books it shall be promptly eliminated, elucidated, expurgated—there now! Don't you think I should be in the grad. class? I was looking up words with 'ate' in—my favorite pastime,—and I came across ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... Revolutionary War yet burns so strongly that they would not, when at work on the old family farm in, let us say, Vermont, be very seriously surprised on some fine morning to see a party of red-coated Hessians come round the angle of the hill. There are those living whose chief pastime as boys was to fight imaginary battles with the loathed British in and out among the old farm-buildings—buildings which yet bear upon them, perhaps, the marks of real British bullets fired in the real war.[57:1] ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... 'Tis therefore, coz, that the wise do love the Comic Muse. Their own high food would kill them. You shall find great poets, rare philosophers, night after night on the broad grin before a row of yellow lights and mouthing masks. Why? Because all's dark at home. The stage is the pastime of great minds. That's how it comes that the stage is now down. An age of rampant little minds, my dear Austin! How I hate that cant of yours about an Age of Work—you, and your Mortons, and your parsons Brawnley, rank radicals all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... said modestly. "But I don't chance to regard this as a suitable occasion for displaying my skill. Uninteresting for you, of course, but then you are fond of running away when there is no one after you. It's been your favourite pastime for almost as long as I ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... multitude instruction. He got a white boy to teach him his alphabet and how to spell to three syllables. By this time he was large enough to wait in a law office at Abbeville Court House, S. C. The young lawyers took great pleasure in giving him instruction in their leisure moments for pastime. He gained a respectable knowledge of history, arithmetic, geography, astronomy and some other branches, but would not study grammar, as he thought he could talk well enough ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... Dean, now—but, oh no, certainly not the Head. What I refer to is the pursuit and collection of decapitated human heads, belonging generally to personal enemies of the collector; it is a sport common in Borneo, and among other interesting, if primitive, nationalities. This pastime is, I understand, a favourite one with some students of the college. It is practised, I need hardly say, under the very strictest supervision; there must be a certificate signed by the British Resident, and a special written ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... dreadful pastime, Angel-queen, When swooping headlong from the Armament Thou spreadest fear along the village green, Fear of the day when ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... then, when their sap begins to flow, it siphons it into an insatiable throat, stopping in its orgie only long enough to snap at the insects that have been attracted to the wounded tree by the streams of its heart-blood now trickling down its sides. Another favorite pastime is to strip the bark off a tree, then peck at the soft wood underneath — almost as fatal a habit. It drills holes in maples in early spring for sap only. If it drills holes in fruit trees it is for the cambium layer, a soft, pulpy, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... confinement still, our performances in the Bull Pen undoubtedly would have brought us to it. At last the doctor hit upon the expedient of transferring me to a room more remote from my inspiring, and, I may say, conspiring, companion. Talking to each other ceased to be the easy pastime it had been; so we gradually lapsed into a comparative silence which must have proved a boon to our ward-mates. The megaphonic Bull Pen, however, continued with irregularity, but annoying certainty to furnish ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... It is simply a pastime, so far as I am concerned. I endeavor to depict the pleasure that Henriette's son, if he still lives, would have in telling you that he was the guilty party, and that he did it because his mother was unhappy, as ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... remittances regularly sent from India by his son, Joseph, for the support of his aged parents; and also that portion of Amelia's slender income which she gave each month to her father. Of this dangerous pastime of her father's Amelia was kept in ignorance, until the day came when he was obliged to confess that he was penniless. At once Amelia handed over to him what little money she had retained for her own and Georgie's ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... indeed most young men are impatient when they are waiting for the accomplishment of any event they have set their hearts upon: the prince, therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... years on the road had taught Emma McChesney to extract a maximum of enjoyment out of a minimum of material. Emma McChesney's favorite occupation was selling T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats, and her favorite pastime was studying men and women. The ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... deal of healthy exercise and enjoyment, and provided that one is keen and wishes to improve, and possesses what is known as a good games' eye, there is no reason why advance should not be rapid. It is also a pastime in which women can combine with and compete against men without in any way spoiling the game; and mixed doubles, to which I refer, are perhaps the most popular department with the average spectator. I think I am not wrong in saying that there is no other game at the present time in which this ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers

... mocking comparisons, and finds his pastime in flouting at Caesar as having managed by a sham heroism to ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... Dulwich, but Paul became adept in this pastime, thanks to games on the lawn attached to our house. In the whole range of athletics nothing gave him so much pleasure and satisfaction as Rugby football. Too massive in build to be a swift runner, and unable owing to his defective vision to give or take "passes" with quick precision, he was not ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... matter of temperament, and instead of writing briefs, Calvin began translating Luther's Bible into French. He was requested to relinquish this pastime long enough to draw up a legal opinion concerning the divorce of our old friend Henry ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... 1824 to a band of Hindustani fanatics, whose leader was Saiyyid Ahmad Shah of Bareilly. Their headquarters, first at Sitana and afterwards at Malka, became Caves of Adullam for political refugees and escaped criminals, and their favourite pastime was the kidnapping of Hindu shopkeepers. In 1863 a strong punitive expedition under Sir Neville Chamberlain suffered heavy losses before it succeeded in occupying the Ambela Pass. The door being forced the Yusafzais ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... My favourite pastime is to listen to others speaking. I never seem able to think of any topics worthy of conversation myself, but I am almost inclined to say that my ability to listen amounts to an art. I can remain silent with an air of absorbing ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... boys, was that of imitating the noise of every bird and beast in the woods. This faculty was not merely a pastime, but a very necessary part of education, on account of its utility in certain circumstances. The imitations of the gobbling, and other sounds of wild turkeys, often brought those keen-eyed, and ever-watchful ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... and a portion of the city wall. It was at Oxford that he first developed that passion for self-discipline which afterwards distinguished him. He took up rowing; and, though thoroughly unsuited by nature to this pastime, secured himself a place in his College 'torpid.' At the end of a race he was usually supported from his stretcher in a state of extreme extenuation, due to having pulled the last quarter of the course entirely with his spirit. The same craving ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the argument of this tragedy, which Giles Headley pronounced to be very dreary pastime, indeed he was amusing himself with an exchange of comfits with a youth who sat next him all the time—for he had found Stephen utterly deaf to aught but the tragedy, following every gesture with eager eyes, lips quivering, and eyes filling at the strains of the love songs, though they ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... he said, "is not of so much use in your case as you represent. Salamanders do not want their amours to be kept secret, they are not ashamed of them. One of those nymphs who loves me does not know of a sweeter pastime than to engrave my initials enlaced with hers on the bark of trees, as you can see for yourself by examining the stems of five or six Scotch firs, the exquisite tops of which you can see from yonder windows. But have you not, my son, learned that that ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... walrus-tooth; in his left hand he bore two spears tipped with glittering bronze. Fergus and Concobar watched him as he strode over the grass; Concobar noted his beauty and grace, but Fergus noted his great strength. Soon the boys, being divided into two equal bands, began their pastime and contended, eagerly urging the ball to and fro. The noise of the stricken ball and the clash of the hurles shod with bronze, the cries of the captains, and the shouting of the ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... actually become fashionable among the gentler sex we regard as the strongest indication of an awakening national taste for exercise. But there is need of caution. Most persons skate with too heavy clothes. The quick movements of the limbs in the changing evolutions of this pastime—though the practised skater is unconscious of much muscular effort—quicken the circulation enough to increase palpably the animal heat and produce a very sensible perspiration. In this exposed condition, the quiet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... with a new pastime planned by Tom, for each day. And most of these pleasures included the other girls, as well as Polly. So the enjoyment was general, and Polly could not say that Tom tried to get her company for himself, by leaving her friends ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... introduction of the leaping-head made hunting possible for women, more attention was paid to the breaking and training of hacks than at present, on account of the great demand for "complete ladies' horses." The advent of the bicycle for ladies has almost abolished hacking as a pastime and means of exercise, and hence the difficulty in finding a well-broken animal for this work. The best substitute is, I think, a good polo pony, because the requirements of that game demand that the animal should be temperate, handy, and capable of being ridden with a slack rein. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... themselves so effectually as by attempting to call up the devil of lust. Allusions that were evidently their common-place table talk, and that approached as nearly as they durst venture to obscenity, were their pastime. With these they tickled their fancy till it gurgled in their throats, applied to Miss Wilmot to give it a higher gusto, and, while they hypocritically avoided words which the ear could not endure, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... of man who, as a boy, was accustomed to thoroughly enjoy the pastime of pulling wings from living flies and drowning a ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... other resemblances, there are moments when, to a quiet contemplator, it suggests the image of one of those rotatory entertainments commonly seen in fairs, and known by the name of "whirligigs or roundabouts," in which each participator of the pastime, seated on his hobby, is always apparently in the act of pursuing some one before him, while he is pursued by some one behind. Man, and woman too, are naturally animals of chase; the greatest still finds something to follow, and there is no one too humble not to be an object of prey to another. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... church, although it be with no other prospect but that of being well entertained, wherein if they happen to fail, they return wholly disappointed. Hence it is become an impertinent vein among people of all sorts to hunt after what they call a good sermon, as if it were a matter of pastime and diversion. Our business, alas! is quite another thing; either to learn, or at least be reminded of, our duty; to apply the doctrines delivered, compare the rules we hear with our lives and actions, and find wherein we have transgressed. These are the dispositions men should bring into the ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift

... to him. I went over and over again the same succession of topics, in the intervals of standing still. How the day had been warm, and the evening kept up its character; the hotels were full now; the cadets well off to have so many ladies; dancing a pleasant pastime, and West Point a nice place. I got so accustomed to the remarks I might expect, that my mouth was ready with an assenting "yes" before the speaker began. But the talking was a small part of the business, after all; and the evening went merrily for me, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... in the dreary row was the turbulent home of Mr. Cassidy, the gentleman who commanded so much of Lawyer Ed's attention. Mrs. Cassidy was on the front veranda washing. It was a pastime she seldom indulged in, for there was never much water in the old leaky rain barrel at the corner of the house. For while Willow Lane had water, water everywhere, the inhabitants had not any drop in which to wash themselves. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... in drawing her out—it was a pastime that took the lead at dinner-parties, to an extent which her hostess often thought preposterous—and she responded with naivete and vigour, perfectly aware that she was scoring all along the line. Upon many charming people she made the impression that she was a type of the most ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... voyages, as soon as they got into the N.E. trade winds the crew settled down to a daily routine during the first hour or two of their watch below in the daytime, of making, mending and washing their clothes. Some never got beyond this, or making mats, but there were men who varied their pastime by carving models of vessels, making wood sails or rigging, and fitting them out in every detail. This work was done with great skill and neatness. Those that could read and were fond of it gave a share of their time to that. There were others who worked hard at learning navigation, ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... becomes an instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of Nature. This view of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... a delightful pastime and made Mrs. Bowman feel that she was twenty and beginning life again. She toyed with the pocket-book and complimented Mr. Tucker on his skill ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... against each other, and to excite the mutual jealousy of all his most trusted adherents, whether Protestant or Catholic. The most good-humoured, the least vindictive, the most ungrateful, the falsest of mankind, he made it his policy, as well as his pastime, to repeat, with any amount of embroidery that his most florid fancy could devise, every idle story or calumny that could possibly create bitter feeling and make mischief among those who surrounded him. Being aware ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... came stalkin' in to where me an' Locals was playin' guess. Guess ain't never apt to be a popular pastime 'cause it has to be played without any kind o' cheatin' whatever. The one who is it, guesses what the other one is thinkin' of, an' if he guesses before he falls asleep, he wins. Well, Hammy, he breaks in on our game just ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... dark and lofty, That near her ascend, If she in her pastime Across thee shall wend, Let every lone pathway In wild flowers be drest, To welcome the footsteps Of her ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... give thee chains and carcanets Of primroses and violets. A bag and bottle thou shalt have, That richly wrought, and this as brave; So that as either shall express The wearer's no mean shepherdess. At shearing-times, and yearly wakes, When Themilis his pastime makes, There thou shalt be; and be the wit, Nay more, the feast, and grace of it. On holydays, when virgins meet To dance the heys with nimble feet, Thou shalt come forth, and then appear The Queen of Roses for ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... the lance was a favorite pastime among the young Arabians, and prepared them for the chase or war."—Notes to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... Holland House, Lord John's leanings towards literature, and friendship with other literary men had been marked. As in the case of other Prime Ministers of the Queen's reign, and notably of Derby, Beaconsfield, and Mr. Gladstone, literature was his pastime, if politics was his pursuit, for his interests were always wider than the question of the hour. He was the friend of Sir James Mackintosh and of Sydney Smith, who playfully termed him 'Lord John Reformer,' of Moore and Rogers, Jeffrey and Macaulay, Dickens and Thackeray, Tyndall and Sir Richard ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... I was counting on getting a few Huns right after breakfast. Well, what's your think about, if you really were indulging in that expensive pastime?" ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... Needle-e'e, Boys," played also to some extent in the form of "London Bridge," and much resembling "Barley Break," a pastime of highborn lords and ladies in the time of Sir Philip Sydney, who describes it in his Arcadia. The boys first choose sides. The two chosen leaders join both hands, and raising them high enough to let the others pass ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... For as the warrior lunged from the shoulder, one of the four guards jerked the neck chain violently from behind, and the prisoner was flung, half throttled, upon his back. Three times, and each time to a roar of delight, this pastime was repeated, and then a soldier appeared in the gateway of ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... with himself. This he accomplished by serving the ball high up in the air and then jumping the net, so as to take it on the other side, following up his return by another leap over the net, and so on till either he or the ball came to grief. On an ordinary day the exertion involved in this pastime would be quite enough for any ordinary individual, but on a day like the present, with the thermometer at ninety in the shade, it was a trifle too much ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... along kicking a stone before him in a disconsolate, disgruntled way. He followed it wherever it went, ever and again kicking it back onto the sidewalk; the simple pastime seemed to afford him infinite relief. And meanwhile, glowing visions arose in his mind, such visions as no one but a poet or a lonely boy on a Saturday morning in the ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... and the exile sleeps, And well his tongue the solemn secret keeps Of the great peace he found afar, until, Death's writ of extradition to fulfill, They brought him, helpless, from that friendly zone To be a show and pastime in his own— A final opportunity to those Who fling with equal aim the stone and rose; That at the living till his soul is freed, This at the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... favourite pastime with the gentlemen who attended Mr. Harmony's lectures, to gradually raise up the lecture-table by a concerted action, and when Mr. Harmony's book had nearly reached to the level of his nose, to then suddenly drop the table to its original ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... to kill, to wench, to fight, Our pastime is, and daily sport; The gibbet claims us morn and night, So let's be jolly, time ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... beneath the castle walls. On the surface of the lake were little boats, painted and gilt, so pretty and dainty that the princess challenged the ambassadors to a voyage. None hesitated to do so, for they thought it was all a gay pastime, and a merry prelude to the marriage festivities. But no sooner had they embarked than boats, fountains, and lake vanished, and the ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... face away from the window. Timothy was getting his "passle o' chips." Gay had spied him, and toddling over to his side, holding her dress above the prettiest little pair of feet that ever trod clover, had sat down on him (a favorite pastime of hers), and after jolting her fat little person up and down on his patient head, rolled herself over and gave him a series of bear-hugs. Timothy looked pale and languid, Samantha thought, and though Gay waited for a frolic ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... who wrote in the reign of Henry VII., is the author of "The Pastime of Pleasure," an allegorical poem in the same taste as the "Romance of the Rose." This allegorical school of poetry, so widely spread through the Middle Ages, reappears in the Elizabethan age, where the same turn of thought is seen in the immortal ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... books—one trained to get at the best in all literary works and reveal it to the reader. This critical work—a combination of rapid reading and equally rapid written estimate of new publications—would have been deadly, save for a love of books, so deep and enduring that it has turned drudgery into pastime and an enthusiasm for discovering good things in every new book which no amount of literary trash ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... volume is presented simply as a story to be read for pastime, neither morality nor symbolism is hereinafter educed, and no "parallels" and "authorities" are quoted. Even the gaps are left unbridged by guesswork: whereas the historic and mythological problems perhaps involved are ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... the earliest ages of the world, hunting was a necessary labour of self-defence, or the first law of nature, rather than a pastime; while hawking could never have been adopted from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... now boldly contemne all seuere bookes that founde to honestie and godlines. In our forefathers tyme, whan Papistrie, as a standyng poole, couered and ouerflowed all England, fewe bookes were read in our tong, sauyng certaine bookes of Cheualrie, as they sayd, for pastime and pleasure, which, as some say, were made in Monasteries, by idle Monkes, or wanton ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... were numerous on the way from the Place d'Espagne to the Palais Castagna, which rears its sombre mass on the margin of the Tiber, at the extremity of the Via Giulia, like a pendant of the Palais Sacchetti, the masterwork of Sangallo. Dorsenne did not indulge in his usual pastime of examining the souvenirs along the streets which met his eye, and yet he passed in the twenty minutes which it took him to reach his rendezvous a number of buildings teeming with centuries of historical reminiscences. There was first of all the vast Palais Borghese—the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... first come," said she, "you laugh at us. Then when you have forgotten the impression of Paris brilliancy, and see us in our own sphere, you pay court to us, if only as a pastime. And you, who are famous for your past passions, will be the object of attentions which will flatter you. Then take care!" cried Dinah, with a coquettish gesture, raising herself above provincial absurdities and Lousteau's ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... night side of nature, I was soon promoted to the post of night nurse, with every facility for indulging in my favorite pastime of "owling." My colleague, a black-eyed widow, relieved me at dawn, we two taking care of the ward between us, like regular nurses, turn and turn about. I usually found my boys in the jolliest state of mind their condition allowed; for it was a known fact that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... we had any parties for pastime? Well ma'am, not many. We never was allowed to have no parties nor dances, only from Christmas Day to New Year's eve. We had plenty good things to eat on Christmas Day and Santa Claus was good to us too. We'd have all kinds of ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... application, whether as a member of the executive of any local sports association, or as a participant in the game itself. He was elected to the committee responsible for organizing the Lowwood Annual Games, but resigned because having taken up racing as his pet pastime for the time being, he wanted to compete in ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... early. We didn't light the lamp at all, you remember. You went to bed before I did—we couldn't see the cards—" He stopped confusedly, and again he gave the two women the impression that he blushed. "We weren't playing for money," he hurriedly explained. "Just for pastime. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... same Blue Bird, and have been full of hope that it would come fluttering down to them at last. Now they are tired of trying, knowing that to try were foolish and of no avail. Yet it is pleasant for them to see, as here, others intent on the old pastime. Perhaps—who knows?—some day the bird will be trapped... Ah, look! Monsieur Le Duc almost touched its wing! Well for him, after all, that he did not more than that! Had he caught it and caged it, and hung the gilt cage in the boudoir of Madame la Duchesse, doubtless the bird would have turned ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... old intrigues are dull, I want pastime, and would like to earn fifty pounds, and if my chances in other quarters are ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce

... had been made, on the pattern of those we had used in West Virginia in 1861. The trench in the ground with flat stone covering level with the tent floor and connected with an opening on the outside, proved the most successful device. We collected in these, and used every manner of pastime to kill the tedious hours till the subsidence of the wind made our usual outdoor life and activity possible again. Our efforts at meals were a woeful sort of failure. Cooking under such difficulties ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... on the minds of his untutored observers, by resorting to a proper amount of mummery and mystical action. This he was enabled to do with some effect, in consequence of having practised as a lad in similar mimicry, by way of pastime. The Germans, and the descendants of Germans in America, are not of a very high class, as respects education, taken as a body, and they retain many of the most inveterate of the superstitions of their Teutonic ancestors. Although the bee-hunter himself was of purely English ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... to this day patches of such land, in the neighbourhood of Norwood, may betray what the country was in the old time:—when a mighty forest, "abounding with wild beasts"—"the bull and the boar"—skirted the suburbs of London, and afforded pastime to king and thegn. For the Norman kings have been maligned by the popular notion that assigns to them all the odium of the forest laws. Harsh and severe were those laws in the reign of the Anglo-Saxon; as harsh and severe, perhaps, against the ceorl and the poor man, as in the days of Rufus, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry and a-thirst; but for him also there is food and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... have passed for a profound philosopher. It is a rule which should shine in gilt letters on the gingerbread of youth, and the spectacle-case of age. Every man who reads with any view beyond mere pastime, knows the value of it. Every one, more or less, acts upon it. Every one regrets and suffers who neglects it. There is some trouble in it, to be sure; but in what good thing is there not? and what trouble does it save! Nay, what ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various

... it's even very good of you to show such courage, for you know that it is not a bit of pastime to sit for me. Never mind, you had better confess to it, you big silly, you are afraid of another woman coming ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers who might find him posted there, And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... and wandered in the town all day. He met friends, and drank with them; they hired a carriage and drove into the country, and there drank again. All the time Keawe was ill at ease, because he was taking this pastime while his wife was sad, and because he knew in his heart that she was more right than he; and the knowledge made ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Spermaceti whale; for like you mortals, the whale is at times a sort of hypochondriac and dyspeptic. You must know, subjects, that in antediluvian times, the Spermaceti whale was much hunted by sportsmen, that being accounted better pastime, than pursuing the Behemoths on shore. Besides, it was a lucrative diversion. Now, sometimes upon striking the monster, it would start off in a dastardly fright, leaving certain fragments in its wake. These fragments the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... more complete and exhaustive exhibit of the progress of science and the arts in this country for the past twenty-two years than a complete file of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. It is a curious and interesting pastime to compare the condition of the mechanic arts as presented in some of our first volumes with that shown in our more recent ones. During all this time, nearly a quarter of a century, our journal has endeavored to represent the actual condition of our scientific ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... and with all charity to his undeveloped personality, we may note a few other examples of his mental reflexes. The list is long, but it would take a large encyclopaedia to exhaust the subject. The pastime, recently come into vogue, of collecting Bromidioms,[1] is a pursuit by itself, worthy enough of practice if one appreciates the subtleties of the game and does not merely collate hackneyed phrases, irrespective of their true bromidic quality. For our purpose ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess

... two great classes of over-furnished and unfurnished:—of those in which the Greek marble in its niche, and the precious shelf-loads of the luxurious library, leave the inmates nevertheless dependent for all their true pastime on horse, gun, and croquet-ground;—and those in which Art, honored only by the presence of a couple of engravings from Landseer, and literature, represented by a few magazines and annuals arranged in a star on the drawing-room table, are felt to be entirely foreign to the daily business ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... occasions Luck Cullison was usually "deviling" him, the only diversion that had been open to the ranchman for some days past. Because of its danger—for he could never be quite sure that Blackwell's lust for swift vengeance would not over-power discretion—this pastime made a peculiar appeal to the audacious temper of the owner ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... that his mistress might hear him; and, when I remonstrated on the absurdity of the proceeding, he quoted the case of Blondel, and some trash out of Uhland's ballads. Serenading on the west coast is by no means a pleasant pastime. The nights are as raw as an anchovy, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... internes of the Convent, when granted permission to go out into the city, was a favorite pastime, truly a labor of love, of the young gallants of that day,—an occupation, if very idle, at least very agreeable to those participating in these stolen promenades, and which have not, perhaps, been altogether discontinued in Quebec ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... nature: he found his rest in change. He usually had some large compositions on hand and turned to this for pastime when portraits failed. Then Saskia was ever present, and if there was a holiday he painted her as the "Jewish Bride," "The Gypsy Queen," or ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... calculate upon the comparative poverty of the rebels, repeating the fallacious adage, that money is the sinews of war. Money is so, but only in a limited degree, and more limited than is generally supposed; more limited even now when war is a very expensive pastime. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... there, And breathe enough of air? Even beyond the West Thou migratest, Into unclouded tracts, Without a pilgrim's axe, Cleaving thy road on high With thy well-tempered brow, And mak'st thyself a clearing in the sky. Upholding heaven, holding down earth, Thy pastime from thy birth; Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other, May I approve myself thy ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

... favourable on this particular afternoon, and she set forth light-footed upon the adventure, leaving Cinders to his monotonous but all-engrossing pastime. A wide line of rocks stretched between her and her goal, which was dimly discernible in the deep shadow of the cliff—a mysterious opening that had the appearance of a ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... war temporarily deprives such a country and its few misguided prophets whose monomania is dread of that chimera, the "Colossus of the North," of the pastime of nestling up to Europe in the hope of annoying us. It postpones, too, the hope of the morbid ones that we shall come to war with a powerful enemy. Now, perhaps, even these will appreciate the remark of a diplomatist of a certain weak country ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... a throb from my heart, my baby! My own baby, who, when I snatch her in my arms, smiles at me with his wonderful eyes of blue; and wellnigh maddens me with the very echo of a voice whose wily sweetness won my love, to make an hour's pastime, a cheap toy, soon worn out, worthless and trodden under foot after three weeks' sport! Stooping over my baby, when she stretched her little hands and coaxed me to lift her on my lap, I have started back from ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... thank thee, Prince Leviathan; and I promise thee that thou shalt long continue with me among the sweet vapours of this place, and scourge the shades of the great princes of the earth for thy pastime. Hem! a fine fellow, and seems to have had quite enough of men and things. Despair, audacity, hate, rancour, agony, and pride, have torn deep furrows in his soul. He looks even at us and hell without trembling. Faustus, art thou become dumb ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... For she was so fair and lovely—his young queen; she understood so well by her jests to smooth away care from his brow, and affright vexation from his soul—she was such an agreeable and sprightly pastime, such a refreshing means of driving ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... men having been making merry with their sweethearts, were at their coming home to come over a heath. Robin Good-fellow, knowing of it, met them, and to make some pastime, he led them up and down the heath a whole night, so that they could not get out of it; for he went before them in the shape of a walking fire, which they all saw and followed till the day did appear: then Robin left them, and at his ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... forward one foot, then the other. Ugh! The bottom of the pond was soft and slimy, and squashed up between her toes like worms. For the first time a dreadful misgiving came over her. What if, after all, swimming were not the delightful pastime it was cracked up to be! However, there was ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore

... almost dark, and I broke up the race trying to get nearer in my canoe so as to watch things better. Twice since then I have heard from summer campers of their having seen loons racing across a lake. I have no doubt it is a frequent pastime with the birds when the summer cares for the young are ended, and autumn days are mellow, and fish are plenty, and there are long hours just for fun together, before Hukweem moves southward for the hard solitary winter life ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... prohibition made many converts to Protestantism among English seafaring folk. Even Mary could not prevent her subjects from preying on Spanish and Portuguese commerce and colonies; and with Elizabeth's accession preying grew into a national pastime. Hawkins broke into Spanish monopoly in the West Indies, Drake burst into their Pacific preserves, and circumvented their defences; and a host of followers plundered nearly every ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... and about it towered higher peaks, black with pine forests, only a path here and there cutting their primeval gloom. Betty stepped into a boat and rowed beyond sight of her house and the hotel. Then she lay down, pushed a cushion under her head, and drifted. It had been a favourite pastime of hers since childhood, but this morning her mind for the first time opened to the danger of a wild and brooding solitude, still palpitating with the passions which had given it birth, for ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... more in sight, and the master went to shoot at them, but they were so great, that they burst our irons, and we lost both fish, irons, pastime, and