"Pastime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beauty of those popular traditions; but here, in England at least, they had almost dwindled out, or at any rate had been lost sight of as home-growths. We had learnt to buy our own children back, disguised in foreign garb; and as for their being anything more than the mere pastime of an idle hour—as to their having any history or science of their own—such an absurdity was never once thought of. It had, indeed, been remarked, even in the eighteenth century—that dreary time of indifference and doubt—that some of the popular traditions of the nations ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... is advancing, yet the sport, though loudly demanded, does not begin. The Americains grow derisive and find pastime in gibes and raillery They mock the various Latins with their national inflections, and answer their scowls with laughter. Some of the more aggressive shout pretty French greetings to the women of Gascony, and ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... hampered him long enough to prevent Peer Gynt from becoming a great poem; after that he found himself on the threshold of a world where everything mattered too much in itself for its associations to be of consequence. Attempting to analyse Ibsen's characters used to be a pastime for fools; to-day, we all know that they come from that world where everything has been reduced to an essence that defies analysis. There Ibsen was never so completely at home as Cezanne; he lacked the imagination by which alone one arrives and remains in the world of reality. His vision ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... old Greek and Persian pastime. "Throw the spear and speak the truth," was a national maxim of the Persians that we may copy ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... American novelists to-day. He is the author of some thirty books of extraordinary variety in fiction. He was born in New York, and studied in the studios of Paris to become an artist. While working at painting he took up writing as a pastime, and had such immediate success that he soon gave up art and turned to literature as his life work. Always, as a part of this interest, he has studied and worked in the field of natural history, so that to-day ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... alone murder that can be traced directly to the war psychology. Robbery and burglary have rapidly increased, and much of this is due to the emotions of boys. The robbing of country banks has grown to be almost a pastime, and often one or more participants in these ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... boy. She dried my mop of hair for me once so my stepmother would not know I'd been in swimming. Tell her I sent the cream to her. Say, you were right about Miss M'ri making the best cream in the country. It used to be a chronic pastime with her. That's how I guessed what you had when you said you came from there. Whenever there was a picnic or a surprise party in the country she always furnished the ice cream. Isn't ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... attainable, able to make rapid detours, and if they study the wind, and are familiar with the “lay” of the country, likely to see almost as much of the sport as the best-mounted. All are bent on the healthy enjoyment of this thoroughly English pastime. Their thoughts might find echo in the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... professional player improved the game itself goes without saying as being a business with him instead of a pastime, and one upon which his daily bread depended, he went into it with his whole soul, developing its beauties in a way that was impossible to the amateur who could only give to it the time that he could spare after the business ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... question, turning from her post between the curtains of Robin's sitting-room. Not in a tone of complaint did she speak, rather as though weighing which pastime would be most ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... lacking in decision, superstitious and cruel, he passed a life of idleness amid the luxury of a corrupt court, surrounded by pages, women, and eunuchs, with no more serious pastime than the chase, pursued within the limits of his own parks or on the confines of the desert. But if the king was weak, his empire was vigorous, and Nebuchadrezzar, brought up from his youth to dread the armies of Media, retained his respect for them up to the end of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... thou base, thou baffled traitor! Six trusty slaves wait but my call to bind And bear thee to the king. Ay, rage, rage, rage, For I'll invent such tortures to despatch thee, Such racks, such whips, such baths of boiling sulphur, The damned shall think their pains mere mirth and pastime, And envying furies own their skill outdone. I go to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... seventy shillings was put down without a murmur. How much farther the bidding would have gone will never be known, for a vicious little bird must needs tell the Colonel all about it. That gentleman happened to be engaged in his favourite (proclaiming) pastime; he sat ruminating on the high price of coal, and evolving schemes to bring wood back to its proper level. The latter article was what the poorer classes used as fuel. The Colonel had no scruples ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... not spoken of his boyhood for years, but he never ceased to think of those happy days. And although he tried hard, he could not believe that it was all a dream. Whenever he played a game of chess, which was his one pastime, he seemed to see himself in his old room at Mayence, and he sighed. His fellow priests wondered why he did this, and he laughingly told them it was because he had no idea how ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... king never permitted any pastime to interfere with the duties of state, which he considered to be superior to (54) all other claims and of paramount importance, and (a) (37) kept himself so far under control that he allowed no one ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... God disposes, the posts were either careless, or God ordained it thus; for suddenly the enemy rushed upon our men, who could not unite, as they were by that time scattered through the forest. The enemy, having caught them off their guard, made a pastime of it, killing twenty-six men, and carrying off arms, powder, balls, and fuses. I regard that event as the greatest of all our losses. Among those of our men killed there by the enemy was Captain Lopez Suarez, a fine soldier. Our men were not disheartened by these reverses, except such and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... kind were more rigorous, used to shake his head, and groan grievously, when he espied the tables lying in the parlour, or the children playing with the dice boxes or backgammon men. Indeed, Mrs. Butler was sometimes chidden for removing these implements of pastime into some closet or corner out of sight. "Let them be where they are, Jeanie," would Butler say upon such occasions; "I am not conscious of following this, or any other trifling relaxation, to the interruption of my more serious studies, and still more ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... about, and those of the best Quality; who were equally charm'd with her Sweetness of Temper, as the Men were with her outward Beauties. But in a Month's time, or thereabout, observing that he was continually solicited and courted to some Sport or Pastime with those Gentlemen of his Neighbourhood, she was forc'd to do her self the Violence to beg of him that he would divert himself with 'em, as before their Marriage he us'd: And she had so good Success, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... business, during one season, enables a man who left home a beggar to return with his fortune made! He marries, sets his wives to hoe the mealies and milk the cows, and thereafter takes life easy, except when he takes a fancy to hunt elephants, or to go to war for pastime. Ever after he is a drone in the world's beehive. Having no necessity he need not work, and possessing no principle he ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... The children, playing noisily in the back yard on the wood-pile, paused for a moment to gaze with callow interest at them; but the spectacle of "The'dosia's sweetheart" was too familiar to be of more than fleeting diversion, and they resorted once more to their pastime. Mrs. Blakely too, who with rolling-pin in her hand had turned to gaze out of the window, went back to rolling out the dough vigorously, with only the muttered comment, "Wish The'dosia didn't know how much I'd like that man fur a son-in-law, then ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... your hand no longer strong, and your foot no longer fleet? How many of them, young woman! when the light is out of your eye, and the beauty and freshness out of your face and figure, when you are no longer able for parties, when it is no longer a pastime to read novels, and when the ballroom is not exactly the place for you,—how many of your pleasures will survive? Young man! how many of yours will last when you can no longer go into dissipation, and stomach and system will no longer ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... ships," too, says the Psalmist, in this 104th Psalm, "and there goeth that leviathan, whom Thou hast made to take his pastime therein." This leviathan is no doubt the whale—the largest of all living things—often a hundred feet long, and as thick as a house. And yet even of him, the monster of all monsters, does God's Word stand true, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... occasion in these pages—the aristocracy of the Campagna. And it is likely that dancers on the Piazza Navona on a Befana night should belong to this class, for the Campagna shepherd is probably too poor, too abject and too little civilized to indulge in any such pastime. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... was to procure fresh meat for my crew. Here it would be killing for killing's sake. I know that is a privilege reserved for man, but I do not approve of such murderous pastime. In destroying the southern whale (like the Greenland whale, an inoffensive creature), your traders do a culpable action, Master Land. They have already depopulated the whole of Baffin's Bay, and are annihilating a class of useful ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... night, he came no more, nor for more than a month could I catch a glimpse of him in the street or in church, while I wearied myself with watching for one; although I knew he was in the town, and almost every day went out hunting, a pastime he was very fond of. I remember well how sad and dreary those days and hours were to me; I remember well how I began to doubt as they went by, and even to lose confidence in the faith of Don Fernando; and I remember, too, how my maid heard those ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... if surprised at such ignorance. "Why, humans is their favorite pastime! Humans is just pie to a Hydrophoby Skunk. It ain't really any fun to be bit by a Hydrophoby Skunk neither." He raised his coffee cup to his lips and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... the bee-hunter was, to produce an impression on the minds of his untutored observers, by resorting to a proper amount of mummery and mystical action. This he was enabled to do with some effect, in consequence of having practised as a lad in similar mimicry, by way of pastime. The Germans, and the descendants of Germans in America, are not of a very high class, as respects education, taken as a body, and they retain many of the most inveterate of the superstitions of their Teutonic ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... permit such discourse only, such shows, such merriment, as promote the particular end and design of such entertainments; and that is, by pleasant conversation either to beget or maintain friendship and good-will among the guests; for an entertainment is only a pastime table with a glass of wine, ending in ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... a threefold embrace on a slippery stair was hardly a safe pastime, and before Jasper had time to utter more than' Holloa there! take care!' there descended suddenly on him an avalanche of little girls, 'knocking him off his feet, so that all promiscuously rolled down two or three steps together. Fergus and Primrose, who had somehow been holding on behind,' ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... techniques of making bark-cloth and felt. Unfortunately nothing remains of the actual works that were the first examples of what the Chinese everywhere were beginning to call "art". "People", that is to say the gentry, painted as a social pastime, just as they assembled together for poetry, discussion, or performances of song and dance; they painted as an aesthetic pleasure and rarely as a means of earning. We find philosophic ideas or greetings, emotions, and experiences represented by paintings—paintings with ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... thawing in the sun, I left the hut and walked about the mountains for some hours. I had lately been thinking of writing some children's verses, addressed to a certain little girl, but nothing had come of it. Now as I walked on the mountainside, I felt again a desire for this pastime, and worked at it on several occasions, but could not get it into shape. The night, when one has slept an hour or two, is the time when such things come ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... Jacobin and a nun, who went secretly to an orchard to enjoy pleasant pastime under a pear-tree; in which tree was hidden one who knew of the assignation, and who spoiled their sport for that time, ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... smell'st the breath of great-eyed kine, Sweet as the blossoms of the vine. Here thou behold'st thy large sleek neat Unto the dew-laps up in meat: And, as thou look'st, the wanton steer, The heifer, cow, and ox draw near, To make a pleasing pastime there. These seen, thou go'st to view thy flocks Of sheep, safe from the wolf and fox, And find'st their bellies there as full Of short sweet grass, as backs with wool: And leav'st them, as they feed and fill, A shepherd piping ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... had a good deal of pastime with him in the cool garden, while Felix was being walked over the schoolyards in the sun; and they were excellent friends, though Ethel certainly had a certain repugnance to the discovery of how big a boy it was with whom Gertrude had danced barefooted on the rocks. Of ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of our boys, was that of imitating the noise of every bird and beast in the woods. This faculty was not merely a pastime, but a very necessary part of education, on account of its utility in certain circumstances. The imitations of the gobbling, and other sounds of wild turkeys, often brought those keen-eyed, and ever-watchful ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... town of Troy; they are all twisted, broken, and charred, bearing witness to the fierceness of the flames in which the town perished. These discoveries reveal to us the daily life of the people of Troy. Judging from the number of boars' tusks found, hunting must have been a favorite pastime with them. The bones of oxen, sheep, and goats, of smaller species than those of the present day, have also been found. Horses and dogs were rare, and cats unknown. The domestic poultry of the present day was also wanting, no remains of birds having been found except a few bones of the wild swan ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... be remembered that the favourite recreation of the Chinese is to sit and meditate on the tombs of their ancestors, and though in these mortuaries this pastime cannot be carried out in its entirety, this modified form is universally regarded as a very satisfactory substitute. In one chapel containing the remains of the wife of the Chinese Ambassador in Rome, there was a curious ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... unconsciously slipping back to her favourite pastime, to that alluring compound of friendship and etherealised flirtation which she had likened to fencing with the buttons off the foils. The outcome of her last fencing-bout might have awakened glimmerings ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... her less than mind as recorder, reasoner, and ruler; and for one gem of poetry or other beauty of purely literary value which she quotes, there are fifty records of principles of action. The acquisition of knowledge was her favourite pastime, her principal pleasure in life, and there were no doubts of her own ability to disturb her so long as there was no self-consciousness. Unfortunately, however, for her tranquillity, the self-consciousness had to come. She approached the verge of womanhood. She was made to do ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... thronged for a few moments, but owing to the extraordinary strength of the tobacco which the faithful Richard shovelled into the furnace, it developed no enduring popularity, Xanthippe, with a suddenly acquired pallor, being the first to renounce the pastime as revolting. ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... in all cases to the motive of impulse, but might be compared to the sped of a stone, which rushes with like fury down the hill whether it was first put in motion by the arm of a giant or the hand of a boy. He felt, therefore, in no ordinary degree, the headlong impulse of the chase, a pastime so natural to youth of all ranks, that it seems rather to be an inherent passion in our animal nature, which levels all differences of rank and education, than an acquired habit ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... if it will do any good. People devour books but, when they have finished one, they never ask themselves what is to be done. It is immediately followed by another on a different subject, and reading becomes nothing but a pastime or a narcotic. Judith may be admired, but it is by those who will not undergo the fatigue of a penny journey in an omnibus to see their own Judith, perhaps nearly related to them, and will excuse themselves ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... instinct with life. From the seeds of this gourd, preserved with great care, and fed with ghee, come forth in due time the sixty thousand boys. The son of Cesina was a youth of the most malicious and cruel disposition; his pastime was to throw little infants into the river, and solace himself with their cries. He is sent into exile by his just and humane father, where he has a son, Ansuman, as gentle and popular as Asamanja was malignant and odious. King Sagara prepares to offer the Aswameda, the famous ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... for Eileen's supervision of his movements, which was usually marked by an officious severity, was sensibly relaxed on these days and Excalibur found himself at liberty to range abroad amid the heath and through the coppices, engaged in a pastime that he imagined ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... a pastime and pleasure, as there is nothing that so much delights the old soldier as to revisit the scenes and battlefields with which he was once so familiar, and to recall the incidents, though trifling they may have been at ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... garbs of directors of corporations or financial magnates, the legal briefs and sermons underwent a similar change. Social amenities displaced Calvinistic theology; dancing, which had been a crime against the Church, became mere frivolity and finally an innocent pastime. Leading lawyers ceased to plead in petit courts to inferior magistrates, and learned to devise forms of contracts, to lobby in legislatures, or appear with the great Maryland and Virginia practitioners ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... "is a caddy's occupation. Both the caddies are now busy. Let us sit down here. These sand hummocks are delightful. It is perfectly sheltered, and the sun is in our faces. Golf is an overrated pastime. Let us sit and watch that little streak of blue find its way ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shrink from a similar task; should he, who had so often for mere amusement's sake plunged to the bottom of the sea to fetch up the bright coral branch, hesitate to entertain the same project? He could do it in an hour, and how many times had he, for pure pastime, continued in the water for more than twice as long! At once Dantes resolved to follow the brave example of his energetic companion, and to remember that what has once been ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... This is a dismal place in some moods of the mind. Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the brink gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have been what few can be—sufficient to our own pastime. Yes, say the word outright: self-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks the recess now, and dreary too, like all other spots where happiness has been! There lies my shadow in the departing sunshine with its head upon the sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit! ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in August, when Henry Hamilton left school to go home and spend the Sabbath with his mother. This he frequently did, as it was but ten miles distant, and such a walk was only pastime to the vigorous youth, now glowing with health and strength in every vein. On this day however, the walk appeared unusually long to him; and he sat down twice by the road-side to rest himself. This was very uncommon; but he said nothing of fatigue when he reached home about ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous
... V. was put to flight, leaving the bones of his army in Provence, the dauphin was returning to Lyon by the Rhone. He stopped to sleep at Tournon, and, by way of pastime, practised some violent physical exercises,—which were nearly all the education his brother and he, in consequence of their detention as hostages, had ever received. The prince had the imprudence—it being the month of August, and the weather very hot—to ask for a glass ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good: Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... and I dare say that most of those who read this will wonder that such a search should be a pastime for any man, but I confess it is a pastime for me. To discover these things, to recreate them, to dig out on foot the base upon which two thousand years of history repose, is the ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... pastime, amusement, recreation, diversion, sport, disport, gambols, frolic, jest, merriment; action, use, employment, practice, exercise; comedy, drama, melodrama, farce, burlesque; dalliance, toying, twiddling; liberty, scope, swing. Associated Words: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... sheltered, like that, from the ocean winds, they noticed one or two little objects, jumping up and down out of holes in the ground and then scuttling back again—not from any alarm at their appearance, but as if only in play, for they did not interrupt their pastime for a moment as the ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... crime, except in seasons of famine, has been enormously overstated. The prevalent idea with us Westerns appears to be, that the murder of their children, especially of their female children, is a kind of national pastime with the Chinese, or, at the best, a national peculiarity. Yet it is open to question whether the crime, excepting in seasons of famine, is, in proportion to the population, more common in China than it is in England. H. A. Giles of H.B.M. Chinese Consular ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... where they were sure to find Lord Stockheath playing a hundred up with his cousin, Algernon Wooster—a spectacle of the liveliest interest—or they could, if fond of golf, console themselves for the absence of links in the neighborhood with the exhilarating pastime of clock golf; or they could stroll about the terraces with such of their relations as they happened to be on speaking terms with at the moment, and abuse their host and the rest of ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Marguerite of Valois said of her: "I did not dare to speak to her, and when she looked at me I trembled for fear of having done something that displeased her." Ladies who had been delinquent were stripped and beaten with lashes; for correction—frequently for mere pastime—she would have them undressed and slapped vigorously with the back of the hand. Francoise of Rohan, cousin of Jeanne ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... your own ease and advantage, as to commit, perfectly, the signs of the moods and tenses before you proceed farther than to the subjunctive mood. If you do, the supposed Herculean task of learning to conjugate verbs, will be transformed into a few hours of pleasant pastime. ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... is not in such deadly earnest, but merely indulging in a harmless pastime, such an effort of concentration need not be made. The 'willing' is, of course, akin to 'wishing' when cutting the cards in another ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... fruitlessly with that in which there is no delight; all night he embraces the shirt, and when he beholds the hair he thinks he is lord of all the world. Truly Love makes a wise man a fool: since he has joy, he will change his pastime before the bright dawn and the sunlight. The traitors are holding counsel as to what they will be able to do and what will become of them. Long time they will be able to defend the castle; that is a certainty if they ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... This out-door pastime is of comparatively modern creation, and until quite lately was very much in vogue. It nay be played by persons of all ages and of either sex; but it is especially adapted for ladies and young persons, as it demands but slight personal exertion, while it affords ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... those who listened to him. Nor was it easy, scarcely possible, to deceive him. Information reached him from so many, and such contrary quarters, that with his discrimination and experience, he could almost instantly distinguish the truth. The secret history of the world was his pastime. His great pleasure was to contrast the hidden motive, with ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... books is to some men a pastime; to others it is a passion; but to the librarian and the intelligent book collector it is both a business and a pleasure. The man who is endowed with a zeal for knowledge is eager to be continually adding to the stores which will enable him to acquire and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... you calmly survey all this array and war, you would see, not torrents of blood or dead bodies, but fallen souls! You would see wounds so grievous, that human war, with all its horrors, is mere child's play or idle pastime, in comparison to the sight of so many souls struck down every day by Satan.' Thus this learned Greek father very eloquently represents the great battle of Satan and his hosts, against all mankind. But for a description of the internal conflict, Diabolus and his army of Doubters and Bloodmen arrayed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wicked exercises are usually practised (for they have their courts, gardens, and yards for the same purpose), when they were all come together and mounted aloft upon their scaffolds and galleries, and in the midst of all their jolity and pastime, all the whole building (not one stick standing) fell down with a most wonderful and fearful confusion. So that either two or three hundred men, women, and children (by estimation), whereof seven were killed dead, some were wounded, some lamed, and otherwise bruised and ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... fashionable eye beheld the awful deed, and finding all safe, settled her freight, and spun away down hill, feeling all over the delightsome excitement of swift motion which makes coasting such a favorite pastime with the more sensible portion of the child-world. One after another, she took the little girls down the hill and dragged them up again, while they regarded her in the light of a gray-coated angel, descended for their express benefit. Polly was just finishing off with one delicious ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Bunyan's bad conduct in his youthful days. In 1644, when The Book of Common Prayer was abolished, an Act was passed for the better observance of the Lord's-day; all persons were prohibited on that day to use any wrestlings, shooting, bowing, ringing of bells for pastime, masques, wakes, church-ales, dancing, game, sports or pastime whatever; and that 'the Book of Sports shall be seized, and publicly burnt.' During the civil war this Act does not appear to have been strictly enforced; for, four years after it was passed, we find Bunyan and his dissolute companions ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... oft, full oft, they thee ignite, I oft a pastime prove for tongues with folly rife; By wasting of thyself thou yieldest others light, And I in self same way must ...
— Grimmer and Kamper - The End of Sivard Snarenswayne and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... called him in cardroom circles at the "store," where men were fiercely intolerant of other pursuits than poker, for which pastime Mr. Blakely had no use whatever—no more use than had its votaries for him. He was a dreamy sort of fellow, with big blue eyes and a fair skin that were in themselves sufficient to stir the rancor of born frontiersmen, and they of Arizona in the days of old were an exaggeration ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... platform, where guests have been alighting for a generation or more, the drive passes to an old-fashioned carriage-house, in which are the great family sleigh and a light and gayly painted cutter, revealing that the home is not devoid of the young life to which winter's most exhilarating pastime is so dear. A quaint corn-crib is near, its mossy posts capped with inverted tin pans much corroded by rust. These prevent prowling rats and mice from climbing up among the golden treasures. Still further beyond are the gray ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... not usually the best qualified to do so; and it is not to be forgotten that Balzac was a real countryman of Rabelais and a legitimate inheritor of Gauloiserie. Unluckily no man can "throw back" in this way, except now and then as a mere pastime. And it is fair to recollect that as a matter of fact Balzac, after a year or two, did not waste much more time on these things, and that the intended ten dizains never, as a matter of fact, ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... languished as a popular pastime; the demand for morning cocktails had unaccountably fallen off; the bar-keeper would fall asleep at the club-room from sheer lack of employment during the afternoons and early evenings, for many of ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... and pleasure of an afternoon was to come and sit with the sick man's company in the sunny autumn evenings; and he had the honour more than once of giving Miss Bell his arm for a walk in the Temple Gardens; to take which pastime, when the frank Laura asked of Helen permission, the Major eagerly said, "Yes, yes, begad—of course you go out with him—it's like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody in the Gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of thing—everybody ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... silencing the scruples of his reason, the noble prejudices of his faith, in presence of the necessity of granting that bread of falsehood which poor humanity requires in order to be happy? Doubtless, he begged the pardon of Heaven for allowing it to be mixed up in what he regarded as childish pastime, for exposing it to ridicule in connection with an affair in which there was only sickliness and dementia. But his flock suffered so much, hungered so ravenously for the marvellous, for fairy stories with which to lull the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... his back. He hoped that it was not because of her mishap that she was not in a habit. He could hardly be expected to divine the true reason. This was, shortly, that the lady, who had expected to see him, could not enjoy a pastime from participation in which footmen are for a variety of reasons so rigorously debarred. Incidentally, she had seen Anthony before he had seen her, and the smile with which he had credited her companion's bonhomie was due to his presence alone. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... General Howe received the honour of knighthood, as did General Carlton for similar success in Canada—the one becoming Sir William Howe, and the other Sir Guy Carlton; but neither did much afterwards to merit the honour. The English officers seemed to have anticipated a pastime in America instead of hard fighting and severe service, and the German mercenaries anticipated rich ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... The rule was that if a boy sat down, he was let alone, but as long as he remained standing within the field, he was open to an attack. No one struck with the hand, but all manner of tripping with legs and feet and butting with the knees was allowed. Altogether it was an exhausting pastime—fully equal to the American game of football and only the young athlete ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... were, generally, in easy cannon range, in most places within musket range, and the pickets of the two armies were, for the most part, in speaking distance, and the men often indulged in talking, for pastime. Except in rare instances the sentinels did not fire on each other by day, but sometimes at night firing was kept up by the Confederates at intervals to prevent desertion. During the last months of the siege, circulars ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... acquired the dignity of a science, is one that Europe owes to India, where it was probably invented not earlier than five centuries before Christ; the triumphant progress of Islam aided in the extension of this oriental pastime. It was known at the courts of Nicephorus at Conftantinople and his contemporary Haroun-al-Rashid at Bagdad. One would like to add that Charlemagne also was acquainted with it, but there is no good evidence for that legend. It was known in Spain in the ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... famous for wakes, the wakes of Whalley were famous even in Lancashire. The men of the district were in general a hardy, handsome race, of the genuine Saxon breed, and passionately fond of all kinds of pastime, and the women had their full share of the beauty indigenous to the soil. Besides, it was a secluded spot, in the heart of a wild mountainous region, and though occasionally visited by travellers journeying northward, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... temporarily at the Palace and at once set about locating on Sutter Street. He had recourse again to Brunt, who furnished him with a long list of vacancies in that neighbourhood. Apartment-hunting was an agreeable pastime to Vandover, though in the end it began to bore him. Altogether, he visited some fifteen or twenty suites, in each case trying to fit himself into the rooms, imagining how the window-seat would look in such a window, how the pipe-rack would show over such a mantel, just where ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... of this tragedy, which Giles Headley pronounced to be very dreary pastime, indeed he was amusing himself with an exchange of comfits with a youth who sat next him all the time—for he had found Stephen utterly deaf to aught but the tragedy, following every gesture with eager eyes, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistol practice should distinctly be an open-air pastime; and when Holmes in one of his queer humours would sit in an arm-chair, with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... been injured in the pastime known as the "double roll." Especially has this been the case with persons not native to the land of Heart's Desire or the equivalent thereof. Even those born to the manner, and possessed of the freedom of a vast landscape whose every particular was devoted to the behoof of any man seized ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... ruddy face of the Squire, and Miss Lavinia's dignified and stately figure, solemn and imposing, flanked by the silver jug and urn—and on the old ticking clock, and antique furniture, and smiling portraits, and recumbent Caesar, did it shine, merry and laughing, taking its pastime ere it went away to other lands, like a great, cheerful simple soul, smiling at ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... in their minds until it became a very strong probability. Visions of arrow heads, Indian pottery and ornaments were before them constantly, until nothing would do but they must investigate. The elders were much amused over the excitement, but voted it a harmless pastime and gave their full consent to an attempt at ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... gratitude for their exertions. There is nothing to be urged against this method of applauding the performers when kept within reasonable bounds. Sometimes it is to be feared, however, the least discreet of the audience indulge in calls rather for their own gratification—by way of pastime during the interval between one play and another—than out of any strict consideration of the abilities of the players; and, having called on one or two deserving members of a company, proceed to require the presence before the curtain of others who have done little to merit the compliment. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... consideration on my aunt's part. I have not alluded to Harry all this time, but of course, whenever his mother and I were occupied in amorous alliance, he was equally engaged in the same delicious pastime with Ellen. And, I may add, that once or twice I had seized a favourable opportunity of gratifying the little lecherous creature with what she called a feast of my noble prick. She, of course, was delighted at ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... nation, every citizen of which was not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practice from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider sword-play and quarter-staff as a necessary part and parcel of education, and the pastime of every leisure hour. The "fiercest nation upon earth," as they were then called, and the freest also, each man of them fought for himself with the self-help and self-respect of a Yankee ranger, and once bidden to do his work, was trusted to carry it out by his own ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... than ever with the next whiff from the pipe. The whole figure, in like manner, assumed a show of life, such as we impart to ill-defined shapes among the clouds, and half deceive ourselves with the pastime of ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... extraordinary regret for his loss. But, sir, I am unable to do justice to all these qualities; and of the fruit of his own studies it had not entered into his mind to leave any proof to posterity; all that remains, is the little which, as a pastime, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... clothes. Here and there you would find some genius playing dreamy, monotonous Spanish airs on the guitar, in the midst of a merry group of dancing and singing young Mexicans, many of whom were not older than I. Card-playing seemed, however, to be their favorite pastime; all Mexicans are inveterate gamesters, who look upon the profession of gambling as an honorable and ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... place for everything, doing his work promptly, will accomplish twice as much and with half the trouble of him who does it carelessly and slipshod. By introducing system into all your transactions, doing one thing at a time, always meeting appointments with punctuality, you will find leisure for pastime and recreation; whereas the man who only half does one thing, and then turns to something else, and half does that, will have his business at loose ends, and will never know when his day's work is done, for it never will be done. Of course, there is a limit ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... his hand, alwayes in feare least he should catch him: and if once in a yere he bites him, he sets it so close, that he is paid for a long time after. Such is the ende of all princes fauorites. When a Prince after long breathings hath raised a man to great height, he makes it his pastime, at what time he seemes to be at the top of his trauaile, to cast him downe at an instant: when he hath filled him with all wealth, he wrings him after as a sponge: louing none but himself, and thinking euery one made, but to serue, and please him. ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... Hicks, Jr., standing by his open window at 3 P. M. one afternoon a week after his sensational return to Bannister College, with the "Prodigious Prodigy" in tow, indulged in the soul-satisfying pastime of twanging his banjo, and roaring, in his subterranean voice, a parody on "I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier." It was actually the first Caruso-like outburst of the pestersome youth that year, but his saengerfest brought vociferous howls of ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... confidence in Sir John Lubbock and Frederick Harrison, they make excellent progress and do much to keep up the reading habit. Fourth—The "Oh, just-anything-good-you-know" reader. Her name is legion. She never knows what she has read. Yet the social student who failed to take into account the desultory, pastime reader, would miss a great factor in the spread of ideas. Fifth—The person who does not read. He is commoner than most suppose. He is often young, more often boy than girl, oftener young man than young woman. He commits eternally what Mr Putnam aptly calls the great crime against the library of ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... An edifying pastime for an adult woman! I did not utter this sentiment, for she would rightly have styled me the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... feature which the authors of the romances themselves either did not always understand, or were at pains to obscure by the introduction of the obviously post hoc "motif" above referred to, i.e., that he was called the Fisher King because of his devotion to the pastime of fishing: a-propos of which Heinzel sensibly remarks, that the story of the Fisher King "presupposes a legend of this personage only vaguely known ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... the age of three-score years and twelve; I can not say, Vixi, and I could not procure a more agreeable pastime than to relate my own adventures, and to cause pleasant laughter amongst the good company listening to me, from which I have received so many tokens of friendship, and in the midst of which I have ever lived. To enable me to write well, I have only to think ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... left! In order that to-morrow the next man may find his pastime where I have shuddered from cleft to chasm, suicide upon me and thou before me! You dare suggest that? That part of my life I have poured into you I am to see thrown before wild beasts? Do you see your bed with the sacrifice—the victim—on it? ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... other through the water, and flap their wings and dive about, in evident enjoyment of their pastime, it is a sign that rain is not ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... religious Sikhs and the little, nervous, high-strung Dyak pagans get on very well together, eating, sleeping and drilling in perfect harmony. Though the Dyak members of the constabulary are recruited from the wild tribes of the interior, most of them having indulged in the national pastime of head-hunting until they donned the company's uniform, they make excellent soldiers, courageous, untiring, and remarkably loyal. Upon King Edward's accession to the throne a small contingent of Dyak police was sent to England to march in the coronation procession. When, owing to the serious ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... would think it all my generosity; or, if she could not, she would take and die. Oh no! I'll not fail her. No, I won't; not if I have to spend seven years after the model of old Bill, whose liveliest pastime is a good long sermon, when it ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an organized pastime, a function of social idleness ministering to the vanity of certain wealthy inhabitants of these isles nearly as much as to their inborn love of the sea. But the writer of the article in question goes on to point out, with insight and justice, that for a great number of people (20,000, I think he ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... ascended—imaginary papers were glanced at, imaginary scandal was discussed with elderly shakings of the head, and—regrettable to say—imaginary glasses were lifted lipwards. Heaven only knows how the germ of this dreary pastime first found way into his small-boyish being. It was his own invention, and he was proportionately proud of it. Meanwhile, Charlotte and I, crouched in the window-seat, watched, spell-stricken, the whirl and eddy and drive of the innumerable snow-flakes, wrapping our cheery little ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... artillery, and his reserves. Crossing the Alps here (pointing to the Great Mont St. Bernard) I shall fall upon Melas, cut off his communications with Austria, and meet him here in the plains of Scrivia" (placing a red, pin at San Giuliano). Finding that I looked on this manoeuvre of pins as mere pastime, he addressed to me some of his usual compliments, such as fool, ninny, etc., and then proceeded to demonstrate his plans more clearly on the map. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour we rose; I folded up the map, and thought no more of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... asked, rather astonished, for in common with many men he imagined chess to be almost purely a masculine pastime. ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... altogether, or be fed by his friends. The instruments of achievement may be adorned, and made delightful in the using, but they must not {197} on that account be mistaken for the achievement; leisure may be made a worthy pastime through the cultivation of the sensibilities, but it must not be substituted for vocation, or allowed to infect a ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... she, Beatrice O'Valley, do with Gay if she tried—seriously tried? He would not linger beside Trudy if Beatrice gave him to understand there was a place for him at her own hearth. She knew Gaylord too well; he suddenly assumed the figurative form of a goal, as she had once assumed to Steve—a play pastime—in the true sense. A real man would not play off property doll in the hands of any woman, not excepting his own wife; which Beatrice realized. Living with a cave man had taught her many things. Yet it would be rare fun to have a property doll all one's own, different from the impersonal, ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Cuzco, the central region of Peru, was the cradle of their civilisation. According to tradition among the Peruvians, there had been a time, long past, when the land was held by many tribes, all plunged in barbarism, who worshipped every object in nature, made war as a pastime, and feasted upon the flesh of their slaughtered captives. The Sun, the great parent of mankind, pitying their degraded condition, sent two of his children, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo Huaco, to govern and teach them. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... passing, with no will For life or death, for all that made life dear Was fled like summer when the leaves fall sere. And Arthur spoke, misreading Gawayne's thought: "Heaven send we have not all too dearly bought Our evening's pastime, Gawayne. You have done As fits a fearless knight, and nobly won Our thanks in equal measure with our praise. Be both remembered ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... were once common in China which have long since passed out of the national life, and exist only in the record of books. Among these may be mentioned "butting," a very ancient pastime, mentioned in history two centuries before the Christian era. The sport consisted in putting an ox-skin, horns and all, over the head, and then trying to knock one's adversary out of time by butting at him after the fashion of bulls, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... certainly not the Head. What I refer to is the pursuit and collection of decapitated human heads, belonging generally to personal enemies of the collector; it is a sport common in Borneo, and among other interesting, if primitive, nationalities. This pastime is, I understand, a favourite one with some students of the college. It is practised, I need hardly say, under the very strictest supervision; there must be a certificate signed by the British Resident, and a special ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... Princess desired to make a stay more or less long in every town en route. If, on the way, she noticed a convent of any importance, she at once asked to be taken thither, and, in default of other pastime or pretext, she requested them to say complines ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... boys were by no means alone upon the ice. The afternoon was so fine that men, women, and children, bent upon enjoying the holiday, had flocked to the grand canal from far and near. Saint Nicholas had evidently remembered the favorite pastime; shining new skates were everywhere to be seen. Whole families were skimming their way to Haarlem or Leyden or the neighboring villages. The ice seemed fairly alive. Men noticed the erect, easy carriage of women, and their picturesque variety of costume. ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... and the little pair of babies, by their mere soft helplessness, gave him an indescribable sense of fondness and refreshment. His little ones were all the world to him, and he could not see how a pattern mother should ever be so happy as with them around her. He forgot the difference between the pastime of an hour and the employment of a day. The need of such care on her part was the greater since the nursery establishment was deficient. The grand nurse had almost abdicated on the double addition ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for pastime, If June be refulgent With flowers in completeness, All petals, no prickles, Delicious as trickles Of wine poured at mass-time, And choose One indulgent To redness and sweetness; Or if with experience of man and of spider, She ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... thou wight yeman, And Robin thou soone shalt see; But first let us some pastime find Under the ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... third year I took pleasure in crawling under the bed with my boy-cousin who was nine months my senior, and after we had taken down our drawers, in kissing each other's nates. I do not remember which of us first thought of this pastime. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... our scanty years are told, It seems like pastime to grow old; And as Youth counts the shining links That Time around him binds so fast, Pleased with the task, he little thinks How hard that chain will press at last. Vain was the man, and false as vain, Who said—"were he ordained to run "His long career of life again, "He would do all that ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... first, but I afterward forgave her, when a more careful examination taught me to know this adorable woman's character. Coquetry was with her not a vice of the heart or of an unscrupulous mind; having nothing better to do, she enjoyed it as a legitimate pastime, without giving it any importance or feeling any scruples. Like all women, she liked to please; her success was sweet to her vanity; perhaps flattery turned her head at times, but in the midst of this tumult her heart ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the one pastime which could be practiced without making a noise of any sort to attract undesirable attentions, the boy took to it in self-defence. But before long it had become his passion. He read, by stealth, everything that fell into his hands, a weird melange of newspapers, illustrated ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... as yet undreamed of by either of them. The causes which start men upon their careers are often seemingly the most slight and causal. Mildred meant nothing more than to find a brief and kindly-natured pastime in softening the hard lives and in rounding the sharp angles of the Atwood family, and Roger merely came in for his share of her attention. Flesh and spirit, however, are not wood and stone, and she might learn in deep surprise that her light aesthetic touches, while producing pleasing changes ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... when leaves grow green, And blossoms bedeck the tree, King Edward would a hunting ride, Some pastime ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... dark alley at midnight, in an opium den, at the entrance to a theater, or in the victim's bed. If the assassin is arrested the society furnishes witness to prove an alibi and money to retain a lawyer. Another favorite pastime of the Highbinder who is usually a loafer, is to levy blackmail on a wealthy Chinaman. If the sum demanded is not paid the victim's life is not worth 30 cents. One of the famous victims of the Highbinders in recent ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... shame, no injury attached, still he prefers war; when he may live at home at ease, he insists on toil, if only it may end in fighting; when it is given to him to keep his riches without risk, he would rather lessen his fortune by the pastime of battle. To put it briefly, war was his mistress; just as another man will spend his fortune on a favourite, or to gratify some pleasure, so he chose to squander ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... endless sea-yarns about their voyages under famous admirals, and about gale and calm, battle and chase, and all that class of incident that has its sphere on the deck and in the hollow interior of a ship, where their world has exclusively been. For other pastime, they quarrel among themselves, comrade with comrade, and perhaps shake paralytic fists in furrowed faces. If inclined for a little exercise, they can bestir their wooden legs on the long esplanade that borders by the Thames, criticising the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was moved to a very acute feeling of annoyance; he condemned Madame Zephyrine unmercifully; he even blamed himself; but when he found, next day, that she had taken no means to baulk him of his favourite pastime, he continued to profit by her carelessness, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Even in this pastime the cousins were rivals. Sir Charles's favorite horse was a magnificent thoroughbred, who was seldom far off at the finish: over good ground Richard's cocktail had no chance with him; but sometimes, if toward the close of the run they came to stiff ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... make the last great effort; and afterward the triumph, the waving of handkerchiefs, the great cheer that greets the victor, and the smiles of merry lips and laughing eyes. Those were the prizes we raced for, when racing was the pastime of gentlemen, and not an excuse for blackguardism and gambling, as to-day it is fast becoming. So my kind hosts and I made our little bets, and enjoyed ourselves right thoroughly, until the last race, which was won ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... patrician, and his bosom friend, Hell-Roaring Bill Jones; and if they were fertile in invention, they were no less energetic in carrying their inventions into execution. To shoot over the roofs of the cars was a regular pastime, to shoot through the windows was not unusual, but it was a genius who thought of the notion of crawling under the dining-car and shooting through the floor. He scattered the scrambled eggs which the negro waiter was carrying, but did no other damage. These ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... abhorrence of the pastime of angling has been already noticed. See vol. iii. p. 70, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... his house there, as also that the Mountainers had made much in a readinesse; I requested that he would sende downe, which he promised to doe. The eighteenth day I was with him againe, and so continued there till night; and he shewed me his house, with pastime in ducking with water spaniels, and baiting bulls with his English doggs. At this time I moved him againe for the sending downe to Sus, which he granted to doe; and the 24th day there departed Alcayde Mammie, with Lionell Egerton, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... him, will suffice to raise him above the ordinary degree of human happiness and pleasure, half animal though it be; his only resources are his sensual appetite,—a cozy and cheerful family life at the most,—low company and vulgar pastime; even education, on the whole, can avail little, if anything, for the enlargement of his horizon. For the highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind, however much our youth may ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... believe it will prevent my ever rising very high. But pastime for pastime is it any idler ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... was literally filled with game, and the region in the immediate vicinity of La Pena contained its full proportion of deer, antelope, and wild turkeys. The temptation to hunt was therefore constantly before me, and a desire to indulge in this pastime, whenever free from the legitimate duty of the camp, soon took complete possession of me, so expeditions in pursuit of game were of frequent occurrence. In these expeditions I was always accompanied by a soldier named Frankman, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... quite uniquely, not founded on any great depth of love for Anne. His appropriation of the three sisters had been a pretty and pleasant pastime. When he had finally decided upon Anne as the pivotal center of his universe he had contemplated a future in which the other sisters also figured—especially Amy. He had, indeed, not thought of a ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... and chevaliers," said William, gaily, as he closed his helmet, and took from his squire another spear; "now, I shall give ye the day's great pastime. Pass the word, Sire de Tancarville, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... singleness of purpose Beddoes never possessed. Inheriting from his father the qualities of both poet and physician, the faculties of the scientific man, trained and cultivated through a long life by Dr. Thomas Beddoes (with whom poetry was but an occasional pastime), seem to have overbalanced and diverted the poetic genius of his son. The hereditary instinct overcame the individual bent. And in spite of Lovell Beddoes' opinion that "the studies of the dramatist and physician are closely, almost ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... regime, there was one lonely idle telephone in the White House, used by the servants several times a week. But with McKinley came a new order of things. To him a telephone was more than a necessity. It was a pastime, an exhilarating sport. He was the one President who really revelled in the comforts of telephony. In 1895 he sat in his Canton home and heard the cheers of the Chicago Convention. Later he sat there and ran the first presidential telephone ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... largely and so persistently made merry. It has been a stock subject with them. It is as if they had said to themselves, 'When at a loss, revile the connubial condition.' Married life has been the sport of every wit, and, sorrowful to relate, society has been well content to join in the pastime. There is nothing so common as sarcasm on matrimony, and nothing, apparently, so welcome, even ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams |
