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Pastime   Listen
verb
pastime  v. i.  To sport; to amuse one's self. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pastime" Quotes from Famous Books



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... pastime, diversion, fun, sport, entertainment. Gather, accumulate, amass, collect, levy, muster, hoard. Ghost, spirit, specter, phantom, apparition, shade, phantasm. Gift, present, donation, grant, gratuity, bequest, boon, bounty, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... hundred other pieces of knavery, but it must not be supposed that having begun by murder, Derues would draw back and remain contented with theft. Two fraudulent bankruptcies would have sufficed for most people; for him they were merely a harmless pastime. Here we must place two dark and obscure stories, two crimes of which he is accused, two victims whose death groans no ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Words linked to "Pastime" :   diversion, interest, sideline, avocation, hobby, recreation



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