all; yet, nevertheless, the master shot at them with a pike, and had well-nigh gotten one, but he was so strong, that he burst off the bars of the pike and went away. Then he took the boat-hook, and hit one with that; but all would not prevail, ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... certain fact is that Bannockburn was fought on a point of chivalry, on a rule in a game. England must "touch bar," relieve Stirling, as in some child's pastime. To the securing of the castle, the central gate of Scotland, north and south, England put forth her full strength. Bruce had no choice but to concentrate all the power of a now, at last, united realm, and stand just where he did stand. His enemies knew his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... exhibition of this most cowardly pastime is now prohibited; and the bull-ring was taken up, by order of Mr. Buck, out of this market-place about eight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... authors of the romances themselves either did not always understand, or were at pains to obscure by the introduction of the obviously post hoc "motif" above referred to, i.e., that he was called the Fisher King because of his devotion to the pastime of fishing: a-propos of which Heinzel sensibly remarks, that the story of the Fisher King "presupposes a legend of this personage only vaguely known and ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... Did the bloodthirsty soul of Tiberius comprehend the stainless innocence of the victims he crushed for pastime on the rocks below Villa Jovis? There is but one arbiter for your hatred, the hang-man, to whom you would so gladly hurry me. Hunting a woman to the gallows is fit sport for ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... bloody face, refusing to let him wipe it. John Thresher said to me at night, 'Ay, now you've got a notion of boxing; and will you believe it, Master Harry, there's people fools enough to want to tread that ther' first-rate pastime under foot? I speak truth, and my word for 't, they'd better go in petticoats. Let clergymen preach as in duty bound; you and I'll uphold a manful sport, we will, and a cheer ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... table bending over his horrible employment, half pastime, half primitive operation, the light of the lamp full upon him, when a sound of padding feet shook the floor and he looked up, his eyes full of the effort of listening attentively, and saw a face peering in at the door. For a moment he was startled, ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... fingers of patrician beauty. All this may captivate the fastidious noble; but, to men less artificial in their tastes and habits, could such a woman be better than a statue—and could love, the strongest of human passions, be ever more to her than a short-lived and amusing pastime? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... sentinel of the Varangian Guard, whom they passed on being recognized. In the next apartment was stationed the Court of Guard, where were certain soldiers of the same corps amusing themselves at games somewhat resembling the modern draughts and dice, while they seasoned their pastime with frequent applications to deep flagons of ale, which were furnished to them while passing away their hours of duty. Some glances passed between Hereward and his comrades, and he would have joined them, or at least spoke ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... framing of a deathless lay The pastime of a drowsy summer day. But gather all thy powers, and wreck them on the verse That thou dost weave. . . . The secret wouldst thou know To touch the heart or fire the blood at will? Let thine eyes overflow, Let thy lips quiver ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael

... Smith, Andrew P. Bashford, George R. White, and Peyton Randolph, all of whom had been sailors previous to enlistment in the army, and consequently were familiar with that line of duty, and to them it was mere pastime. ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke

... which was visited by few guests except during the fair, well merited its good reputation. Opportunity and inclination were found for various kinds of amusement. But, as she neither could nor dared go much out of the house, the pastime was somewhat limited. We sang the songs of Zachariae; played the "Duke Michael" of Krueger, in which a knotted handkerchief had to take the place of the nightingale; and so, for a while, it went on quite tolerably. But since ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... nice city clothes is my favorite pastime," Lance retorted, and went inside again to see who was doing all the whooping. The chief whooper, he discovered, was Bill Kennedy, the man whom he had very nearly thrashed. Mary Hope was looking her Scotch primmest. Lance measured ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... by their love for the kindred art of music. Giorgione himself was an admirable musician, and linked with all that is akin to music in his work, is his love for painting groups of people knit together by this bond. He uses it as a pastime to bring them into company, and the rich chords of colour seem permeated with the chords of sound. Not always, however, does he need even this excuse; his "conversation-pieces" are often merely composed of persons placed with indescribable grace in ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps









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