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More "Proficient" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tedious one, although they tried to enliven it with a game of bridge, in which Uncle John and Louise were quite proficient and the others dreadfully incompetent. Once in a while the volcano thundered a deep detonation that caused the windows to shiver, but the Americans were getting used to the sound and paid little ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... writings upon tea by self qualified experts, will find himself involved in a maze of contradictory assertions and opinions from which there is no escape save by the exercise of judicial powers, by an independent exercise of his own judgment, in separating truth from error. And unless he is a proficient in physiology and chemistry, he will find himself baffled at last, because several important scientific questions concerning Tea are still unsolved ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... rejected. It was too precarious; she had had no experience. There was the stage. No—that would not do. She did not like the environments. There remained only the alternative of being a saleswoman in a department store or a stenographer. Having taken a course in shorthand, and being fairly proficient, she chose the latter, and, thanks to the influence and good offices of Dr. Everett, at last succeeded in securing a fairly ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... a conqueror of the Ethiopians. What a career did the son of the Hebrew bondwoman probably lead in the palaces of Memphis, sitting at the monarch's table, feted as a conqueror, adopted as grandson and perhaps as heir, a proficient in all the learning and arts of the most civilized nation of the earth, enrolled in the college of priests, discoursing with the most accomplished of his peers on the wonders of magical enchantment, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... fencing-master replied, his black beady eyes twinkling. "Vare good for me. Vare good also for you. Always ready, is the gentleman's motto; and to make himself ready, his high recreation. But, doubtless, sare," with a faint smile, "you are proficient, and I teach you nothing. You come but to sweat a little." An observant person would have noticed that as he said this he raised his voice above his ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... lodges. I had been at the encampment for almost a week, daily expecting the warriors' return, before I could persuade the people to grant me the right of search through the wigwams. In the end, I succeeded only through artifice. Indeed, I was becoming too proficient in craft for the maintenance of self-respect. A child—I explained to the surly old men who barred my way—had been confused with the Sioux slaves. If it were among their lodges, I was willing to pay well for its redemption. The old squaws, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... purchase of their wares. The exact details of the story are not altogether clear in my memory, but, as I recall it, something the good Doctor said angered these women, for they began showering him with profane and blasphemous names. At this style of language the fishwives are said to be extremely proficient. What do you fancy that Dr. Johnson called them in return? But you could hardly guess. He called H them parallelopipedons. I am not entirely certain whether it was parallelopipedons or isosceles triangles. Possibly there are ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Hobbs were trapping with a party on the Arkansas River, not far from Bent's Fort. Among the trappers was a green Irishman, named O'Neil, who was quite anxious to become proficient in hunting, and it was not long before he received his first lesson. Every man who went out of camp after game was expected to bring in "meat" of some kind. O'Neil said that he would agree to the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... lodgings when he left town at the end of the season, and spare himself the expense of any home as long as he could find friends to entertain him. There are certain items of the cost of living for which the greatest proficient in the art of tick must pay, or he will come to a speedy end;—and a man's lodging is one of them. If indeed the spendthrift adapts himself to the splendour of housekeeping, he may, provided his knowledge of his business be ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... foundation for the physical diagnosis of the present time, and, more than for laying a foundation, for constructing a fairly complete edifice. He who should now undertake to practise general medicine without having first made himself proficient in the detection and interpretation of the sounds elicited by auscultation and percussion in diseases of the heart and lungs ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... the son of parents in moderate circumstances, who, while he was a child, reared him in the midst of vice and license. On this account, and by his own nature, he was quarrelsome and evilly disposed. He would learn no trade, except to commit robberies along the highway, in which he became so proficient, that very soon he had a large following—more than two thousand—of whom he was the acknowledged chief, and came to be feared throughout the whole province ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... of all is the schooner; but, owing to the fact that it is difficult to get them to go well to windward unless the hull is perfectly rigged, the author has decided not to deal with this type of boat. When the reader becomes proficient in building and sailing the simpler types described in this book, he may turn his attention to the construction and sailing of more ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... should provide a suitable successor. Fate was propitious to me once more. I found a young private tutor with whom I had long been in friendly correspondence, and who had all those qualities which were lacking in me. He was not only thoroughly proficient in the grammar of his mother tongue (German), but also in the grammar of the classical tongues; and, if I am not mistaken, in French also. He had a knowledge of geography far beyond anything I could boast, was acquainted with history, knew arithmetic, possessed some familiarity with botany,—much ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... can feel that you have really accomplished something; and when you have not beaten, you have at least learned points that will enable you to beat the next time, or the next to the next time—or sometime. And everyone who really loves a game wants to stick to it until he has conquered and is proficient. ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... Allied pilot who went far back of the German lines used his glasses diligently, in the endeavor to locate the secret aviation field of the Boche. This would naturally be camouflaged in the customary fashion, at which the Teutons had become almost as proficient as the French; but trust an airman to spy out the lodging place ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... eagerly if I were free to accompany him again to the scene of our awful experience. I was free enough, but reluctant. Why revive the horrors of that awful night! But he persuaded me, and a month later we were in the same region, and moreover had found old Klaas alive and hearty. John had become proficient in the Bushman and Hottentot tongues, as his brother had been; though where and how he had studied them I never knew. Would he, too, I wondered, try to obtain the Proof, as his poor mad brother had done? And when ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... often to recall images in the various sensory lines; determine in what classes of images you are least proficient and try to ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... promise to make Antiochus a conqueror in the Olympic games, or equal to a Theagenes, or Polydamas; but only that where a man had natural abilities for this exercise he could, by his instruction, render him a greater proficient in it: far be it from me, also, to promise the invention of an art so difficult as this, nor do I say that I can make anybody an historian; but that I will point out to one of good understanding, and who has been in some measure used to writing, certain ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... retrograde movements, and with the aid of a small globe and pair of compasses was able by means of his own calculations to detect serious discrepancies in the Alphonsine and Prutenic tables. In order to make himself more proficient in calculating astronomical tables he studied arithmetic and geometry, and learned mathematics without the aid of a master. Having remained at Leipsic for three years, during which time he paid far more attention to the study of astronomy than to that of law, he returned to his ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... has commenced with him. His diary affords no food for fancy. Every thing is practical. The qualities of the soil, the relative value of sites and localities, are faithfully recorded. In these his early habits of observation and his exercises in surveying had already made him a proficient. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... associated with outdoor sports, and that the favour in which the men are held and their fame vary directly as their power to ride or to shoot straight, she becomes possessed by the notion that she too must, if she is to please at all, be proficient in the sports of men. Merely to ride to hounds is, of course, not sufficiently distinctive. Many women do that, without losing at all the ordinary characteristics of women. She must ride bare-backed, she must understand a horse's ailments and his points, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... full seven years old, when his father gave him in charge to a divine of his own folk and faith. The priest taught him the laws and tenets of their Misbelief and instructed him in philosophy and all manner of other knowledge, and it needed but three full told years ere he was proficient therein and his spirit waxed resolute and his judgment mature; and he became learned, eloquent and philosophic[FN315]; consorting with the wise and disputing with the doctors of the law. When his father saw this of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... education; he had learned it himself at the age of thirteen, and insulted his superior young gentlemen private secretaries by asking them if they knew it. Jane and Johnny, who had been in early youth very proficient at it, had, since they were old enough to know it was a sort of low commercial cunning, the accomplishment of the slave, hidden their knowledge away like a vice. When concealed from observation and pressed for time, they had furtively taken down lecture notes in it at Oxford, ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... embodied in signs and symbols. Taliesin, describing his initiation, says: "The secrets were imparted to me by the old Giantess (Ceridwen, or Isis), without the use of audible language." And again he says, "I am a silent proficient." ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... jubilant at being relieved. Next time Bernice danced near, Warren regarded her intently. Yes, she was pretty, distinctly pretty; and to-night her face seemed really vivacious. She had that look that no woman, however histrionically proficient, can successfully counterfeit—she looked as if she were having a good time. He liked the way she had her hair arranged, wondered if it was brilliantine that made it glisten so. And that dress was becoming—a dark red that set off her shadowy eyes and high ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of those seats of learning, and would have starved there, but for the affectionate remittances of Henry, who shortly became so great a proficient in the art of music, as to have it in his power not only to live in a very reputable manner himself, but to send such supplies to his brother, as enabled him to pursue ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... was with Laodamas, Euryalus, who had won in the wrestling bout, said insolently, 'Laodamas is surely mistaken in thinking that thou shouldst be proficient in sports. As I look at thee I think that thou art one who makes voyages for gain—a trader whose only thought is for his cargo ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... embassy came to the city, on its way back from the khan in Persia to the great Khan Kublai, who ruled in far-off China, and to whom all the Tartar rulers owed allegiance. The chief ambassador was struck with the talents and charm of the brothers, who had now become proficient in the Tartar language, and persuaded them to accompany him on his journey to the presence of the Great Khan, who had never yet set eyes on a man of the West, and would, he assured them, receive them honourably. They would not have been Venetians had they refused such an ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... The Indian is a proficient canoeist, and will adventure himself with confidence in a canoe of the frailest construction, which he will guide in safety, and with surpassing skill. He will dispel the fears of his disquieted and faithless fellow-voyager (for the motion at times in canoeing is, unmistakably, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... perfectly healthy girl in mind and body. A sound mind in a sound body was her noble heritage. She was always extremely temperate in food and drink, fastidious in all her tastes and personal habits, indulgent never beyond the dictates of perfect simplicity and sobriety. Proficient in all branches of housekeeping, her apparel was mostly of her own making. Good literature was a passion with her, and while never an omnivorous reader, she had a natural instinct for the best in language. A spirit of ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... hula kilu was performed by the alii class, who took great pains and by assiduous practice made themselves proficient that they might be ready to exhibit their accomplishment before the public, was a guarantee that this hula, when performed by them, would be of more than usual grace and vivacity. When performed in the halau as a tabu dance, according ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... he can; Who knows the moment to embrace, He is your proper man. In person you are tolerably made, Nor in assurance will you be deficient: Self-confidence acquire, be not afraid, Others will then esteem you a proficient. Learn chiefly with the sex to deal! Their thousands ahs and ohs, These the sage doctor knows, He only from one point can heal. Assume a decent tone of courteous ease, You have them then to humour as you please. First a diploma must belief infuse, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... measures. But in the grave music of the various elaborate stanzas in which the Elizabethan poets delighted, and of which the Spenserian, though the crown and flower, is only the most perfect, he was a great proficient, and his couplets and blank verse are not inferior. Some of his single lines have already been quoted, and many more might be excerpted from his work of the best Elizabethan brand in the quieter kind. Quiet, indeed, is the overmastering characteristic of Daniel. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... fostering care of Lily, the first master, not only became so distinguished in itself, but set the example, and prepared the way, by its rules and its grammar, for so many others which followed in its wake. Edward VI.; with the natural feeling of a boy fond of knowledge, and himself a proficient for his years, was aware of the evil, and projected the remedy. Colet might be his model—but he was embarrassed in his means by courtiers, who were for ever uttering the cry of the horse-leech's daughters; and, besides, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... they were, handsome, magnificently built, and well skilled in the use of their simple tools. In the use of the adze they were particularly proficient, and able to plane a section of wood to within a hairbreadth of thickness by the use of this alone. They liked to use it for the most delicate work, so certain are they of their accurate manipulation, and on one occasion when I supplied a bandage to bind a wound on the finger of a workman ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... as we have begun we shall soon find ourselves prying into the more scientific works on botany, and perhaps eventually extending our interest to the birds, the beasts and the boulders. One of these days we may become quite proficient amateur naturalists, but this is only by the way; the real advantage to us has been the externalizing of ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... English clergyman, where I was introduced to a young Russian nobleman, by the name of Dunjowski, who had attended lectures in several German universities, and came to England to learn the English language, in which he soon became a proficient. During his residence in England he became acquainted with a number of distinguished men, noblemen and others; among whom were the late Rev. Dr. Chalmers. This young Russian nobleman, having learned that I was on a tour of investigation of the educational institutions ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... played them well, too, though in what corner he kept the amount of intellect necessary to the mastery of them was a puzzle. The probability seemed that his wits had not decayed until after he had become in a measure proficient in the use of the chanter, as they call that pipe by means of whose perforations the notes are regulated. However this may be, Willie could certainly play the pipes, and was a great favourite because of it—with children especially, notwithstanding ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... that Ethel soon discovered was that, in addition to being excellent physical specimens, all the men, and many of the women, were proficient as aviators. Of these facts life on board bore ample evidence, for the great fan ventilated gymnasium was the most conspicuous part of the ship's equipment and here in regular drills and in free willed disportive exercise those on board kept themselves from stagnation during the idleness of the ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... before he had become at all proficient in the knife- grinding and umbrella-mending arts; and many a sly laugh and joke on the part of Deborah made him at times half-inclined to give up the work; but there was a determination and dogged resolution about his character which did not let him lightly abandon anything he had ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... and fitter to act upon the wide theatre of life, than to write representations for the circumscribed theatre of the stage. In the light of an author he is less eminent, and lived a life of too much hurry to become proficient in poetry, a grace which not only demands the most extensive abilities, but much leisure and contemplation. But if he was not extremely eminent as a poet, he was far removed above contempt, and deserves to have full mention made of all his writings; and we can easily ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... confession of Jose Pilar. Not that Jose had been one of the padre's friends. In fact, he was suspected during the past year of having been a secret agent of Aglipay, the self-consecrated Bishop of Manila, and the target of the accusation and invective that the Church of Rome is so proficient in. The recent rulings of the order had abolished the confession fee; but the long road was uncertain and the dangers great. The padre rubbed his hands as he went out. He had received a "voluntary" contribution ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... matters of law. His Orations are very dry, but his juridical remarks are excellent: for he was a learned man, and well versed in the Greek literature, and was likewise an attentive and constant hearer of Panaetius, and a thorough proficient in the doctrine of the Stoics; whose method of discoursing, though very close and artful, is too precise, and not at all adapted to engage the attention of common people. That self- confidence, therefore, which is so peculiar to the sect, was displayed by him with ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... visits from Boston, was very much in evidence at the Saturday evening ice parties. He was not an artist at the sport himself, but he was especially proficient in the art of strapping on a lady's skates, and murmuring,—as he adjusted the last buckle,—"The prettiest foot and ankle on the river!" It cannot be denied that this compliment gave secret pleasure to the fair village maidens who received ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was to decide who would go to the new English Convoy, and two or three left for England to become proficient in motor mechanics ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... were French women of the sixteenth century who are still famous. Marguerite de Valois was as cultivated in mind as she was generous and noble in character. Her love of learning was not easily satisfied. She was proficient in Hebrew, the classics, and the usual branches of "profane letters," as well as an accomplished scholar in philosophy and theology. As an author—though her writings are somewhat voluminous and not without merit—she ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... some of the events of his life. How he had visited the principal cities of Europe; and how he had studied under the best men, in order to make himself proficient in his line of work. Having heard that many Londoners were competing for the construction of carriages for Russia, he had hastily sent in his estimate. The work was accorded to him, and in a few years time he had ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... comes the Bishop of Cambray, with an attack of literary scabies, looking for a young religieux who could correct his manuscript. The Bishop was going to Paris after important historical facts, and must have a competent secretary. Only a proficient Latin and Greek scholar would do. The head of the monastery recommended Erasmus, very much as Artemus Ward volunteered all of his wife's relatives ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... nature made proficient by practice. He had prospected in every mining camp from Mexico to Moose Factory. If he were to find a real bonanza, his English-American friend used to say, he would be miserable for the balance of his days, or rather his to-morrows. ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... the Pawnees, Sioux, Blackfeet, and other northern tribes, were the general go-betweens, trading with all, making peace or war with or for any or all. It is certain that the Kiowas are at present more universally proficient in this language than any other Plains tribe. It is also certain that the tribes farthest away from them and with whom they have least intercourse use ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... affair interested her more and more, she courted the girl's confidence as well as his. It was not long before her ardent, sagacious, strong-willed soul sympathised with that of Luis, which was so timid, childlike, pitiful, and affectionate. More proficient in the art of love-making than the Estrada-Rosa girl, she soon won the count's confidence and affection and she drew from him a number of confidences, not only about his feelings, but the whole of his life. No clever Jesuit could have made a better confessor. Luis, delighted ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... decision, and demands the advice of everybody at the moment he should be acting. This man takes little part in politics and follows his mercantile pursuits. His hobby-horse is ship-building, in which art he is such a proficient as to be quite the Seppings of Hydra. As to the rest, he is a very worthy, warm-hearted man, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... the pains to spy upon them, it was highly probable he knew English, and if he knew English it was certain the whole of their design was in the Master's knowledge. There was one singularity in the position. If Secundra Dass knew and concealed his knowledge of English, Harris was a proficient in several of the tongues of India, and as his career in that part of the world had been a great deal worse than profligate, he had not thought proper to remark upon the circumstance. Each side had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... illustrious point of his existence—at the time, indeed, when after purchasing without money the renowned and proficient charm-water Ho-Ko for a million taels, he had sold it again for ten—that Chang was informed by his brother of the circumstances connected with Ling. After becoming specially assured that the matter was indeed such as it ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... from him that about a year ago he had been seriously ill of Roman fever; but as he hesitated, and seemed unwilling to speak on the subject, I questioned the friend. From him I learnt that the young man had formerly been a very proficient pupil in one of the best-known studios in Rome, but that a year ago he had suffered from a most terrible attack of malaria, in consequence of his remaining in Rome to work after others had found it necessary to go into ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... acres of partly cleared land which failed to provide him with a living. For that reason, he periodically left his tiny log house and packed for some survey expedition, or went down to work for a few months at a sawmill. Capable of most determined labor, wonderfully proficient with his hands, he asked no more from life than a little plain food and indifferent shelter. No luxury that civilization could offer would have tempted him ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... secrets of the French kitchen are laid bare; no effort is spared to make everything plain, from the humble pot-au-feu to the most gorgeous monumental plat. And I would refer any one who wants to become proficient in any French dish, to that book, feeling sure that, in following strictly the directions, there will be no failure. It is the one book I have met with on the subject in which no margin is left for your own knowledge, if you have it, to fill up. ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen
... specious manner, and his power of playing the part that the occasion demanded. In this particular he was even the superior of Mandit, who was an adept in this line. These two men found no difficulty in securing the services of proficient burglars, safe-robbers, and the like; for, in addition to the high rewards paid these men, they were in a manner insured against permanent imprisonment in case of misfortune. It was always arranged that, if any of their enterprises came to grief, ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... seen Patty enter a room except in the most correct, decorous, and highly approved fashion. It does seem foolish then to send the poor child away for a year to practise an art in which she is already proficient." ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... pose as the most learned, expert, scientific, highly trained body of medical men in the world. They are undoubtedly as well trained, as highly educated, and as thoroughly proficient as the medical officers of any army in the world. A summons of an ordinary practitioner would bring with him his saddle-bags of medicines; no physician in the city would pretend to answer even an ambulance call without having a few simple remedies—in other words, an emergency case; but it was ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... was not proficient in the knowledge of letters, and he rejoiced in his ignorance as being an ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... not fully enter into his mother's plans is shown that while at Cracow he devoted himself mostly to medicine. He was so proficient in this that he secured a physician's degree; and having been given leave to practise he revealed his humanity by declining to do so, turning to mathematics with a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the lovers were united in a private room. Is it necessary to say in what language the proceedings were opened? Surely not! There is an inarticulate language of the lips in use on these occasions in which we are all proficient, though we sometimes forget it in later life. Natalie seated herself on a locker. The tea, sugar, and spices were at her back, a side of bacon swung over her head, and a net full of lemons ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... by much as they do with any boy on a farm. Of work there was plenty, but he found time to become a proficient skater, and a strong, sturdy swimmer, to learn and take delight in outdoor sports, all of which helped to build a constitution like iron, and to give him an interest in such things which he has never lost. The boys of ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... and another came down to him unarmed, and received him with great appearance of friendship. One of them addressed him in Dutch, which none of our people understood; he then spoke a few words in Spanish, in which one of the persons of the cutter was a considerable proficient: The Indian however spoke it so very imperfectly, that it was with great difficulty, and by the help of many signs, he made himself understood; possibly if any of our people had spoken Dutch, he might have been found equally deficient in that language. He asked for the captain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... impulsive movements. He was a man of pure mind, of high morality, and intensely devoted to the life-work which he had chosen. His studies during the winter in the cabin of Kin Cade, had made him a proficient in the colloquial Spanish language. This proved to him an invaluable acquisition. He had also gathered and stored away in his retentive memory all that this veteran ranger of the woods could communicate respecting the geography of the Far West, ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... pastime? In what varieties of strange game does this nether world abound? How interesting to strike down creatures that were known above ground before the Deluge! But how? By that terrible vril, in which, from want of hereditary transmission, I could never be a proficient? No, but by a civilised handy breech-loader, which these ingenious mechanicians could not only make, but no doubt improve; nay, surely I saw one in the Museum. Indeed, as absolute king, I should discountenance vril altogether, except ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... equal facility in either". Milton, both in his verse and prose, has carried this affectation to such a degree, as not only to be frequently beyond a meer English apprehension, but even beyond that of an ordinary proficient in the learned languages. Yet, so far were these innovations from being considered as prejudicial, that one of the most admired writers of our days, Dr. Johnson, did not scruple to confess, that he formed his style upon the model of Sir Thomas Brown. ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... the use of the city library. He and his brother and two friends were transferred to the signal corps, which was considered at that time the most efficient in the Southern army, and, becoming soon proficient in the system, attracted the attention of the commanding officer, who formed them into a mounted field squad and attached them to the staff of Major-General French. "Often Lanier and a friend," says the latter officer, "would come to my quarters and pass the evenings with us, where the 'alarums ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... which they learned to be more proficient on horses, the boys did little for the week following the hunt. Jack made anxious inquiries every day after the condition of Peter Lantry, hoping the aged man might have regained his senses enough to give directions for finding Mr. Ranger's cabin. But the fever ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... Piombo.—The emancipation of the individual had a direct effect on the painter in freeing him from his guild. It now occurred to him that possibly he might become more proficient and have greater success if he deserted the influences he was under by the accident of birth and residence, and placed himself in the school that seemed best adapted to foster his talents. This led to the unfortunate experiment ...
— The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance - Third Edition • Bernhard Berenson
... teacher to seat them proved a failure. The idea among them seemed to be that each should take some part in amusing the company. One would jump from the back of a bench upon which he had been seated, while others were creeping about the floor; another, who deemed himself a proficient in turning somersaults, would be trying his skill in this way, while his neighbor, equally ambitious, would show the teacher how he could stand on his head. Occasionally they would pause and listen to the singing of a hymn or the reading of a little story; then all ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... chapters on Carriage and Wagon Building, Painting, Varnishing, are by Charles F. Adams, one of the most successful builders in Wisconsin. The language employed is so simple that any young man of average ability can, in a short time, become proficient in all of these useful and profitable occupations. Each chapter is fully illustrated, there being more than 50 drawings throughout ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... into the world it was at Rome, where he gave lessons in music and modern languages, in many in which he was a proficient. His splendid appearance, his captivating address, his thorough familiarity with the modes of society, gave him the entree to many houses where his talents amply requited the hospitality he received. He possessed, amongst his other gifts, an immense amount ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... and I were perpetually changing identities and confusing our playmates, as well as our parents. To that end I was a willing German scholar, and Karl also became proficient ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Can. Use one tin can for experimenting. By capping and tipping, heating the cap, and throwing it off and simply putting another cap on the same can, you can use this one can until you become proficient in capping. ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... try it in any other way for some time to come," he said, stroking her hair; "you must become a good deal more proficient in the use of skates before I can again trust you to go alone; especially where there are so many other and ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... For serious offences, such as wife beating, wife stealing, or having more than one wife at a time, we were not so lenient. The offender, on conviction, was strung up by the thumbs and used as a target by amateurs who desired to become proficient in the use of the cattle-adder. Murderers were attended to a trifle more expeditiously. They were strung up ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mr. Stuart and myself, Charles and Beatrix, propose visiting Europe in May. From my son I learn that you are proficient in the French and German languages, and would be invaluable to us on the journey, besides the pleasure your society will afford us all. If you think six hundred dollars per annum sufficient recompense for your services and all ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... would have been much better employed in making their own discordant natures harmonious; at savants for gazing at the heavenly bodies while sublimely incognizant of earthly ones; at orators who studied how to enforce truth, but not how to practice it. * * * When asked what business he was proficient in, he answered, 'to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... had herself professed the Roman Catholic Faith two years before, she entered with the greater ardour on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the observation of the habits and manners of the peasantry. In the former, she soon became a proficient. On the latter head, I extract from her familiar letters written home to England at the time, two pleasant ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... small measure to his poetic power and to that unrivaled grace of style which led the ancients to say that if Jove should speak Greek he would speak like Plato. He was a remarkable example of that universal culture of body and mind which characterized the last period of ancient Greece. He was proficient in every branch of art and learning and was such a brilliant athlete that he contended in ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... streets, and watch for such youths as were likely to buy from or sell to him. He had always a few dollars to rattle in his pocket. He never addressed the rawest of schoolboys but as a grown-up man; he was a proficient in the art of bowing, could brighten up old brass and silver as good as new, was always ready to buy old black coats, and possessed the skill of giving them a degree of gloss ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... in addition to the general subjects and the lectures at the Sorbonne, Nelka also studied music, in particular the violin, and at a time was quite proficient in it, though she did not keep it up, as she did with painting, which she continued for ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... an only child and spent much of his time in the company of a cat who shared his tastes and pursuits even to the extent of fishing in the River Weir with him, the cat being far more proficient at the sport than the boy. When the cat died we none of us dared to break the news to the child, and were much surprised when he asked us to say why his cat only came to play with him at nights nowadays. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... less a proficient, and never acquired the art of writing or spelling French, far less foreign languages, with accuracy or correctness; nor had the monks of Brienne any reason to pride themselves on the classical proficiency ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... that Gorgias may be tired, and desires to answer for him. 'Who is Gorgias?' asks Chaerephon, imitating the manner of his master Socrates. 'One of the best of men, and a proficient in the best and noblest of experimental arts,' etc., replies Polus, in rhetorical and balanced phrases. Socrates is dissatisfied at the length and unmeaningness of the answer; he tells the disconcerted ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... showing what the bills call the "cloven foot," Miss Aubrey orders him to be shown out. Meantime, Mr. Tittlebat Titmouse, having been returned M.P. for Yatton, has made a great noise in house, not by his oratorical powers, but by his proficient ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... less affected than myself. He had formed a strong attachment towards me, and had a cheerfulness of disposition which often beguiled the tedious hours of captivity. He was likewise a proficient in the Bambarra tongue, and promised on that account to be of great utility to me in future. But it was in vain to expect anything favourable to humanity from people who are strangers to its dictates. So, having shaken hands with this unfortunate boy, and blended ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... whom I had met when elk-hunting on the head-waters of the Yellowstone and the Snake. Personally, I knew too little to decide as to the comparative merits of the two arms; but I did know that it was a great deal better to use the arm with which our men were already proficient. They were therefore armed with what might be called ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... suggestion is just as applicable to our LORD'S Birth, or to His Death; to His Temptation, or to His Resurrection. But to see whither all this tends, and what it really means, you must have recourse to the pages of a more advanced proficient in the Science of Ideology. He admits that its "application to the interpretation of Scripture, to the doctrines of Christianity, to the formularies of the Church, may undoubtedly be pushed so far as to ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the friend of his opening manhood, Robert Emmet. Trinity College, Dublin, having been opened to Catholics by the Irish Parliament in 1793, Moore was entered there as a student in the succeeding year. He became more proficient in French and Italian than in the classic languages, and showed no turn for Latin verses. Eventually, his political proclivities, and intimacy with many of the chiefs of opposition, drew down upon him (after ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... innumerable interruptions and cares attendant upon his station, he still found time, one can hardly imagine when, to become a proficient in all the learning of the day. He wrote and spoke four languages readily, Latin, French, German and Italian. Few men have possessed more persuasive powers of eloquence. All the arts and sciences he warmly patronized, and men of letters of every class found in him ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... builder of technique or a teacher of beginners. Pupils who are accepted by him must be already proficient technicians, and it may be stated that the teacher who can prepare pupils for Joachim stands high in the profession. Joachim is a great adviser, a former of style, and a master of interpretation, to whom pupils flock two or three years too early, and feel aggrieved ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... occurrence of anything worthy of record, save that Flora, acting upon Dick's advice, continued her pistol practice, with the view of further perfecting herself at the target, and acquiring even still greater dexterity. On the fourth day, however, feeling that she was tolerably proficient, and perhaps wearying somewhat of the monotony of perpetual shooting at a target, as soon as Leslie and the natives—one of whom now readily answered to the name of Cuffy, while the other did not disdain to be styled Sambo—had gone off to the brig, she resolved to treat ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... prior to the Anglo-Norman invasion of which remains now exist. The work is crowded with illustrations drawn with wonderful accuracy, and engraved in a style which proves that Mr. O'Hanlon, the engraver, has become so proficient as hardly to have a ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... snatching at it now and then according as opportunity favored me. I give but little time to my music now (though some every day, because I will not let go anything I have once possessed); for I shall never be a proficient in it, and I already have as much of it at my command as answers my need of it as a recreation. Any of these occupations is more agreeable to me than letter-writing; so is needlework, so is walking out, so is—almost anything else I could ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... This monster consisted of two men, ordinary in appearance in the superior extremities, whose trunks fused into a single lower extremity. The King took diligent care of their education, and they became proficient in music, languages, and other court accomplishments. Between them they would carry on animated conversations, sometimes merging into curious debates, followed by blows. Above the point of union they had no synchronous sensations, while below, sensation was common to both. This monster ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... that it would be a handy accomplishment for schoolboys to be proficient in the handling, splicing, hitching, and knotting of ropes. He suggests the propriety of having the art taught in our public schools. A common jackknife and a few pieces of clothes line are the main appliances needed to impart the instruction with. He concludes it would not only be of use ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... banquet of blood. This infernal carnage the Welsh have appropriately denominated the treachery of the long knives. It will be as well to observe that the Saxons derived their name from the saxes, or long knives, which they wore at their sides, and at the use of which they were terribly proficient." ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... these old peoples, whether in sculpture, painting or poetry, surpassed, if it did not eclipse, corresponding periods of modern times. In some of the practical arts the old races were proficient. In architecture, which combines the aesthetic and practical elements, the man of antiquity was at least the equal of the man of the present. In one particular art—a sort of humanitarian profession based on natural science and directed ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... reserve in the neighbourhood of Frog Creek are known as the Wood Crees, they were all peaceable and industrious, and were becoming proficient in the art of husbandry. They lived in the log cabins in the winter, but in the summer they took to their tents. They numbered about 200 persons. They appeared satisfied with their position which was much ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... specialization in modern life, this argument, despite Carlyle, has not attained much popularity. Even in idealized fictions of the poet, it is not often maintained that he is equally proficient in every line of activity. Only one actual poet within our period, William Morris, can be taken as representative of such a type, and he does not afford a strong argument for the poet's distinctive virtue, inasmuch as tradition does not represent him as numbering ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... dancing functions of Mars that The Grand March does to ours, though it is infinitely more intricate and more beautiful. Before a Martian youth of either sex may attend an important social function where there is dancing, he must have become proficient in at least three dances—The Dance of Barsoom, his national dance, and the dance of his city. In these three dances the dancers furnish their own music, which never varies; nor do the steps or figures ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... detest the man, but the Greek as well. If he could have followed his own desire he would have abandoned the subject at once and substituted something in its place, but Will understood fully his father's desire for him to become proficient in that department and how useless it would be for him to write home for the desired permission. In sheer desperation he began to devote additional time to his study of Greek, until he felt that he was almost neglecting ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... why the virginal was so called. One is that it got its name from its association with hymns to the Virgin. Another is that it was thus called in honor of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. We may accept whichever theory best suits us, but history records that both Elizabeth and Mary of Scotland were proficient in its use and that it was the favorite instrument of Henry VIII. Items for repairs and for instruction in playing the virginal appear frequently in the royal expense book, showing conclusively that His Majesty was not unmindful of such accomplishments. Four ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... loyalty and chivalric faith belong only to the past," said the girl, reaching up a rounded arm and patting her aunt's thin hand. "And now we will be practical. I fancied the head of the settlement looked worried when he met me, and he is not very proficient at hiding ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... diligent, and her favorite studies were music and poetry. She would spend several hours practicing every day, and her father had the most proficient of masters he could find to teach her the koto (Japanese harp), the art of writing letters and verse. When she was twelve years of age she could play so beautifully that she and her step-mother were summoned to the Palace to perform ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... instructions, and, taking his light shot-gun, disappeared in the fringe of willows which lay between the camp and the marshy borders of the lake out of which they had made their last portage on the Rocky Mountain summit. It was not long before they began to hear the reports of his gun, and so proficient had he by this time become in its use that when he returned in the course of three-quarters of an hour he had a young goose and a half-dozen mallard ducks to add to ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... Leckler's charitable solicitations, was the plantation plasterer. His master had given him his trade, in order that he might do whatever such work was needed about the place; but he became so proficient in his duties, having also no competition among the poor whites, that he had grown to be in great demand in the country thereabout. So Mr. Leckler found it profitable, instead of letting him do chores and field work in his idle time, to hire him out to neighboring ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia and Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in awe, for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in her earliest ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... two of the penning of this epistle, Tom realised one of the objects of his young Oxford ambition, and succeeded in embarking in a skiff by himself. He had been such a proficient in all the Rugby games that he started off in the full confidence that, if he could only have a turn or two alone, he should satisfy not only himself but everybody else that he was a heaven-born oar. But the truth soon began to dawn upon him that pulling, especially ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... that these Members have diligently attended their duties at the Hospital, are always neat in appearance, punctual in their habits and proficient in their cursing. I recommend they be allowed to enter for the Blue ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... he was led to cry out against all sorts of music; and the advices of our Society down to modern times have been uniformly in the same direction. It has been felt that the time required to become a proficient in its practice was improperly taken from more important uses; that the emotions it produces have no tendency to strengthen the intellectual or moral character; that the most melodious sounds that human instruments can make have no power to implant principles, give strength to resist temptation ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends
... that disease." Accordingly, Parr having in vain tried to reconcile himself to the "uttering of mortal drugs" for three years, was at length suffered to follow his own devices, and in 1765, was admitted of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Dr. Farmer was at that time tutor. Of this proficient in black letter (he was one of the earliest, and perhaps the cleverest, of his tribe) we are told by Archdeacon Butler, in a note, that he was a man of such singular indolence, as to neglect sending in the young men's accounts, and is supposed to have burnt large sums of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... craft so diligently that by merely clapping my eyes upon a bookseller I can tell you with certainty what manner of books he sells; but you must know that the ideal bookseller has no fads, being equally proficient in and a lover of all spheres, departments, branches, and lines of his art. He is, moreover, of a benignant nature, and he denies credit to none; yet, withal, he is righteously so discriminating ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... as he was, he played a good game of baseball and tennis and he distinguished himself by his kicking in football before he was twelve years of age. The game was then called Association Football, and kicking formed a large part of it. At an early age, he became proficient in kicking with right or left foot. When he was fifteen he created a sensation over at the Old Seminary by kicking the black rubber Association football clear over Brown Hall. That was kick enough for a boy of fifteen with an old ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... acquiring an education for persons in limited circumstances were then small, yet Joseph Keifer early determined to secure an education, and by his own persevering efforts, with little, if any, instruction, he became especially proficient in geography and mathematics, and acquired a thorough practical knowledge of navigation and civil engineering. He could speak and read German. He was a general reader, and throughout his life was a constant student of both ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... at Durham, England, March 6, 1809. She was highly educated and was proficient in both Greek and Latin. She wrote her first verses at the age of ten, and her first volume of poems was published when she was but seventeen years old. In 1846 she was married to the poet Robert Browning. Her first known works are "Aurora Leigh," a novel in verse, "The Portuguese Sonnets," ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... unassuming, you will create a position for her, and, whether she becomes the king's master, or his mistress, or whether she only becomes his confidant, you will only have made a new proficient." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... concupiscences, which move him in opposition to charity: this concerns beginners, in whom charity has to be fed or fostered lest it be destroyed: in the second place man's chief pursuit is to aim at progress in good, and this is the pursuit of the proficient, whose chief aim is to strengthen their charity by adding to it: while man's third pursuit is to aim chiefly at union with and enjoyment of God: this belongs to the perfect who "desire to be dissolved and to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... leading the life of gaiety natural to his age in company with a friend named Deyverdun, became an apt student of the classics and was soon a proficient in French, in which tongue he wrote before long as fluently as in English. With young Deyverdun he worked, and in his company Edward Gibbon also played. After visiting frequently at the house of the celebrated Voltaire at Monrepos, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... with effect, provided she is not called upon to fire from a standing position, in which case the weight is liable to cause bad aiming. Though it came rather late in the day, Jenks caught at the idea. He accustomed her in the first instance to the use of blank cartridges. Then, when fairly proficient in holding and sighting—a child can learn how to refill the clip and eject each empty shell—she fired ten rounds of service ammunition. The target was a white circle on a rock at eighty yards, and those of the ten shots that missed the absolute mark would have made an enemy at the same distance ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... been captured during the wars in Soudan, and is being held as a slave in the stronghold of the Mahdi. For years it had been thought that he was dead. His friends in London decide to go and try to rescue him. One of them is a well-known and proficient surgeon. They arrive in Cairo, and proceed on down into the Soudan, where they get in contact with an influential Sheikh. They establish themselves by doing many cures, where it is possible, and gradually work ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... really proficient in erecting the canvas shelters, and in a very brief time the scene began to present quite a martial appearance, such as half a dozen tents in a bunch ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... Cleary telling him to come at once to town and make the final arrangements before receiving orders to join his regiment. We shall draw a veil over the last interview between Sam and Marian. She was proficient in the art of saying farewell, and nothing was lacking on this occasion to contribute to its romantic effect. They parted in tears, but they were tears of ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... Nano several times afterwards and visited him in his lodgings, and had him carefully examined and cross-questioned and pumped by Professor Palmer of Cambridge, who is proficient in Eastern tongues. He conversed with John in Hindustani, and the result of our examination was that John declared he had in his youth lived a very loose life, and belonged to a tribe of wanderers who were to all the other wanderers on the roads in India what regular gypsies are ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... slaved at "footer," and displayed a curious inaptitude for squash racquets. At all games Caesar and Scaife were precociously proficient. John's clumsiness annoyed them. Often the Caterpillar joined him and Fluff, giving them to understand that this must be regarded as an act of grace and condescension which might be suitably ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Web. Digital Dante attempts to organize the information most significant for students first engaging with Dante and scholars researching Dante. The digital of Digital Dante incurs a new challenge to the student, the scholar, and teacher, perusing the Web: to become proficient in the new tools, e.g., Search, the Discussion Group, well enough to look beyond the technology and delve into the content. For more information and access to the project, please visit its ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... that they felt were true. Those eight years at Coventry transformed the awkward country girl into a woman of intellect and purpose. She knew somewhat of all sciences, all philosophies, and she had become a proficient scholar in German and French. How did she acquire this knowledge? How is any education acquired if not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... shall we encounter next? This issue— 'Twas nothing more than darkness deepening darkness, And weakness crowned with the impotence of death!— Your pupil is, you see, an apt proficient. (ironically) Start not!—Here is another face hard by; Come, let us take a peep at both together, And, with a voice at which the dead will quake, Resound the praise of your morality— Of this too ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... the purpose of ascertaining the points mentioned is quite simple, and is distinctly interesting. In a very important case the services of a qualified chemist will probably be requisitioned, but the cost of the necessary material and the time required to make oneself proficient as a capable tester are so slight that even the small fee that would be charged by a chemist ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... became increasingly proficient, and as his ability grew he began to find magic a wonderful game, which he and Mr. Wicker played together. They played this new and unique form of hide-and-seek, each one taking a new shape, turn by turn, as a challenge to the other's powers ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... his game became popular. Up to the time of Ibn Khallikan, in the thirteenth century, its best player was one As-Suli, famous as an author and a convivialist, who died one hundred and twenty years before the Norman Conquest. "To play like As-Suli" was indeed a proverb. Among this proficient's friends was his pupil, the khalif Ar-Radi, who had the greatest admiration for As-Suli's genius. One day, for instance, walking with some boon companions through a garden filled with beautiful ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... practice. He rarely attempted and probably would not have excelled in the lighter lyrical measures. But in the grave music of the various elaborate stanzas in which the Elizabethan poets delighted, and of which the Spenserian, though the crown and flower, is only the most perfect, he was a great proficient, and his couplets and blank verse are not inferior. Some of his single lines have already been quoted, and many more might be excerpted from his work of the best Elizabethan brand in the quieter kind. Quiet, indeed, is the overmastering characteristic of Daniel. It was this no doubt ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... strengthened his muscles, and greatly augmented his natural suppleness and agility. He was passionately fond of and had thoroughly studied the noble art of fencing, and, while he believed himself to be still only a scholar, had long been a master in it—a proficient, such as is rarely to be found, even in the great cities. A better instructor than old Pierre he could not have had—not in Paris itself—and buried though he had been in the depths of the country, entirely isolated, and deprived of all the usual advantages enjoyed ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... her aunt's sickness Desire Edwards had made a practice of running into her Uncle Jahleel's many times a day to give a sort of oversight to the housekeeping, a department in which she was decidedly more proficient than damsels of this day, of much less aristocratic pretensions, find it consistent with their dignity to be. The doctor and Desire were at this moment in the living-room, inspecting through the closed shutters the preparations on the green for the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... were prepared to learn Manchu sufficiently well to edit, or translate, into that language such portions of the Scriptures as the Society might decide to issue, provided means of acquiring the language were put within his reach, and employment should follow as soon as he showed himself proficient. To this Borrow had willingly agreed. At this period, the idea appears to have been to execute the work ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... every one. John was born in Prospect Row, in the year 1819. He was intended by his father for the medical profession, and spent some years in preliminary studies. He was exceedingly fond of chemistry, in which he became very proficient, and the study of which continued to be a favourite pursuit all his life. He had also considerable skill as an anatomist, and it is known that, within a few years of his death, having caught a mole in his garden, he dissected it most skilfully, with a view to discover the peculiarities ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... was over, the colored people would gather in the little hamlet and march to the music of a drum and fife, and under the command of Nimbus, whose service in the army had made him a tolerable proficient in such tactical movements as pertained to the "school of the company." Very often, until well past midnight the fife and drum, the words of command, and the rumble of marching feet could be heard in the little village. The white people in the country around about began to talk about "the niggers ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... of time. The motion of the sun by day and of the moon and stars by night served to warn him of the recurring periods of light and darkness. By noting the position of these stellar bodies during his lonely vigils, he soon became proficient in roughly dividing up the cycle into sections, which he denominated the hours of the day and of the night. Primitive at first, his methods were simple, his needs few and his time abundant. Increase in numbers, multiplicity of duties, and division of occupation ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... out my baptisms to have amounted to about six hundred.... I believe with you that the study of comparative religion is important for all missionaries. Still more important, it seems to me, is it that missionaries should make themselves thoroughly proficient in the languages and literature of the people to whom they are sent."—Dr. Legge's Letter to ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... will easily understand that my mysterious Guest was speaking the language of truth and even of simplicity. But to me, proficient though I was in Flatland Mathematics, it was by no means a simple matter. The rough diagram given above will make it clear to any Spaceland child that the Sphere, ascending in the three positions indicated there, must needs have manifested himself ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... at least, one might deduce from a science of the mind as something existing by itself a complete theory of methods of learning, with no knowledge of the subjects to which the methods are to be applied. Since many who are actually most proficient in various branches of subject matter are wholly innocent of these methods, this state of affairs gives opportunity for the retort that pedagogy, as an alleged science of methods of the mind in learning, is futile;—a mere screen for concealing the necessity a teacher is under of profound and accurate ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... IV., who was supposed to have escaped from the assassins of the Tower, and to be concealed somewhere in England. Accordingly, the monk Simon, who was the tool of higher persons, carefully instructed young Simnel in the role which he was to play, and in a short time had rendered him thoroughly proficient in his part. But just as the plot was ripe for execution a rumour spread abroad that Edward Plantagenet, earl of Warwick, and only male heir of the House of York, had effected his escape from the Tower, and the plan of the imposture was changed. Simnel was set to learn another lesson, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... of the Eastern States were regaled by an "Infant Drummer." This lad, Harry W. Stowman, at the age of seven or eight, was a proficient on the drum. He was seen by this editor, executing solos of great difficulty, and accompanying the orchestra with variations on his unpromising instrument, which musicians praised and in which he avoided monotony ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... instances such inflammation is due to the manner of treatment of collar injuries. Therefore, when one considers the numerous and dissimilar possible causes of shoulder lameness, it behooves the practitioner to become proficient in diagnostic principles. ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... him that about a year ago he had been seriously ill of Roman fever; but as he hesitated, and seemed unwilling to speak on the subject, I questioned the friend. From him I learnt that the young man had formerly been a very proficient pupil in one of the best-known studios in Rome, but that a year ago he had suffered from a most terrible attack of malaria, in consequence of his remaining in Rome to work after others had found it necessary to go into the country, and that the malady had so affected the nervous ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... overturning by a single push the chubbiest child who opposed him, made him a fearful joy to the nursery. This last quality was incautiously developed in him by a negro boy-servant, who, later, was hurriedly propelled down a flight of stairs by his too proficient scholar. Having once tasted victory, "Billy" needed no further incitement to his performances. The small wagon which he sometimes consented to draw for the benefit of the children never hindered his attempts to butt the passer-by. On the contrary, on well-known scientific principles he added ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to play detective for me, Miss Lawton. Have you four girls unemployed at the moment?—Say, for instance, a filing clerk, a stenographer, a governess and a switchboard operator, who are sufficiently intelligent and proficient in their various occupations, to assume such ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... I'm proficient both in jotting and in tittling; I know a certain cure for boots that creak; I can see through Mr. KEYNES and Mr. Britling; But I cannot tell a bubble from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... "whatever you do, whatever you are able to give to your father, is part of his benefit bestowed upon you." So it is the benefit of my teacher that I have become proficient in liberal studies; yet we pass on from those who taught them to us, at any rate from those who taught us the alphabet; and although no one can learn anything without them, yet it does not follow that whatsoever success ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... these apparitions, took counsel of Nezahualpilli, King of Tezcuco, who was a great proficient in astrology; but far from obtaining any comfort from him, he was still further depressed by being told that all these things predicted the speedy downfall of his empire. When, therefore, the picture-writings ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... professional nurse though hard she would think it at first, when once accustomed to its little drudgeries she would find it a noble calling, with God's blessing attached to it. She consented, and I trained her in my hospital, she became in a very short time one of my most proficient nurses. From that time she had gained the battle, for, as soon as some of our medical men got acquainted with her, they gave her employment at the most serious of their cases, till at last it became very hard for me to procure her for some of my own patients, and ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... the Spectator, the Tatler, the Guardian, and the Rambler, and would discourse by hours together on the superiority of such publications to anything which has since been produced in our Edinburghs and Quarterlies. He was proficient in all questions of genealogy, and knew enough of almost every gentleman's family in England to say of what blood and lineage were descended all those who had any claim to be considered as possessors of any such luxuries. For blood and lineage he himself had a most profound ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... knowledge of the history of the law an easy accomplishment; but Tazewell never read them, and drew his information from the original sources. In the history of Virginia he was, without exception, the greatest proficient of his time. Whatever was told by Smith, Beverly, Keith, Stith, and Burk with his continuators, or by Hening in the statutes at large, or in the journals of the House of Burgesses and of the House of Delegates, or could be gathered from the living voice ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... to lock and unlock a padlock. The animal most proficient in this became able to select the right Yale key out of a bunch of half a dozen or more, with as much quickness and precision as the average ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... exposing his own. Piquet, the most beautiful game at which a man can make sacrifice of his fortune, was one with which Mowbray had, for his misfortune perhaps, been accounted, from an early age, a great proficient, and in which the Earl of Etherington, with less experience, proved no novice. They now played for such stakes as Mowbray's state of fortune rendered considerable to him, though his antagonist appeared ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... she would make sweet, engaging excuses, and beg off. But the girls of this day have invented "silent volition." When you ask them to do anything they don't quite like, they look you in the face, bland but full, and neither speak nor move. Miss Dover was a proficient in this graceful form of refusal by dead silence, and resistance by placid inertia. She just looked like the full moon in Zoe's face, and never budged. Zoe, being also a girl of the day, needed no interpretation. "Oh, very well," said she, "disobliging thing!"—with ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of the northern air bit into the girl's blood. She spent much time in the open and became proficient and tireless in the use of snowshoes and skis. Daily her excursions into the surrounding timber grew longer, and she was never so happy as when swinging with strong, wide strides on her fat thong-strung rackets, or sliding with the speed of the wind ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... told about deer stalking in the highlands, in which exercise I inferred Lord John had been a proficient. The conversation reminded me of the hunting stories I had heard in the log cabins in Indiana, and I amused myself with thinking how some of the narrators would appear among my high-bred friends. There is such a quaint vivacity and ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... father; "I should like to have you a proficient in all manly accomplishments, only don't be foolhardy and run useless risks. I want my son to be brave, but not rash; ready to meet danger with coolness and courage when duty calls, and to have the proper training to ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... and message from him, I found him sitting in his study,[80] and in a discourse with C. Velleius, the senator, who was then reputed by the Epicureans the ablest of our countrymen. Q. Lucilius Balbus was likewise there, a great proficient in the doctrine of the Stoics, and esteemed equal to the most eminent of the Greeks in that part of knowledge. As soon as Cotta saw me, You are come, says he, very seasonably; for I am having a dispute with Velleius on an important subject, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... line, which is known as the "Spey cast." In vain has Major Treherne illustrated the successive phases of the "Spey cast" in the fishing volume of the admirable Badminton series. It cannot be learned by diagrams; no man, indeed, can become a proficient in it who has not grown up from childhood in the practice of it. Yet its use is absolutely indispensable to the salmon angler on the Spey. Rocks, trees, high banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead cast. The essence and value of the Spey ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... have been misleading to say, what is undoubtedly true, that it is as an artist that Ibsen is great. To call a man a good artist came to much the same thing as calling him a good ping-pong player: it implied that he was proficient in his own business; it did not imply that he was a great man who affected life greatly. Therefore many people who understood Ibsen and were moved by his plays preferred to call him a political thinker or a social reformer; while their enemies, the aesthetes, were very willing to call him a great ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... and stratagems, secrets and betrayals, and this species of the arachnids is proficient in all ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... romance full play for a few minutes with this question. Some recluse, preferring the absolute simplicity of nature, or perhaps wearied with the artificialities of society, had secluded himself here with the company of his only daughter. Proficient as a pathfinder, he had easily discovered some other way of provisioning his house from the settlements than by the ordinary trails past Collinson's or Skinner's, which would have betrayed his vicinity. But recluses are not usually accompanied by young daughters, ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... were brought from away, in the Amberson manner, though this was really a gesture—perhaps one more of habit than of ostentation—for servitors of gaiety as proficient as these importations were nowadays to be found in the town. Even flowers and plants and roped vines were brought from afar—not, however, until the stock of the local florists proved insufficient to obliterate the interior structure of the big house, in ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... action. The guns may be on one side of a hill and the enemy on the other, and they may be miles apart, yet the gunner must be able to get the range. His efforts are directed by observers in aeroplanes or balloons, and the range is established by calculations, so that the gunner must be proficient in ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... drew from thence the conclusion that I was not fitted by nature to cut a respectable figure at an English university. "He will fly off in a tangent," said he, "and, when called upon to exhibit his skill in Greek, will be found proficient in Irish; I have observed the poor lad attentively, and really do not know what to make of him; but I am afraid he will never make a churchman!" And I have no doubt that my excellent father was right, both in his premises and the conclusion at which he arrived. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... well to speak honestly—lest you should unlearn certain old habits of yours, and forget to give your own little dinners. For if formerly, when you had good examples to imitate, you were still not much of a proficient in that way, how can I suppose you will get on now? Spurina, indeed, when I mentioned the thing to him, and explained your previous habits, proved to demonstration that there would be danger to the highest ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... perished the friend of his opening manhood, Robert Emmet. Trinity College, Dublin, having been opened to Catholics by the Irish Parliament in 1793, Moore was entered there as a student in the succeeding year. He became more proficient in French and Italian than in the classic languages, and showed no turn for Latin verses. Eventually, his political proclivities, and intimacy with many of the chiefs of opposition, drew down upon him (after various interrogations, in which he honorably ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... did Stoic philosophy fail of more wide or lasting success among mankind? Because—we may perhaps answer—its chief weapon was the reasoning intellect, in which only a few could be proficient. Because, fixing its ideal in imperturbability, it denied sensibilities of affection, joy, and hope, which are a large part of normal humanity. Because, in its lack of natural science, and its revulsion ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... I shall be happy to show you the evidence in your national records," said Horace. "And you may be glad to know that your old enemy, Mr. Jarjarees, came to a violent end, after a very sporting encounter with a King's daughter, who, though proficient in advanced magic, unfortunately perished herself, poor lady, ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... of studies mapped out for me was much the same as I pursued at Mount Vernon, with a specialty of the first six books of Euclid, and of algebra. Latin was taught but little. From the first, arithmetic, algebra and surveying were my favorite studies, and in those I became proficient. We had an improvised theatre in which we acted ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... descriptive account of every ecclesiastical building in Ireland of a date prior to the Anglo-Norman invasion of which remains now exist. The work is crowded with illustrations drawn with wonderful accuracy, and engraved in a style which proves that Mr. O'Hanlon, the engraver, has become so proficient as hardly to have a ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... come not only to detest the man, but the Greek as well. If he could have followed his own desire he would have abandoned the subject at once and substituted something in its place, but Will understood fully his father's desire for him to become proficient in that department and how useless it would be for him to write home for the desired permission. In sheer desperation he began to devote additional time to his study of Greek, until he felt that he was almost neglecting certain other ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... Seabird—this being the name of the hulk—and to this, my reply, the bo'sun said little; but I perceived that he liked my spirit, and so from thence until we reached the Port of London, I took my turn and part in all seafaring matters, having become by this quite proficient in the calling. Yet, in one matter, I availed myself of my former position; for I chose to live aft, and by this was abled to see much of ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... convey the little they have to return to him, for it is seldom more than, 'My Lord, I have done the thing you gave me to do.' If the matter be complex, he too resorts to the lip-speech, which he could not teach without first being proficient in it himself. Thus, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... natures harmonious; at savants for gazing at the heavenly bodies while sublimely incognizant of earthly ones; at orators who studied how to enforce truth, but not how to practice it. * * * When asked what business he was proficient in, he ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... offences, such as wife beating, wife stealing, or having more than one wife at a time, we were not so lenient. The offender, on conviction, was strung up by the thumbs and used as a target by amateurs who desired to become proficient in the use of the cattle-adder. Murderers were attended to a trifle more expeditiously. They were ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... political inexperience and partly to their lack of organizing powers. Let us hope that from now onwards Yugoslavia will have to arm herself less heavily against the slings and arrows of the world, and that she will be able therefore to become a more proficient swimmer ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... known as one of the most proficient students of military science and art in our service, and is amply qualified to prepare an original textbook on this subject. That he should have found time to translate Duparcq's work, amid his arduous and important services as General Halleck's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... appreciation of his own capacity; and his aims never rose above that capacity. As a superficial man he dealt with superficial things, and his dealings were marked by tact and shrewdness. In his sphere he was proficient, and he kept his wits upon the alert for everything that might be turned to professional and profitable use. Thus it was that, as he sauntered along one of the main thoroughfares of Cincinnati, as has been written, his attention was suddenly arrested by a voice ringing clear and full ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... young gentlemen at Hamilton, I wonder, still carry on their ordinary conversation in the Latin tongue, and their familiar vacation correspondence in the language of Aristophanes? I hope so. I hope they are more proficient in such exercises than the young gentlemen of twenty years ago were, for I have still great faith in a culture that is so far from any sordid aspirations as to approach the ideal; although the young graduate is not long in learning that there ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Fra Giovanni was not proficient in the knowledge of letters, and he rejoiced in his ignorance as being an abundant source ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... broken out at home, but they had been attacked for a long time by the Rumanians, who had caused them endless trouble. If they had succeeded in remaining in power long enough, they would, no doubt, in time have shown themselves proficient in murdering their fellow-countrymen and as skilled in the use of the rifle as the Bolsheviki in Russia, the Spartacides in Germany and the Communists in Bavaria. These four groups of European Socialists of the extreme ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... things in this life have sometimes preferred. Whereof not to be sensible when good and fair in one person meet, argues both a gross and shallow judgment, and withal an ungentle and swainish breast. For by the firm settling of these persuasions I became so much a proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me, from that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored; and above them all preferred the two ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... captains during the last weeks of the winter term had put a different complexion on matters. Football is not like cricket. It is a game at which anybody of average size and a certain amount of pluck can make himself at least moderately proficient. Kennedy, after consultations with Fenn, had picked out what he considered the best fifteen, and the two set themselves to knock it into shape. In weight there was not much to grumble at. There were several heavy men in the scrum. If only these could be brought ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... looks like disorder, but which is really a judicious contrivance. After setting a few spokes in one direction, the Epeira runs across to the other side to draw some in the opposite direction. These sudden changes of course are highly logical; they show us how proficient the Spider is in the mechanics of rope-construction. Were they to succeed one another regularly, the spokes of one group, having nothing as yet to counteract them, would distort the work by their straining, would even destroy it for ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... certainty that might have won the applause of Galerius, [2] there is a peculiar sling and rotary motion of the arm in launching a stone, which no girl ever can attain. From ancient practice, I was somewhat of a proficient in this art, and was discussing the philosophy of female failures, illustrating my doctrines with pebbles, as the case happened to demand; whilst Lord Westport was practising on the peculiar whirl of the wrist with ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... There is no such thing. Nor did any one of them owe his abilities as a writer to any other person. Writers are self-made. But it is a reasonable speculation that history might never have heard of the greater number of these men had they not worked sedulously to become proficient with the pen as well as with the sword. Granting that they had other sound military qualities in the beginning, an acquired ability to express themselves lucidly and with force became a touchstone to preferment. The same thing holds true of their celebrated military ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... peculiarly happy manner and disposition. He was a very fine extempore orator, and possessed great military ardor from childhood. The writer, a fellow-student, remembers him as captain of a company of school-boys, at Woodward, which, drilling for pastime, became very proficient in tactics. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... things, for I must be proficient in something," said the poet Longfellow when young. Franklin studied everything—languages, literature, science, and art. His middle life was filled with studies; all life to him was a schoolroom. His studies ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... all the diversities of an April sky. Her hair was light-brown; her eyes hazel, and sparkling with a mild but fluctuating light; her features regular; her lips full, and of equal size; and her person surpassingly graceful. She was a proficient in music. Her conversation was sprightly, but always on subjects light in their nature and limited in their interest: for moral sympathies, in any general sense, had no place in her mind. She had some coquetry, and more caprice, liking and disliking almost in the same ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... had not a particle of that knowledge in which Young America is so great a proficient, namely, the "knowing how to get out of a scrape." She was, besides, alarmed at the effect of her words on Ivy, supposing nothing less than that the girl was in the last stages of a swift consumption; so she sat down, and, rubbing her starchy hands together, with many a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... and air pressure? The house address alone is not enough, for many children surrounded by wealth are denied health rights, such as the right to play, to breathe pure air, to eat wholesome food, to live sanely. Scholarship will not help, because the frailest child is often the most proficient. Manners mislead, for, like dress, they are but externals, the product of emulation, of other people's influence upon us rather than of our living conditions. Nationality is an index to nothing significant in ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... appointed for the trial was pretty sure of coming off the conqueror, the whole was looked upon as a more specious kind of sacrifice. Amycus, who was king of Bithynia, is represented as of a [746]gigantic size, and a great proficient with the caestus. He was in consequence of it the terror of all strangers who came upon the coast. Cercyon of [747]Megara was equally famed for wrestling; by which art he slew many, whom he forced to the unequal contention. But Cercyon was ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... and its best handling in an advertisement, and of the value and relation of illustrations to text. He perceived that his work along these lines seemed to give satisfaction to his employers, since they placed more of it in his hands to do; and he sought in every way to become proficient in the art. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... his new found protegee was such as would only have entered into the brain of a dreamy and impecunious poet. He saw in Lavinia Fenton the making of a fine actress—not in tragedy but in comedy—and of an enchanting singer. But to be proficient she must be taught not only music, but how to pronounce the English language properly. She had to a certain extent picked up the accent of the vulgar. It was impossible, considering her surroundings and associations, to be otherwise. But proper treatment ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... my Lord—I beg your pardon—but a pack of dogs I unexpectedly met." For in the hacknied art of lying without injury to any one, Rushbrook, to his shame, was proficient. ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... having in vain tried to reconcile himself to the "uttering of mortal drugs" for three years, was at length suffered to follow his own devices, and in 1765, was admitted of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Dr. Farmer was at that time tutor. Of this proficient in black letter (he was one of the earliest, and perhaps the cleverest, of his tribe) we are told by Archdeacon Butler, in a note, that he was a man of such singular indolence, as to neglect sending in the young men's accounts, and is supposed to have burnt ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... "A skilled proficient in that line, a slaughterer of genius, Von Moltke, in reply to the peace delegates, once uttered these ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... rifle, and pistol, but now he began to perfect himself in the use of the last-named weapon. He arranged the basement of his house in such a way that he could practise with his revolvers, and he soon became very proficient in the accuracy ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... German lines used his glasses diligently, in the endeavor to locate the secret aviation field of the Boche. This would naturally be camouflaged in the customary fashion, at which the Teutons had become almost as proficient as the French; but trust an airman to spy out the lodging ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... with the pastor of that town; while Wordsworth and his sister went to Goslar. From Ratzeburg Coleridge repaired to Gsttingen on 12th February, 1799, to attend lectures at the University. He worked hard while in Goettingen to acquire a knowledge of the literature of Germany, and made himself proficient in the dialects as well as of classical German. He met two of the Parrys, brothers of the Arctic explorer, at Gsttingen; and, later, Clement Carlyon, an Englishman from Pembroke College, joined the group. Carlyon afterwards in later life, in his "Early Years and Late Reflections", depicted Coleridge ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... curious workshop of both divine and human hands. The railway fare is only two cents a mile, first class, and half that, second class; we left the choice to our guide. A good guide is almost indispensable. Our faithful Takenouchi was proficient in everything; he was valet, courier, guide, instructor, purchasing agent, and maid. I never knew a person so efficient in every way; he could be attentively absent; he never intruded himself upon us in any way. It is impossible to describe the wonderful temples! ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... was provided only with a single doubly-pointed stick and a cast-net, like the one perhaps, used by the ancient gladiators. The object of these fierce combats was to capture and bind the bear, and to carry him in triumph from the scene of action! Charles was, it seems, a great proficient in this dangerous sport. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... that she "wore her learning lightly as a flower." "Her manners [Examiner], her tastes, her accomplishments, in many of which, music especially, she was proficient, were feminine in the nicest sense of the word." Unlike her father in features, or in the bent of her mind, she inherited his mental vigour and intensity of purpose. Like him, she died in her thirty-seventh year, and at ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... no more lonely evenings for Alec, when he sat with bowed head beside his table, staring into vacancy. He should have had another promotion in March. Alec felt that he was proficient enough to be advanced, and he told himself bitterly that the reason he was not was because the ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... not everything. What the newcomers—whether Cushites or Semites—did teach them, was a more orderly way of organizing society and ruling it by means of laws and an established government, and, above all, astronomy and mathematics—sciences in which the Shumiro-Accads were little proficient, while the later and mixed nation, the Chaldeans, attained in them a very high perfection, so that many of their discoveries and the first principles laid down by them have come down to us as finally adopted facts, confirmed by later science. ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... reading. Leaving these studies all are devoted to the more abstruse subjects, to mathematics, to medicine, and to other sciences. There is continual debate and studied argument amongst them, and after a time they become magistrates of those sciences or mechanical arts in which they are the most proficient; for every one follows the opinion of his leader and judge, and goes out to the plains to the works of the field, and for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the pasturage of the dumb animals. And they consider ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... your 'ands off the new arm-rack." Foxy wrestled with a turbulent crowd in the gymnasium. "Nor it won't do even a condemned Snider any good to be continual snappin' the lock, Mr. Swayne.—Yiss, the uniforms will come later, when we're more proficient; at present we will confine ourselves to drill. I am 'ere for the purpose o' takin' the names o' those willin' to join.—Put down that ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... myself with a city noted in story, and I could not, under the canopy of my native sky, have planted the step among scenes more closely interwoven with past national transactions, or fraught with more interesting associations. In attending the Natural Philosophy Class, not being proficient in mathematic lore, I derived less advantage than had otherwise been the case with me. Yet I did not sit wholly in the shade, notwithstanding that the light which shone upon me did not come from that which Campbell says ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was deserted. Gerard Douw was pacing the apartment with the restless step of impatient expectation, every now and then humming a passage from a piece of music which he was himself composing; for, though no great proficient, he admired the art; sometimes pausing to glance over the work of one of his absent pupils, but more frequently placing himself at the window, from whence he might observe the passengers who threaded the obscure by-street in which his studio ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... through his aid. Hooker dedicates his History of Ireland to him; Hakluyt, his Voyages to Florida. A work 'On Friendship' is dedicated to him; another 'On Music,' in which art he had found leisure, it seems, to make himself a proficient; and as to the poetic tributes to him,—some of them at least are familiar to us already. In that gay court, where Raleigh and his haughty rivals were then playing their deep games,—where there was no room for Spenser's muse, and the worth of his 'Old ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... She was well grounded in history, instructed in Latin—though she did not fancy it, and later, in the British Constitution, and in law and politics. Nor were light accomplishments neglected: in modern languages, in painting and music, she finally became singularly proficient. Gifted with a remarkably sweet voice and a correct ear, she could not well help being a charming singer, under her great master, Lablache. She danced well, rode well, and ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... learn from a parrot over a week end won't be likely to make you very proficient in the language," said Mrs. Martin. Then she turned to Mr. Bullfinch and told him she would be glad to keep the parrot until Monday. "But only till Monday," ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... for she had no cronies. Not in millinery and dressmaking, for there were no admiring eyes to reward such labors. Not in gadding, for she might not pass the imprisoning wall. Not even in reading, perhaps because she was not much of a proficient in that art. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Mrs. St*pf**d, of Curzon-street, May-fair. How she acquired her present cognomen I know not, unless it was for her stopping accomplishment in the polite science of pugilism and modern patter, in both of which she is a finished proficient, as poor John D———, a dashing ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... occasions lost himself in the bush. Thereafter he ran away from school twice, having been seized with a romantic and irresistible desire to see and shoot a lion! In order to cure his son of this propensity, Mr Brown sent him to England, where he was put to school, became a good scholar, and a proficient in all games and athletic exercises. After that he went to college, intending, thereafter, to return to the Cape, join his father, and go on a trading expedition into the interior, in order that he might learn the business, and carry it ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... who, handicapped in this way, have in after life, by strong will and great application, overcome their disabilities and become good cricketers, great at tennis, proficient at golf, strong swimmers, skilful shots; but they have been exceptional men with a strong ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... possessed with the exploits of the King's soldiers in Europe and America, and influenced by his brother John's example—then captain in the 8th Regiment of the line—Isaac pleaded successfully to enter the army. To better prepare for this all-important step, and to become proficient in French, a necessary accomplishment, it was arranged, though he was only fifteen, to place him with a Protestant clergyman in Rotterdam for one year, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... a "considerable proficient," even by the cautious testimony of Dr. Johnson; and in this language only the doctor was an accomplished critic. If Pope had really the proficiency here ascribed to him, he must have had it already in his boyish years; for the translation ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... January, 1784, framed as closely as possible on the model of the Royal Society in London; and the presidency was offered to Mr. Hastings, then Governor-general in India, who not only was a liberal encourager of Persian and Sanscrit literature, but had made himself a proficient in the former of these languages at a time when its importance had not been duly appreciated; and was familiarly versed in the common dialects of Bengal. That gentleman, however, declining the honour, and recommending that ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... at once wrought Love and Veneration; the Language of her Eyes sufficiently paid the Loss of her Tongue, and there was something so Commanding in her Look, that it struck every Beholder as dumb as herself; she was a great Proficient in Painting, which puts me in mind of a notable Story I can't omit; her Father had sent for the most Famous Painter in Italy to draw her Picture, she accordingly sat for it; he had drawn some of the Features of her Face; and coming to the Eye, desired her to give him as brisk and piercing ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Through all the duties of the day, it animated her; for Florence hoped that the more she knew, and the more accomplished she became, the more glad he would be when he came to know and like her. Sometimes she wondered, with a swelling heart and rising tear, whether she was proficient enough in anything to surprise him when they should become companions. Sometimes she tried to think if there were any kind of knowledge that would bespeak his interest more readily than another. Always: at her books, her music, and her work: in her morning walks, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... years of age, who reigned by the name of Benedict the Ninth. This youth, as he grew up, contaminated his rule with every kind of profligacy and debauchery. But even he, according to Benno, was a pupil in the school of Silvester, and became no mean proficient in the arts of sorcery. Among other things he caused the matrons of Rome by his incantations to follow him in troops among woods and mountains, being bewitched and their souls subdued by the irresistible charms of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... oddities, he was not only possessed of physical power corresponding to his great height and massive stature, but was something of a proficient at athletic exercises. He was conversant with the theory, at least, of boxing; a knowledge probably acquired from an uncle who kept the ring at Smithfield for a year, and was never beaten in boxing or wrestling. His constitutional ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the gold, and returned some time during the latter seventies to the upper San Pedro valley. Here he "raised his family," as the old expression has it, and, his sons grew up, Finn, Ike, and Billy. Those were wild days, and the two last-named boys became more proficient with rope, running-iron, and forty-five revolver than they ever did with their school-books. In time they were known as rustlers and in the lawless town of Charleston by the San Pedro River they fell in with Curly Bill. When the outlaw went eastward into the valleys of the San Simon and ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... House Lunch." The cooking was all done on the Chelton and the eatables were handed over the brass rail to Lottie and Marita, who served as waitresses on the Dixie. First there were lettuce sandwiches, rolled. Any girl who can successfully roll bread and lettuce is termed proficient by the cooking teachers, and it was a tie between Belle and Cora as to who did the most and ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... the side of his hostess, and listened in silence to the conversation. What a conversation! At any other time, under any other circumstances, Ferdinand would have been teased and wearied with its commonplace current: all the dull detail of county tattle, in which the squire's lady was a proficient, and with which Miss Temple was too highly bred not to appear to sympathise; and yet the conversation, to Ferdinand, appeared quite charming. Every accent of Henrietta's sounded like wit; and when she bent her head in assent to her companion's ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... was the same as in regard to the distance flights—i.e., that it should be stopped "at or before the moment of touching the ground." What the present rule means, in this respect, is that the pupil must be really proficient at making a vol-plane, without any aid at all from his engine, before he can hope to pass the test; and such a proved skill—say in the making of his first cross-country flight, should his engine fail suddenly—may spell the difference ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... longest time; but at St. Dunstan's there is no time limit set for any course. If proficiency is not achieved in one month or six months, the student can keep doggedly at it for a longer period. St. Dunstan's is a home until proficiency in the chosen calling is achieved. "Grow proficient" was Sir Arthur's demand of his boys; and with few exceptions they stuck at it ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... individual was by birth a Valencian, and died about 1580; he was professor at various universities - of rhetoric at Valencia, of Greek at Zaragossa, where he gave lectures, in which he explained the verses of Homer; he was a proficient in Greek, ancient and modern, and it should be observed that, in the passage which we are about to cite, he means himself by the learned individual who held conversation with the Gitanos. (66) EL ESTUDIOSO CORTESANO was reprinted at Alcala in ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... ethyl chloride and bromide, nitrite of amyl, amylin,—and the skill that they have acquired in the manipulation of these powerful drugs stamps them as the most dangerous coterie of criminals in existence. Now," he concluded, "doubt it or not, we have to deal with a man who is a proficient student of these sleepmakers. Who is he, where is he, and ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... and spent much of his time in the company of a cat who shared his tastes and pursuits even to the extent of fishing in the River Weir with him, the cat being far more proficient at the sport than the boy. When the cat died we none of us dared to break the news to the child, and were much surprised when he asked us to say why his cat only came to play with him at nights nowadays. When we questioned him about it, he stoutly maintained that his cat was ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... Mr. Simon Rolles had distinguished himself in the Moral Sciences, and was more than usually proficient in the study of Divinity. His essay "On the Christian Doctrine of the Social Obligations" obtained for him, at the moment of its production, a certain celebrity in the University of Oxford; and it was understood in clerical and learned circles that young Mr. Rolles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to write for publication is one which inheres strongly in every human breast. From the proficient college graduate, storming the gates of the high-grade literary magazines, to the raw schoolboy, vainly endeavoring to place his first crude compositions in the local newspapers, the whole intelligent public are today seeking expression through the printed ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the company of Thrasyllus and made some use of the mantic art every day, becoming himself so proficient in the study that when he was once bidden in a dream to give money to a certain person, he comprehended that a deceitful spirit had been called up before him and he put the man to death. Likewise, in the case of all the rest of the astrologers and magicians and ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... have been expected, instrumental music became more and more independent, and musicians, especially the flute players, prospered; for we read in Suidas that they were much more proficient and sought after than the lyre and kithara players. When they played, they stood in a conspicuous place in the centre of the audience. Dressed in long, feminine, saffron-coloured robes, with veiled faces, and straps round their ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... the river one evening just previous to the Christmas holidays, Nancy was urged to participate. Of course, the older girls expected to carry off the palm. Corinne Pevay came from Canada, and one or two other girls lived well up toward the line. So their winters were long and they were proficient in every winter sport before ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... of the sixth Olympiad. In the times of Varro the philosopher, a man deeply read in Roman history, lived one Tarrutius, his familiar acquaintance, a good philosopher and mathematician, and one, too, that out of curiosity had studied the way of drawing schemes and tables, and was thought to be a proficient in the art; to him Varro propounded to cast Romulus's nativity, even to the first day and hour, making his deductions from the several events of the man's life which he should be informed of, exactly as in working back a geometrical ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the outer fortifications in safety, and there were greeted with some surprise but with no displeasure by the Makalanga, whom they found still drilling with the rifles, in the use of which a certain number of them appeared to have become fairly proficient. Going to the hut in which the spare goods from the waggon had been stored, they quickly made their preparations. Here also, Mr. Clifford wrote a letter, one of the most unpleasant that he had ever been called upon to ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... save himself from her desperate but unconscious struggles, while supporting her with a degree of ease and strength which had been acquired while teaching some dozen of the village urchins how to practise an art in which he himself was reckoned a great proficient. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... was frank in his statements and discussed the various ideas without hesitation. He was inclined to write a great deal, especially poetry of the waste-basket variety, and considered himself quite proficient in this respect. On February 2, 1911, he appeared before the Staff conference where the advisability of granting him parole of the grounds was considered. Upon being refused this privilege he again attempted suicide by making several superficial cuts ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... fight in a dark room with so many against him. One result of his intimacy with Jack was that he became dissatisfied with his own progress in the manly art of self-defence. It was all very well to make himself proficient with the foils and as a boxer, and to be a good shot, but he was living among people who had the knife for sole weapon, and if by chance he were attacked by a man with a knife, and had no pistol or other weapon, he would find himself ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... and characteristic of a vulgar person is that he never expects either benefit or hurt from himself, but from externals. The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is that he expects all hurt and benefit from himself. The marks of a proficient are that he censures no one, praises no one, blames no one, accuses no one, says nothing concerning himself as being anybody or knowing anything; when he is hindered or restrained, he accuses himself; when praised, he secretly ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... intrusted with a second embassy to Holland, in which his skill and dexterity were universally admitted. He was not more remarkable for a quick insight into the temper of others, than for a command of his own. In history, in literature, in foreign languages, he was equally a proficient. With classical literature he had been from his boyhood familiar. He wrote Latin prose with correctness, ease, and purity; and spoke that tongue with a fluency and facility of the rarest among Englishmen, and not very common even among foreigners. In the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... another long winter. He ground away at the bookkeeping—he was more proficient at it, but he hated it as heartily as ever—and wrote a good deal of verse and some prose. For the first time he sold a prose article, a short story, to a minor magazine. He wrote long letters to Helen and she replied. She was studying hard, she liked her work, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... fully enter into the spirit and practice of the place; though I soon became tolerably active. At robbing orchards, tying up latches, lifting gates, breaking down hedges, and driving cattle astray, I was by no means so great a proficient as Hector; nor had I any great affection for swimming hedgehogs, hunting cats, or setting dogs at boys and beggars; but at climbing trees, running, leaping, swimming, and such like exercises, I was ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... lord, a smiling, supple man who had already marketed two daughters to his advantage. But Graciosa's time was not yet mature in the year of grace 1533, for the girl was not quite sixteen. So Graciosa remained in Balthazar's big cheerless house and was tutored in all needful accomplishments. She was proficient in the making of preserves and unguents, could play the harpsichord and the virginals acceptably, could embroider an altarcloth to admiration, and, in spite of a trivial lameness in walking, could dance a coranto or a saraband against any ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... proficient canoeist, and will adventure himself with confidence in a canoe of the frailest construction, which he will guide in safety, and with surpassing skill. He will dispel the fears of his disquieted and faithless fellow-voyager (for the motion at times in canoeing is, unmistakably, perturbing ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... through, the proficient business man with his powers of concentration, the first-rate organiser, the scientist, the inventor—all these men are contemplatives who do not drive to God, but to the world or to ambition. Taking God as their goal, they could ascend to great heights of happiness; though ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... boys and girls have passed all the standards of the elementary schools, they enter trade schools, where they remain until they are proficient in some craft which will enable them to earn a living. Those who show decided intellectual or business aptitudes are sent to colleges ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... courteously that he was quite astonished, and she spoke even more to those of his council with whom she had audience; there she produced an excellent impression, speaking and arguing with an easy grace in which she was proficient, and making herself rather agreeable than hateful or tiresome. Her reasons were found good and pertinent and she retained the high esteem of the emperor, his court ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... student has become proficient in the arrangement of tools in combination with lines, a design consisting entirely, or almost entirely, of lines may be tried. This is more difficult, because the limitations are not so obvious; but here again the principle of repetition, and even distribution, ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... any one. He was fortunately stationed at the gun of which Jacob was captain, and the old sailor took pains to instruct him in handling it. Naval gunnery not being in those days the art it has since become he was soon a proficient. ...
— The Two Shipmates • William H. G. Kingston
... was over Frank had advanced a little in the art of milking, and it may as well be said here that in the course of a week or so he became a fair proficient, so that his father even allowed him to try Vixen, a cow who had received this name from the uncertainty of her temper. She had more than once upset the pail with a spiteful kick when it was nearly full. One morning she upset not only the pail, but Frank, ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... in which they learned to be more proficient on horses, the boys did little for the week following the hunt. Jack made anxious inquiries every day after the condition of Peter Lantry, hoping the aged man might have regained his senses enough to give directions for finding Mr. Ranger's cabin. But the fever still held the old miner (for ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... Hippocrates was surprisingly proficient, although he lived before the Anatomic Period. He had various lotions for the healing of ulcers; some of these lotions were antiseptic and have been in use in recent times. His opinions on the treatment of fractures are sound, and he was a master in the use of splints, and considered ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... I got to know Mesdames de Valbelle and de Rancerolles, the Princess de Chimai, and many others who were then in the best society of Paris. Although Madame du Remain was not a proficient in the occult sciences, she had nevertheless consulted my oracle more frequently than Madame d'Urfe. She was of the utmost service to me in connection with an unhappy circumstance of which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the same time, it is open to certain very obvious criticisms. It would be absurd to contend that the day's labor of a coolie laborer is equal in productivity to the day's labor of a highly skilled mechanic, or that the day's labor of an incompetent workman is of equal value to that of the most proficient. To refute such a theory is as beautifully simple as the theory itself. In all seriousness, arguments such as these are constantly used against the Marxian theory of value, notwithstanding that they do not possess the slightest relation to ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... not keep his mind upon his work. It was a situation unique in his experience. That he, Richard Kendrick, should be employed in serious work in the same room with the niece of a prosperous and distinguished gentleman, a girl who had not hesitated to learn a trade in which she had become proficient, and that the three of them should spend the morning in this room together, taking no notice of each other beyond that made necessary by the task in hand—it was enough to make him burst out laughing. At the same time he felt ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... months to rafting, and, being then as proficient as there was any need to be at that branch of the art, I determined to go in for rowing proper, and joined one of ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... Trade his Mother design'd him, viz. a Carpenter: Accordingly she was recommended to Mr. Wood in Witch-Street near Drury-Lane, as a Master capable of entertaining and instructing her Son: They agreed and Bound he was for the space of seven Years; the Lad proved an early proficient, had a ready and ingenious Hand, and soon became Master of his Business, and gave entire Satisfaction to his Master Customers, and had the Character of a very sober and orderly Boy. But alas unhappy ...
— The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard • Daniel Defoe
... have heartily recommended the method of finding relations amongst the numbers themselves, to all who are proficient in the use of In., ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... the Emperor, 'is a proficient Queen in the art of man training. My other sister, the Duchess of Parma, is equally scientific in breaking-in horses; for she is constantly in the stables with her grooms, by which she 'grooms' a pretty sum yearly in buying, selling, and breaking-in; while ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 4 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... rolled by much as they do with any boy on a farm. Of work there was plenty, but he found time to become a proficient skater, and a strong, sturdy swimmer, to learn and take delight in outdoor sports, all of which helped to build a constitution like iron, and to give him an interest in such things which he has never lost. The boys of Temple College find in him not only a pastor and president, ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... towns-folk of La Chatre. They had heard of her studies, too, and disapproved of them as unlady-like in character. Philosophy was bad enough, but anatomy, which she had been encouraged to take up by Deschartres, himself a proficient in medical science, was worse—sacrilegious, for a person understood to be professedly of a devotional turn of mind. She went game-shooting with the old tutor; he had a mania for the sport, which she humored though she ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Father. Or Jesus would have men to believe in Him, i.e. to touch Him spiritually, as being Himself one with the Father. For to that man's innermost perceptions He is, in some sort, ascended unto the Father, who has become so far proficient in Him, as to recognize in Him the equal with the Father . . . whereas she as yet believed in Him but carnally, since she wept for Him as for a man." But when one reads elsewhere of Mary having touched Him, when with the other women, she "'came ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... mentioned as unseasonably spoken, it being fit that we should know such and avoid them;—as that to Pompey the Great, to whom, upon his return from a dangerous war, the schoolmaster brought his little daughter, and, to show him what a proficient she was, called for a book, and bade her begin at ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... learns only that which learn he can; Who knows the moment to embrace, He is your proper man. In person you are tolerably made, Nor in assurance will you be deficient: Self-confidence acquire, be not afraid, Others will then esteem you a proficient. Learn chiefly with the sex to deal! Their thousands ahs and ohs, These the sage doctor knows, He only from one point can heal. Assume a decent tone of courteous ease, You have them then to humour as you please. First a diploma must belief infuse, That you in your profession take the lead: You ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... separated, the points of contact between them also were not few. Victoria understood very well the meaning and the attractions of power and property, and in such learning the English nation, too, had grown to be more and more proficient. During the last fifteen years of the reign—for the short Liberal Administration of 1892 was a mere interlude imperialism was the dominant creed of the country. It was Victoria's as well. In this direction, if in no other, she had allowed ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... unsuccessfully. Tooke's friends' meeting was I suppose a dinner of CONDOLENCE. I am not sorry to find you (for all Sara) immersed in clouds of smoke and metaphysic. You know I had a sneaking kindness for this last noble science, and you taught me some smattering of it. I look to become no mean proficient under your tuition. Coleridge, what do you mean by saying you wrote to me about Plutarch and Porphyry—I received no such letter, nor remember a syllable of the matter, yet am not apt to forget any part of your epistles, least of all an injunction ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... pounds out of Coventry for Hill, and promised him twenty. For this sum Hill agreed to do Little. But he demanded some time to become proficient in the weapon he meant ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... praise of Bernardin de St. Pierre, that coming immediately after Rousseau and Buffon, and being one of the most proficient writers of the same school, he was in no degree their imitator, but perfectly original and new. He intuitively perceived the immensity of the subject he intended to explore, and has told us that no day of his life passed without ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... a superior staff officer who can be trusted, nor a commander of troops of all arms who will be able to make the most of them in face of the enemy, than will they make a successful physician or a proficient electrical engineer. It was also completely overlooked by the propagandists of this particular stunt that the experience which on every front, other than the Mesopotamian, temporary officers had been gaining was for practical purposes confined to trench warfare, ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... was, he soon, by his skilfully plied blows (for he had become a proficient in fencing and boxing in England), made his enemies take ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... In the second year of his fugitivism he had lost his watch. At first it was like losing an arm, a part of his brain, a living friend. From that time until he came into possession of Conniston's timepiece he was his own hour-glass and his own alarm clock. He became proficient. ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... factions and favorites that a child King always engenders. England had known Richard of Gloucester, even since his boyhood, as a strong man among strong men—a puissant knight, an unbeaten general, a wise counsellor, a brilliant administrator; in all things able, resourceful, proficient; combining, as it were, in the last of the Angevines, all the keen statesmanship, stern will, and fiery dash of the great House that had ruled England for three ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... left the long-limbed youth alone in his incompetence. He had an impression that Wegstetten wished to hear good of the bombardier, and after all, in the fire-workers, it would not be necessary for Frielinghausen to be a proficient at riding. But the less Frielinghausen knew about horses the more he boasted of his acquirements, when once the riding instruction had come to ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... all these supply colour. Certain toys seem specially suited to give hand control, e.g. a Noah's Ark, where the small animals are to be set out carefully, tops or teetotums and tiddlywinks, at which some little children become proficient. The puzzle interest must not be forgotten, and simple jigsaw pictures give great pleasure. It is interesting to note here that the youngest children fit these puzzles not by the picture but by form, though ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... Ehrenthal's, he would wander about the streets, and watch for such youths as were likely to buy from or sell to him. He had always a few dollars to rattle in his pocket. He never addressed the rawest of schoolboys but as a grown-up man; he was a proficient in the art of bowing, could brighten up old brass and silver as good as new, was always ready to buy old black coats, and possessed the skill of giving them a degree of gloss which insured their ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... care of Benavides and Cobo the mission flourished, and the two fathers became increasingly proficient in the Chinese language. When the provincial Juan de Castro began making preparations for an inspection tour of his Chinese vicariate in 1590, he chose as his companion Miguel de Benavides. The account of the events leading up to this expedition is given in the already quoted letter of Salazar ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... district at that time. His school-house on New York Avenue was burned by an incendiary about 1843, and his flourishing and excellent school was thus ended. For a time he subsequently taught music, in which he was very proficient; but about 1846 he opened a school on School-house Hill, in the Hobbrook Military School building, near the corner of N Street, north, and Twenty-third Street, west, and had a large school there till about 1851, when he relinquished ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... time which would have been much better employed in making their own discordant natures harmonious; at savants for gazing at the heavenly bodies while sublimely incognizant of earthly ones; at orators who studied how to enforce truth, but not how to practice it. * * * When asked what business he was proficient in, he ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... with a peculiarly happy manner and disposition. He was a very fine extempore orator, and possessed great military ardor from childhood. The writer, a fellow-student, remembers him as captain of a company of school-boys, at Woodward, which, drilling for pastime, became very proficient in tactics. ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... theory, at least, one might deduce from a science of the mind as something existing by itself a complete theory of methods of learning, with no knowledge of the subjects to which the methods are to be applied. Since many who are actually most proficient in various branches of subject matter are wholly innocent of these methods, this state of affairs gives opportunity for the retort that pedagogy, as an alleged science of methods of the mind in ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... enemy of England: and, above all, a plan of commercial freedom, the germ of which may be found in the long-maligned negotiations of Utrecht, but which in the instance of Lord Shelburne were soon in time matured by all the economical science of Europe, in which he was a proficient. Lord Shelburne seems to have been of a reserved and somewhat astute disposition: deep and adroit, he was however brave and firm. His knowledge was extensive and even profound. He was a great linguist; he pursued both literary and scientific investigations; his house was frequented by men of letters, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... sciences, in which R. Eleazar was very proficient, are only to be considered as helps to the study ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... education for persons in limited circumstances were then small, yet Joseph Keifer early determined to secure an education, and by his own persevering efforts, with little, if any, instruction, he became especially proficient in geography and mathematics, and acquired a thorough practical knowledge of navigation and civil engineering. He could speak and read German. He was a general reader, and throughout his life was a constant student of both sacred and ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... favorable circumstances, to have entered where she was despised by the rest of the family. It may be imagined how great indignation was excited in this man by her refusal, the more especially as, like Dumiger, he thought himself a proficient in science and the mechanical arts, and was one of those who in his way was laboring for the prize so soon to be awarded by the city. If merit was to be the test of success, he had but little chance; but ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... some weeks before he had become at all proficient in the knife- grinding and umbrella-mending arts; and many a sly laugh and joke on the part of Deborah made him at times half-inclined to give up the work; but there was a determination and dogged resolution about his character which did not let him lightly abandon anything he had once undertaken. ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... more than once that day had proven himself more willing than proficient with the oars, surrendered them to Endicott and for more than an hour the Easterner battled with the yellow, turgid flood before he finally succeeded in driving the boat ashore in the mouth of a coulee. Abandoning the boat, they struck out on foot up river where, a mile or more above they had ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Mrs. Lander decide between having her brushes in ivory or silver, but there was really no choice for her, and they came in silver. She knew not only her own place, but the places of her two ladies, and she presently had them in such training that they were as proficient in what they might and might not do for themselves and for each other, as if making these distinctions were the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... honor!—since Josephus speaks of his successful and brilliant exploits as a conqueror of the Ethiopians. What a career did the son of the Hebrew bondwoman probably lead in the palaces of Memphis, sitting at the monarch's table, feted as a conqueror, adopted as grandson and perhaps as heir, a proficient in all the learning and arts of the most civilized nation of the earth, enrolled in the college of priests, discoursing with the most accomplished of his peers on the wonders of magical enchantment, the hidden meaning of religious rites, and even the being and attributes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... were going on for making examples of these impertinent pirates, who had dared to enter the port of Campeachy, Roc was racking his brains to find some method of getting out of the terrible scrape into which he had fallen. This was a branch of the business in which a capable pirate was obliged to be proficient; if he could not get himself out of scrapes, he could not expect to be successful. In this case there was no chance of cutting down sentinels, or jumping overboard with a couple of wine-jars for a life-preserver, or of doing any of those ordinary things which pirates were in the habit of doing ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... was a woman about sixty years of age, short, thick, "singing like a cracked pot," says the letter which we have already quoted; an excellent woman, moreover, and the only merry one in the whole convent, and for that reason adored. She was learned, erudite, wise, competent, curiously proficient in history, crammed with Latin, stuffed with Greek, full of Hebrew, and more of a Benedictine ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... color, and very fertile, as is attested by the great quantity of grain raised annually by the Banyeti. A great many villages of this poor and very industrious people are situated on both banks of the river: they are expert hunters of the hippopotami and other animals, and very proficient in the manufacture of articles of wood and iron. The whole of this part of the country being infested with the tsetse, they are unable to rear domestic animals. This may have led to their skill in handicraft works. Some make large wooden vessels with very neat lids, and wooden bowls of all sizes; ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... presence, which for the Spanish sovereigns is regarded as a proof of the greatest friendship and the highest mark of gratitude. They commanded that henceforward Columbus should be called "Praefectus Marinus," or, in the Spanish tongue, Amiral. His brother Bartholomew, likewise very proficient in the art of navigation, was honoured by them with the title of Prefect of the Island of Hispaniola, which is in the vulgar tongue called Adelantado.[14] To make my meaning clear I shall henceforth employ these usual words of Admiral and Adelantado as well as the terms which are now commonly ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... man." Accordingly I did so, and drew from him that about a year ago he had been seriously ill of Roman fever; but as he hesitated, and seemed unwilling to speak on the subject, I questioned the friend. From him I learnt that the young man had formerly been a very proficient pupil in one of the best-known studios in Rome, but that a year ago he had suffered from a most terrible attack of malaria, in consequence of his remaining in Rome to work after others had found it necessary to go into the country, and that ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... nevertheless, a picturesque figure enough. The man was attired in a somewhat threadbare suit of Lincoln green, with a high-crowned Tyrolese hat; a knapsack was slung behind his shoulders, and he was attended by a white Pomeranian dog, evidently foot-sore, but doing his best to appear proficient in the chase by limping some yards in advance of his master, and sniffing into the hedges for rats and mice, and ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mind in a sound body was her noble heritage. She was always extremely temperate in food and drink, fastidious in all her tastes and personal habits, indulgent never beyond the dictates of perfect simplicity and sobriety. Proficient in all branches of housekeeping, her apparel was mostly of her own making. Good literature was a passion with her, and while never an omnivorous reader, she had a natural instinct for the best in language. A spirit of indomitable ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... remembered an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia and Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in awe, for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in her earliest days he had been like one inspired, and as she now stood ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the main theme of the second book,—for the collection is divided into seven books,—is certainly not characteristically Persian; European, and especially German poets have also been very liberal and very proficient in bibulous verse. The maxims that make up the third and a portion of the fourth book are for the most part either plainly unoriental, or else so perfectly general, and, we may add, so hopelessly commonplace, ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... got George Macwha to go with them for cockswain; and under his instructions, they made rapid progress in rowing and sculling. Then Annie was again their companion, and, the boat being by this time fitted with a rudder, had several lessons in steering, in which she soon became proficient. Many a moonlight row they had on the Glamour; and many a night after Curly and Annie had gone home, would Alec again unmoor the boat, and drop down the water alone, letting the banks go dreaming past him—not always sure that he was not dreaming himself, and would not suddenly awake and find ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... prevailed in Cicero's day that neither of them was familiar with Greek literature. This, however, was a mistake. Both were well read in it. But Antonius desired to be thought ignorant of it; hence he never brought it forward in his speeches. Crassus did not disdain the reputation of a proficient, but he wished to be regarded as despising it. These relics of old Roman narrowness, assumed whether from conviction or, more probably, to please the people, are remarkable at an epoch so comparatively ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... such a proficient in the art and talent of wrestling that none of his contemporaries had ability to cope with him, till he at length had one day boasted before the reigning sovereign, saying, "To any superiority my master possesses over me, he is beholden to my reverence of his seniority, and in virtue of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... make a man an intellectual glory to his age, even if his powers are great; for unless he positively desires to seize the flower of perfection, he will be but a dry scholar, a dealer in words, a proficient in mechanical thought, and a mere wheel of memory. And the man who has this positive quality in him will rise in spite of adverse circumstances, will recognise and seize upon the tide of thought which is his natural food, and will stand as a giant at last in the ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... Stoic philosophy fail of more wide or lasting success among mankind? Because—we may perhaps answer—its chief weapon was the reasoning intellect, in which only a few could be proficient. Because, fixing its ideal in imperturbability, it denied sensibilities of affection, joy, and hope, which are a large part of normal humanity. Because, in its lack of natural science, and its revulsion from the mythologic ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... provided with a tutor in the person of Robert Hurault, Baron of Auzay, great archdeacon and abbot of St. Martin of Autun. (2) This divine instructed her in Latin and French literature, and also taught her Spanish and Italian, in which languages Brantome asserts that she became proficient. "But albeit she knew how to speak good Spanish and good Italian," he says, "she always made use of her mother tongue for matters of moment; though when it was necessary to join in jesting and gallant conversation she showed that she was acquainted with more ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... gave all his money to his country on the eve of his departure, yet died wealthy for his time. Serene, even-tempered, philosophical, he was yet far-seeing, care-taking, sagacious, and intensely industrious. He acquired a knowledge of the Italian and Spanish languages, and was a proficient French speaker and writer. He possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the power of gaining the regard, even the affection, of his fellow-men. He was even a competent musician, mastering every subject to which his attention was turned; and province-born and reared in the business of melting tallow ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... the great praise of Bernardin de St. Pierre, that coming immediately after Rousseau and Buffon, and being one of the most proficient writers of the same school, he was in no degree their imitator, but perfectly original and new. He intuitively perceived the immensity of the subject he intended to explore, and has told us that no day of his life passed without his collecting ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... these parts), with a child upon his knee, eating his breakfast; his wife, and the remainder of his children, were some of them employed in waiting upon each other, the rest in teasing and spinning wool, at which trade he is a great proficient; and moreover, when it is made ready for sale, will lay it, by sixteen or thirty-two pounds' weight, upon his back, and on foot, seven or eight miles, will carry it to the market, even in the depth of winter. I was not much surprised at all this, as you may ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... opportunity to use his musket; for if he exposed the smallest portion of his body, it was the signal for his watchful enemies, who sent the bullets about him in unpleasant proximity. In spite of his dangerous situation, he could not help thinking that the rebels were very proficient in "Indian fighting," for, with all his watchfulness, he could not get an opportunity to put in a shot. All he could see of his enemies would be, first, a rifle thrust carefully over the levee, then a very small portion of ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... previous to the Christmas holidays, Nancy was urged to participate. Of course, the older girls expected to carry off the palm. Corinne Pevay came from Canada, and one or two other girls lived well up toward the line. So their winters were long and they were proficient in every winter sport ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... may be tired, and desires to answer for him. 'Who is Gorgias?' asks Chaerephon, imitating the manner of his master Socrates. 'One of the best of men, and a proficient in the best and noblest of experimental arts,' etc., replies Polus, in rhetorical and balanced phrases. Socrates is dissatisfied at the length and unmeaningness of the answer; he tells the disconcerted volunteer that he has ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... often dwindle down to a small portion of the audience. The requirements for an examination will weed this remainder until there is found but a handful that will submit to the test. These workers are usually mature, and often prove themselves to be thorough and proficient students. The examination is intended to be a thorough test, and if it proves the work to have been creditably done, a certificate to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... creative power. When the idealist studies astronomy, does he learn anything about the stars that God made? Far from him so naive a thought! His astronomy consists of two activities of his own (and he is very fond of activity): star-gazing and calculation. When he has become quite proficient he knows all about star-gazing and calculation; but he knows nothing of any stars that God made; for there are no stars except his visual images of stars, and there is no God but himself. It is true that to soften this hard saying ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... greatest concern now was, what she should do for a living. She had learned to play on the piano, to draw and paint, and had practised embroidery. But in all these she had sought only amusement. In not a single one of them was she proficient enough to teach. Fine sewing she could not do. Her dresses had all been made by the mantua-maker, and her fine sewing by the family sempstress. She had been raised in idle pleasure—had spent her time in thrumming on the piano, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... prayer-meetings which were held, seemed powerless to restrain the downward tendency of morals. Profanity, the most revolting and dreadful, abounded, though contrary to the Articles of War, and many of the officers were proficient in this vice. Gambling, in all the forms possible among soldiers, was the main amusement on the Sabbath-day. These were the prominent vices, and, if possible, they were growing more and ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... relation similar to the more formal dancing functions of Mars that The Grand March does to ours, though it is infinitely more intricate and more beautiful. Before a Martian youth of either sex may attend an important social function where there is dancing, he must have become proficient in at least three dances—The Dance of Barsoom, his national dance, and the dance of his city. In these three dances the dancers furnish their own music, which never varies; nor do the steps or figures vary, ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... qualified experts, will find himself involved in a maze of contradictory assertions and opinions from which there is no escape save by the exercise of judicial powers, by an independent exercise of his own judgment, in separating truth from error. And unless he is a proficient in physiology and chemistry, he will find himself baffled at last, because several important scientific questions concerning Tea are ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... inefficient. To see him putting young cabbage-plants in rows is to realize what a fine thing it is to know the best way of going to work, even at such a simple-seeming task as that; and I would not undertake to count in how many such things he is proficient. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... was an informal affair in which there were many cooks, but no broth spoiled. To see Mr. Southard earnestly engaged in making a Welsh rarebit, an accomplishment in which he claimed to be highly proficient, one would never have suspected him of being able to thrill vast audiences by his ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... sportsman, and a good shot with gun, rifle, and pistol, but now he began to perfect himself in the use of the last-named weapon. He arranged the basement of his house in such a way that he could practise with his revolvers, and he soon became very proficient in the accuracy and quickness of ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... St John remains at the east end of the High Street, still in possession of its fine Hall and Chapel, and the great school founded by William of Wykeham in 1382, "for seventy poor and needy scholars and clerks living college-wise in the same, studying and becoming proficient in grammaticals or the art and science of grammar." It remains without compare, the oldest and the greatest school in England, whose daughter is Eton and ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... thing. Nor did any one of them owe his abilities as a writer to any other person. Writers are self-made. But it is a reasonable speculation that history might never have heard of the greater number of these men had they not worked sedulously to become proficient with the pen as well as with the sword. Granting that they had other sound military qualities in the beginning, an acquired ability to express themselves lucidly and with force became a touchstone to preferment. The same thing holds true of their celebrated ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... surnamed of Antioch, was born at Samosata, in Syria. He lost his parents while very young; and being come to the possession of his estate, which was very considerable, he distributed all among the poor. He became a great proficient in rhetoric and philosophy, and applied himself to the study of the holy scriptures under one Macarius at Edessa. Convinced of the obligation annexed to the character of priesthood, which was that of devoting himself entirely to the service of God and the good of his neighbor, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... many delightful hours listening to what he had to tell me about his experiments, and helping him fly kites by means of which he expects to discover the laws that shall govern the future air-ship. Dr. Bell is proficient in many fields of science, and has the art of making every subject he touches interesting, even the most abstruse theories. He makes you feel that if you only had a little more time, you, too, might be an inventor. He has a humorous and poetic side, too. His dominating ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... during the last weeks of the winter term had put a different complexion on matters. Football is not like cricket. It is a game at which anybody of average size and a certain amount of pluck can make himself at least moderately proficient. Kennedy, after consultations with Fenn, had picked out what he considered the best fifteen, and the two set themselves to knock it into shape. In weight there was not much to grumble at. There were several heavy men in the scrum. If only these could be brought to use their weight ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... account of every ecclesiastical building in Ireland of a date prior to the Anglo-Norman invasion of which remains now exist. The work is crowded with illustrations drawn with wonderful accuracy, and engraved in a style which proves that Mr. O'Hanlon, the engraver, has become so proficient as hardly to ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... told in a previous volume, the Creston Patrol of Boy Scouts had become fairly proficient airmen, having constructed a glider which in a contest had won for them a motor with which they later equipped an airship. Gerald, especially, had shown himself a most capable and courageous aviator, and ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... was born at Durham, England, March 6, 1809. She was highly educated and was proficient in both Greek and Latin. She wrote her first verses at the age of ten, and her first volume of poems was published when she was but seventeen years old. In 1846 she was married to the poet Robert Browning. Her first known works are "Aurora Leigh," a novel in verse, "The Portuguese Sonnets," "Casa ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... the lad a proficient in magic?" asked Hadrian. "It seems to me simply impossible that he should have completed this statue and a woman's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... round. This proved rather a trying ordeal for some of the apprentices, one or more of whom we usually had boarding with us, or to a new servant-girl, as their education in many cases had not been of too liberal a description. But they soon got more proficient, and if it led them to nothing higher, it was a good educational help. These devotional exercises were not common in the district in the mornings, and were apt to be broken in upon by callers at the wright's shop; but that was never entertained as an excuse for curtailing ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... his light shot-gun, disappeared in the fringe of willows which lay between the camp and the marshy borders of the lake out of which they had made their last portage on the Rocky Mountain summit. It was not long before they began to hear the reports of his gun, and so proficient had he by this time become in its use that when he returned in the course of three-quarters of an hour he had a young goose and a half-dozen mallard ducks to add to ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... difference. The passion for old Violins, thus awakened, caused him to relinquish his former employment entirely, and to devote the whole of his attention to the art which he so loved. He soon became aware of the growing demand for Italian works, and felt that, possessed with a varied and proficient knowledge of the different styles of workmanship belonging to the Italian schools of Violin-making, he could turn his present acquirements to a profitable as well as pleasurable use. He resolved to journey in search of hidden Cremonas. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... belief. Even for a family to do its own stamping the outfit would be of great service; but when it is realised, that by means of the instruction, samples and materials that are included as "Outfits," any lady can easily become a proficient in making choice Kensington Lace of most elegant and graceful patterns, and become skilled in executing every description of perforated stamping and thus make a nice addition to her income in a very easy ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... making any national language international will at once become clear if we imagine the whole youth of the United States condemned to become proficient in French or Spanish or German. Say we take the easiest of them, Spanish: does anyone dream the thing possible? Only an infinitesimal fraction of our young people could attain even a smattering, and that ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... out your line, you have a respectable cast, for here the river is broad, you can scarce cast your line across it. Well, you must be a little patient,—You cannot expect to catch a fish the moment you throw in.... I see you are not a great proficient at the piscatory science. Cast out very little line at first, perhaps about the length of your rod, and then increasing by degrees, you will soon be able to throw full across and with precision. Ah! now you ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... forever in the company of Thrasyllus and made some use of the mantic art every day, becoming himself so proficient in the study that when he was once bidden in a dream to give money to a certain person, he comprehended that a deceitful spirit had been called up before him and he put the man to death. Likewise, in ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... Surgery, Hippocrates was surprisingly proficient, although he lived before the Anatomic Period. He had various lotions for the healing of ulcers; some of these lotions were antiseptic and have been in use in recent times. His opinions on the treatment of fractures are sound, and he was a master in the use of splints, and ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... so firmly rooted, the career before him so splendid, that there were not wanted whisperers who, in addition to his other crimes, ascribed to Roderigo Calderon the assistance of the black art. But the black art in which that subtle courtier was a proficient is one that dispenses with necromancy. It was the art of devoting the highest intellect to the most selfish purposes—an art that thrives tolerably well for a time ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... independent transcendent competent insistent consistent convalescent correspondent corpulent dependent despondent expedient impertinent inclement insolvent intermittent prevalent superintendent recipient proficient efficient eminent excellent fraudulent latent opulent convenient corpulent ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... fraught with danger to him from the little hands of his Caucasian Christian brothers. He made her the most marvellous toys; he would cut out of carrots and turnips the most astonishing roses and tulips; he made life-like chickens out of melon-seeds; he constructed fans and kites, and was singularly proficient in the making of dolls' paper dresses. On the other hand, she played and sang to him, taught him a thousand little prettinesses and refinements only known to girls, gave him a yellow ribbon for his pig-tail, as best suiting his complexion, read to him, showed him wherein he was original ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... one could learn to use it with a little practice, and he's right. Basically, anyone can use it as soon as he puts it on for the first time. But it's like so many other tools. The more you use it, the more proficient you get with it. And I suspect it has capabilities I haven't ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... of famous men laid low. Among them none was more remarkable than Tom Steele, an ardent follower of O'Connell, and his "head pacificator." Steele was a gentleman and a Protestant; he had studied with great success at Cambridge University, and was a proficient in mathematics. He began life with bright prospects; talents, education, connections, and property—all were his. He wrecked all in the service of Ireland, as he believed—in the service of an Irish faction, as the event proved. Steele burned with indignation at the disabilities ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Use one tin can for experimenting. By capping and tipping, heating the cap, and throwing it off and simply putting another cap on the same can, you can use this one can until you become proficient in capping. ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... a very dead English sovereign who manufactured the Round Table, and did all the things a good English king should do. Little is known of his Prince of Waleshood. Was crowned in Westminster Abbey, but without the American contingent. Became proficient as a knight. Stayed away from the palace so much his queen began flirting. Al's sword was a wonder. Press Agent: Lord Tennyson. recreation: Grailing. Address: ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... powers both of body and mind. When the prince had reached his eighteenth year he was allowed to choose his bride, and his choice fell on the beautiful Yasodara; but in order to obtain her hand he had to vanquish in open contest those of his people who were most proficient in manly exercises. First came the bowmen, who shot at a copper drum. Siddharta had the mark moved to double the distance, but the bow that was given him broke. Another was sent for from the temple—of unpolished steel, so stiff that no one could bend it to get the loop of the string into ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... the heaven where the stars and no clouds live. She was a sadly dainty little creature. No one in the world except those two was aware of the being of the little bat. Watho trained her to sleep during the day, and wake during the night. She taught her music, in which she was herself a proficient, and taught ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... in barracks and in camp. He at first even went through the form of inspecting it, to see if I had performed my duty properly, and I think I enjoyed this until the novelty wore off. However, I was kept at it, becoming in time very proficient, and the knowledge so accquired has been of great use ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... they call me;—and, when I am King of England, I shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap. They call drinking deep, dying scarlet; and, when you breathe in your watering, they cry hem! and bid you play it off. To conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour, that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life. I tell thee, Ned, thou hast lost much honour, that thou wert not with me in this action. But, sweet Ned,—to sweeten which name of Ned, I give thee this pennyworth of sugar, clapp'd even ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... above described blend into one another with every shade of gradation. Some are admirably proficient in the well-known sciences—that is to say, they have good health, good looks, good temper, common sense, and energy, and they hold all these good things in such perfection as to be altogether without introspection—to be not under the law, but so entirely under grace that every ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... about three years in that house, left the University without a degree.' Wood declares that 'his natural parts being strangely advanced by academical learning, under the care of an excellent tutor, he became the ornament of the juniors, and was worthily esteemed a proficient in oratory and philosophy.' It is exceedingly likely, Ralegh being Ralegh. At the same time, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... space, Each man learns only that which learn he can; Who knows the moment to embrace, He is your proper man. In person you are tolerably made, Nor in assurance will you be deficient: Self-confidence acquire, be not afraid, Others will then esteem you a proficient. Learn chiefly with the sex to deal! Their thousands ahs and ohs, These the sage doctor knows, He only from one point can heal. Assume a decent tone of courteous ease, You have them then to humour ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... could find applicable to the subject. I have carefully avoided all rapturous expressions which can only suit a few persons, and have endeavoured to express myself in such a manner as may suit a young beginner in religion, as well as a greater proficient.'"—Extract ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... Colonel Burton's blowpipes, retorts and other "notions," as his son put it, proceeded by easy stages to Marseilles, whence chariot, chaise, horse and family were shipped to Leghorn, and a few days later they found themselves at Pisa. The boys became proficient in Italian and drawing, but it was not until middle life that Richard's writing developed into that gossamer hand which so long distinguished it. Both had a talent for music, but when "a thing like Paganini, length without breadth" was introduced, and they were ordered to learn the violin, Richard ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... for he had studied surgery in Germany for the mere love of the science. After which, making the grand tour in France and Italy, he had taken up that art of being a gentleman in which men became so proficient in my young days. He had learned to speak French like a Parisian, had hobnobbed with wit and wickedness from Versailles to Rome, and then had come back to Annapolis to set the fashions and to spend the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sometimes made a hasty sketch with her pencil the means of conveying her ideas, either by direct or emblematical representation. Above all, in the art of ornamental writing, much studied at that period, Fenella was so great a proficient, as to rival the fame of Messrs. Snow, Shelley, and other masters of the pen, whose copybooks, preserved in the libraries of the curious, still show the artists smiling on the frontispiece in all ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... at Woodville Castle ended as usual in such mansions. The hospitality stopped within the limits of good order; music, in which the young lord was a proficient, succeeded to the circulation of the bottle: cards and billiards, for those who preferred such amusements, were in readiness: but the exercise of the morning required early hours, and not long after eleven o'clock the guests began to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... enthusiasm. What an argument it would be in favor of his new system if a mere civilian unhorsed a Guardsman trained after the old fashion! For a week he drilled me more or less every day in getting him off his horse in various ways, and I speedily became a proficient in the art, he meanwhile gaining some new ideas on the subject, which were duly printed in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... of the manufacture of man out of wood instead of clay is thoroughly in keeping with an origin purely Dayak. The Dayaks never have been proficient in pottery, and to this day they carve their bowls and dishes out of hard wood, otherwise it seems to me that clay would have suggested itself to them as the most suitable substance whereof to have made man. Another item ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... become a fairly proficient Italian scholar. I could speak the language fluently and read it fairly well. It wasn't the fault of Giuseppe if my pronunciation was sometimes queer and if very often I used the jargon of the provinces. My object was ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... started at a trot, dragging the toboggan behind him; it sank heavily in snow so light. Courthope lent a hand to the loop of rope by which it was drawn. He too essayed the trot of the Canadian. He was growing proficient, and if he did not succeed in keeping up the running pace, he managed to go more quickly than before. They made fair progress. Looking back, Courthope saw Madge and the stranger emerge upon the road with the little horse. He had not time to look back often to see ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... 'Go,' it says, and 'to the devil go! And shake thyself!' I tremble—but 'tis so; Wretch as thou art, what answer canst thou make? Oh! without question, thou wilt go and shake. What's here? 'The School for Scandal'—pretty schools! Well, and art thou proficient in the rules? Art thou a pupil? Is it thy design To make our names contemptible as thine? 'Old Nick, a novel!' oh! 'tis mighty well - A fool has courage when he laughs at hell; 'Frolic and Fun;' the Humours of Tim Grin;' Why, John, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... his own competence as admiralty judge in his colony is given with engaging frankness in a contemporary letter: "The office of Judge Admiral was not given me for my understanding of the business better than others, nor for the profitableness thereof, for I left the schools too young to be a great proficient either in that or other laws, and have been much more used to the pike than to the book; and as for the profit, there is no porter in this town but can get more money in the time than I made by this trial. But I was truly put in to maintain the honour ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... 527. Adj. knowing &c. v.; cognitive; acroamatic[obs3]. aware of, cognizant of, conscious of; acquainted with, made acquainted with; privy to, no stranger to; au -fait, au courant; in the secret; up to, alive to; behind the scenes, behind the curtain; let into; apprized of, informed of; undeceived. proficient with, versed with, read with, forward with, strong with, at home in; conversant with, familiar with. erudite, instructed, leaned, lettered, educated; well conned, well informed, well read, well grounded, well educated; enlightened, shrewd, savant, blue, bookish, scholastic, solid, profound, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... flowers, and they, on the one hand, saw how modest and genial Ch'in Chung was, how he blushed before he uttered a word, how he was timid and demure like a girl, and on the other hand, how that Pao-yue was naturally proficient in abasing and demeaning himself, how he was so affable and good-natured, considerate in his temperament and so full of conversation, and how that these two were, in consequence, on such terms of intimate friendship, it was, in fact, no matter of surprise that the whole company ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a rooted aversion; and at history he was inclined to yawn, except when it happened to touch upon the names and deeds of such men as Vasco di Gama and Columbus. But in geography he was perfect; and in arithmetic and book-keeping he was quite a proficient, to the delight of Mrs. Dorothy Grumbit, whose household books he summed up; and to the satisfaction of his fast friend, Mr. Arthur Jollyboy, whose ledgers he was—in that old gentleman's secret resolves—destined ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... degree of Proficient is conferred in the University of Virginia, in a certificate of proficiency, on those who have studied only in certain branches taught in some of the schools connected with ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... were no more lonely evenings for Alec, when he sat with bowed head beside his table, staring into vacancy. He should have had another promotion in March. Alec felt that he was proficient enough to be advanced, and he told himself bitterly that the reason he was not was because the ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the acrobatic dancing class, for a month, because here the students get all sorts of primary acrobatic tricks and gain in strength and flexibility. All dancing is easier to those who take this work. And besides, if you go out and accept an engagement you will be proficient in cartwheels, splits, and many other neat tricks that will be of great service to you. These are stunts that you cannot learn in a theatre; no one has time to teach them to you, nor the necessary equipment or facilities, and you want to be ready when ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... was a cattle-dealer, and taught her to handle fearlessly the animals he delighted in. She learned to tell at a glance the finest points of live-stock, and to doctor bovine and equine ailments with the utmost skill. With all this, she became a proficient in Italian and French, and a terse and rapid writer. A few years ago, after her father's death, she traveled in Italy with an invalid sister, having an eye to her pet passion—the horse. While there she met Prince Poniatowsky, also an ardent ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... lived before, would he live again? There must be a way to know. "Alclytus," began an early chapter of the tale, "was born this time in 21976 B.C. in a male body as the son of a king, in what is now the Telugu country not far from Masulipatam. He was proficient in riding, shooting, swimming and the sports of his race. When he came of age he married Surya, the daughter of a neighbouring rajah and they were very happy together in their ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... of Halleck, and his lazy or incompetent, or traitorous staff, to have seen to the sending on of the pontoons. However, supposing Burnside and his staff to have as much wit as an average twelve-year-old school boy, they could have found in the army not merely hundreds, but even thousands of proficient workmen in a variety of mechanical trades, who would have constructed on the spot, and at the shortest notice, any number of bridges, pontoons, &c. Oh, how little are those wiseacre generals, the conceited and swaggering West Pointers; oh, how very little, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... the growth of specialization in modern life, this argument, despite Carlyle, has not attained much popularity. Even in idealized fictions of the poet, it is not often maintained that he is equally proficient in every line of activity. Only one actual poet within our period, William Morris, can be taken as representative of such a type, and he does not afford a strong argument for the poet's distinctive virtue, inasmuch as tradition does not represent him ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... only"), I left this fire-chariot, and at once perceiving another in an attitude of departure, I entered it, as the casual barbarian had definitely instructed, and began to assure myself that I had already become expertly proficient in the art of journeying among these Beneath Regions and to foresee the time, not far distant, when others would confidently address themselves to me in their extremities. So entrancing did this contemplation grow, that this outrageous person ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... the sultan had seen me, and ordered me to be reserved for the imperial seraglio; by this falsehood screening himself, not only from Ali's importunities, but also from his vengeance. I took the advice of my master, and in a little more than a year became a proficient in music and most other accomplishments; I also learnt to write and read, and to repeat most of the verses of Hafiz, and other celebrated poets. At seventeen I was offered to the kislar aga as a prodigy of beauty and talent. The kislar aga came to see me, and was astonished; he saw at once ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... termed a "White House Lunch." The cooking was all done on the Chelton and the eatables were handed over the brass rail to Lottie and Marita, who served as waitresses on the Dixie. First there were lettuce sandwiches, rolled. Any girl who can successfully roll bread and lettuce is termed proficient by the cooking teachers, and it was a tie between Belle and Cora as to who did the most and best of ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... next five weeks, Tom was employed forenoon, afternoon, and evening, in the drill, and he soon made himself proficient. The company was recruited nearly up to its maximum number, and was then attached to the —th regiment, which had just been formed and ordered to ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... professed Maxim with these People never to think; there is something so solemn in Reflexion, they, forsooth, can never give themselves Time for such a way of employing themselves. It happens often that this sort of Man is heavy enough in his Nature to be a good Proficient in such Matters as are attainable by Industry; but alas! he has such an ardent Desire to be what he is not, to be too volatile, to have the Faults of a Person of Spirit, that he professes himself the most unfit Man living for any manner of Application. When ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... house. Inside the monumental hearth, at an arm's length up the wide chimney, a receptacle had been contrived in the brickwork, with a small iron door which opened and closed with a secret spring. Chauvelin, whom his nefarious calling had rendered proficient in such matters, had soon mastered the workings of that spring. He could now open and close the iron door ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... natural enough that Elizabeth should have wanted to begin the study of Greek; and with the help of her father and of Mr. Boyd, a blind friend of her father's, she became a most proficient Greek scholar. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Richard Kendrick, should be employed in serious work in the same room with the niece of a prosperous and distinguished gentleman, a girl who had not hesitated to learn a trade in which she had become proficient, and that the three of them should spend the morning in this room together, taking no notice of each other beyond that made necessary by the task in hand—it was enough to make him burst out laughing. At the same time he felt a genuine satisfaction in the situation. If he could ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... embarrassing for both of us. I always wait for the other person to speak. I know lots of people, but I don't know who they are. It is all a matter of ability to observe things. I never observe anything now. I gave up the habit years ago. You should keep a habit up if you want to become proficient in it. For instance, I was a pilot once, but I gave it up, and I do not believe the captain of the Minneapolis would let me navigate his ship to London. Still, if I think that he is not on the job I may go up on the bridge and offer him ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... qui nescit, campestribus abstinet armis; Indoctusque pilae, discive, trochive, quiescit; Ne spissae risum tollant impune coronae: Qui nescit versus, tamen audet fingere. Quid ni? A moderate proficient in the laws, A moderate defender of a cause, Boasts not Messala's pleadings, nor is deem'd Aulus in Jurisprudence; yet esteem'd: But middling Poet's, or degrees in Wit, Nor men, nor Gods, nor niblick-polls admit. At festivals, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... constant study was "slang," in which he was no mean proficient. He always carried in his pocket a colt (i.e. a foot and a half of rope, knotted at one end, and whipped at the other), for the benefit of the youngsters, to whom he was a most inordinate tyrant. He could judge a day's work, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... for. The foundation of his education was laid in the grammar school of his native town, where most probably his father (being a clergyman) would officiate as tutor. At the age of fifteen he was sent to Oxford. Five years of assiduous study made him proficient as a tutor; this, combined with his amiability and profound views of society, gained him the respect of the Earl of Devonshire, and he was appointed tutor to the Earl's son, Lord Cavendish. From 1610 to 1628, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... Kader, as we used to say in the old days; these four, the two gendarmes and two policemen, sat down opposite me on chairs and began cross-questioning me in Italian, a language in which I was not proficient. I so far understood them as to know that they were ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... probable he knew English, and if he knew English it was certain the whole of their design was in the Master's knowledge. There was one singularity in the position. If Secundra Dass knew and concealed his knowledge of English, Harris was a proficient in several of the tongues of India, and as his career in that part of the world had been a great deal worse than profligate, he had not thought proper to remark upon the circumstance. Each side had thus a spy-hole on the counsels of the other. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the movements of the erratic and extraordinary bodies in the air and heavens. He took up the study of Latin, and pursued it until he could read it fluently. He read all the standard poets, and had copies of their works in his library. Also, he became proficient in history, while his miscellaneous reading was very extensive. Of his books ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... towards Garibaldi with ponderous assurance, but Garibaldi was not going to be tied, she preferred her freedom. She was not, however, unwilling to play a friendly game of tag; it was her favorite sport and she was very proficient in it. When the big soldier would come within reach of her, she would lower her head and duck under his arm, and before the astonished pursuer could collect his wits and look around, she would be browsing innocently ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... younger ladies, his society was, it is superfluous to observe, at the lowest premium civility and native kindliness of disposition would permit them to declare by the nameless and innumerable methods in which the dear creatures are proficient. To Rosa Tazewell he could not be anything better than a target for the arrows of her satire, or the whetstone, upon the unyielding surface of which she sharpened them. But she showed her prudential foresight in never laughing at him ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... have amounted to about six hundred.... I believe with you that the study of comparative religion is important for all missionaries. Still more important, it seems to me, is it that missionaries should make themselves thoroughly proficient in the languages and literature of the people to whom they are sent."—Dr. Legge's Letter to ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... world. As a mere pastime chess is easily learnt, and a very moderate amount of study enables a man to become a fair player, but the higher ranges of chess-skill are only attained by persistent labour. The real proficient or "master" not merely must know the subtle variations in which the game abounds, but must be able to apply his knowledge in the face of the enemy and to call to his aid, as occasion demands, all that he has of foresight, brilliancy ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... possibility that she and Anne might be the subject of unpleasant comment, Grace made up her mind to enjoy herself. She was fond of dancing, and knew that she would have plenty of invitations to do so. David would look after Anne, who was not yet proficient enough in dancing to venture to try it ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... thoroughly proficient and more frequently than ever Borroughs would let me "spell" for him for a while each day. Be it said to his credit, however, he was always within hearing, when I was doing any of his work. He was carefulness personified, and the following incident only serves to ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... curve of the form, before a table filled with letters and papers, and tosses them one by one into the squares to which they belong. This is done with the utmost rapidity, and long practice has made the clerk so proficient that he never misses the proper square. The stamping of the office mark and cancelling of the postage stamps on letters to be sent away is incessant, and the room resounds with the heavy thud of the stamp. This is no slight work, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Tacitus ordered to be placed every year in the public libraries among the national archives. (Tac. Imp. x.) Orosius, the Spanish ecclesiastic, who flourished at the commencement of the fifth century, has several references to Tacitus in his famous work, Hormesta. This great proficient in knowledge of the Scriptures and disciple of St. Augustin quotes the fifth book of the History thrice (Lib. V., cc. 5 and 10), and thrice alludes to facts recorded by Tacitus,—the Temple of Janus being open from ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... over early in the morning to help Anton with some of his sunshine experiment work. The crippled lad had definitely settled down to the study of meteorology and spent all his time either at his instruments or at his books. Under the Forecaster's teaching, he was becoming thoroughly proficient, and the fact that the lad was a natural-born mathematician stood him in a good stead. He was no longer merely a crippled lad, with scarcely a chance before him, he was making a place for himself in the community and there was no doubt that he would ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... "Scottish Brothers," who were the cynosure of the eyes of the Court of James III of Scotland. This monster consisted of two men, ordinary in appearance in the superior extremities, whose trunks fused into a single lower extremity. The King took diligent care of their education, and they became proficient in music, languages, and other court accomplishments. Between them they would carry on animated conversations, sometimes merging into curious debates, followed by blows. Above the point of union they had no synchronous ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... riding, or become proficient in that art, unless she has good nerve. Luckily, the large majority of girls who learn to ride possess abundance of nerve and pluck, an excess of which is often a danger to safety in the hunting field. It may ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... devoted himself to natural history, the late Lord Chief Baron Pollock devoted his leisure to natural science, recreating himself in the practice of photography and the study of mathematics, in both of which he was thoroughly proficient. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... and be fairly comfortable. He had long since become used to the limy smell (used to defeat a more sickening one), and to the numerous rats which he quite regularly trapped. He had learned to take an interest in chair-caning, having become so proficient that he could seat twenty in a day if he chose, and in working in the little garden in spring, summer, and fall. Every evening he had studied the sky from his narrow yard, which resulted curiously in the gift in ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... all the nations of the world at their own games. It is not the United States only, but all her Colonies and every country of Europe that turn to Great Britain as to their best antagonist in whatever sport they find themselves proficient. Just now England's brow is somewhat bare of laurels, but year in and year out Britain will continue to win the majority of contests in her meetings with all the world; and if she lose at times, is it not better to have rivals good enough to make her extend ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... or fortnight, I think of returning to the Continent till autumn, when I shall bring a horse, and stay the winter at Burnham. I return to many charming women; but no charming woman will return with me. I want to be a proficient in the language, which is my only reason for returning. I hate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... thousand streams for trout and the tiny gudgeon and crayfish—can show as noble a list of fishes as any city in the world. The chef de cuisine who could not enumerate an hundred and fifty entrees all distinctively French, would be no proficient in his noble profession. The British beef stands against all the world as the meat noblest for the spit, though the French ox which has worked its time in the fields gives the best material for the ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... details of the story are not altogether clear in my memory, but, as I recall it, something the good Doctor said angered these women, for they began showering him with profane and blasphemous names. At this style of language the fishwives are said to be extremely proficient. What do you fancy that Dr. Johnson called them in return? But you could hardly guess. He called H them parallelopipedons. I am not entirely certain whether it was parallelopipedons or isosceles triangles. Possibly there are two versions ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the eye remains to me, and I am a proficient in that, ma'am,' said Mat, roused by these efforts to deny her the right of ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... presented itself to me as the best for gaining a living by, was that of a horse-breaker, in which I consider myself a proficient. It is certainly one of the least servile, and it appeared to me to be more compatible than any other with that of a poet, for it is much easier to write tragedies in a stable than ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... send him to Jena for three months to pick up your noble vernacular; and in the meanwhile to continue his Greek and Mathematics, in which the young gentleman is fairly proficient. If you can recommend any Professor under whom he can carry on his studies, it will be ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... still early enough after her morning's duties were over, for a tramp along the Panipara Jhil for snipe, the sport Honor most enjoyed and at which she was gradually becoming proficient. She would be all alone, that bright January day, as Tommy, her faithful and devoted lover, was prevented by his duties from waiting ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... voice is so important, breathing exercises are often prescribed for regular practice. Such exercises, when directed by a thoroughly proficient instructor, may be vocally effective, and beneficial to health. Unwisely practiced, they may be unfitted to vocal control and of positive physical harm. Moderately taking the breath at frequent intervals, as a preparation or reenforcement ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... things which have already come to their development thousands of times over in the persons of its ancestors. It is in virtue of this that it acquires proficiency in the actions necessary for its existence—so far as it was not already at birth proficient in them—much more quickly and easily than would be otherwise possible; but what we call instinct in the case of animals takes in man the looser form of aptitude, talent, and genius. {84} Granted that certain ideas are not innate, yet the ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... three months to rafting, and, being then as proficient as there was any need to be at that branch of the art, I determined to go in for rowing proper, and joined one of ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... of the Crow Patrol in these sports. He was a wonderfully fine athlete for a boy of his age, and was proficient in many games. There had been no other real candidate for the post of pitcher on the Crow baseball team, and he was expected to make a new record ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... applicants for the post of Language Master at a well-known Public school, eight were proficient in at least five languages. However, as the ninth man proved to be an ex-Sergeant-Major, the eight immediately retired ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... merit, too, of a proper appreciation of his own capacity; and his aims never rose above that capacity. As a superficial man he dealt with superficial things, and his dealings were marked by tact and shrewdness. In his sphere he was proficient, and he kept his wits upon the alert for everything that might be turned to professional and profitable use. Thus it was that, as he sauntered along one of the main thoroughfares of Cincinnati, as has been written, his attention was suddenly arrested ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... that will improve you so much as playing with good players; never refuse, therefore, when any one offers you odds, to accept them: you cannot expect a proficient to feel much interest in playing with you upon even terms, and as you are sure to derive both amusement and instruction from him, it is but fair that he should name the conditions. It will soon happen that you yourself will be able to give ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... and angrily rubbed his eyes with his bony knuckles. He sobbed twice, and then burst forth in a shrill tirade of abuse. Quivering with ungovernable rage, he called Dick every vile name he could lay his proficient ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the habit, since the hot weather began, of making ices every afternoon, and had become, from long practice, quite proficient at the work. At three o'clock we were in the midst of our occupation, our whole thoughts and energies bent on the accomplishment of our task. Clad in loose deshabille, seated on the floor of the sitting-room, we worked and watched the process ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... from the Opelousas parishes, and all cultivators—well versed in farming, and in all the mechanical arts connected with a farm. Among them are brickmakers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, etc. Some of them are proficient weavers, who have long been employed making the stuff called Attakapas cottonade, so favorably known in the market. They take along with them the necessary machinery for that trade, and all sorts of agricultural ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... romantic vein, and exceedingly superstitious. He was deeply versed in the fairy superstitions which abound in Ireland, all which he professed implicitly to believe. Under his tuition Goldsmith soon became almost as great a proficient in fairy lore. From this branch of good-for-nothing knowledge, his studies, by an easy transition, extended to the histories of robbers, pirates, smugglers, and the whole race of Irish rogues and rapparees. Everything, in short, that savored of romance, fable, and adventure was congenial to his ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... own invitation and message from him, I found him sitting in his study,[80] and in a discourse with C. Velleius, the senator, who was then reputed by the Epicureans the ablest of our countrymen. Q. Lucilius Balbus was likewise there, a great proficient in the doctrine of the Stoics, and esteemed equal to the most eminent of the Greeks in that part of knowledge. As soon as Cotta saw me, You are come, says he, very seasonably; for I am having a dispute with Velleius on an important subject, which, considering the nature of your ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... "Wolfert's Roost"; afterward the name was changed to "Sunnyside," the name by which it is still known. Little by little he bought more land, he planted trees, and cultivated flowers and vegetables. At one time he boasts that he has become so proficient in gardening that he can raise his own fruits and vegetables at a cost to him of little more than ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... firemen 3rd class. While in training they are paid $30 a month. They also receive their clothing allotment, their food, dry comfortable quarters in which to live, and all text books and practical working tools. In return for this chance to become proficient in a very necessary trade, all that is required of those enlisting is a knowledge of common fractions, ambition to learn the trade, energy and a strict attention to the ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... hymns to the Virgin. Another is that it was thus called in honor of Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. We may accept whichever theory best suits us, but history records that both Elizabeth and Mary of Scotland were proficient in its use and that it was the favorite instrument of Henry VIII. Items for repairs and for instruction in playing the virginal appear frequently in the royal expense book, showing conclusively that His Majesty was not unmindful ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... mentions the "burning lens." Nearly every one is familiar with an achievement attributed to Archimedes in which he destroyed the ships at Syracuse by focusing the image of the sun upon them by means of a concave mirror. The ancient Egyptians were proficient in the art of glass-making, so it is likely that the "burning-glass" was employed by them. Even a crude lens of glass will focus an image of the sun sufficiently well to cause inflammable material ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... every easel, except that of Schalken, was deserted. Gerard Douw was pacing the apartment with the restless step of impatient expectation, every now and then humming a passage from a piece of music which he was himself composing; for, though no great proficient, he admired the art; sometimes pausing to glance over the work of one of his absent pupils, but more frequently placing himself at the window, from whence he might observe the passengers who threaded the obscure by-street in ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... tolerable education, young Dickens made some progress in the study of law; but soon undertook his father's business as reporter, in which he struggled as he has made David Copperfield to do in becoming proficient. ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... performed a straight ASCII conversion), AM used "SGML-like" codes. These codes resembled SGML tags but were used without the benefit of document-type definitions. AM found that many service bureaus were not yet SGML-proficient. ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... London. It was the habit of his life to give up his London lodgings when he left town at the end of the season, and spare himself the expense of any home as long as he could find friends to entertain him. There are certain items of the cost of living for which the greatest proficient in the art of tick must pay, or he will come to a speedy end;—and a man's lodging is one of them. If indeed the spendthrift adapts himself to the splendour of housekeeping, he may, provided his knowledge of his business ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... mental culture, social training, and refined accomplishments of Esther Randolph to such a father were matters of import. Nor were the subtle interwoven relations of the intellectual and ethical with bodily conditions, disregarded. She learned much by study wisely directed; became proficient in the languages, vocal and instrumental music; absorbed valuable general information from frequent talks with her father; read with discrimination some of the best works of poetry, romance, and literature; was familiar with the amenities ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... thing you can think of?" asked Sally. "I do mean it. I've written to London and I've got the prospectus here of one of the schools for teaching shorthand and typewriting. For eight pounds they guarantee to make any one proficient in both—suitable to take a secretaryship. Doesn't matter how long you'll stay; they agree for that sum to make you proficient, and they also half promise to get ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... she "wore her learning lightly as a flower." "Her manners [Examiner], her tastes, her accomplishments, in many of which, music especially, she was proficient, were feminine in the nicest sense of the word." Unlike her father in features, or in the bent of her mind, she inherited his mental vigour and intensity of purpose. Like him, she died in her thirty-seventh year, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
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