"At first hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cheeks? What did it mean? Was she acting a part? Or had they after all misjudged her? There was no time then for either surmises or explanations. They were the heroines of the hour, and had to repeat their story afresh to those who had not yet heard it at first hand. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... people to meet because of their familiarity with the first half of the eighteenth century, that brightest and most prosperous period of colonial life. They could tell us at first hand of those happy, easy-going times that lay between the long struggle to establish the colonies and the fierce struggle to make ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... a third of them ever told," and he leaned forward, quite at his ease again. "I have some business interests down that way, and so hear a good deal of what is going on at first hand. A New York gunman is so much worse than these amateurs out here there ain't no comparison. ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... have all the facts at first hand before venturing an opinion," Craig replied with precisely that shade of hesitancy that might reassure the anxious father and mother, without raising a ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... Sir Ethelred? A new man's antagonism to old methods. A desire to know something at first hand. Some impatience. It's my old work, but the harness is different. It has been chafing me a little in one or two ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... if any one had told him that it was not shot from the phoenix' nest with leaden arrows, while the merchant of 1580 wished to know where it was grown, and how much he would pay a pound for it if he bought it at first hand. Any attempt to reconcile these frames of ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... presentation in the Orange theatre—in the provinces—instead of being first produced on the Paris stage. In direct defiance of the modern French canons of centralization, the great audience was brought together not to ratify opinions formulated by Parisian critics but to express its own opinion at first hand. Silvain, of the Comedie Francaise, was the Maximien; Madame Caristie-Martel, of the Odeon (a grand-daughter of Caristie the architect who saved the theatre from ruin), was the Minervine. The support ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... needed capacity is not unattainable. Consequently no method of investigation is the only method; and no law forbidding any particular method can cut us off from the knowledge we hope to gain by it. The only knowledge we lose by forbidding cruelty is knowledge at first hand of cruelty itself, which is precisely the knowledge humane people wish ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... would never give me an account of himself. For some years Shakespeare had been the object of my study and of all my respect before I had learned to love his personality. I was not yet able to comprehend nature at first hand. All that my eyes could bear was its image only, reflected by the understanding and arranged by rules: and on this score the sentimental poetry of the French, or that of the Germans of 1750 to 1780, was what suited me best. For the rest, I do not blush at this childish ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Perrault, literary parent of the fairy tale, Laboulaye's charming narratives have a certain unique quality due to the fact that they were intended and collected for the author's own children, were told to them round the fireside in the evening, and so received at first hand the comment and suggestion of a bevy of competent, if somewhat ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... believed by himself to have been rendered. Into the actuality of these services it is not necessary here to inquire;[138] it is sufficient to say that Nelson's knowledge of them could not have been at first hand, and that the credence he unquestionably gave to them must have depended upon the evidence of others,—probably of Lady Hamilton herself, in whom he felt, and always expressed, the most unbounded confidence. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... was Leonardo? Why, he was the same kind of a man as Edison—only Leonardo was thin and tall, while Edison is stout. But you and I would be at home with either. Both are classics and therefore essentially modern. Leonardo studied Nature at first hand —he took nothing for granted—Nature was his one book. Stuffy, fussy, indoor professors—men of awful dignity—frighten folks, cause children to scream, and ladies to gaze in awe; but Leonardo was simple and unpretentious. He was at home in any society, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Lossing's The Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812 (1868) has enjoyed wide popularity because of his gossipy, entertaining quality. The author gathered much of his material at first hand and had the knack of telling a story; but ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... bad man, and that girl, Dick's mother, was good. Yes; that's the only word to use, strange as it seems to me even after all these years. You see, she was not a hornbill. She came in touch with life at first hand; she took from life what she wanted; she had, what were to me, unheard-of ideas about love and the free gift of self, and yet she never meant to hurt any one; and she had kept herself, amid all the confusion, the gentlest and sweetest ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... they purchased at first hand, and obliging salesmen promised Miss Mason with their lips, but Mary with their eyes, that they should go out on the noon delivery. For other things, however, the two searched the second-hand stores which stand in that district like logs in ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... think I can be of use later on. When we went to Miss Northcote's School we learned to weave mats and paint on china, and I can give instructions in them. In their turn they will instruct me, for I shall learn much about Housing Conditions and have an opportunity to examine at first hand the various industrial problems of the day. Who knows? when we are through, I may prepare a paper for the Nation." Her sisters indicated ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... that the subject of psychical research makes no great appeal to me," Sir William Henry Perkin, the inventor of coal-tar dyes, told some friends in New York recently. "Personally, in the course of a fairly long career, I have heard at first hand but one ghost story. Its hero was a man whom I may as well ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... it involve a point for decision. Let them instead present to their governor whatever they please and through him forward to you all such requests of theirs as he may approve. In this way they will neither spend anything nor effect their object by crooked practices, but receive their answers at first hand ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... was quickened by the announced determination of the French king, Francis I, to put an end to religious dissent among his subjects. Calvin abruptly left France and found an asylum in the Swiss town of Basel, where he became acquainted at first hand with the type of reformed religion which Zwingli had propagated and where he proceeded to write a full account of the Protestant position as contrasted with the Catholic. This exposition,—The Institutes of the Christian Religion,—which was published in 1536, was dedicated ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... you refer has been carried away to the planet Mercury," said the head clerk to a German demonologist who came to investigate the matter at first hand. ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... seat, with—strange to observe!—his head turned toward the front of the car. Behind him the other figures were still and silent. Julius guessed that nobody felt like speaking; he did not feel like it himself. It had been a little too near a thing to discuss at first hand. ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... YOURSELF by pleasing your MOTHER; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your MOTHER confers upon you now. You will then labor for yourself directly and at FIRST HAND, not by the roundabout way through your mother. It simplifies the matter, and it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... taste prevented him from introducing the slavery question in his publications, excepting in the life of Pierce, but for this same reason his English acquaintances in various places were obliged to discover his opinions at first hand, nor is it very likely that they were slow to do this. Phillips and Garrison had been to England and through England, and their dignified speeches had made an excellent impression. Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell and Whittier had spoken ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... would prefer to learn of this at first hand from the bank; indeed, from me, its president. Yesterday, Mr. Withers, a promissory note, a sixty-day note, for a thousand dollars fell due in the Furmville National Bank. You might like to see ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... Henry George studied economics at first hand. The dignified frappe which he received in way of honorarium for his university lecture had its advantages. People in San Francisco wanted to hear what the editor had to say as well as to read his utterances. He was invited ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Blanley that day. Enough of the trustees of the college lived in the San Francisco area to muster a quorum for a meeting the evening before; a committee, including James Dacre, the father of the boy in Modern History IV, was appointed to get the facts at first hand; they arrived about noon. They talked to some of the students, spent some time closeted with Whitburn, and were seen crossing the campus with the Parapsychology people. They didn't talk to Chalmers or Fitch. In the afternoon, Marjorie Fenner told Chalmers that ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... already the first workings of that spirit which made Gibson afterwards into the greatest sculptor of all Europe. He didn't try even then to draw horse or man by mere guess-work; he went out and studied the subject at first hand. There are in that single trait two great elements of success in no matter what line of life—supreme carefulness, and ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... exactly. Curiosity, perhaps. I want to see at first hand what you'll do. You're the most interesting human being I've ever met, and that isn't prejudice. Aunts do not, as a rule, find their nephews interesting. And what have you come here for? I assure you I ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... the past, and is itself subject to the state, which is the chief heir to our social inheritance. The family, however, is now, as it has always been, the interior, vital, and so far indispensable social relationship, beginning, as it does, at first hand the training of each individual toward membership in society-at-large. In the past, under the mother-rule, the social elements of the family were emphasized, since her power was one delegated by the group of which she and her children were a part and closely related to peaceful ways and to ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... a representative company of thinking Americans render to their land than to visit and touch at first hand the sources of so much that is valuable to the world, and to carry home lessons and messages which may easily be potent in forming stronger ties in the old time intimate relationship ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... child's play to him. Pasini, a well-known painter, living at Parma, did not believe the stories told of Paganini's ability to play the most difficult music at sight. Being the possessor of a valuable Stradiuarius violin, he challenged our artist to play, at first hand, a manuscript concerto which he placed before him. "This instrument shall be yours," he said, "if you can play, in a masterly manner, that concerto at first sight." The Genoese took the violin in his hand, saying, "In that case, my ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... The Slav Invasion. J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, Pa. $1.00, net. Study at first hand of conditions in Pennsylvania mining regions and the ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... I know the type. A thoughtful young girl, healthy, cultivated and, by the modern miracle, taught how to think. She studies vice conditions in Chicago at first hand and what she sees turns her into a crusader. This girl has spirit. Brought face to face with a great evil, moved by the appeal of helpless womanhood, she throws aside her veneer of ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... the U. S. Geological Survey, graphically woven into a stirring narrative that both pleases and instructs. The author enjoys an intimate acquaintance with the chiefs of the various bureaus in Washington, and is able to obtain at first hand the material ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Plataea, and a scimitar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Masistius we know was killed by the Athenian cavalry; but as Mardonius fought against the Lacedaemonians and was killed by a Spartan, they could not have got it at first hand; nor is it likely that the Lacedaemonians would have allowed the Athenians to carry off such a trophy. And about the olive they have nothing else to tell but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right to the country, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... it is only by a loose terminology that we apply the term characteristics to them without distinction between them and the inherent traits. In considering the characteristics of the Negro people, therefore, we must not confuse the constitutional with the removable. Studied with sympathy and at first hand, the black man of America will be seen to possess certain predominant idiosyncrasies of which the following form a ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... him about anything," he said slowly. "I am a psychologist. I wish to do my own observing, at first hand. I came not to question Dr. Farr, but ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... baggage room, the station-agent was whispering excitedly to his companion. The man in his chair beyond the door could of course hear no word of that hurried conference, but after all he had no need to do so. He had read its essence at first hand from the wire and it ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... Head, "of the First Regiment of Foot-guards," wrote, about three weeks after (or dictated in sad spelling, not himself able to write for wounds), a Letter to his Brother, of which here is an Excerpt at first hand, with only the spelling altered:... "It was our Regiment that attacked the French Guards: and when we came within twenty or thirty paces of them, I advanced before our Regiment; drank to them [to the French, from the pocket-pistol one carries on such occasions], and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it—rare faculty—almost as swiftly as English; and he was one of the swiftest readers I have known. Thus equipped, he had the advantage of being one of the few English men of science who made it a practice to follow German research at first hand, and turn its light upon their ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... as he when neighbors noticed his plants and pictures. He was not a little pleased to feel himself a sort of wonder, as he passed through the village with his plants; and, greedy of praise, he allowed his acquaintance to believe that his drawings were at first hand, and made by himself from nature. "Thomson's Seasons," read to him about this time by his brother Giles, gave him a glimpse of the union of poetry with natural beauty; and lit up in his mind an ambition which finally transformed the illiterate, rugged, half-tutored youth into the man who wrote ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... rank, eavesdropping, but most illuminating, thus to get at first hand the Eastern point of view as to ourselves; to hear the bloodless, gentle shell of Indian philosophy described by believers. They discussed the most minute and impractical points, and involved themselves ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... said, coming with me to the door. "If you don't mind rough spots now and then, I'll try to show you a few things at first hand." ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... animals, the true homes of childhood in this wild, undomesticated stage from which modern conditions have kidnapped and transported him. Books and reading are distasteful, for the very soul and body cry out for a more active, objective life, and to know nature and man at first hand. These two staples, stories and nature, by these informal methods of the home and the environment, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... fitfully blazing, fed by scant draughts, so deeply was it choked by the pile of ashes from the logs that had served to brighten the busy room the night before. It is important to note this fireplace, for long afterward, when I went forth to gather impressions at first hand, and there heard Mr. Stuffer and his guests warm to the discussion of every topic under the sun, I decided that the glow of inspiration and the stimulating incense of resinous knots, arising from that corner, cast the witchery which wrought conviction in the minds of men less ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... must be fed from many sources. They secure the skill of the specialist, but they never accept his limitations of interest and work. The clearer their vision of the unity of all forms of human action and expression, the deeper their need of studying at first hand these different forms of action and expression. Goethe did not choose that comprehensiveness of temper which led him into so many fields; it was the necessity of a mind vast in its range and deep in ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... administrative and international law, politics, economics, diplomacy and any other subjects that may fall within the scope of action of the special official. When, however, a law-maker or a high administrative official deals at first hand with a great population, it is extremely important that he be so experienced and so fitted by temperament that he may know his people. He must see how far he can go without arousing too much opposition. Even in promoting good measures, it is often essential ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... and France to study this problem at first hand. I interviewed Cabinet Ministers; I talked with lawmakers, soldiers, captains of capital, masters of industry, and plain, everyday business men. Often the talk was disturbed by shriek of shell or bomb of midnight ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... said, created a sensation and endless controversy. The revolutionaries thought him a caricature and a libel, the reactionaries a scandalous glorification of the Devil; and impartial men such as Dostoevsky, who knew the revolutionaries at first hand, thought the type unreal. It is impossible that Bazarov was not like the Nihilists of the sixties; but in any case as a figure in fiction, whatever the fact may be, he lives and will continue to live....—From "An Outline of Russian ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... in the university, and make that the goal towards which its efforts are directed, is an absurdity. There must be good teachers before there can be good schools, and good teachers can only be formed in institutions that are chiefly concerned with knowledge at first hand. This has been a recognized principle in Germany for half a century, or longer; is now almost universally admitted in France, and is the goal toward which the whole ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... I have not read the books from which he has borrowed his opinions. Indeed, from their freshness, I should not be surprised to learn that he had them at first hand from living men, or even from his own observation ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... all the same thing. There is no inequality in the region of art; and I have seen things on the vaudeville stage which were graced with touches of truth so exquisite, so ideally fine, that I might have believed I was getting them at first hand and pure from the street-corner. Of course, the poor fellows who had caught them from life had done their worst to imprison them in false terms, to labor them out of shape, and build them up in acts where anything less precious would have been lost; but they survived all that and gladdened the soul. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... noise, who may well be call'd a noise indeed, for no Musick can be heard for them; so whilst he utters nothing but old stories, long since laught thridbare, or some stale jest broken twenty times before: His mirth compared with theirs, new and at first hand, is just like Brokers ware in comparison with Mercers, or Long-lane compar'd unto Cheap-side: his wit being rather the Hogs-heads than his own, favouring more of Heidelberg than of Hellicon, and he rather a drunken ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... old-time Brooklyn boy friend with whom he had gone to school: Frank N. Doubleday, to-day the senior partner of Doubleday, Page and Company. Bok had been attracted to advertising through his theatre programme and Brooklyn Magazine experience, and here was presented a chance to learn the art at first hand and according to the best traditions. So, whenever his stenographic work permitted, he assisted Mr. Doubleday in preparing and placing the advertisements of the ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... read Henry James. Henry James's mind is of a higher cast and temper; I have no doubt at one time of his life Henry James said, I will write the moral history of America, as Tourgueneff wrote the moral history of Russia—he borrowed at first hand, understanding what he was borrowing. W.D. Howells borrowed at second hand, and without understanding what he was borrowing. Altogether Mr James's instincts are more scholarly. Although his reserve irritates me, and I often regret his ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... took delight in the statues which had been found, and the other signs of Greek and Roman art; but it is not to be supposed that he would know Homer and Virgil and Horace and Pindar and Sappho at first hand. He had, however, friends among the learned men, who could tell him of the treasures of classic literature, and his imagination was quick to seize this material and adapt ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... health. Unless he is on his guard more than is likely you ought to catch some slight straw to show what ails him. Then follow it up with a word or two about Miss Daisy, and you will have spent a good afternoon, even if he doesn't smile on your suit at first hand, and take you to his manly breast ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... seat in a Cabinet of which Palmerston is the Chief." They part, the London Correspondent of the Tattlesnivel Bleater finishes his letter, and—always being withheld by motives of delicacy, from plainly divulging his means of getting accurate information on every subject, at first hand—puts in it, this passage: "Lord John Russell is spoken of, by blunderers, for Foreign Affairs; but I have the best reasons for assuring your readers, that" (giving prominence to the exact expressions, it will be observed) "'NOTHING ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... uneasy about the possible outcome of Chichikov's whim, that during the three nights following his departure she had been unable to sleep a wink; whereafter, in spite of the fact that her horses were not shod, she had set off for the town, in order to learn at first hand how the dead souls were faring, and whether (which might God forfend!) she had not sold them at something like a third of their true value. The consequences of her venture the reader will learn from a conversation between two ladies. We ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... civilian inhabitants in Belgium and the North of France has been made public by the Belgian and French Governments and by those who have had experience of it at first hand. Modern history affords no precedent for the sufferings that have been inflicted on the defenseless and non-combatant population in the territory that has been in German military occupation. Even the food of the population was confiscated ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... addition to the qualities of a Roman tyrant, many of the least lovable traits of the ghila monster of Arizona. Hearing this about her father, and having already had the privilege of meeting her brother and studying him at first hand, his heart bled for Maud. It seemed to him that existence at the castle in such society must be ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... they saw or heard at first hand of the indescribable cruelties and atrocities of the Huns. Ned, Bob, Jerry, and their comrades saw with what fervor the French and British were proceeding with the war, and their own spirits ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... the lives and thoughts of the working classes. He was strongly influenced by socialism, and all his spare moments were spent with books. He came to live in Chelsea with an artist friend, but he had already tasted life at first hand, and the rather hazy atmosphere of that literary and artistic Utopia made him uneasy. His afternoons were spent at the British Museum reading room, his evenings at the Northampton Institute, where he attended classes, and even did a ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... —under such names as Old Horny—into a familiar acquaintance not without a certain grim charm of his own. No doubt also there enters into their humour something of the original barbaric attitude towards things. For a primitive people who saw death often and at first hand, and for whom the future world was a vivid reality that could be felt, as it were, in the midnight forest and heard in the roaring storm, it was no doubt natural to turn the flank of terror by ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... a wofully poor protagonist. The situation where (in the midst of whirling events) he makes the startling discovery that he himself has been in some way switched on to the part of villain is one that you can appreciate only at first hand. Certainly if you want (as who does not in these days?) an anaesthetic of agreeable nonsense The Plot-Maker is a medium that I can cordially recommend: one obvious advantage being that you need not try to believe a single ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... appeared in "EVERYBODY'S." He explained that a manuscript written by another man had been sent him to put in shape. The facts were there, and the moral, but the treatment was technical. It lacked carrying power. Dickson knew nothing of the other author, and so proceeded to get up the subject at first hand. He took not one of the facts for granted. After three months he returned the revised manuscript to the magazine. It was sent back, with specific directions for rewriting. In due course he again remailed it to the editor, who congratulated him on his achievement—for ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... many questions about my trip. He told me of his own journey through the Congo in 1908 (he was then Prince Albert), when he covered more than a thousand miles on foot. He said that he was glad that an American was going to write something about the Congo at first hand and he expressed his keen appreciation of the work of American capital in his big colony overseas. "I like America and Americans," he said, "and I hope that your country will not forget Europe." There was a warm clasp of the hand and I was off on the first lap of the journey ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... determined on something of the same sort, and probably are far on with the printing of your Two select volumes. I confess myself greatly better pleased with it on that footing than on another. Who Mr. Loring may be I know not, with any certainty, at first hand; but who Waldo Emerson is I do know; and more than one god from the machine is not necessary. I pray you, thank Mr. Loring for his goodness towards me (his intents are evidently charitable and not wicked); but consider yourself as in nowise bound at all by that blotted Paper he has, but do the ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... with an Excellency, because what was alluded to in conversation as "the mystery of Samburan" had caused such a sensation in the Archipelago that even those in the highest spheres were anxious to hear something at first hand. Davidson had been summoned to an audience. It was a high ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... and in Arizona Tom and Harry had studied the occurrence of precious ores, and also the methods of assaying and extracting ores. Having their time wholly to themselves after finishing in Arizona the dauntless young pair went to Nevada, there to study mining at first hand. In time they located a mining claim, though there were other claimants, and around this latter fact hung an extremely exciting story. Both young engineers nearly lost their lives in Nevada, and met with many strenuous situations. Their sole idea ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... out of them; and though Paris may be only London with a difference, that difference includes bluer skies, brighter streets and gardens, and all the originals of which you have here the copies. There, at least, I shall have the fashion of my peruke and my speech at first hand. Here you only adopt a mode when Paris begins to tire ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... he said curtly. "I mean to save my partner; I've staked my life on doing so. But I've said enough. You're coming with me—now—and if you make any attempt to rouse your friends, you'll have a chance to learn something about the other world at first hand a few ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... Barbara, however, drew him aside from the direct path to Marrow Lane. He had resolved not to see her for a year, but thought it right to break through that resolution in order to tell her at first hand of Harry West's death. But the janitor told him that Miss Ferris had not been coming to the studio for a long time. She had had no word from her. She had left one day by the back stair without her hat; a little ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... said the postilion; 'and now I'm sure I am not mistaken about you; you have taken lessons yourself, at first hand, in the college vacations, and a promising pupil you were, I make no doubt. Well, your friends will be all the happier to get you back. Has your ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... his intention that Mrs. Newsome, away off with her finger on the pulse of Massachusetts, should yet be no less intensely than circuitously present through the whole thing, should be no less felt as to be reckoned with than the most direct exhibition, the finest portrayal at first hand could make her, such a sign of artistic good faith, I say, once it's unmistakeably there, takes on again an actuality not too much impaired by the comparative dimness of the particular success. Cherished intention too inevitably acts and operates, in the book, about fifty times as little ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... occupation, where their capacity for altruism and self-sacrifice can find a field. The tension is almost imperceptible, perhaps quite unconscious. It is everywhere overborne by a keen interest in life, by a desire to know the world at first hand, while susceptibilities are at their height. The apple of intelligence has been plucked at perhaps a little too great cost of health. The purely mental has not been quite sufficiently kept back. The girl wishes to know a good deal more ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Carey's brother, and Mr Fielding Hall were also at dinner, and my bachelor host A. Binning, so between these people and G.'s host and hostess, Mr and Mrs E., information about Burmah and its dependencies, its social, commercial, or political prospects was available at first hand ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... through the rock seemed insuperable. One might hear the opinion freely expressed that Ballarat's day as premier goldfield was done. Ned set up this belief merely for the pleasure of demolishing it. He had it at first hand that great companies were being formed to carry on operations. These would reckon their areas in acres instead of feet, would sink to a depth of a quarter of a mile or more, raise washdirt in hundreds of tons per day. One such company, indeed, had already sprung into existence, out ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... is; still we have thought that in this way we should do it the least injustice, and we are also convinced that even what we have shown will tend to rouse an appetite, and that any of our readers, who may not yet have been also Mr. Tennyson's, will become more eager to learn and admire it at first hand. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... into the character, properties, and purpose of all things to which the attention and interest are directed. . . . It is, we repeat, a spiritual sense opening inwardly, as the physical senses open outwardly; and because it has the capacity to perceive, grasp, and know the truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of information, we call it intuition. All inspired teaching and spiritual revelations are based upon the recognition of this spiritual faculty of the soul, and its power to receive and appropriate them. . . . Conscious unity of man in ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... to give you instructions, for you're man enough to make your own. But I can give you the general hang of the situation. You tell Ivery you're going North to inquire into industrial disputes at first hand. That will seem to him natural and in line with your recent behaviour. He'll tell his people that you're a guileless colonial who feels disgruntled with Britain, and may come in useful. You'll go to a man of mine in ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... tastes and feelings of her various acquaintances. To her Radical Cabinet minister friend, she openly praised its outspoken zeal for the cause of the people, and its value as a wonderful storehouse of useful facts at first hand for political purposes in the increasingly important outlying Metropolitan boroughs. 'Just think, Sir Edmund,' she said, persuasively, 'how you could crush any Conservative candidate for Hackney or the Tower Hamlets out of that awful chapter on the East End match-makers;' while with the Duke, to ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... of the territorials in this ancient Indian capital. A series of lectures by leading Indians served to interpret Indian life and thought to these soldiers, who were seeing at once the needs and greatness of the Indian Empire at first hand, while leading Indian Christians of the type of Mr. K. T. Paul, Dr. Datta, and Bishop Azariah told them the fascinating story of Indian missions and the history of Christianity in Asia. A new sense of race brotherhood is taking ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... experience of the more magnificent scoundrels of whom he bought the wood originally, contented me with the swindle with which I had become familiarized. On this occasion I took a boat and went to the Custom House, to get my fuel at first hand. The captain of the ship which I boarded wished me to pay more than I gave for fuel delivered at my door, and thereupon ensued the tragic scene of bargaining, as these things are conducted in Italy. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... dull and dreary in his memory; even the thought of the hunting field could not lure his desire. New York was full of marvelous novelties; its daily routine, even in the hotel and on the streets, gripped his heart and his imagination; and he confessed to himself that New York was life at first hand; fresh drawn, its very foam sparkling and intoxicating. He walked from the Park to the Battery and examined all that caught his eye. He had a history of the city and sought out every historical site; he ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... whenever the lips took up the speech, and voiced it. She was one of those happy beings in either sex who can amuse themselves, who can hold pleasant communion with the inner self, who can find romance in old houses, and yet love books, who prefer sunrises and sunsets at first hand, ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Then: "The news will be none the less welcome from your lips, ma'am," said he. "Is it that you are interested in the ravings of delirium, and welcomed the opportunity of observing them at first hand? I hope I raved engagingly, if so be that I did rave. Would it, perchance, be of a lady that I talked in my fevered wanderings?—of a lady pale as a lenten rose, with soft brown eyes, and ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... to-day know anything about the great guns now being used on so many European battle fronts? Our young friends had the rare opportunity of witnessing, at first hand, a number of these terrific duels, and the story which is most fascinatingly told is illustrated with numerous drawings of the British, French and ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... Ruskin he found a writer who expressed the thoughts that he believed. He read Ruskin, and insisted that Burne-Jones should. Together they read "The Nature of Gothic," and then they went out upon the streets of Oxford and studied examples at first hand. They compared the old with the new, and came to the conclusion that the buildings erected two centuries before had various points to recommend them which modern buildings have not. The modern buildings were built by contractors, while the old ones were constructed by men who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... be there," Lady Ruth answered. "Mrs. Clutsam told me she was going out all day, to-day, to visit her husband's sister who is staying somewhere twenty miles from here on the Oban road, and longing, of course, to hear all about the murder at first hand. Relations are so exacting, and if they are relations-in-law they become positive Shylocks. Juliet may have gone to the lodge though, all the same, and stayed to keep ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... look of remonstrance and deprecation was his only reply. However, as it has always been my rule to seek information at first hand, I tried, in a friendly and confidential way, to draw him out respecting certain of his Church's usages and tenets, which I knew to be garbled and falsified by Protestant bigotry. But it was evident that throughout every fibre of his moral nature there ran a conviction ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... warmly and sincerely; for, as strange as it may appear to those who have not studied human nature at first hand, every word of this eulogy ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... hear more, surely one would do more! But this hole-and-corner way of doing warfare damps all enthusiasm and stifles recruiting. Why are we allowed to know nothing until the news is stale? Yesterday I heard at first hand of the treatment of some civilians by Germans, and I visited a village to hear from the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... behind the curtain—not very hard for me; things always had a way of sticking in my mind. I knew the newest songs in town, and the choruses of all the old ones. I could show him the latest tricks with cards—I'd got those at first hand from Professor Haughwout. You know how great Tom is on tricks. I could explain the disappearing woman mystery, and the mirror cabinet. I knew the clog dance that Dewitt and Daniels do. I had pictures of the trained seals, ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... among men of strength, thinkers and benefactors at first hand, germinators of thought and heroism in the van of the race,—such as bear the stamp of a primitive and primeval energy, like Abraham, Noah, Moses, David and Paul, Buddha and Mohammed, Socrates and Plato, in the East; Garrison and John ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... comment about Grandison's "showy and ostentatious" benevolence and his excessive variety of accomplishments. The judgment about Richardson's incessant emphasis on sex anticipates much later criticism, and is made at first hand, though connected with the stock comment that modern tragedies dwell too exclusively on the passion of love. There is truth in the observation that Mr. B— and Lovelace think nothing can be done with women except by bribery, ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... past is concerned, it fails to apply to the India of the present and must fall far wide of the mark in the future. Many years have elapsed since the author of "Asia and Europe" left India; and he is not conversant, at first hand, with the mighty revolution which is taking place there at present. He fails, for one thing, to appreciate the wonderful influence of modern scientific discovery as a unifier of all peoples and as the handmaid ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... before each individual who would enter fully into this rich world of environment, then, is to discover at first hand just as large a part of the material world about him as possible. In the most humble environment of the most uneventful life is to be found the material for discoveries and inventions yet undreamed of. Lying in the shade of an apple tree under the open sky, Newton read from ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... but more than that, they respect him. You know, mother, that I can tell something at first hand about learning one's job. But these officers put the average civilian to shame. I doubt if there is stronger professional feeling, or a higher standard of professional achievement, anywhere in the world. If all ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... delighted to hear of you again at first hand: our last traditions represented you at Edinburgh, and left the prospect of your return hither very vague. I have only time for one word tonight: to say that your room is standing vacant ever since you quitted it,—ready to be ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is very great. His images are noble, or, if borrowed from humble objects, ennobled by his handling. He throws his royal robe over a milking-stool and it becomes a throne. But chiefly he chooses objects of comparison grand in themselves. He deals with the elements at first hand. Such delicacy of treatment, with such breadth and force of effect, is hard to match anywhere, and we know him by his style at sight. It is as when the slight fingers of a girl touch the keys of some mighty and many-voiced organ, and send its thunders rolling along the aisles and startling ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have come to me at first hand regarding Italians in the East, Hungarians in Pennsylvania and Austrians in Minnesota, it seems absolutely certain that all members of the lower classes of southern Europe are a dangerous menace ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... else. After listening to Laguerre you felt that a talk with the other men was a waste of time. There was nothing apparently that he did not know of men and events, and his knowledge did not come from books, but at first hand, from contact with the men, and from having taken part ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... whom "correctness" was stronger than inspiration; who, however admirable in their own achievement, were lacking in the nobler and subtler qualities of the poet. They were not the Greeks; not even, at first hand, the Latins; though the names both of Greek and Latin were often on Johnson's lips. They were rather the Latins as filtered through the English poets of the preceding century; the Latins in so far as they had appealed to the writers of the "Augustan age", but no further; the Latins, as ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... methods of contemporary workers, such glimpses of the personalities of living celebrities, might form a fitting conclusion to this record of progress. There is a stimulus in contact with great men at first hand that is scarcely to be gained in like degree in any other way. So I have thought that those who have not been privileged to visit the great teachers in person might like to meet some of them at second hand. I can only hope that something ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... think I detect in several recent books a fresh, less final, and less tidy treatment of the kinematics of mechanisms, but I would yet recommend that anyone who thinks of writing a textbook take time to review, carefully and at first hand, not only the desk copies of books that he has accumulated but a score or more of earlier works, covering the last century at least. Such a study should result in a better appreciation of what constitutes a contribution to knowledge ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... has to be added a critical vagueness even greater. I am sorry that I am unable to confirm or to gainsay at first hand Borrow's wonderfully high estimate of certain Welsh poets. But if the originals are anything like his translations of them, I do not think that Ab Gwilym and Lewis Glyn Cothi, Gronwy Owen and Huw Morris can have been quite ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... birds and flowers; and, indeed, one may know by the frequent allusions to flowers and birds and the nice observation shown in these allusions, that these things must have made a strong impression on the youthful mind of the poet. He learned nature at first hand, and had his lesson by heart, unconsciously imbibing it from his walks alone, or with his dearly loved elder brother, Charles—elder by five years—over all the country-side; and there is no doubt that the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... the familiar objects about us the student may well combine some reading which may serve to show him how others have been successful in thus dealing with Nature at first hand. For this purpose there are, unfortunately, but few works which are well calculated to serve the needs of the beginner. Perhaps the best naturalist book, though its form is somewhat ancient, is White's Natural History of Selborne. Hugh Miller's works, particularly ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... classified him," I cried with joy. "You have painted his portrait in the gallery of city types. But I must meet one face to face. I must study the Man About Town at first hand. Where shall I find him? How shall ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... many hostile glances from the townspeople. At least two-thirds of the citizens were strongly in favor of Wade, but before they took active steps in his behalf they waited for the return of a horseman, who had hurried out to the ranch to learn at first hand ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... instance there was an additional whet to appetite in the connection of Carew with Gethin. He was naturally an object of curiosity to his tenant Trevethick, and never before had the old man had the opportunity of hearing at first hand of the eccentricities of the Squire. In relating them Richard took good care to show by implication on what intimate terms he stood with him, and hinted at the obligation under which he had put him by throwing his park gate open so opportunely. The impression which ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... not allowed to play just as other children did, for her governess made use of them to teach her little charge court etiquette. And indeed, some means of teaching the child court etiquette was necessary, as her mother refused to allow her to appear at the royal court and receive her lessons there at first hand. The court of George IV was most disreputable, and the Duchess of Kent wisely judged that it was no place for her little daughter. When William IV came to the throne in 1830, Victoria's mother still refused to allow the child to be much at court, for though ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... period of his life, he had occasion to study at first hand certain places where he received original information which he later used in writing "Konovalov" and "The Ex-Men," which have thus acquired an autobiographical value. In fact, he worked a long while with these ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... of the university. It seemed to Hugh that the arguments employed must be identical with those that might formerly have been used to justify the retention of Hebrew in the curriculum—the advisability of making acquaintance at first hand with a noble literature, the mental discipline to be obtained; "Greek has such a noble grammar!" said one of these enthusiasts. Hugh grew a little nettled at the tone of the discussion. The defenders of Greek seemed to be so impervious to facts which told against them. They erected their theories, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... into the book only a minimum of matter calculated to take the student away from the Bible itself to a discussion about it and to put into it a maximum of such matter as will require him to study the scripture at first hand. ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell |
