"Smattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consequence of the gross vulgarity of our dominant passions, and partly from their own nullity. They are like London houses, all built and furnished on exactly the same model, and that a most uninteresting one. Whether a girl is bred up at home or in a convent, she has the same masters, gets a smattering of the same accomplishments, reads the same dull books, and contributes to society the same ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the fact that he was heir-apparent to one of the secondary European monarchies. Voltaire, however, was not the man to turn up his nose at royalty, in whatever form it might present itself; and it was moreover clear that the young prince had picked up at least a smattering of French culture, that he was genuinely anxious to become acquainted with the tendencies of modern thought, and, above all, that his admiration for the author of the ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... female teacher ten pounds. Such a rate of remuneration was not well calculated to attract competent persons, and the result was very unsatisfactory. Most of the teachers employed were old men who had a mere smattering of learning and who were very incompetent instructors. They usually lodged with the parents of the pupils, living at each house in proportion to the number of scholars sent. This system, which raised them but one degree above the condition of paupers, was not conducive to their comfort ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the Homeric heroes did with their melas oinos,—that black sweet, syrupy wine (?) which they used to alloy with three parts or more of the flowing stream. [Could it have been melasses, as Webster and his provincials spell it,—or Molossa's, as dear old smattering, chattering, would-be-College-President, Cotton Mather, has it in the "Magnalia"? Ponder thereon, ye small antiquaries who make barn-door-fowl flights of learning in "Notes and Queries!"—ye Historical ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... revenue—seemed satisfied, and said, 'I wish you to be there; I do not wish any body else; you are my amigo, and it is nobody's business but mine; the country is mine, and if I please to give you all, I can.' His majesty is very proud of displaying his very small smattering of Spanish or Portuguese; and almost all the higher people having acquired a few words, shows there must have been a communication at no very distant date. I was also warned not to care for any of the other Pangerans,—not, indeed, to have anything ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... sir," she said, with a malicious smile, "includes, I presume, a smattering of medicine ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... aut finis.' He may have been told what it meant, but he certainly seemed to know. Of course, no real knowledge of Latin can be obtained without a University education"—and the Rector pulled up his tie and collar—"but still chemists and persons of that sort do manage to get a smattering of it." ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... of an eastern language, knock an Asiatic down because he thought the man was a fool, whereas he himself was ignorant of what was going on. The message the coolie was bringing was misunderstood by the conceited assistant, and as a result of having just this smattering of the vernacular, he ran his firm in for a loss of fifty ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... of little men. Then they had stories of how he could throw off the thought of his wretched position, and enter into a frolic with Betsy Balcombe and her sister at the Briars. He would play for hours with the two little girls, and also with the other children that became attached to him. The smattering knowledge and comic rawness of the discourses on this great personality were always intensely attractive. Faith in the accuracy of their own views was strong. Long before I was old enough to be allowed to take part in the forecastle Napoleonic discussions I used to ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... capacity, as measured by the results of a many-sided examination. Why should this be? The answer is that under any system of formal examination many-sidedness in education necessarily means smattering; and that against smattering the Universities have, very properly, set their faces. But, after all, there is no necessary connection between many-sidedness and smattering. In Utopia, where the concentric rings of growth are formed by the gradual evolution of an inner life, whatever feeds that inner ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... said Hazel. "As for me, I have got a smattering of so many subjects, all full of incredible truths, that my faith in the impossibility of anything is gone. Ah! if James Watt was only here instead of John Hazel—James Watt from the Abbey with a head as big as a pumpkin—he would not have gone groping about the island, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... with the exception of gin-and-water, everything. I know every language, both in the known and unknown worlds; I am profoundly ignorant of history, or indeed of any other useful science, but have a smattering of all. I am excellently qualified to judge and lash the vices of the age, having experienced, I may almost say, every one of them in my own person. The immortal and immoral Goethe, that celebrated sage of Germany, has made exactly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... surrendered. A man, who looked like the captain, standing near the deserted wheel, looked at us intently for a few seconds, and then, observing that we were all ready to give him our starboard broadside, answered in the affirmative; whereupon our people, several of whom had a smattering of French, gave three hearty cheers as they dropped the lanyards of their locks to the deck, and laid down their ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... it had persisted; it had increased steadily, though the possibility of its realization had seemed remote. Stark poverty demanded that he remain to coax a scant living from the soil for his mother. Yet, his determination was fixed. He got some smattering of education, along with Plutina, from a kindly Quaker who came among the "Boomers" of the Blue Ridge as a missionary school-teacher. Thus, Zeke learned surprisingly much. His thirsty brain took up knowledge as a sponge takes up water. So great was his gratitude to this instructor that, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... circumstances that so many men, and especially women, make shipwreck. Thrown suddenly upon their own resources, they bring to the great labor-market of the world general intelligence, and also general ignorance. With a smattering of almost everything, they do not know practically how to do one thing well. Skilled hands, though backed by neither heart nor brains, push them aside. Take the young men or the young women of any well-to-do town or village, and make them suddenly dependent upon ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... short of a real gale, was not to be undertaken with twenty men, the extent of Daly's command; and he had recourse to the assistance of his enemies. A good natured, facetious Irishman, himself, with a smattering of French, he soon got forty or fifty of the prisoners in a sufficient humour to lend their aid, and the sail was set, though not without great risk of its splitting. From this moment, la Victoire was better off, as respected the gale and keeping a weatherly ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... precise word or phrase to express an idea. The reason why a study of the classics may be better than that of modern foreign languages, is that in studying the latter the object is more often considered—by the student at least—to become able to read professional books in a modern language, or to get a smattering which will be of use in travel or in business; while in the study of the classics these objects are entirely absent, and the attention is more apt to be concentrated on studying delicate shades of meaning. However, everything depends upon the teacher and the way ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... Howells and James and other authors of that ilk have lifted the portieres of our own drawing rooms and shown us what is transpiring therein. Gail Hamilton says that to be "well-smattered" is next best to being deeply learned, and nowhere can a smattering of almost everything be better gained than from ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... state in which it comes out of committee! Clauses omitted which are essential to the working of the rest; incongruous ones inserted to conciliate some private interest, or some crotchety member who threatens to delay the bill; articles foisted in on the motion of some sciolist with a mere smattering of the subject, leading to consequences which the member who introduced or those who supported the bill did not at the moment foresee, and which need an amending act in the next session to correct their mischiefs. It is one of the evils of the present mode of managing ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... understood." But like so many other lessons of the great Reformer, this was not remembered by his successors; and in course of time all that the youth and laboring classes could boast in favor of their doctrinal training was a smattering of contemporary controversy. There were sermons and expository lectures intended for children; but they were often at unseasonable hours, and of such insufferable dryness as to tax the mind and patience of maturity. A certain author, in a catalogue of this class of literature, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... navigation, commerce, and husbandry are very imperfect, compared to the same things in Europe; also, in their knowledge, their learning, and in their skill in the sciences, they are either very awkward or defective, though they have globes or spheres, and a smattering of the mathematics, and think they know more than all the world besides. But they know little of the motions of the heavenly bodies; and so grossly and absurdly ignorant are their common people, that when the sun is eclipsed, they think a great dragon has assaulted it, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... in its variations; Earthlike planets were equally inventive. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, plus varying proportions of phosphorus, potassium, iodine, nitrogen, sulfur, calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, and strontium, plus a smattering of trace elements, seem to be able to cook up all kinds of life under the strangest ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... but it went no farther than the fact that they were "in the New Testament"; and Mr. Stelling was not the man to enfeeble and emasculate his pupil's mind by simplifying and explaining, or to reduce the tonic effect of etymology by mixing it with smattering, extraneous information, such as is ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... No. What does experience teach us when quite alone? Nothing. Experience, separated from all element of reason, only reveals to us our own sensations. This, a Scotch philosopher, Hume, has proved to demonstration,—a demonstration which constitutes his glory. It is easy, without having even a smattering of philosophy, to understand quite well that science is formed by thought. Now, if we did not possess the faculty of thinking, it would not be given to us by experience. Thought does not enter by the eye or the ear. Imagine a living body not possessed of reason: ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... eliminating from his speech certain grammatical inaccuracies in her presence, and would not so much as split an infinitive if he remembered in time. It was trying, to be sure. Ford thanked God that he still retained a smattering of the rules he had reluctantly memorized in school, and that he was not married (at least, not uncomfortably so), and that he was not compelled to do more than eat his meals in the house. Mrs. ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... and the stranger's disappointment at there being no fish after the soup has only been equalled by his astonishment when it turns up in the fourth place. It is for this reason that the Tuscan bill of fare proves such a puzzle to the stranger with only a smattering of the language, for it is not made out under the headings of fish, entrees, joint, etc., but of lessi, fritti, umidi, and arrosti; and fish, for instance, will be found under all four headings. Famous dishes at the Giappone are Spaghetti a sugo di carne (gravy ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard
... had by that time associated so much with the chief that he had learned to speak his language with facility. Indeed nearly all the settlers who had a turn for languages had by that time acquired a smattering more or less ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... timber, cheerfully leaving the women and children to be fed and cared for at the school. As the days shortened and the nights grew longer, the girl realized, with bitterness in her heart, that almost the only thing she had accomplished along educational lines was the imperfect smattering of the Indian tongue that ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... way along the crowded sidewalks, the boys took in all the sights that were so new to their American eyes. Only Rob had a small smattering of French, while his companions could not speak a word of the language. All of them were utterly ignorant of Flemish, current in half the homes ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... thing goes on in the older Universities. The classics are retained as a subject in which all must qualify; and the education provided for the ordinary passman is of a contemptible, smattering kind; it is really no education at all. It gives no grip, or vigour, or stimulus. Here again no one takes any interest in the average man. If the more liberal residents try to get rid of the intolerable tyranny of compulsory classics, a band ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... He had only a smattering of law, but he knew that the witness was right, and that he had been betrayed by temper into making a discreditable ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... tints, while the shapes of some of them were fantastic enough to suggest that Dame Nature must have been under the influence of a nightmare when she formed them. A few of them were merely giant creepers, but Earle, who possessed more than a smattering knowledge of botany, declared that most of them were orchids, several of which were new to him. The air of the place was heavy with mingled odours—one might almost have called them perfumes, were it not for a certain smack of rankness and ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... Scraggs a large, imposing, capable, but socially indifferent person who responded to the name of Adelbert P. Gibney. Mr. Gibney had spent part of an adventurous life in the United States Navy, where he had applied himself and acquired a fair smattering of navigation. Prior to entering the Navy he had been a foremast hand in clipper ships and had held a second mate's berth. Following his discharge from the Navy he had sailed coastwise on steam schooners, and after ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... scholar, but was always deeply interested in the progress of his students. But here lay the villainy. Almost {p.034} all my companions who had left the High School at the same time with myself had acquired a smattering of Greek before they came to College. I, alas, had none; and finding myself far inferior to all my fellow-students, I could hit upon no better mode of vindicating my equality than by professing my contempt for ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... had not existed, so there is every reason to believe that "Taras Bulba" could not have been written without the "Odyssey." Once more ancient fire gave life to new beauty. And yet at the time Gogol could not have had more than a smattering of the "Odyssey." The magnificent translation made by his friend Zhukovsky had not yet appeared and Gogol, in spite of his ambition to become a historian, was not equipped as a scholar. But it is evident from his dithyrambic ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... unacquaintance^; unconsciousness &c adj.; darkness, blindness; incomprehension, inexperience, simplicity. unknown quantities, x, y, z. sealed book, terra incognita, virgin soil, unexplored ground; dark ages. [Imperfect knowledge] smattering, sciolism^, glimmering, dilettantism; bewilderment &c (uncertainty) 475; incapacity. [Affectation of knowledge] pedantry; charlatanry, charlatism^; Philister^, Philistine. V. be ignorant &c adj.; not know &c 490; know not, know not what, know nothing ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... transporting furs and goods between his post and the nearest depot. Next in rank is the interpreter. He is, for the most part, an intelligent labourer, of pretty long standing in the service, who, having picked up a smattering of Indian, is consequently very useful in trading with the natives. After the interpreter comes the postmaster; usually a promoted labourer, who, for good behaviour or valuable services, has been put upon a footing with the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... made a panegyric on the furniture in comparison with that of Mrs. Over-the-Road. She struck the lyre and awoke a louder and loftier strain on the splendour of its proportions and symmetry—"heaps of room here to swing a cat"—and her rapture and inspiration swelled as she turned herself to the smattering price charged for it. On this theme she chanted long and lovingly and a hundred coloured, senescent imageries ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... undertook to teach the English language. It is true he was ignorant of the Dutch, but he had a smattering of the French, picked up among the Irish priests at Ballymahon. He depicts his whimsical embarrassment in this respect, in his account in the Vicar of Wakefield of the philosophical vagabond who went to Holland to teach the natives English, without knowing a word of their own language. Sometimes, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... is without even the charm of variety; she has been hot-pressed in the most approved finishing establishments, and is turned out the exact double of her sister or her cousin or her friend, with the same stereotyped manner, the same smattering of accomplishments, the same contribution to society of her little sum of superficial information. We wonder how it is that any one can take an interest in a creature of this sort, just as we wonder how any one can take an interest in the Court Circular. And yet there are few sentiments ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... usual smattering," said Miss Verney carelessly. "I think I know why I admire his work; but then I am sure I see more in it when some one like Mr. Darrow tells me ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... his subject, his role, as usual, was that of the flatteringly eager enquirer. Needless to say, his learning had been acquired by diligent application within the last week, and that it had a very definite object behind it. The laird had but a smattering of the subject, but being an intelligent, well-read man, he was quite able to discuss Mr. Hobhouse's favourite pursuit, so that when his daughter entered the room she found herself in an atmosphere as little reminiscent of the mysterious stranger as it was possible ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... indignities, such as would have been our fortune in olden days. But did you notice how that old warrior examined the knots himself? He seems to be a sort of head-man. I can remember a smattering of a few dialects, and I am sure I heard him say to the braves: 'Not too tight. Do not hurt the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... six feet six) should be exceedingly rare, or that the human race is not of all possible heights from three inches to thirty feet? Can it be doubted that in this case, as in the last, the wrong answer would be given? He would defend himself, probably, if he had a smattering of science, by saying that experience teaches us that Nature works by 'invariable laws'; by which he would mean, usually unbroken customs; and that he has, therefore, a right to be astonished if they are broken. But he would be wrong. The just cause of astonishment ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... sallied forth that afternoon. They send very fine boys nowadays to our great high schools in the United States, and to Rugby and Eaton and Harrow in England, but never went forth a finer pair to learn things. No smattering of letters or lore of any printed sort had these rugged youths, but their eyes were piercing as those of the eagle, the grip of their hands was strong, their pace was swift when they ran upon the ground and their course ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... Public School-girls, they return from their 'polishing schools'—these demoiselles—cursed with a superficial smattering of everything but what they ought to have learned—physical and moral wrecks, whom we physicians are expected to wind up in the morning for the husband-hunting excitements of the evening. And these creatures are intended for ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... and rod, with bat and racquet, with the gloves and Indian clubs, the nimblest quarter-back and dodger, the swiftest runner of his school, it must be owned that Mr. Sanford Ray was a most indifferent scholar. Of geography, history, and languages he had rather more than a smattering because of occasional tours abroad when still at an impressionable age. Yet Sandy "took more stock," as he expressed it, and "stawk," as he called it, in Sioux and the sign language than he did in French or German, knew far more of the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... his speeches a year or two ago, that fine speaker and famous Liberal, Mr. Bright, took occasion to have a fling at the friends and preachers of culture. "People who talk about what they call culture!" said he contemptuously; "by which they mean a smattering of the two dead languages of Greek and Latin." And he went on to remark, in a strain with which modern speakers and writers have made us very familiar, how poor a thing this culture is, how little good it can ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... days things happened just as they do now; the criticism is almost invariably the work of beginners. A youth who has acquired a smattering of learning, who has caught up the slang of the studios, and pretends to have a system or to defend a paradox, is chosen to write an account of the Salon. I was that youth, that novice. And after all, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... a man. What is culture? This is a question on whose solution man's eternal destiny is largely suspended. Our age prides itself on being an age of culture; but do we know in what true culture really consists? As a whole, I think not. A smattering of sentimental literature, a superficial refinement of manners, a few borrowed phrases and appropriated customs of "society," the rendering of a few pieces by rote, and fashionable dress, constitute with, alas! too many the standard of culture. How unworthy of ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... with a fat run—lower berths all occupied, with at least a smattering of riders in the uppers, night after night—ought to be able easily to put aside a hundred and fifty dollars a month as his income from this item. There are hundreds of porters who are doing this very thing; and there are at least dozens of porters who own real estate, automobiles, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... them to make them slaves and bigots. They don't teach them what they teach their own sons. Look at the miserable smattering of general information—just enough to serve as sauce for their great first and last lesson of 'Obey the powers that be'—whatever they be; leave us alone in our comforts, and starve patiently; do, like good boys, for it's God's will. And then, if a boy does show ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and had taken a fancy to him, chiefly on account of his ever-ready and unusually dazzling and expansive smile, and he had been sent to a garage in Milan for six months. The quick-witted Florentine learned a great many things in a short time besides the necessary smattering of mechanics and the management of cars, and on his return he displayed many new airs and graces in addition, fortunately, to the same old smile. Later on he spent the obligatory two years in barracks, in a regiment of Bersaglieri, and came ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... men and women of the city. Suddenly from the city editor's desk his ambition turns to Washington. He succeeds there. He now comes into the presence of distinguished ambassadors, ministers and diplomatists. He acquires a polish and a smattering of the languages. His work becomes a feature of his paper. The president chooses him for a friend; he comes and goes as he wills. Presently his eye furtively wanders to Europe. The highest ambition of a journalist, ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... enemy's battery, and this they do steadily. The "Meddler" cannot reply to them effectively, and other Boer guns try in vain to reach them. At night a curious palpitating light on the clouds southward attracts attention. One Rifle Brigade man who has a smattering of the Morse Code watches it for some time and mutters to himself, "X.X.X. Why, they're calling us up"; and before a signalman can be roused we see clearly enough these palpitations resolving themselves into dots and dashes. It is a signal from the south, flashed by searchlight ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... the funeral Squire Tisdale called at the house, invited by Mrs. Preston. The squire had a smattering of law, and often acted ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Whatever interests are selected should be carried to efficiency. Better a reasonable number of carefully selected interests well developed and resulting in efficiency than a multitude of interests which lead us into so many fields that we can at best get but a smattering of each, and that by neglecting the things which should mean the most to us. Our interests should lead us to live what Wagner calls a "simple life," but not a ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... spoke French and German fluently and each had a smattering of Italian. Also, as the result of several trips to Russia, they had a few words of the ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... ocean-going vessels, but Doctor Wyndham B. Blanton, the chief authority on seventeenth-century Virginia medicine, concludes that most of them probably had poor educations and little more to recommend them than "a smattering of drugs, a little practice in opening abscesses and a liking for the sea." A seventeenth-century contemporary recommended that a ship's surgeon—surgeons went to sea far more often than physicians—be the possessor of a certificate from a barber-surgeon ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... study. You had the advantage of a college career—I didn't. We'll master here these records of the world's life. We'll seek wisdom in the history and experience of man. What do you know of the treasures buried in those big volumes? Our young men go to school and plunge into life with a mere smattering. Do you know the history of your own country, how it was discovered, how its colonies grew, how its battles were fought against overwhelming and impossible odds? How its great Constitution grew in the hands of inspired leaders, ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... adored as he was by his Indian soldiery, he never learned to express himself with facility in any Indian language. He is said indeed to have been sometimes under the necessity of employing, in his intercourse with natives of India, the smattering of Portuguese which he had acquired, when a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... called a dirt road is, properly speaking, an earth road. Dirt is filth, but earth is not; so when we call an earth road a dirt road we commit a vulgar error by employing a wrong epithet. All this I know, and yet, conforming to a custom, because it is a custom followed by all except a smattering of purists, I humiliate my sense of integrity, and I prostitute the virtue ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... years of law; three years of electronics and jet and air-drive engine mechanics and engineering; pre-med, psychology, math, English, Spanish and a smattering of Portuguese, to say nothing of dozens of other subjects. You graduated in the upper tenth of your class with a B.S. in both Transportation and Criminology which is why you're riding patrol and not punching a computer or tinkering with an engine. You'd think with ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... Parracombe; and by that scapegrace hangs a tale. He was an old schoolfellow of his at Bideford, and son of a merchant in that town—one of those unlucky members who are "nobody's enemy but their own"—a handsome, idle, clever fellow, who used his scholarship, of which he had picked up some smattering, chiefly to justify his own escapades, and to string songs together. Having drunk all that he was worth at home, he had in a penitent fit forsworn liquor, and tormented Amyas into taking him to sea, where he afterwards ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... them of the invasion of Xerxes, and his crossing the wide Hellespont. "Ah," said a young recruit, a native of an obscure village in Kent, who had acquired a decent smattering of geography,—knowing well that the world was round, and that the earth was divided into land and water, and, furthermore, that there were more countries on the globe than England, and who now wished to raise his pretensions a little before his comrades; said this young ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... [says Mr. Arnold], make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity. The culture which is supposed to plume itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin is a culture which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity and ignorance, or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... colleges established in every district: there are not sufficient worthy teachers to supply them; and many children of little aptitude are compelled by their parents to study. In the result, almost all the pupils leave with but a smattering of learning, some because they have been badly taught, others because they have been incapable of more. The remedy that I propose is this. Let the colleges in all towns which are not of metropolitan rank be reduced ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Seneca, Antoninus. Then I must master other things: the Fathers thoroughly; Bede and ecclesiastical history generally; a smattering of Hebrew—I only ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... to some other camp. The boys are pretty widely scattered in these forests. You'd never guess the distances I sometimes make. Even Labrador. But it doesn't much matter. I've a good smattering of physic, and the boys are always getting hurt one way and another. I'd hate to feel I couldn't go to them wherever they are. Maybe if I built a better house I'd not want to leave it. It would be hard getting on the move. You see, I get their call any ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the ascertainment of the numbers who sicken and who die of particular diseases, would save more lives in future generations than can be now appreciated; but what can the regimental surgeon do towards furnishing any trustworthy materials to such an inquiry? A dozen doctors, with each his smattering of patients, can learn and teach but little while they work apart: whereas a regular system of inquiry and record, in action where the sick are brought in in battalions, is the best possible agency. Not only are these objects lost when surgeons are allowed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Harry is not altogether illiterate. The seaport town where he first saw the light had a public school for the poorer people, in which he was taught to read and write. By the former of these elementary branches—supplemented by a smattering of Spanish, picked up in South American ports—he is enabled to decipher the writing upon the card—for it is in writing—and so gets the correct address, both ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... a thousand other girls could not accomplish equally well? She could play fairly well, sing fairly well, paint fairly well, trim a hat so that it did not look obviously home-made, make a trifle or creams, though she was densely ignorant about boiling a potato. She possessed, in fact, a smattering of many things, but had not really mastered one which, if needs be, would be a ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... while the girls are young. This governess is underpaid, and has consequently herself been only partially educated. Then as the girls grow older they are sent for a year or two, to "finish" them, to some young ladies' academy, and the ultimate product is a smattering of French and music, and crude ideas of fashion and refinement, which make them dissatisfied with their home and unfit for an agricultural life as the ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... normal school at Vaucluse where I was assured food: dried chestnuts and chickpeas. The principal, a man of broad views, soon came to trust his new assistant. He left me practically a free hand, so long as I satisfied the school curriculum, which was very modest in those days. Possessing a smattering of Latin and grammar, I was a little ahead of my fellow pupils. I took advantage of this to get some order into my vague knowledge of plants and animals. While a dictation lesson was being corrected around me, with ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... officials and their ladies were in ecstasies when they listened to him, and I could not make out for a long time what sort of man I had to deal with, a cynic or a clever rogue. Such types as he, on the surface intellectual with a smattering of education and a great deal of talk about their own nobility, are very clever in posing as ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... my recollection goes, the teachers were generally of a very inferior order, and rarely possessed more than a smattering of the rudiments of grammar and arithmetic. As the Governor points out, they were poorly paid, and "boarded around" the neighbourhood. But it is not improbable that they generally received all their services were worth. In those days most of the country ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... acquaintance either, and the species of ignorance one encounters occasionally is so absolute and profound as to be almost amusing, and quite curious; while there is, also, quite enough native shrewdness, worldly acuteness, and smattering of shallow superficial reading, to produce a result which is worthless and vulgar to a pitiable degree. Of course there are exceptions to this narrowness and aridity of intellectual culture, but either they are really rare exceptions, or I ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... deal to say about these agents of humanity presently. I will only say here that no prisoner who cares whether he lives or dies, or who possesses common sense or the smallest smattering of experience of prison affairs, ever is so reckless as to impart any facts to the persons in question. If he accuses any guard or other official of cruelty, the entire force of prison keepers can and will be at need marshaled to deny point-blank ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... rapid, stealthy removal,—"dorobo (thieves) fashion" remarks Yves, who in frequenting the mousmes has picked up a smattering ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of 300 pounds per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we learned a smattering of in our classical days in Alma Mater, vita bene. Where you can live well, the sense is, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... moment to bestir himself about, and had attained a decent proficiency in reading and writing. Under the Chaplain of the Blacks, who swore at me grievously, but never, under the direst forbidding, laid finger on me, I became a current scholar enough of my own tongue, with just such a little smattering of the Latin as helped me at a pinch in some of the Secret Dealings of my later career. But Salt Water has done its work upon my Lily's Grammar; and although I yield to no man in the Faculty of saying what I mean, ay, and of writing it down in good plain ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... taken from my studies and set, as is the custom in our trade, to practise on a sheep's head at the tender age of nine years, before I was allowed to venture on the humane countenance,)—I say, being thus curtailed and cut off in my classical learning, I must confess I managed to pick up a pretty smattering of genteel information from that treasury of all sorts of knowledge; at least sufficient to make me a match in learning for all the noblemen and gentlemen who came to our house. Well, on looking over the Flare-up notices to correspondents, I read, one day last April, among ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... two later, they arrived in a packing-case, together with a bill for thirty-eight pounds, he was somewhat dismayed. Still, he tackled those books like a man, and, being clever and industrious, within three months had a fair working knowledge of the subject, and had even picked up a smattering of hieroglyphics. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... is out of his groove. A smattering of law is not enough here. It wants a smattering of ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Chassepot rifle from a javelin, When such affairs as SORTIES and surprises I'm more wary at, And when I know precisely what is meant by Commissariat, When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery, When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery, In short, when I've a smattering of elementary strategy, You'll say a better Major-GenerAL has never SAT a gee - For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury, Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century. But still in learning vegetable, animal, and mineral, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments: meanwhile, strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves, the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry, they act as such children may ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... give you a smattering of the French and Italian, I know not but I may take you on a little tour into France and Italy; at least, to Bath, Tunbridge, Oxford, York, and the principal places of England. Wherefore, as I love to look upon you as the companion of my pleasures, I advise you, my dearest love, not to ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... it all, my good woman!" he exclaimed in English, "don't talk so fast. I only know a smattering of your tongue.—She puzzles me, my dear. It's all tongue.—Who the British Dickens wants to know that your little one is quite well again and strong, ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... looked down upon as unpatriotic. Why we waste time in teaching even French according to this method I have never been able to understand. A perfect unacquaintance with a language is respectable. But putting aside comic journalists and lady novelists, for whom it is a business necessity, this smattering of French which we are so proud to possess only serves to ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... in the old happy-go-lucky fashion of schooling. Australian children have all now the chance of learning the three R's according to the latest and most approved fashion, and if their parents choose they can also get a smattering of history, geography, and one or two ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... and perfection, till we have once more cast our secondine, that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into the last world, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper ubi of spirits. The smattering I have [in the knowledge] of the Philosophers stone ... hath taught me a great deale of Divinity, and instructed my beliefe, how the immortall spirit and incorruptible substance of my soule may lye obscure, and sleepe a while within this ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... I'm dreadfully ignorant; but not more so, I really believe, than a great many girls whom people consider quite well-educated enough to teach their daughters. After all, the daughters themselves are only women, too, you see, Ernest, and don't expect more than a smattering of book-knowledge, and a few showy ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... commercial travellers, possessing a smattering of English, smiled openly, and an English gentleman seated at the side of the ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... number—have experienced few of those restrictions which hedge about the lives of most people. All cannot be great linguists any more than all can be great inventors, and it were just as valuable and reasonable an expenditure of time to teach a child to be one as the other. Of what benefit is a smattering of foreign language, except to make people ridiculous? and that class is already sufficiently large; far better that they learned to speak and spell their mother tongue with a commendable degree of accuracy, or that they learn to train future families in consonance ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... anyone who will visit, first the Palace of Versailles,[13] then the Grand Trianon, and afterwards the Petit Trianon. By the help of a few illustrations, such a visit in the order given would greatly interest anyone having a smattering of knowledge of the characteristic ornaments of these different periods. A careful examination would demonstrate how the one style gradually merged into that of its successor. Thus the massiveness and grandeur of the best ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... of women at the present time, generally,—even in Germany, which is famous for its schools,—is without solid foundation, and altogether superficial and of no real worth. It consists usually in acquiring a smattering of two modern tongues and learning to play the piano, to which a wholly unreasonable amount of time ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... him here, and has supported, and is still supporting her. Besides," went on the still secretly smiling Major, "the fellow has actually found time, through all his adversities, to pick up quite a smattering ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... at a blow. Three days hence the Red hordes may be sweeping across Western Europe in an irresistible flood. At the present moment Trotsky has less than one thousand one hundred and thirty-five trustworthy troops all told, mostly Chinese, with a smattering of Army Service Corps. In a month's time he will have a million and a half of well-trained soldiers at his beck. Don't ask me how he does it. He has plenty of money and his Army is well paid. Only yesterday I saw a private of the Red Guards pay ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... education, are familiar with at least one language beside their own. Very often I found a person conversant with two foreign languages, and it was no unusual thing to find one speaking three. I knew a young officer at Irkutsk who spoke German, French, English, and Swedish, and had a very fair smattering of Chinese, Manjour, and Japanese. A young lady there conversed well and charmingly in English, French, and German and knew something of Italian. It was more the exception than the rule that I met an ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... dart at us if they saw a chance. There was digging, and ditching, and yam-planting, and a dozen other things to be done, so we were busy enough all day; though in the evening we had a little time to ourselves. Among other things, I learned to dispense drugs for the surgeon, and picked up a smattering of his knowledge. All the time I was on the lookout for a chance of escape; but it is hundreds of miles from any other land, and there is little or no wind in those seas: so it was a terribly difficult job ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... (I did not mention men, since they have a smattering of the science), will still seem an untruth. The writer has taken care here to give the mute reasons for this strange antipathy; I mean the distastes of Bertha, because I love the ladies above all things, knowing that for ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the "Charity,'' with a crew of sick and dying men, was brought to anchor off the island of Kiushiu, Japan. Adams was summoned to Osaka and there examined by Iyeyasu, the guardian of the young son of Taiko Sama, the ruler, who had just died. His knowledge of ships and shipbuilding, and his nautical smattering of mathematics, raised him in the estimation of the shogun, and he was subsequently presented with an estate at Hemi near Yokosuka; but was refused permission to return to England. In 1611 news ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Examinations has been the first, as far as we know, to set a paper in domestic science to senior candidates. There has been a demand for it in the London Matriculation, but objection has been raised on the score of its being a smattering and a soft option. The Oxford Delegacy has introduced two new headings—Domestic Science and Hygiene—and sets two papers under each, without any practical work. The first paper is the same under both headings—Elementary Physics and Chemistry, and the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... with an enthusiasm denied to later times. It was work that appealed to persons of varying ranks and of varying degrees of learning. In the early part of the century, according to Nash, "every private scholar, William Turner and who not, began to vaunt their smattering of Latin in English impressions."[250] Thomas Nicholls, the goldsmith, translated Thucydides; Queen Elizabeth translated Boethius. The mention of women in this connection suggests how widely the impulse was diffused. Richard Hyrde says of the translation of Erasmus's Treatise ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... stick of a creature with a smattering of medicine, grew sceptical. He insisted that jacketing, no matter how prolonged, could never kill me; and his insistence was a challenge to the Warden to continue ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... however, he did not appear to be so apt a pupil. He managed, after many trials, to acquire "buenos dias" and "buenos tardes," and "senorita" and "gracias," and a few other short terms. Dick was indeed eager to get a little smattering of Spanish, and perhaps he was not really quite so stupid as he pretended to be. It was delightful to be taught by a beautiful Spaniard who was so gracious and intense and magnetic of personality, and by a sweet American girl who moment by moment forgot her shyness. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... I do not," said Florence. "I know French fairly well for a girl of my age, and I have a smattering of German, and am fairly fond of music. I don't care for English History nor English Literature, and I have not studied either of them; and my grammar is very weak, and my spelling—well, Aunt Susan, I can't spell properly. I am sorry, but I inherit ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... the little summer-house you may have observed at the further corner of the lawn. This study of his, if study such desultory snatches at science may be called, led him, in his examination of vegetable bodies, to a smattering acquaintance with botany, a science of which Ellen Armitage is an enthusiastic student. They were foolishly permitted to botanize together, and the result was, that Alfred Bourdon, acting upon the principle that genius—whether sham or real—levels all merely ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... by all our knowledge concerning Shakspere, as well as by the abstract principles of proof, to regard him in general as a reader of his own language only, albeit not without a smattering of others; and among the books in his own language which we know him to have read in, and can prove him to have been influenced by, we come back to Montaigne's Essays, as by far the most important and the most potential for suggestion ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... decay of intellectual cultivation. This may sound paradoxical in an age which habitually talks so much about Education and Culture; but I am persuaded that it is true. Dilettantism is universal, and a smattering of erudition, infinitely more offensive than honest and manly ignorance, has usurped the place which was formerly occupied by genuine and liberal learning. A vast deal of specialism, "mugged up," as boys ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... his fame extends so far; a dull repetition of the same notion characterises all his works. He served his apprenticeship to old Plumbline, in Brick Lane; got up the Carpenter's Vade-Mecum by heart; had a little smattering of drawing from Daub the painter, and then set up in business for himself. As for Mr Triangle the architect, who built the grand town-hall here, the other-day, in the newest style of Egyptian architecture, and copied two mummies for door-posts, and who is now putting up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... morality. The three requisites all centre in Tentaillon's boarders. They are painters, therefore they are continually lounging in the forest. They are painters, therefore they are not unlikely to have some smattering of education. Lastly, because they are painters, they are probably immoral. And this I prove in two ways. First, painting is an art which merely addresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a day was devoted to penmanship and a sorry smattering of Russian, the cost of tuition and writing-materials being ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... gentlemen of Siam and Laos, who had acquired such a smattering of English as qualified them to assist the prince in his scientific diversions. Opposite the armory stood a pretty little cottage, quite English-looking, lighted with glass windows, and equipped with European furniture. Over the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... place, woe betide the loblolly-boy, the assistant-surgeon's assistant, and the constant attendant upon the hospital. This personage is usually a fellow of some small knowledge of reading and writing, who, by overhearing the daily clinical lectures of the doctor, contrives to pick up a smattering of medical terms, which he loses no opportunity of palming off upon his messmates below as sublime wisdom sucked in at ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... up. As a youth, I was slow at my lessons; preferring to watch and assist workmen when I had an opportunity of doing so, even with the certainty of having a thrashing from the schoolmaster for my neglect. Thus I got to know every workshop and every workman in the town. At any rate I picked up a smattering of a variety of trades, which afterwards proved of the greatest use to me. The chief of these was wooden shipbuilding, a branch of industry then extensively carried on by Messrs. William and Robert Tindall, the former of whom resided ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... white was instituted and kept up was somewhat peculiar and almost incomprehensible, for neither spoke the language of the other except to a very slight extent. Leaping Buck's father had, indeed, picked up a pretty fair smattering of English during his frequent expeditions into the gold-fields, which, at the period we write of, were being rapidly developed. Paul Bevan, too, during occasional hunting expeditions among the ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... the woman? Where is the Englishman? Tell me." I sang the words boldly, but in bastard French with clipped accents. I feared that among all these Senecas there might be one or more who had some smattering ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... settled opinion' must have been formed in three days, and between Grantham and London. For from that Lincolnshire town he had written to Temple on March 18:—'As to American affairs, I have really not studied the subject; it is too much for me perhaps, or I am too indolent or frivolous. From the smattering which newspapers have given me, I have been of different minds several times. That I am a Tory, a lover of power in monarchy, and a discourager of much liberty in the people, I avow; but it is not clear ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... sorts of Utopian ideas, of impracticable theories, and notions absolutely without method. His studies had been too desultory to amount to anything. He had mastered a few Latin phrases, and covered his real ignorance by a smattering of the science of medicine as practised among the Indians and the Chinese. He even had a strong leaning toward the magic arts, and when a human life was intrusted to his care he took that opportunity to try some experiments. Madame Moronval was inclined to call in another ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... bring to bear all his energies on whatever tussock or mole-hill it may be out of which he has to dig his fortune. When the youth steps out into life, it may be that his actual store of knowledge is superficial—a smattering of too many things—but superficiality is precisely the one quality which, in theory at least, his training has been calculated not to produce. Englishmen know that the American throws tremendous energy and earnestness ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... mistake; and it is for this reason that I am glad to see "mere literary education and instruction" shut out from the curriculum of Sir Josiah Mason's college, seeing that its inclusion would probably lead to the introduction of the ordinary smattering of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... he described some stirring event of the Revolutionary War. We hung breathless on his account of the treason of Arnold and its detection and the class burst out into applause when he ended,—a thing the like of which never happened in any time in College. There was a little smattering of instruction in modern languages, but it was not of much value. We had a French professor named Viau whom the boys tormented unmercifully. He spoke English very imperfectly, and his ludicrous mistakes ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... pretty, interesting, and elicited universal applause. All the month of February we were by day preparing for our long stay in the country, and at night making the most of the balls and parties of the most primitive kind, picking up a smattering of Spanish, and extending our acquaintance with the people and the costumbrea del pais. I can well recall that Ord and I, impatient to look inland, got permission and started for the Mission of San Juan Bautista. Mounted on ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... and shallow treatises concerning the Renaissance; they came with preconceived notions which were often strongly dashed with old-fashioned prejudice, but which did not lack originality: they come now in the smattering mood, imbued with no genuine beliefs, but covered with exceeding thick varnish. Old gentlemen then visited the sights in the morning, and quoted Horace to each other, and in the evening endeavoured by associating with Romans to understand something of Rome; young gentlemen now spend ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... along this road for a distance of some ten miles brought them late in the afternoon to the plantation which was to be their future home, or prison; and George, Walford, and the lad Tom, with an old negro who possessed a slight smattering of English, were installed into a small, but fairly comfortable, wooden hut, thatched with sugar-cane-leaves. Here the clothing which they had been wearing when purchased was taken from them, and they were ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... exclusively to the staff or executive business of the regiment. Further than making the necessary details of officers and men for picket duty, I had never had anything to do with that branch of the service. I had, therefore, only a smattering knowledge of the theory of this duty. It may well be judged, therefore, that I felt very keenly this lack, when I received my order to report for duty as division field-officer of the day, the following morning. Here I was suddenly confronted ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... accomplishments, she was good-humoured and tolerably unaffected, but wilful and capricious as a spoiled child; she spoke her own language pretty well, with an occasional slight vulgarism or bit of green-room slang; had a smattering of French, and played the piano sufficiently to accompany the ballads and vaudeville airs which she sang with spirit and considerable freedom of style. I had met German actresses who were far more lady-like off the stage, but there was nothing glaringly or repulsively vulgar about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... young gentleman of moderate understanding, but great vivacity, who, by dipping into many authors of this nature, had got a little smattering of knowledge, just enough to make an atheist or a free thinker, but not a philosopher or a man of sense. With these accomplishments, he went to visit his father in the country, who was a plain, rough, honest man, and wise though not learned. The son, who ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... imagination. Scholastic history ends at 1700 or 1800, always long before it throws the faintest light upon modern political or social conditions. The geography is, for the most part, topography, with a smattering of quantitative facts, heights of mountains, for example, populations of countries, and lists of obsolete manufactures and obsolete trade conditions. Any one who will take the trouble to run through the text-books ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... number, the militia might be drafted to supply the deficiencies, but only to serve until December, and not to be marched out of the province. In this case, said he, before they have entered upon service, or got the least smattering of duty, they will claim a discharge; if they are pursuing an enemy who has committed the most unheard-of cruelties, he has only to step across the Potomac, and he is safe. Then as to the limits of service, they ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... head. "You don't see a ship when it's in spacedrive. It's out of normal space-time dimensions. We had a smattering of the theory at cadet school ... anyway, if one did flash into normal space-time—say, for instance, coming in for a landing—the probability of us being at the same place at the same time was almost nil. 'Two ships passing in the night' as ...
— Homesick • Lyn Venable
... holding forth, to the handful of men who had been dining with me, on Malay beliefs and superstitions, while they manfully stifled their yawns. When a man has a smattering knowledge of anything, which is not usually known to his neighbours, it is a temptation to lecture on the subject, and, looking back, I fear that I had been on the rostrum during the best part of that evening. I had told them of the Penangal, that horrible wraith ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... time, I was not only reading many books besides Thackeray's, but I was studying to get a smattering of several languages as well as I could, with or without help. I could now manage Spanish fairly well, and I was sending on to New York for authors in that tongue. I do not remember how I got the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Council to prohibit all dram shops, allowing no liquor to be sold in a quantity less than a quart. This suggestion was carried out in a city ordinance. He condemned the existing system of education, which gave children merely a smattering of everything, and made "every boarding school miss a Plato in petticoats, without an ounce of genuine knowledge," pleading for education "of a purely practical character." The Legion he considered a matter of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... breakfast if you require one, and keeps the key of your apartment when you are absent. It is a charming mode of living. You can dine or lunch when you will, and are master of your time and your apartment. I employed a neat, light carriage and one horse, with a driver who knew a smattering of several languages, and found him trusty and faithful—all this at a cost that would disgust the ordinary hotel proprietor in the United States, and especially the hack driver of any of our cities. This, in Paris, was the usual outfit of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... exploits had been continually rung in my hears by some hill-people with whom I had made great acquaintance in the market-place. Week by week they brought me fuel, eggs, and fruit, and in my dealings with them I had picked up a smattering of their beautiful Slavonic language, and was eager to display this new accomplishment to your uncle. However, I soon saw that was not the time for pressing the subject upon him; on scanning his sunburnt features ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... entirely in the hands of the clergy, was elementary in character. Pupils learned enough Latin grammar to read religious books, if not always to understand them, and enough music to follow the services of the Church. They also studied arithmetic by means of the awkward Roman notation, received a smattering of astronomy, and sometimes gained a little knowledge of such subjects as geography, law, and philosophy. Besides these monastic and cathedral schools, others were maintained by the guilds. Boys who had no regular schooling often received instruction from the parish priest of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... that they may become thoroughly enmeshed in the social consciousness. If we can cause people to think toward thoroughness rather than toward arithmetic or other school studies, we shall win the feeling that we are making progress. Thoroughness must be distinguished, of course, from a smattering knowledge of details that have no value. In the right sense thoroughness must be interpreted as the habit of mastery. We may well indulge the hope that the time will come when parents will invoke the aid of the schools to assist their children in acquiring this habit of mastery. When that ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... Sir Cred. Smattering to my Mistress, hah, and therefore wou'd not be wanting to give me a lift out of this World; but I shall give her such a go-by—my Lady Knowell understands the difference between three Thousand a Year, and—prithee what's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... Pierre Squirrel, the head chief, seemed to harbour a more kindly spirit. He now suddenly acquired a smattering of English and a fair knowledge of French. He even agreed to lead us through his own hunting grounds to the big Buffalo range, stipulating that we be back by July 1, as that was Treaty Day, when all the tribe assembled to receive their treaty money, ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... teach anything so old-fashioned as writing, I see. Now look at this memorandum Aunt Plenty gave me, and see what a handsome plain hand that is. She went to a dame-school and learnt a few useful things well; that is better than a smattering of half a dozen so-called higher branches, I take the liberty ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... boys An inkling of these pleasures, too— A little smattering of the joys Their dead and buried fathers knew; And let them sing—while glorying that Their sires so sang, long years ago— The songs "amo, amas, amat" And ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... picked him up in Bristol at 4 a.m. yesterday, my lord. Simmonds made out that that there Frenchman, Monsieur Marinny" (Dale prided himself on a smattering of French), "had pitched a fine ole tale about you. In fact, the bearings got so hot at Symon's Yat that Simmonds chucked his job till Mr. Vanrenen ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy |
