"Commoner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interesting part of the garden, is that devoted to wax dolls. There are other beds for the commoner dolls—for the rag dolls, and the china dolls, and the rubber dolls, but of course wax dolls would look much handsomer growing. Wax dolls have to be planted quite early in the season; for they need a good start before the sun is very high. The seeds are ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... of the exchequer in Ireland, was born in Dublin in 1615. In 1617 his father became baron of the exchequer in England, and removed to London with his family. In Michaelmas term 1631 the future poet was entered as a gentleman commoner at Trinity College, Oxford. He removed in 1634 to Lincoln's Inn, where he was, says John Aubrey, a good student, but not suspected of being a wit. The reputation he had gained at Oxford of being the "dreamingest young fellow" gave way to a scandalous reputation for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... their natural lot. If any person among those who were made slaves (sa guiguilir)—through war, by the trade of goldsmith, or otherwise—happened to possess any gold beyond the sum that he had to give his master, he ransomed himself, becoming thus a namamahay, or what we call a commoner. The price of this ransom was never less than five taels, and from that upwards; and if he gave ten or more taels, as they might agree, he became wholly free. An amusing ceremony accompanied this custom. After having divided ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... motion of the commoner streets; through the roar and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and nothing meets ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... 'mimic fires,' and make it glow and sparkle as if, like the heavens, it had its galaxies and constellations. These are the jelly-fishes, or sea-nettles (Acalephae), as they are often called, from the stinging properties with which some of them are endowed. The commoner forms are well known, for the beach is often strewn with the carcasses of the larger species. On fine days in summer and autumn, whole fleets of these strange voyagers appear off our coasts. Their umbrella-shaped, transparent disks float gracefully through the calm water, and ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... individuals maintained are so few in number, and (2) that its beauty is so great it can hardly be improved. But the individuals maintained have not been too few for the independent origin of the black-shouldered form, or for the supplanting of the commoner one by it. As to any neglect in selection,{120} it can hardly be imagined that with regard to this bird (kept as it is all but exclusively for its beauty), any spontaneous beautiful variation in colour or form would have been neglected. On the contrary, it would have ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... and a new earth had begun for me, and a delicious longing, clean and sweet, that swept every commoner feeling far away. What matter that the life before me be filled with danger, and all the coarse and cruel things of the hard days of the Santa Fe Trail? In that hour I knew the best of life that a young man can know. Its benediction after all these years of change is ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... sometimes the suffering hero, but in both cases the recognized or unrecognized merit of oneself is the big fact in the story, so that the mastery motive is evidently finding satisfaction here as well as in other forms of play. Probably the conquering hero dream is the commoner and healthier variety. A classical example is that of the milkmaid who was carrying on her head a pail of milk she had been given. "I'll sell this milk for so much, and with the money buy a hen. The hen will lay so many ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... smallness of the products which the able man can really claim as his own, the consequent diminution of his claims to any exceptional reward on account of them, and the fact that even the highest ability, however rare it may be, is very much commoner than it seems to be, and will, for this reason in addition to those just mentioned, be obtainable in the future at a very much ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... glance, the creature abandoned to grief made a romantic and striking picture, and Sophia thought for an instant that she had at length encountered life on a plane that would correspond to her dreams of romance. And she was impressed, with a feeling somewhat akin to that of a middling commoner when confronted with a viscount. There was, in the distance, something imposing and sensational about that prone, trembling figure. The tragic works of love were therein apparently manifest, in a sort of dignified beauty. But ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... with marine articulata; but a knowledge of the crustacea of the island is at present a desideratum; and with the exception of the few commoner species that frequent the shores, or are offered in the markets, we are literally without information, excepting the little that can be gleaned ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... officers' decision as to what they should or should not do, so he left to the politicians, in whose hands the gifts lay, to decide what they would, or should, accord to a successful admiral. Pitt, the Great Commoner, left Hawke a commoner. Possibly he recognized that only by stretch of imagination could Hawke be reckoned one of the creations of a great ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... some former generation of the family had produced patchwork curtains and coverlet; and patchwork was patchwork in those days, before the early Yates and Peels had found out the secret of printing the parsley-leaf. Scraps of costly Indian chintzes and palempours were intermixed with commoner black and red calico in minute hexagons; and the variety of patterns served for the useful purpose of promoting conversation as well as the more obvious one of displaying the work-woman 's taste. Sylvia, for instance, began at once to her old friend, Molly Brunton, who had accompanied her into this ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... indeed, and a beautiful young widder besides. So she and Mr. Brudenell, they fell in love long of each other. But law, you see her kinfolks was bitter agin her a-marrying of him—which they called him a commoner, as isn't true, you know, 'cause he is not one of the common sort at all—though I s'pose they being so high, looked down upon him as sich. Well, anyways, they was as bitter against her marrying of him, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... order to transact their business with something like due dispatch, to travel both by night and day. In this case, as in others, the cause produced the effect; or rather, we should say, the temptation occasioned the crime. Highway-robbery was frequent; and many a worthy man—fat farmer and wealthy commoner—was eased of his purse in despite of all his armed precautions and the most sturdy resistance. The poorer classes, in every part of the country, were, with scarcely an exception, the friends of those depredators; by whom, it is true, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... did not certainly know if that immobile eye of his was glass—something has changed it from a liquid brown to a serene and confident blue. That shoulder-blade is an extremely doubtful document, and I would like to put it side by side with the gnawed scapulae of a few of the commoner domestic animals before I admitted ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... go forever and forever on!' He is the leader appointed by Heaven for sublime events. I am sent to him as a knight of God. I go to York. I was true at Metz to liberty, and in the council hall I shall be true, whatever is offered me, to Washington, our Washington beloved! to the world's great commoner! Farewell." ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... mountain-barrier which, refreshed by the Pacific, bears the noble forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges, and among them trees which are the wonder of the world. As I stood in their shade, in the groves of Mariposa and Calaveras, and again under the canopy of the commoner redwood, raised on columns of such majestic height and ample girth, it occurred to me that I could not do better than to share with you, upon this occasion, some of the thoughts which possessed my mind. In their development they may, perhaps, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... entered a colt or two at Epsom: her consort, Prince George of Denmark, loved horse-racing and drank Epsom waters. Greatest of all memories of the Turf, Eclipse lived for years by Epsom downs, and won poor little races for an obscure commoner. He would have won any race he could have been asked by a king, but it was the fate of the finest racehorse ever foaled to live before the Derby was founded, and before he could race another horse worthy to pass the starting post with him. Pownall, in his History ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... standard, again, involves the possession of rare virtues, and rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... deal when in the Carlyle letter he claimed to be the most rabid of Sansculottes. It is unlikely that he was ever very bare-kneed and crimson in his anarchy. He believed always that cruelty should be swiftly punished, whether in king or commoner, and that tyrants should be destroyed. He was for the people as against kings, and for the union of labor as opposed to the union of capital, though he wrote of such matters judicially—not radically. The Knights of Labor organization, then very powerful, seemed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Herr Professor there reclined upon a divan the form of Sir Reginald Elphinstone, sometimes called by his friends "the handsome baronet," said to be the richest commoner in England. At the age of thirty-five, having freely exposed himself to all known sources of peril, except those involved in a trip to the Polar regions, in his eager pursuit of sport and adventure, Sir Reginald seemed, for the moment, to have ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... innate delicacy would never permit him to go into these sordid details, too many of which I have perhaps told you. But I am made of rougher stuff than he. I am never quite as unreasonable as he can be at times, but I am commoner." ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... publicity through books and newspapers, who, though they ought to be the warmest in their enthusiasm, have never felt drawn to hear him, and, if they know of him at all, think of him as one who pleases in a simple way the commoner folk, forgetting in their pride that every really great man pleases the common ones, and that simplicity and directness are attributes ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... little chance of finding it. And it can not be pretended that to judge of an induction when found is perfectly easy, is a thing for which aids and instruments are superfluous; for erroneous inductions, false inferences from experience, are quite as common, on some subjects much commoner than true ones. The business of Inductive Logic is to provide rules and models (such as the Syllogism and its rules are for ratiocination) to which if inductive arguments conform, those arguments are conclusive, and not otherwise. This is what ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... to her affectionate friend, being sure that, the moment she opened her lips, the mother would side with her son against 'Sammy,' with love against prudence, and perhaps even compel her to the intolerable degradation of marrying a commoner. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Villon to make sport! I have dropped the 'de,' Monsieur La Mothe, there are so many rascals amongst the nobility nowadays that I find it more distinguished to be the simple commoner. Dull at the Chateau! Good Lord! don't I know it!" He paused, lifting his head with a quick, bird-like motion: a cunning smile wrinkled his face and he smote the table with his open hand. "Dull, are ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Chatham, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778), this distinguished statesman and orator. He became very popular as a statesman and was known as "The Great Commoner."] ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... readin' me frind Grover Cleveland out iv th' party. He's usin' the Commoner to read him ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... Parliament. It was William Burke's influence with Lord Verney that procured for his namesake the seat at Wendover. Burke made his first speech in the House of Commons a few days after the opening of the session of 1766 (January 27), and was honoured by a compliment from Pitt, still the Great Commoner. A week later he spoke again on the same momentous theme, the complaints of the American colonists, and his success was so marked that good judges predicted, in the stiff phraseology of the time, that he would soon add the palm of the orator to the laurel of ...
— Burke • John Morley
... there is another way, and that is to wear armour. Then you can frighten your enemy, or at least prevent him from eating you. Some fish, like the Trunk Fish, (p. 52, No. 6), are covered with bony plates, jointed together like armour. Spines and prickles are a commoner defence. ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... you, and I imagine you haven't been having any too easy a time with dear mamma-in-law, I'm mighty glad you're going to get away with Dicky by yourself. A week in the mountains ought to set you up wonderfully, and you certainly need it when you start weaving mysterious tragedies about the commoner garden variety of 'masher.'" ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... too long for insertion here, in relation to this cortes, showing the sturdy stuff of which a Castilian commoner in that day was made. (Teoria, part. 2, cap. 7.) It will scarcely gain credit without a better voucher than the anonymous scribbler from whom he ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... as the house in which Townsend Bishop lived, called "Bishop's Mansion." This continues to a period subsequent to the style of its architecture, and within recent tradition and the memory of the living. In the old Salem Commoner's records, it is called "Bishop's Cottage," which was the name generally given to dwelling-houses in those early times. Having, as occasion required, been seasonably repaired, it is as strong and good a house to-day as can be found. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... mental medicine, to whom their results come daily. Distasteful as the task may be, the social worker should familiarize herself, through reading or through instruction by a qualified physician, in the commoner forms of these maladjustments. This is not urged because it is part of the social worker's task to make detailed inquiry into such matters or to pass judgment upon them, but because they often clamor for attention and need to be recognized by ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... room at Portray Castle, and had taken possession of them as property found in her own house. John Eustace and the bishop had combined in demanding them on behalf of the heir, and a lawsuit had then commenced! The diamonds were the most costly belonging to any Commoner in England, and had been valued at twenty-four thousand pounds! Lord Fawn had retreated from his engagement the moment he heard that any doubt was thrown on Lady Eustace's right to their possession! Lady Eustace had declared ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... contradictory facts and speeches to himself,—which means subduing, and in a manlike and godlike manner conquering them to himself,—might have merely thrown new contention into them, new unwisdom into them, and so been conquered by them; much the commoner case! In that way he had proved no 'Saint,' or Divine-looking Man, but a mere Sinner, and unfortunate, blameable, more or less Diabolic-looking man! No landlord Edmund becomes infinitely admirable ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the madake. Made of bamboo split into long narrow strips, these tightly wrapped in twisted hempen cord to the thickness of a sun (inch), with the convenient leverage of a couple of shaku (feet), the mere sight brought Kondo[u] to terms. As he entered he had seen them lead away a heimin (commoner) who had undergone the punishment. The man's back, a mass of bruised and bleeding flesh, was vivid to mind. At once he prostrated himself; made full confession. At last they were at the source. Kondo[u] was a witness ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... privately over his ancestry and his landed estates. But if the nobleman tries to make these ancestors or these landed estates the condition of special influence and privilege in the government, of control over public policy, then the anger of the commoner rises against the nobleman and he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... been satisfied with the loss of the first ten thousand pounds; but Lady Arabella was made of higher mettle. She had married a man with a fine place and a fine fortune; but she had nevertheless married a commoner and had in so far derogated from her high birth. She felt that her husband should be by rights a member of the House of Lords; but, if not, that it was at least essential that he should have a seat in the lower chamber. She would by degrees sink into nothing if she ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... misfortune to be born to a romantic history. The humdrum always think that you are lying. In real truth romance is common in life, commoner, perhaps, than the commonplace. But the commonplace ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... would have been little or no difficulty in carrying out a law that nobody should take a part in the business who had not some handle to her name, but it was felt that such an arrangement as that might lead to failure rather than glory. The commoner world must be represented but it should be represented only by ladies who had made great names for themselves. Mrs Conway Sparkes, the spiteful poetess, though she was old and ugly as well as spiteful, was to have a stall and a bevy, because there was thought to be no doubt about ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... the great Commoner, considered money as dirt beneath his feet compared with the public interest and public esteem. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... who had been estranged and angered for many months, met, and with friendly smiles greeted each other again. The ladies in the gallery above rose up as if by a common impulse, to look down, with smiles, upon the great commoner. One whose silvered hair, parted smoothly and modestly upon her aged forehead, fell in two massy folds behind her ears, clasped her hands, and audibly ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... a commoner, let alone a peer," said Roland, growing fierce. "If I were no better off than Carrick, I'd drop the title; that's what I'd do. Why, if he could live as a peer ought, do you suppose we should be in the position we are? One a soldier; one (and that's me) lowered to be a common old proctor; ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... successor to Hollweg, was the first commoner to be appointed to that high office, without even a ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... Sydney writes to Mrs. Lefanu from Stanmore Priory to the effect that she is the best-lodged, best-fed, dullest author in his Majesty's dominions, and that the sound of a commoner's name is refreshment to her ears. She is surrounded by ex-lord-lieutenants, unpopular princesses (including her of Wales) deposed potentates (including him of Sweden), half the nobility of England, and many of the best wits and writers. She had sat to Sir Thomas Lawrence for her portrait, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... imitation porcelain used by those who cannot afford the real; this branch of the work alone takes up about forty per cent. of the entire output. Then there is the genuine porcelain for table and decorative use; the porcelain necessary for electrical purposes; stoneware, or the commoner household articles found in the kitchen comprising yellow ware, Rockingham ware, and red earthenware; and in addition the great quantities of sanitary ware for plumbing, drain-pipes, and tiling. Of all these varieties of porcelain the hardest in quality, and the only one absolutely non-absorbent, ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... early admiration and study of Baudelaire that set Wagner to extorting ecstasy from his orchestra by images of death and love; and no doubt the temperament which seeks such combinations—a temperament commoner in mediaeval days than ours—was inherent in Wagner. He makes his Isolde sing mournfully and madly over a corpse and, throwing herself upon the dead body of Tristan, die shaken by the sweet cruel pains ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... carried off the girl, and married her for her lands. This, too, was a plain case of abducting an heiress, not indeed by violence, but with consummate art. Setting aside the rare attractions of the lady, in Moodie's estimation the prize was immense. L'Isle, with all his lofty airs, was but a commoner, with perhaps no fortune but his sword, a mere adventurer, and Lord Strathern's broad acres were an irresistible temptation; though, in truth, this coveted domain counted thousands of acres of sheep-walk to the hundreds of ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... does me wrong, my lord; if I were so He might have bought me at a common price: Do not believe him. O, behold this ring, Whose high respect and rich validity Did lack a parallel; yet, for all that, He gave it to a commoner o' the camp, If I ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the invention consisted in its rendering the commoner sorts of cotton available for fine spinning. The manufacturers were thereby enabled to select the most suitable fibres for high-priced fabrics, and to produce the finer sorts of yarn in much larger quantities. It ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... long wet hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. 'Where is the Prince?' said he. 'Gone! Gone!' the two cried together. 'Neither he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King's niece, nor her brother, nor any one of all the brave three hundred, noble or commoner, except we three, has risen above the water!' Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, cried, 'Woe! woe, to me!' and ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... him, and the unwarranted supposition that he wishes to employ him. Just as the commoner once held his land by the munificence and condescension of the lord, so to-day the working-man holds his labor by the condescension and necessities of the master and proprietor: that is what is called possession by a precarious [15] ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... "villa life" might be considered even more aristocratic than at "Monte"; and Dom Ferdinand took himself and his ally out of danger's way when Dodo refused to understand that only flirtation, not marriage, was possible with a "commoner." The price of Dauntrey hospitality had, however, fallen. Those who could be attracted by the bait of their barren title had now to be looked for low in the social scale: and it was difficult to get eligible partis with whom to dazzle heiresses. The slender Austrian count, whom Dodo ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of all sizes and shapes, their beautiful tiles gleaming here and there as the light from the rising moon touched them, delicate spires, pointing upwards, tipped with silver light, low roof of the commoner's dwelling and pillared facade of old and stately palace intervening, and, far away, those cold white, solitary peaks overtopping all else, rising into the region of the stars, made up a ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... With this object you stand on the piece of tin or "crampit" before referred to, grasp the stone firmly by the handle and hurl it along the ice. It is almost essential to let go the stone at the right moment, otherwise it will hurl you. The game is almost identical with the commoner game of "bowls," except for the language, which is worse. The term "wood" is inappropriate and must be avoided, as the use of it may lay you under a charge of ignorance or flippancy, which you will find almost ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... Squire but a man of learning, and thus become greater even than his father before him, preparations and arrangements were made something sooner than had been intended, and not long afterward he was entered a gentleman commoner ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the hands of the artists; that is well. Artists, as a rule, are the last to organise themselves into official castes, and such castes, when organised, rarely impose on the choicer spirits. Rebellious painters are a good deal commoner than rebellious clergymen. On compromise which is the bane of all religion—since men cannot serve two masters—almost all the sects of Europe live and grow fat. Artists have been more willing to go lean. By ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... rows in the side aisles, just as their commoner sisters stand in rows upon the pavement edge to ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... any decision as to their respective characters. Ned wished to be Richard the Third, and Charlie that of Richmond and repeat the triumphs of Bosworth; but meeting such obstinate opposition from their council, turned their attention to "something commoner," as Ned expressed himself. After several hours intermingled with side-splitting laughter and grave discussion, a fair representation of Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday was produced, while Marguerite and her friends received more compliments from the young aspirants than ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... life unto the letter: And why should not That, which authority Prescribes, esteemed be Advantage got ? If th' prayer be good, the commoner the better, Prayer in the Church's words, as well As sense, of all prayers bears ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... Raymond narrowly in the long tete-a-tetes they had together. She drew him out, encouraging and pressing him to tell her everything about himself. She was always apprehending a jarring note, the inevitable sign of the man's coarser clay, of his commoner upbringing, the clash of his caste on hers. But she was struck instead by his inherent refinement, by his unformulated instincts of well-doing and honour. He was hazy about the use of oyster-forks, had never seen a finger-bowl, committed to her ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... living. But once when I was at Washington I went into the Patent Office, where the models of the inventions are deposited; the building is about as large as the Ducal Palace, and it is full of them. The people there told me nothing was commoner than for the same invention to be repeated over and over again by different inventors. Some few succeed, and then they have lawsuits with the infringers of their patents; some sell out their inventions for a trifle to companies that have capital, and that grow ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... (1892), a curious eulogy supplemented by "excerpts from the wit, wisdom, poetry and eloquence" of the versatile hero; and a life of General Weaver is soon to be issued by the State Historical Society of Iowa. William J. Bryan's "The First Battle" (1896) and numerous biographies of "the Commoner" treat of his connection with the Populists and the campaign of 1896. Herbert Croly's "Marcus A. Hanna" (1912) should also be consulted ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... Occasionally, however, the interest of his letters changes from personal to public, and we get a glimpse of scenes and personages that have become historical. He was present in the House of Commons at the first grand debate on the German war after the Great Commoner's retirement from office—"the pitched battle," as Sterne calls it, "wherein Mr. P. was to have entered and thrown down the gauntlet" in defence of his military policy. ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... Elijah come to life again, and held the crowds by his self-chosen privations no less than by his fierce, fiery eloquence. His desert life and contempt for ease and luxury spoke of a strength of character and purpose which fascinated commoner men, and make the next point the more striking—namely, the utter humility with which this strong, self-reliant, fiery rebuker of sin, and despiser of rank and official dignities, flings himself at the feet of the coming One. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... his services. Voules, supposing from his appearance that he was one of the other guests who had mistaken his room, made him a polite bow, and said something to that effect. The valet, uncertain whether the young gentleman was a lord or a commoner, thought it wise to be on the safe side, and addressing him as "My lord," said that he had been sent by Lord John to brush his clothes and shoes, and as the portmanteaus had not arrived, to put any of his lordship's wardrobe ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... reservoirs of ink, for he used every device of newspaper and pamphlet to drive home his message. He even printed his creed in Gaelic, Welsh and Erse. Third, he employed his kinship with the people to the fullest extent. The Commoner won. As the great structure of social reform rose under his dynamic powers so did the influence of the House of Lords crumble like an Edifice of Cards. Democracy in England meant something ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... concluded, he begged permission from his seat beside Plunkett, to address the House sitting, which was granted, and then in a discourse of two hours' duration, full of his ancient fire and vigour, he asserted once again, by the divine right of intellect, his title to be considered the first Commoner of Ireland. Gifted men were not rare in that assembly; but the inspiration of the heart, the uncontrollable utterance of a supreme spirit, not less than the extraordinary faculty of condensation, in which, perhaps, he has never ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... were of an illicit kind, and poor as he was, Pitt refused to accept one farthing beyond his salary. His pride never appeared in loftier and nobler form than in his attitude towards the people at large. No leader had ever a wider popularity than "the great commoner," as Pitt was styled, but his air was always that of a man who commands popularity, not that of one who seeks it. He never bent to flatter popular prejudice. When mobs were roaring themselves hoarse for "Wilkes and liberty," he denounced Wilkes as a worthless profligate; ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... by Vaughan's namesake. He has indeed another poem in that volume signed "Hen. Vaugh., Jes. Soc." but that is in Latin, and it is not unexampled for one man to contribute more than one poem, especially in different tongues, to such collections. Or it may be by Herbert Vaughan, who was a Gentleman-commoner of the College in 1641, and has, with Henry Vaughan the Fellow, verses in the [Greek: proteleia] Anglo Batava of ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... elder ladies; they were talking together eagerly. She walked over to the bow-shaped window, and opened the commoner envelope: ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... bit of ground where the kitchen garden meets the flowers, Japan has long since enlarged its bill of fare with the tuber of a cousin of our common hedge nettle, with the roots of the large burdock, commoner still. In Florida, the calla lily has use as well as beauty; it is ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... up to his room and weighed his duty to himself and to some unshaped rules of courtesy and conduct that he had inherited from a house more renowned for its sense of ceremonial honour, perhaps, than for commoner virtues. His instinct as a stranger in a most remarkable dwelling, creeping with mystery and with numberless evidences of things sinister and perhaps malevolent, told him it was fair to make a reconnaissance, even if no more was to be discovered than a servant's sordid amours. On the other hand, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... She has beauty, too. Nothing is commoner than the talent and beauty of American girls. But they'd better trust to ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... way save by a great upheaval and change could the nation break away from that iron feudal system which held her limbs. But now it was a new country which came out from that year of death. The barons were dead in swaths. No high turret nor cunning moat could keep out that black commoner who struck ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... result in the species being exceedingly numerous. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that no two botanists agree as to the number of species comprising the Gossypium family. A list, however, of the commoner varieties found in various cotton-growing areas of the globe will be given, but before doing so, it is deemed advisable to give a general ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... fate of the nation depends on the conduct of the King and his ministers. Were they to side openly with the Commons, the revolution would be completed without a convulsion, by the establishment of a constitution, tolerably free, and in which the distinction of Noble and Commoner would be suppressed. But this is scarcely possible. The King is honest, and wishes the good of his people; but the expediency of an hereditary aristocracy is too difficult a question for him. On the contrary, his ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Rosy, that it is wonderful what an amount of money slips away in our housekeeping. I suppose the servants are careless, and we have had a great many people coming. But there must be many in our rank who manage with much less: they must do with commoner things, I suppose, and look after the scraps. It seems, money goes but a little way in these matters, for Wrench has everything as plain as possible, and he has ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... lying in that stupor. And Pierson stood gazing down at him compassionately. Like most parsons, he had a wide acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship with death. Death! The commonest thing in the world, now—commoner than life! This young doctor must have seen many die in these last two years, saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to save himself. Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of sea shells or land shells, or of strings of perforated sea shells. The most elaborate kind of wampum was that of the Amerindians of Canada and the eastern United States, the shell beads of which were generally white. The commoner wampum beads were black and violet. Wampum belts were made which illustrated events, dates, treaties of peace, &c, by a rude symbolism (figures of men and animals, upright lines, &c), and these were worked neatly on string ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... forms of the irregular verbs were freely used, but later these are comparatively rare, and the impersonal and auxiliary forms became so much commoner that the full inflected form can only be gathered from the early writings and from the rather imperfect paradigms ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... wearily; 'I have discovered that infinitely worse things are infinitely commoner. But that there's ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... in Africa or Monte Carlo. Was the father of Bryanism, an odious word meaning things Bryan. Later secured one Wilson to attend to Washington detail work. Motto: All things come to him with bait. Ambition: Short ballot with one name. Publications: The Commoner, a newspaper devoted to Bryan advertisements. Address: Mail forwarded from Washington. Epitaph: He Will ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... which he received the thanks of the House. At that time we find a reference to Ipswich as a place which 'the Lord hath long made famous and happy as a valley of Gospel vision.' Such places, alas! seem to have been commoner ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... However, the commoner form of injury done tendons, is strain or sprain. Because of the sudden tensile strain brought to bear upon tendons in the shocks of concussion, as well as in propulsion of the body, there frequently occurs a rupture of fibers and this ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... one that purposes ill? Oh no, by no means. He is a far commoner character—one that hath no purpose, and so being, doth more real ill than he that sets forth to ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... and so sedate that it was said playfully of him he rather kept his parents and teachers in awe than needed correction; but in after-life his quick wit made him full of playfulness in conversation. In 1629 he entered Trinity College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner. There he had for tutor William Chillingworth, a Fellow of the college, who after conversion to the Church of Rome had reasoned his way back into Protestant opinions. Chillingworth became a famous champion of Protestantism ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... of the lives and habits of the commoner wood folk, such as the crow, the rabbit, the wild duck. The book is profusely illustrated by Charles Copeland ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... top of the mound, in the centre, there was a deep hole. Its import was obvious. The mortal remains of one who had lain for centuries in a grandeur befitting his lordly rank had been torn from their sepulchre, probably by some irreverent commoner, and were now doubtless exhibited to the vulgar ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... subordinated to the other that it takes on the character of a grammatical element. We may symbolize this by A b, a type that may gradually, by loss of external connection between the subordinated element b and its independent counterpart B merge with the commoner type A (b). A word like beautiful is an example of A b, the -ful barely preserving the impress of its lineage. A word like homely, on the other hand, is clearly of the type A (b), for no one but a linguistic student is aware ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... for the box, suggested "To bakcho." Pryme says that among the undergraduates, of whom he was one, tobacco had no favour, and "an attempt of Mr. Ginkell, son of Lord Athlone ... to introduce smoking at his own wine-parties failed, although he had the prestige of being a hat-fellow-commoner." ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... who wast wont of commoner clay to build Some rough Achilles or some Ajax tall; Thou whose free brush too oft was wont to gild Some single virtue till ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... was a mighty person in Cumberland, and one who well understood of what nature were the duties, and of what sort the magnificence, which his position as a great English commoner required of him. He had twenty thousand a year derived from land. His forefathers had owned the same property in Cumberland for nearly four centuries, and an estate nearly as large in Durham for more than a century and a half. He had married ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... and Prov. Words, says, "The term is used in contradistinction to gentleman commoner." In Gent. Mag., 1787, p. 1146, is the following:—"There was formerly at Oxford an order similar to the sizars of Cambridge, called battelers (batteling having the same signification as sizing). The sizar and ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... wrote once during a painful crisis of his life, "is now reading my book aloud to her sister at my elbow; they chuckle, and I feel flattered.—Yours, R. L. S. P.S.—Now they yawn, and I am indifferent. Such a wisely conceived thing is vanity." If only vanity so conceived were commoner! And whatever might be the abstract and philosophical value of that somewhat grimly stoical conception of the universe, of conduct and duty, at which in mature years he had arrived, want of manliness is certainly not its fault. Take the kind of maxims which he was accustomed to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now to begin this with telling MD that I dined with the Secretary to-day, who is much out of order with a cold, and feverish; yet he went to the Cabinet Council tonight at six, against my will. The Secretary is much the greatest commoner in England, and turns the whole Parliament, who can do nothing without him; and if he lives and has his health, will, I believe, be one day at the head of affairs. I have told him sometimes that, if I were a dozen ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... evil' is considered very meritorious, and where women are concerned positively a religious duty. Le scandale est ce qui fait l'offense is very much the notion in Egypt, and I believe that very forgiving husbands are commoner here than elsewhere. The whole idea is founded on the verse of the Koran, incessantly quoted, 'The woman is made for the man, but the man is made for the woman'; ergo, the obligations to chastity are equal; ergo, as the men find it difficult, they argue that the women ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... only repeat what I have heard. As for me, I don't know any more. I have kept out of the way for more than three months. And besides, it matters little to me whether Micheline be a commoner or a princess, the wife of Delarue or of Panine. I shall be none the richer or the poorer, shall I? Therefore I need not care. The dear child will certainly have millions enough to marry easily. And her adopted ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is the birthright and the criterion of the gentleman at his best; and it is in popular apprehension even more than that, for this demeanour is accepted as an intrinsic attribute of superior worth, before which the base-born commoner ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... of Pennsylvania, born in London, 1644, From a private school at Chigwell, Essex, he entered, in 1660, as a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford; but, as he withdrew from the national forms of worship with other students, who, like himself, had listened to the preaching of Thomas Loe, a Quaker of eminence, who was fined for Non-conformity, and, the next year, as he pertinaciously adhered ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... author a great name, as well it might. When in London Ward met Wilkins and formed a lifelong friendship with him. They were both men of learning, moderate, dexterous, and successful. Ward entered Wadham as a Fellow Commoner in October 1649, became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and in 1659 President of Trinity. Like Wilkins, he was ejected from his Headship at the Restoration, and like him obtained high preferment under the new regime and became a Bishop. ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... farmer lives more sumptuously. He occasionally has fresh meat and fresh fish, and the dried articles nearly every day. He also indulges in cheese, usually of the commoner kind, known as prim, or mysost, which is not unlike brown Windsor soap. There are two other native cheeses, but they are considered somewhat expensive luxuries. They are called gammelost and pultost, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... commoner, His flowing locks in royal guise, Like mane of lion, or sinister King's hair, ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... WOULDN'T come to pass; but he looked patient—very patient—and fawned like a spaniel dog. Even now, while he warmed and rubbed his hands before the blaze, he had the air of one who only presumed to enjoy it in his degree as a commoner; and though he knew his lord was not regarding him, he looked into his face from time to time, and with a meek and deferential manner, smiled as ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... of the commoner elements may be dismissed. The halo shows that the mica of the rocks is radioactively sensitive. The fundamental criterion of radioactive change is the expulsion of the alpha ray. The molecular system of the mica and ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... old boy, with sleepy eyes and a grey moustache; stout, sedentary, and very innocent, of a type that may often be found in France, but is still commoner in Catholic Germany. Everything about him, his pipe, his pot of beer, his flowers, and his beehive, suggested an ancestral peace; only when his visitors looked up as they entered the inn-parlour, they saw the sword upon ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... Eloquent, who was brought up to look upon justice as the first of political virtues, used to wonder wistfully whether such fearlessness could be achieved by one whose face at present showed none of those characteristics of force, strength, and pugnacity manifested in the portraits of the great commoner. But he found comfort in the reflection that "Dada," mirror of all the virtues, was yet quite mild and almost insignificant in appearance; a small, stout, dapper, very clean-looking little tradesman, with trim white whiskers, a bald head, and a round, rosy face, wherein ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... of that very circuit." All his hopes of promotion at an end, the commission so unequal to the demands for subsistance upon it, was disposed of, and he was at once entered a student of the Law Society of Lincoln's Inn, and a Commoner at —- College, Cambridge ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... those who might not be disposed to give from motives of charity. The narrow streets are thronged with coolies in quality of beasts of burden, having their loads suspended from each end of an elastic pole balanced on the shoulder, or carrying their betters in sedan chairs, two bearers for a commoner, four for a "swell," and six or eight for a magnate. High officials borne in these luxurious vehicles are accompanied by lictors on horse or foot. Bridegrooms and brides are allowed to pose for the nonce ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... heritage of the past, made him timid and overcautious in dealing with abuses. Although he stood with Pitt in defending the American colonies, he had no confidence in the thoroughgoing reforms which the great Commoner proposed. When the Stamp Act was repealed, Pitt would have gone even further. He would have acknowledged the absolute injustice of taxation without representation. Burke held tenaciously to the opposing theory, and warmly supported the Declaratory Act, which "asserted the ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... and the most commonplace, found the preparations rather exciting. Being British she dearly loved the aristocracy, and shrugged her shoulders at any family which took up less than a page in the peerage. She resented deeply the intrusion of the commoner into British politics, and considered Lloyd George an upstart ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... makes such quick triumphant way in English society, as the promise of speedy political distinction. It will supply to its happy possessor the want of family and fortune—it rapidly melts away all distinctions. The obscure but eloquent commoner finds himself suddenly standing in the rarefied atmosphere of privilege and exclusiveness—the familiar equal, often the conscious superior, of the haughtiest peer of the realm. A single successful speech ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... one of the King's scholarships when between nine and ten, but as 'ill-usage was apprehended' the appointment was declined.[207] He was at a boarding-house, and the life of the boys on the foundation was probably rougher. In June 1760 his father took him to Oxford, and entered him as a commoner at Queen's College. He came into residence in the following October, when only twelve years old. Oxford was not more congenial than Westminster. He had to sign the Thirty-nine Articles in spite of scruples suppressed by authority. The impression made upon him by this childish compliance never ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... noted in various disorders of nervous character. Periodic insanity has long been known and studied (see, e.g., Pilcz, Die periodischen Geistesstoerungen, 1901); it is much commoner in women than in men. Periodicity has been observed in stammering (a six-weekly period in one case), and notably in hemicrania or migraine, by Harry Campbell, Osler, etc. (The periodicity of a case of hemicrania ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... which leads to "The Lounging Rooms" and to the first of a series of circular galleries, lighted from the lantern of the dome, which also lights the ground-floor. Hundreds, even thousands, of volumes are displayed on the shelves running round their walls. As we mount higher and higher, we find commoner books in shabbier bindings; but there is still the same order preserved, each book being numbered according to a printed catalogue. . . . The formation of such an establishment as this assumes a remarkable power of organization, as well as ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... page's place, belike, with some great lord, Or some small lord, that other proving shy Of merit that had not yet clipt its shell. Day after day, in weather foul or fair, With lackeys, hucksters, and the commoner sort, At Whitehall and Westminster he stood guard, Reading men's faces with most anxious eye. There the lords swarmed, some waspish and some bland, But none would pause at plucking of the sleeve To hearken to him, and the lad had died On London stones for ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Inn it was enacted, "in 38 Eliz., that if any Fellow of this House, being a commoner or repaster, should within the precinct of this house wear any cloak, boots and spurs, or long hair, he should pay for every offence five shillings for a fine, and also to be put out of commons." The attempt to put down beards at Lincoln's Inn failed. Dugdale says, in his notes on that Inn, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... acknowledged my father's bow, and overlooked him. She seemed to have made her courtiers smile. The ladies and gentlemen obeyed the wave of her hand by quitting the ground; the band headed a long line of the commoner sort, and a body of foresters gathered the remnants and joined them to the rear of the procession. A liveried groom led away Temple's horse and mine. Temple declared he could not sit after seeing the statue descend from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... active life, but seldom remain upon the shelf—either life or death takes them down. In five years' time we find the King offering Pitt anything in sight, and Mr. Pitt, the Great Commoner, became Viscount Pitt, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... our story descended the bean-stalk, and came back to the common world, where fare and work were alike hard; where ugly competitors were much commoner than beautiful princesses; and where the everlasting battle with self was much less sure to be crowned with victory than a turn-to with a giant. We have done the like. Thousands upon thousands of our fellows, thousands ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... impossible scenes—Consuello and he on a yacht skimming the rolling waves of the ocean off Catalina, leisurely inspecting some "gabled foreign town"; she another Princess Patricia with "silken gowns" and "jewels for her hair," loving and wedding him, a "commoner" like the real princess' husband, despite the frowns of kings and queens, and settling down to rule a Graustark-like ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... rage. One man actually inspected my carriage without noticing me. This flattering homage probably came from a carriage-maker. I have been quite out in the reckoning of my forces. Plainly, beauty, that rare gift which comes from heaven, is commoner in Paris than I thought. I saw hats doffed with deference to simpering fools; a purple face called forth murmurs of, "It is she!" My mother received an immense amount of admiration. There is an answer to this problem, and I mean to ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... supreme executive control,—was rarely conferred, although elective, upon any but senators of ancient family and enormous wealth. It was as difficult for a "new man" to reach this dignity, under an aristocratic Constitution, as for a commoner a hundred years ago to become prime minister of England. Transcendent talents and services scarcely sufficed. Only generals who had won great military fame, or the highest of the nobles, stood much chance. For a lawyer to aim at the highest office in the State, without ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... method of teaching this branch of physical science, which it is my chief business to-night to recommend. Let us turn away then from abstract definitions. Let us take some concrete living thing, some animal, the commoner the better, and let us see how the application of common sense and common logic to the obvious facts it presents, inevitably leads us into all ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... a modern popular newspaper, Plato's democracy makes it its business to satisfy existing desires and give people a 'good time'. It does not distinguish between higher and lower. Any one man is as good as another, and so is any impulse or any idea. Consequently the commoner have the pull. Even the great democratic statesmen of the past, he now sees, have been ministers to mob desires; they have 'filled the city with harbours and docks and walls and revenues and such-like trash, without Sophrosyne and righteousness'. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... to be taken up to Krasnoiarsk by steamer, and you can get elk skins for a rouble or two, which will do for sleeping bags, but they are too thick for clothing unless they are very well prepared. At any rate we will get as many squirrel skins as we can, both for clothes, and to exchange for commoner skins ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... sword-dance is found chiefly in the north, but with it appear to be identical the morris-dances—characterized by the wearing of jingling bells—which are commoner in the southern counties. Blackened faces are common in both, and both have the same grotesque figures, a man and a woman, often called Tommy and Bessy in the sword-dance and "the fool" and Maid Marian in the morris. Moreover the morris-dancers in England sometimes ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... the bannered city - The King and the Commoner, And the hopes of the world were with them, And the heart of the world was astir. For the moss-grown walls seemed falling That have shut away men from Kings; And Deep unto Deep was calling For the coming of ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... are best classed under two heads, Gravimetric and Volumetric, in the former of which the final results are weighed, whilst in the latter they are measured. A commoner and older division is expressed in the terms much used in practice—wet assays and dry assays. Wet assays include all those in which solvents, &c. (liquid at the ordinary temperature), are mainly used; and dry assays, those in which solid re-agents are almost exclusively ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... look for thee, and do not see thee come.— If I could see thee, 'twere a commoner thing, And shallower comfort would thy coming bring. Earth, sea, and air lie round me moveless dumb, Never a tremble, an expectant hum, To tell the Lord of Hearts is drawing near: Lo! in the looking eyes, the looked for ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... also natives of India, whence they have been described; but there has been no recent attempt on the part of colonial or European botanists even to throw into a useful form the already published descriptions of the commoner plants of the island. Such a work would be the first step to a Singhalese Flora. The preparation of such a compendium would seem, to belong to the duties of the colonial botanist, and as such it was an object of especial solicitude to the late superintendent, Dr. Gardner. But the heterogeneous ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... for fame; and the last two years during which he sat at the Table were perhaps the merriest of them all. But his attendances, really owing to the illness which ultimately bore him down, were irregular. This irregularity, combined with his habit—then commoner even than now among artists—of wearing his hair very long, brought him one day a letter from his friends and fellow-diners in ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried before a jury of Lords, would have far less cause to complain than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men. Even my counsel, the Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably before ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... therefore, would feel the effects of the advancing cost of the raw material more sensibly than the refined sorts. Nevertheless, it can not be supposed to compensate the advantages due to the causes I have pointed out which fall to the share of the commoner sorts. It is in this class of goods that the most remarkable reductions in price have been accomplished in the past, and it is in them, probably, that we shall witness in the future the greatest ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... as you know, is not that of a pigmy, fold my arms across my manly chest, cry, 'Ha, ha!' and sing 'Rule Britannia,' whereupon the villains would wilt and withdraw. But Jack has no such security. He is a Russian subject, and, prince or commoner, the authorities here could do what they liked with him. I always think of things when it is too late to act. I wish I had urged Jack ashore at Bar Harbor, and induced him to take the oath of allegiance to the United States. I spoke to him about that coming home in the carriage, and ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... passage through a region of pressure, are common; but spherical formations—as if of things that have rolled and rolled along planar regions somewhere—are commoner: ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... dates from the period when stiff cylinder-shaped horsehair sofa-cushions were commoner than they are now. One of these is placed in the middle of the room and the players join hands and dance round it, the object of each one being to make one of his neighbors knock the cushion over and to avoid ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... be the son of a chief of ancient lineage, the fact that he is of blood royal will not excuse him entering a door before some aged "commoner." Age has more honor than all his patrician line of descent can give him. Those lowly born but richly endowed with years must walk before him; he is not permitted to remain seated if some old employee is standing even at ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... another much commoner sign of the times. The worst form of incompetence is perhaps that which allows a man to be competent without realising it, and, in criminal cases at least, this seems to be the normal attitude of the ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... observed and recorded. Because a fact has not been recorded it does not follow that it has not been observed. Any one who is concerned in an organisation for the collection of a particular species of facts knows how much commoner those facts are than people think, and how many cases pass unnoticed or without leaving any written trace. It is so with earthquakes, cases of hydrophobia, whales stranded on the shore. Besides, many ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... narrow strip of the colonies the French were paramount. In Europe, England's position was almost as contemptible. Such was the result of the attempt of the aristocracy to rule England. There was only one man who could save England, and he was an old man, poor, a commoner, and sick almost to death. But in 1757 William Pitt was called to the English helm, accepted the responsibility, and steered the country from her darkest to her most brilliant hour. The campaigns which drove the soldiers of Louis XV. out of America were the first chapter ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... not traversed the archery-ground twenty-five feet, from target to target, on her way to the refreshment-tent, ere half-a-dozen of the household troops, a bachelor baronet, and the richest young commoner of his year were presented by her host, at their own earnest request. Dick's high spirits went down like the froth in a glass of soda-water, and he fell back discouraged, to exchange civilities ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... very presence of his majesty; with great credit, however, to his own loyalty, and very much to the amusement of the king." "I do not well see how that could be." "You shall hear a story which our president (Pye had been a gentleman commoner of Magdalen College) told at his own table. The king was out a hunting; P—— was in, and of, the field; the king's horse fell; the king was thrown from the saddle, and his hat and wig were thrown to a little distance from him: he got on his feet again immediately, and began to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... Mrs. Spalding laid herself open to some ridicule from the British Minister's wife because of her inability to understand with absolute clearness the condition of her niece's husband in respect to his late and future seat in Parliament, to the fact of his being a commoner and a nobleman at the same time, and to certain information which was conveyed to her, surely in a most unnecessary manner, that if Mr. Glascock were to die before his father her niece would never become Lady Peterborough, although her niece's son, if she had one, would be the future lord. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... The commoner varieties will cost from six to fifteen dollars a pair and the rare ones several hundred. To keep the semi-wild birds from flying away they are usually pinioned, a process of taking off the end joint of one wing. The ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... the bottom the fruit, which is scarcely two inches long, resembling an oblong cocoa-nut, with an insipid tenacious kernel, called, by the natives, neeoogoola, or red cocoa-nut, as it assumes a reddish cast when ripe. The third sort is called ongo ongo, and much commoner, being generally found planted about their fiatookas. It seldom grows higher than five feet, though sometimes to eight, and has a vast number of oval compressed nuts, as large as a pippin, sticking immediately to the trunk, amongst the leaves, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... giving wholeness and continuity. The language of the actual and the practical applied to the ideal brings it at once within everybody's reach, tames it, and familiarizes it to the mind. If the writers on metaphysics would deal more in our every-day speech, use commoner illustrations, seek to find some interpreter of the feelings and affections of the mind in Nature, out of the mind itself, and thus keep the life-principle and the thought-principle constantly wedded, making them mutually ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... we can, if we've a mind to! Daily work and common things shows Him to us,—why look there!"— here he pulled from his pocket a small paper-bag, and opening it, showed some dry loose seed—"There ain't nothin' commoner than that! That's pansy seed—a special stock too,—well now, if you didn't know how common it is, wouldn't it seem a miracle as wonderful as any in the Testymen, that out o' that handful o' dust like, the finest flowers of purple an' yellow will come?—ay! some ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... clung to Pitt closer than ever, and in spite of his isolation from all party support raised him daily into a mightier power. It was the sense that a new England was thus growing up about him, that a new basis was forming itself for political action, which at last roused the Great Commoner to the bold enterprise of breaking through the bonds of "connexion" altogether. For the first time since the Revolution a minister told the peers in their own house that ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... included with the Admirals in Howard's inner council of war. "Howard," says Thomas Fuller, "was no deep-seaman, but he had skill enough to know those who had more skill than himself and to follow their instructions." As far as as possible for a commoner, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott |
