"Playground" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... study I could look into a great garden in which a house was being built; when the carpenters left in the evening they put two blocks at the entrance and put a board on them crosswise. Later there came each evening a gang of youngsters who found in this place a welcome playground. That obstruction which they had to pass gave me an opportunity to notice the expression of their characters. One ran quickly and jumped easily over,—that one will progress easily and quickly in his life. Another approached carefully, climbed slowly up the board and as cautiously ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... idea of the best in books is the recreation they can so well bring; if we go to books as to a playground to forget our cares and to blow off the cobwebs of business, let us make sure that we find what we seek. It is there, sure enough. The playgrounds of literature are indeed wide, and alive with bracing excitement, nor is there any limit to the variety ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals. Yonder mountain must migrate into your mind. The fine star-dust and nebulous blur in Orion, "the portentous year of Mizar and Alcor," must come down and be dealt with in your household thought. What if you shall come to discern that the play and playground of all this pompous history are radiations from yourself, and that the sun borrows his beams? What terrible questions we are learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples, cities, and men were swallowed up, and all trace of them gone. We are coming on the secret of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to be the chaperon but the dictator of this tour," declared Winnie when they alighted at the big playground. "I've never been here before, and I don't want anybody to tell me anything ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... Village is less like one's idea of a coal "camp" than of a pretty suburban development, or a military post, with officers' houses built around a parade. The grounds are well kept; there is a tennis court with vine-clad trellises about it, a fine playground for children, pretty brick walks, with splendid trees to shade them; and there is a brick schoolhouse which is a better building, better equipped, better lighted, and, above all, better ventilated than the schools I attended in ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... ruthless scythe, and only the fit survive. I began to understand my mother and the glory in the character which never faltered, although she was alone and life had been hard. How could I whine when I had Tom and a good friend—and life was like a playground? ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... at a discussion in the playground about the best way of intercourse, which I heard of for the first time. This was followed by enlightenment on the source of children. Concluded it must be very painful to both parties. 'Just the other way,' I was told. But the idea ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... flash and being prepared for catastrophes, ducked below their desks, and were none of them seriously hurt. The window was blown out into the playground, and the blackboard on its easel was upset. The slate was smashed to atoms. Some plaster fell from the ceiling. No other damage was done to the school edifice or appliances, and the boys at first, seeing nothing of Plattner, fancied he was knocked ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... A story or a song; A race on any track; A gay adventure, short or long, A puzzling nut to crack; A grinding task; a pleasant stroll; A climb; a slide down hill; A constant striving for a goal; A cake; a bitter pill; A pit where fortune flouts or stings; A playground full of fun;— With many any of these things; With others all in one. What's life? To love the things we see; The hills that touch the skies; The smiling sea; the laughing lea; The light in woman's eyes; To work and love the work we do; To play a game that's ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... loitered on the playground after school, or went to the post-office for the mail and lingered to hear the gossip about the cigar-stand, it would be growing dark by the time I came home. The sun was gone; the frozen streets stretched long and blue before me; the lights were shining pale in kitchen windows, and I ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... soon heard the college bell jangle; she knew that it was nine o'clock, and boys and masters were being ingathered for morning work. The college buildings in their bare enclosure stood on the other side of the road. Winifred would have been too shy to pass the playground while the boys were out, but now that every soul connected with the place would be indoors, she thought she might go round the sides of the Harmon garden and see the red bird much nearer from a place ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... products of the school garden were sold and from the funds thus secured apparatus for the playground was bought. In another school, children sold the vegetables and kept the money. Which, in your judgment, was the most worth while from the standpoint of the social development of ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... in an open place beside the main road to Muirtown, treeless and comfortless, built of red, staring stone, with a playground for the boys and another for the girls, and a trim, smug-looking teacher's house, all very neat and symmetrical, and well regulated. The local paper had a paragraph headed "Drumtochty," written by the Muirtown ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... nervous boy or girl who generally makes the most promising pupil. A natural inclination to study leads children of this type to prefer the schoolroom to the playground. The boy who works hard to get to the top of his class, or to pass an examination, or to obtain a scholarship, is the one least given to games, and, in consequence, the ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... them when coming over sandy roads, but tenaciously Fremont held on to it. Now deep snow forbade its being dragged further. Haste over the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada was imperative, for such peaks and passes are no lady's playground when the forces of winter begin to linger there, yet one can well imagine the regret and distress felt by the Pathfinder at being compelled to abandon this cannon, to which he had so desperately clung on all the wearisome miles ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... in it. Two Greek teams playing at football stopped their game and gazed open-mouthed; young naval cadets at leapfrog rushed with shouts of excitement towards the aeroplane; and a crowd of Jewish factory girls (for all races and classes use this common playground), realizing with quick wit what it meant, flocked up with shrill cries: "C'est un aviateur: allons voir!" A grave old Turk mutters: "Another mad Englishman!" A Greek shouts: "Come on, Pericles, and have a look"; and suddenly, ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... the theatre was a disused burial-ground, later asphalted and turned into a public playground. It was less than a quarter of an acre in extent. It is now built over by workmen's dwellings of the usual kind. It was an additional burial-ground to St. Mary's le Strand, and is mentioned ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... they did not content themselves with whispers, but shouted to each other of their new playground beneath our dear ex-warden's well-loved elms, of their future own gardens, of marbles to be procured in the wished-for city, and of the rumour which had reached them of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... spoke she drew Phyllis towards a corner of the playground, where a large, rather ferocious-looking hedgehog was curled up in ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... the advantage of offering the wildest alpine sport in combination with a well-appointed hotel as a base of operations. Hence the majority of visitors know only that side. Everybody should know it, too, for there is not a nobler playground anywhere; but should also know that it is by no means the only side ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... half built, of gray stone, to the left, but the old one, with its shingles on the outside that had once caused her such wonder, still lay warm in the sun, but closed and deserted. There was the playground where she had been caught in "Ring around the Rosy," and Hale and that girl teacher had heard her confession. She flushed again when she thought of that day, but the flush was now for another reason. Over ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... midst of a growing town because of a flaw in the title, and when eventually the title is quieted and the land is sold it pours wealth upon heads not educated to use it with wisdom. Here is unearned increment made flesh and converted into drama: the field that might have been home and garden and playground becomes a machine, a monster, which gradually visits evil upon all concerned. Then Adelle and her proletarian cousin, aware that the field through the corruption of a well-meant law has grown malevolent, resolve to break the spell by surrendering their selfish ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... used for housing and caring for refugees from all over France and this is done with great system. The expense is figured down to one franc per day for each person. We saw there a children's school, playground, orphanage and Cinema show, and attended church services at which were present several thousand refugees. We could hear the cannon booming during the entire services. Many of the refugees were at work making bags for the trenches and embroidering. We visited ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... true," he admitted. "Every country seems to have sent its statesmen holiday-making. And what a playground, too!" he added, glancing towards Hunterleys with something which was almost a wink. "Here, political crises seem of little account by the side of the turning wheel. This is where the world unbends and it is well that there should be ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lungs and your blood well filled with air, either by walking briskly to school or by chasing one another about the school playground, you will suddenly hear the bell ring, and you march indoors and sit down at your desks. Here, of course, the air cannot blow about freely from every direction, because the walls and doors and windows ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... I remember it all perfectly now. We had been reading some dreadful book and we swore to appear to one another—I mean, whoever died first swore to show himself to the other. And we sealed the compact with each other's blood. I remember it all so well—the hot summer afternoon in the playground, seven years ago—and one of the masters caught us and confiscated the knives—and I have never thought of ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... away, and every month the strong cords of love were binding him still more closely to the hearts of his friends. Spring came—the fresh grass sprung up, and the dandelions opened their blossoms in Willie's playground. How he loved to look at them! Those blades of grass, and the yellow flowers, filled his heart with gladness. His eyes sparkled, and he could scarcely stand still ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... Vava, not seeing very well how she was to get out of it, but wondering what Stella would say to her choice of a friend. As they entered the playground she saw Rosie Brown the centre of a little group of girls, who looked up as she came in, and then looked away again, ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... time-honour'd gloom of noble lime-trees o'er shadow'd, Which for many a century past on the spot had been rooted, Stood there a green and spreading grass-plot in front of the village, Cover'd with turf, for the peasants and neighbouring townsmen a playground. Scooped out under the trees, to no great depth, stood a fountain. On descending the steps, some benches of stone might be seen there, Ranged all around the spring, which ceaselessly well'd forth its waters, Cleanly, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... medals. Yet the fact—in the fact of the world's view-how little was there to remember. The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays and perambulations; the playground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... growing confidence. It was rather fine to stand by yourself, especially when you had one friend who thought you splendid whatever you did, who clung to you, and whom you had to protect. When he walked arm in arm with Rufus Cosgrave in the playground he trailed his coat insolently, and the challenge was not once accepted. From the biggest boys to Dickson Minor, no one cared to risk the limitless possibilities of an encounter, and the word "carrots" was not so much as whispered in ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... it will be necessary to enlarge the scope and, perhaps, to build two stories higher, so that the elders and perhaps bachelors of both sexes, who do not care for the garden, may help to bear the expense of the children's playground. Whatever form the advance may take, this is a sign-post in ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... allowed to live in peace by your side and develop his powers and those of his children that they may be factors in making of this land, the greatest in goodness in all this world. Don't circumscribe the able, noble souls among the Negroes. Give them the world as a playground for their talents and let Negro men dream of stars as do your men. They need that as much as you do. As for me, I ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... pastures and clearings, long since run wild, in which the young foxes love to meet and play on moonlight nights, much as rabbits do, though in a less harum-scarum way. When well fed, and therefore in no hurry to hunt, the heart of a young fox turns naturally to such a spot, and to fun and capers. The playground may easily be found by following the tracks after the first snowfall. (The knowledge will not profit you probably till next season; but it is worth finding and remembering.) If one goes to the place on ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... play in their playground one day when a herald rode through the town, blowing a trumpet, and crying aloud: "The King! The King passes by ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... I passed a primary school playground. The girls had just finished and the boys were beginning Swedish drill. Everyone engaged in the drill, including ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... acted out on himself, and he shrieked and struggled in an anguish which was only mitigated by Stephen's reassurances, caresses, even scoldings. The other youths, relieved from the apprehension of death, agreed to regard their detention as a holiday, and not being squeamish, turned the yard into a playground, and there they certainly made uproar, and played pranks, enough to justify the preference of the captain for full grown criminals. But Stephen could not join them, for Jasper would not spare him for an instant, and he himself, though at first sorely missing employment and exercise, was ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... habit of application and concentration, the fact that I had really been taught to study, not merely turned loose with a book in my hands, gave me an advantage over my mates, I do not know, but when Roger came back he found me only three classes below him and graduated from the little boys' playground forever. ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... upon the playground, yet lingered the faint violet fragrance of their childhood. Beneath that elm a kiss had once touched the air with a fire that still warmed their cheeks in passing. Yonder the look of a face was cut on the viewless air as on marble. Surely, ...
— A Summer Evening's Dream - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... doors of the refectory the general playground sloped gently down northwards to the Rond-point, where it was bounded by double gates of wood and iron that were always shut; and on each hither side of these rose an oblong dwelling of red brick, two stories high, and capable of accommodating thirty ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and cheerfulness of our fellow citizens, their tolerance, their readiness to hope, their prevalent orderliness and self-restraint. We are thinking perhaps of a certain tendency to slackness, a dangerous falling-off in the output of work. If that be so, we need only look at the activities of any playground, or of a class-room in a well-ordered school, to be sure of the future. The natural man, at least in our temperate climates, and as exhibited in the behaviour of his natural progenitor, the child, is all for vigour and experiment. It is we, the adult ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Street, a point of rock projects beyond the rough side. By a rude sort of stone steps beside this point we could clamber down many feet to the bush-grown ledge below. This point had been a meeting-place and playground for Marjie and myself all those years. We named it "Rockport" after the old Massachusetts town. Marjie could hear my call from the bushes and come up to the half-way place between our two homes. The stratum of rock below this point was full of cunning little ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... pretty playground," he suggested, glancing at the Oberlin Park. "Somehow or other, it reminds ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... arena, field, platform; scene of action, theater; walk, course; hustings; stare, boards &c (playhouse) 599; amphitheater; Coliseum, Colosseum; Flavian amphitheater, hippodrome, circus, race course, corso [Sp.], turf, cockpit, bear garden, playground, gymnasium, palestra, ring, lists; tiltyard^, tilting ground; Campus Martins, Champ de Allars^; campus [U.S.]. boxing ring, canvas. theater of war, seat of war; battle-field, battle-ground; field of battle, field of slaughter; Aceldama^, camp; the enemy's camp; trusting ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... think of the garden and playground. Tell about the different parts and the materials that have been used ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... the Museo Civico of Venice that we saw and fell victims to an enchanting antique table decoration—a formal Italian garden, in blown glass, once the property of a great Venetian family and redolent of those golden days when Venice was the playground of princes, and feasting their especial joy; days when visiting royalty and the world's greatest folk could have no higher honour bestowed upon them than a gift of Venetian glass, often real marvels mounted ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... of his delivery had been swung wide, with its mockery of open and honest sunlight, and yet his feet were to remain fettered in that underworld gloom he had grown to hate. He must still stay an unwilling prisoner in this garden of studied indolence, this playground of invalids and gamblers; he must still dawdle idly about these glittering, stagnating squares, fringing a crowd of meaningless foreigners, skulking half-fed and poorly housed about this opulent showplace of the world that set its appeasing theatricalities ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... a big playground," explained Joe. "Swings, merry-go-rounds, all that kind of stuff, you know. And it's pretty around there, too. I'll take you if ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... action never forgotten; and the garden with its flowering tulip-tree, and the syringas and rose-trees jewelled with the much-prized emerald May-bugs; for the whole garden was liberally thrown open to us beyond the gravelled playground; all being now given over to monks and nuns. Then I recollect how a rarely-dark annular eclipse of the sun convulsed the whole school, bringing smoked glass to a high premium; and there was a notable boy's library of amusing travels and stories, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... don't think I need the lecture. I admire their tenacity. I admire their ambition. I admire their blasphemous, consignatory, obscenity attitude of acting as if the Great Creator had concocted the whole glorious Universe for their own playground. Yes," said the chief wearily, "singly they aren't bad traits. Boiled down into the self-esteem of a single race, I don't admire them any more. I'm ...
— Instinct • George Oliver Smith
... as his word. Immediately after the dismissal of the school, while the boys still lingered on the playground, Shorty stalked up to Bob Brandon, and told him if he didn't stop shoving Bert Lloyd out of his proper place in the classes he would punch his head. Whereat Bob Brandon laughed contemptuously, and was rewarded with a blow on the ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... of man and animals, who says: "Children do not play because they are young; they are young in order that they may play." Play is a normal process of the child's growth through spontaneous activity. Joseph Lee, the president of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, goes so far as to say: "Play is thus the essential part of education. It is nature's prescribed course. School is invaluable in forming the child to meet actual social opportunities and conditions. ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... however, ought not to be permanently lodged within doors, and the dog-room is only complete when it has as an annexe a grass plot for playground and free exercise. Next to wholesome and regular food, fresh air and sunshine are the prime necessaries of healthy condition. Weakness and disease come more frequently from injudicious feeding and housing than from any other cause. Among ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... faster than they can be grown. A balance between production and consumption will always be maintained. Our needs for more timber, the necessity for protecting the headwaters of streams, the demands for saving wild life, and the playground possibilities of our forests justify their extension. Approximately eighty per cent of the American forests are now privately owned. The chances are that most of these wooded tracts will always remain in the hands of private owners. It is important that the production of ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack
... brilliant colors of the jockey's silks. There was the babel of excited voices, the shouting as the horses rushed down the picturesque "straight." Then the betting. The lunching. The sun. The blessed sun and gracious woodland slopes shutting in this happy playground of men and women become children again at the touch of pleasure's magic wand. No, for all her anxiety, Nan had no power to withstand the charm and delirium of it all. And, for a while, she flung herself into it with an abandon which matched ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... were talking together in little groups here and there on the playground. The fellows seemed to him to have grown smaller: that was because a sprinter had knocked him down the day before, a fellow out of second of grammar. He had been thrown by the fellow's machine lightly on the cinder path and ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... The vast military importance of the ceded districts has been already referred to. Some scraps on the Nice frontier were saved in a curious way: They were spots which formed part of the favourite playground of the Royal Hunter of the Alps, and it was pointed out to Napoleon that it would be a graceful act to leave these particular 'barren rocks' to his Sardinian Majesty. The zig-zags in the line of demarcation ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... was just about John's age; but as Charley was a cripple, John had chosen Will, who was several years the oldest, to be his closest friend and companion. Regardless of these facts, however, the three boys generally played together. Their playground was the vast dooryard extending far out over ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum
... numerous in Manila one may secure the best of modern service by going to the Manila Hotel, down on the water-front, just off the great promenade and playground known as the Lunetta, where everybody goes at night to see everybody else and to listen to the band. Or one may see more of the native, especially the Spanish, life of the town by stopping at the Hotel de Spain, in the heart of the town, just off the Escolta. Here one may be quite, ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... required intense application. I allowed myself eight hours for sleep, and the other sixteen were given to study. Whether eating, walking, working in the garden or chopping wood, I was boring into the questions of the recitation room. I would occasionally take a little turn with the boys on the playground at noon, but not often. I was fond of it, but felt that I could not spare the time. This was a sad mistake, confirmed by a life of broken-down health. But, like many others, it was not discovered till the mischief was done. A ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... turnkey. 'And the rules? Why, lord set you up like a corner pin, we've a reg'lar playground o' children here. Children! Why we swarm with 'em. How ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... larger boys in the village school of Greenbank were having a game of "three old cat" before school-time, there appeared on the playground a strange boy, carrying two books, a slate, and an ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... love of her pure, refined, if saddened home, everything went well with Princess Victoria, of whom we can only tell that we know the old brick palace where she dwelt, the playground that was hers, the walks she must have taken. We have sat in the later chapel where she said her prayers, a little consecrated room with high pews shutting in the worshippers, a royal gallery, open this time, and an elderly gentleman speaking with a measured, melodious ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... peacock-shaped, floating on the black waters like monster toys of Venetian glass. In the background, rising from low hills, peaks the blue triangle of Mt. Diablo. In the foreground reposes Tamalpais—a mountain shaped in the figure of a woman-lying prone. The wooded slopes of Tamalpais form the nearest big playground for San Franciscans—and Tamalpais is to the San Franciscan what Fujiyama is to the Japanese. Would that I had space to tell here of the time when their mountain caught fire and thousands—men, women and children—turned out to save it! Everybody helped who could. ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... there was life—life in a thousand varying forms, filling the sea and the air. On calm mornings the swelling waves were splashed by myriads of leaping fish, the sky was the playground of innumerable birds, soaring, diving, following their accustomed ways through their own strange world oblivious of the human creatures imprisoned on a bit of wood below them. Surrounded by a universe ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Kembles' Weybridge holidays. This is to be seen in the Eastlands' cottage garden, and is a semi-circular heap of earth or sand planted with trees and shrubs. Once, when it was much larger and higher, it was "the Mound," and was the favourite playground of the Kemble girls and boys. It grew out of a huge heap of sand which the landlord refused to move, and which Mrs. Kemble therefore planted and cut into shape with a walk round the top. Naturally enough, tradition has grown up round this heap of sand. ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... In the playground there might be taunts about his shabby clothes, and rough usage from the Fowley boys, that were hard ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... it is easy enough to reach. Away from the towns—and they are not many—everything is picturesque, grand, and majestic, and the country indeed looks (as the people firmly believed of it long ago) as if it might have been the playground of countless giants, who amused themselves by pulling up acres of land, letting the sea into the valleys, and pelting each other with mountains and islands. Thank goodness the giants have disappeared! But if they really did have a hand in fashioning Norway, they are to be congratulated ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... it even restricts his attention to a small number of those he already knows. So far, then, the learning of his letters contracts his practice; and were it not for keeping up his former habits of speaking, at home and in the playground, the teacher, during the six months or year in which he confines him to the twenty-six sounds of the alphabet, would pretty near deprive him of the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Congresses with regard to the Anarchists should be enforced. The Anarchists who cynically declare Workers' Congresses "absurd, motiveless, and senseless" must be taught once and for all, that they cannot be allowed to make the Congresses of the Revolutionary Socialists of the whole world a playground ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... open space looking down upon the town. Here, on a January afternoon in 1783, a score of boys were hard at work building a snow fort. The winter had been very cold and a great fall of snow at the first of the year had covered the playground several feet deep. After each storm the boys in the military school fought battles back and forth over the open ground, and up and down the roads that led to the village; but this battle was to be a ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... critical upper third of the Rock Creek basin was very nearly turned over to suburban developers as a playground for bulldozers by a lame-duck Montgomery County Council on a rezoning spree. When protests against these actions, as well as against the general degradation of the stream, culminated in the issuance of our report ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... If government be indeed to pan in moral science, we do not understand why rulers should not assume all the functions which Plato assigned to them. Why should they not take away the child from the mother, select the nurse, regulate the school, overlook the playground, fix the hours of labour and of recreation, prescribe what ballads shall be sung, what tunes shall be played, what books shall be read, what physic shall be swallowed? Why should not they choose our wives, limit our expenses, and stint us to a certain number of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... precocity of his intelligence was perhaps imperfectly appreciated by his fellow-students, it led him so far beyond any point within their sight. It has been justly said of him that he passed at once from infancy to manhood, and was in the rank of sages before he had shaken off the dust of the playground. He was of the type of those who strangle serpents while yet in the cradle. We know the temperament which from the earliest hour consumes with eager desire for knowledge, and energises spontaneously with unceasing and joyful activity ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... Gyp and Jerry lingered in the school building to prepare a history lesson from references they had to find in the library. Gyp hated to study; the drowsy stillness of the room was broken by the pleasant shouting from the playground outside. She threw down her pencil and stretched her ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... these are the various kinds and dispositions of men, different classes and races of people, with great variety of character, occupation, and education. Their actions, modes of dress, and customs are included. But we have many other primary and indispensable lessons to learn from the playground, the street, from home and church, from city and country, from travel and sight seeing, from holidays and work days, from sickness, and healthful excursions. Even a child's own tempers, faults, and successes are of the greatest value to himself and ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... inevitable growth of Westmore should increase the demand for small building lots. Whenever Amherst's eyes were refreshed by the hanging foliage above the roofs of Westmore, he longed to convert the abandoned country-seat into a park and playground for the mill-hands; but he knew that the company counted on the gradual sale of Hopewood as a source of profit. No—the mill-town would not grow beautiful as it grew larger—rather, in obedience to the grim law of industrial prosperity, it would soon lose its one lingering ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... a thick, black wintry afternoon, when the writer stopt in the front of the playground of a suburban school. The ground swarmed with boys full of the Saturday's holiday. The earth seemed roofed with the oldest lead, and the wind came, sharp as Shylock's knife, from the Minories. But those happy boys ran and jumped, and ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... cows looked up munching from the pasture in mild surprise at the turnout. The little coach dog stepped aside from the road to give them a bark as he passed, and then pattered and pattered his tiny feet to catch up. The old school house came in sight with its worn playground and dejected summer air, and Marcia's eyes searched out the window where she used to sit to eat her lunch in winters, and the tree under which she used to sit in summers, and the path by which she and Mary Ann used to wander down to the brook, or go in search of butternuts, even ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... public meetings. And none but they can do anything worth doing. And among the rank and file of Radicals the plain common-sense men should make themselves heard. Foreign policy debates in the House are usually the playground of cranks of all varieties, and the plain common-sense man seems to shrink from being vocal in such company. It is a pity. The plain common-sense man should believe in himself a little more. The result would perhaps startle his modesty. And he should begin instantly on the resumption ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that school were lovely, but the little white boys, who had lived all their lives in Jamaica, most likely took it all for granted, and thought it quite natural to have their bathing-place surrounded by cocoa-nut palms, their playground fringed with hibiscus and scarlet poinsettias, and the garden a riot of mangoes, bread-fruits, nutmeg ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... The conditions which have chiefly fostered it are the immigration of people who are accustomed to community life, the increase in factory life and the increased number of people of wealth who seek the advantages which the city gives them. The city has always been the favored playground for the social game. The unhealthy conditions of city life are due to the crowding, the more uncertain means of livelihood, the greater influence of vice and alcoholism. Prostitution and the sexual diseases are almost the ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... reminds me of a mishap I had in the Hester Street school,—the one with the "frills" which the Board of Education cut off. I happened to pass it after school hours, and went in to see what sort of a playground the roof would have made. I met no one on the way, and, finding the scuttle open, climbed out and up the slant of the roof to the peak, where I sat musing over our lost chance, when the janitor came to close up. He must have thought I was a crazy man, and my explanation did not ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... those who say men should be strong, well-a-day! But what constitutes strength in a man? Who shall say? I am strong as the most when it comes to the arm. I have aye held my own on the playground or farm. And when I 've been tempted, I haven't been weak; But now—why, I tremble to hear a maid speak. I used to be bold, but now I 've grown shy, And all on account of a ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... country camping out is part of the ordinary and well-understood amusements of the eastern cities of the United States. The whole State of Maine is practically a State reserve for this, the most popular form of holiday-making in America. Its forests, rivers, and lakes are one vast playground and public sporting domain, which is enjoyed almost entirely by means of camping out and boating. The rivers teem with State-reared trout, of which as many are allowed to be caught as can possibly be consumed by the party. The woods are free to shoot ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... o'clock, but many who came from a distance brought luncheon with them, or had dinner provided for them at the school. There was a luncheon room provided for those who brought their meals with them, but Horace had preferred eating his slice of bread and butter or bread and dripping, walking about the playground. There were others who did the same thing, but they walked in groups and chatted and frolicked, or played games, and when he first came Horace had been invited to join these, and had been initiated into the mysteries of one game peculiar to the school, ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... beautiful and attractive objects to be seen in any community. The approach from the street should be like that to any dwelling house, over well kept walks bordered by green turf, with trees and shrubs and flowers offering their adornment. Everything should speak of neatness and order. The playground should be ample, but it should be in another ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... sweet and so pure, and we were enjoying the world as a clean open-air playground. A few fluffy clouds began to appear, but old Boreas blew them away as soon as the west ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... was an American, and evidently an old hand at the present business. The Maine wilds had long been his playground. He had studied the knack of noiseless paddling under the teaching of a skilled forest guide until he fairly brought it to perfection. And, in perfection, it is about the most wizard-like art practised in the ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... said the Doctor more quietly, "that the boy who did it has not had the courage to own up, but I will give him another chance. I will take every boy's separate answer, and, after that, the whole school will be kept in the playground until the end of the term, unless the guilty boy will ...
— Brave and True - Short stories for children by G. M. Fenn and Others • George Manville Fenn
... that were usually called the twin maples. These two very old trees grew side by side, their great trunks not more than four feet apart and their branches so intermingled that they were practically one tree in two parts. The delightful shade of this double tree afforded a favorite playground for the children, and they had missed it during the past week when they were forbidden to go ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... been present at one or two fights before, at the school I used to attend at Westham, where the boys used to settle their differences generally at the bottom of the playground under a little clump of shady trees that were grouped there, which shut off the view of the house and the headmaster's eye; but never previously had the surroundings of any similar pugilistic encounter ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... over spacious homes which they built of clay and native wood and furnished with the luxuries they brought with them in the ships. They reared lovely daughters and strong, hot-blooded sons; and they grew rich in cattle and in contentment, in this paradise which Nature had set apart for her own playground and which the zeal of the padres had found and claimed in the name of God and ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... brows grew darker. His mind was a playground of conflicting thoughts. When he spoke he did so almost automatically. "She has never had a chance, Don. God knows I am eager ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... the Roman Campagna and the plains of Umbria and Tuscany, on May nights. I had watched them in former days on the Appian Way, round the tomb of Caecilia Metella—their playground for two thousand years; now I found them dancing the selfsame dance in the land of St. Catherine and of Pia de' Tolomei, at the gates of Sienna, that most melancholy and most fascinating of cities. All along my ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... himself for never having had brains enough to plant an avenue or two of poplars or Manitoba maples about Casa Grande, for now we'll have to wait a few years for foliage and shade. And he intends to have a playground for little Dinky-Dink, for he agrees with me that our boy must be strong and manly and muscular, and must not use tobacco in any form until he is twenty at least. And Dinky-Dunk has also agreed that I shall ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... street and its allied institutions will throw light upon the precocious ways of the typical city boy. The street is the playground, especially of the small boy who must remain within sight and call of home. Numerous fatalities, vigorous police, and big recreation parks will not prevent the instinctive use of the nearest available open area. If congestion is to be permitted and numerous small ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... door leading from the school room to his private study, and went in; while the boys, luncheon in hand, ran to the playground. ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... silently and mysteriously disappeared. The next day one of the old wizards came to release the boy; he kept him away from the camp all day and at night took him to a weedah, or bower-bird's, playground. There he tied him down again, and there the boy was visited again by the spirits of the dead, and more ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... the water and watch the clouds chasing each other over the deep blue vault of the sky. The cry of the Night Owl came dreamily from the woods; a prowling Puma roared hungrily to his mate, but the pond of the Musk Rats was a happy playground, and they the merriest ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... in rotation by the ward in which most prizes have been gained in the year, Middleton is the tallest figure. It is reproduced in my large edition. The story which it celebrates is to the effect that Middleton found Coleridge reading Virgil in the playground and asked him if he were learning a lesson. Coleridge replied that he was "reading for pleasure," an answer which Middleton reported to Boyer, and which led to Boyer taking special notice of him. The Country Spectator was a magazine conducted by ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... don't want to break all your hearts, Cherie's especially, but why should all that space be nothing but a playground for us Underwoods, instead of making ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought, she began to run again, and in a little while she was standing opposite the square brick house which she knew to be Mr. Bardsley's. There was not a sign of a boy on the steps, nor was there any sound of voices from the playground; evidently Cecil and his companions were already at study. She stood there, panting and weary, not very well ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... birds sing the same sweet stave, Her lights and airs are given, Alike, to playground and the grave,— And over both ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... younger than me we were in the same class. Such a bright, clever fellow he was! Always through with his lessons before any of the rest of us, he was, and always at the top of the class. And the stories he could tell, lad! Never did I hear such stories. In the playground before school opened we used to get around him and make him tell stories till our hair ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... speaking French) that it is simpler to stick to one gender. His choice was the feminine, and the Boche described as "she" throughout made me think better of myself, which is the essence of friendship. We climbed a flight of old stone steps, for generations the playground of little children, and found a ruined church, and a battalion in billets, recreating themselves with excellent music and a little horseplay on the outer edge of the crowd. The trouble in the hills was none of their business for ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... a bear garden, Hector. You appear to think you are on the playground, judging by ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... were all little boys together we knew that his mother's brother was Lord Holdhurst, the great conservative politician. This gaudy relationship did him little good at school. On the contrary, it seemed rather a piquant thing to us to chevy him about the playground and hit him over the shins with a wicket. But it was another thing when he came out into the world. I heard vaguely that his abilities and the influences which he commanded had won him a good position at ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the sights upon which my eyes rest oftenest and with deepest content is a broad sweep of meadow slowly climbing the western sky until it pauses at the edge of a noble piece of woodland. It is a playground of wind and flowers and waving grasses. There are, indeed, days when it lies cold and sad under inhospitable skies, but for the most part the heavens are in league with cloud and sun to protect its charm against all comers. When the turf is fresh, all the promise of summer is in its tender ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... were playing at rounders in an angle of the court, and I was supposed to be watching them. In reality I was more interested in a group of tall girls who were patrolling up and down under the shade of the trees at the head of their playground—where no boy but I dare enter, and even I only officially. For in kindly Scots fashion, the Eden Valley Academy was not only open to all comers of both sexes and ages, but was set in the midst of a wood of tall pines, ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... and she began to pace up and down the lovely garden, and soon, in the interest which the sight of the unforgotten playground of her youth excited within her, her brow cleared, and she became pleasant and even talkative. The two were in the midst of a very interesting conversation, and were pacing up and down not far from the summer-house, when Orion's clear voice was heard. "The public funeral is going ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... fact that the tuition of that school was no longer free. It came to some five guineas a year, no great sum, but perhaps sufficient to keep the school, with the other influences, select enough for the patronage to which it had fallen. It was a pleasant place, with a playground before it, which in the course of generations there must have been a good deal of schoolboy ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... express my sincere appreciation of the contribution to the book from Mr. Cabot, who, descendent of the ancient explorers, is peculiarly well fitted to speak of Labrador. The great peninsula has been, as he terms it, his "playground," and by canoe in summer or on snowshoes in winter he has travelled thousands of miles in the interior, thus placing himself in ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... neighbour's, consequently the streets are narrow crooked passages of uneven levels; there is not a green thing in them, and the people live in dust and eat it and wallow in it. Here and there you can see a tray of flat cakes pushed out into the midst of the dust to bake in the sun and form a playground for the flies and the microbes, for the Egyptian has no respect for microbes, he is germ-proof; for generations he and his forefathers have drunk the Nile water, unfiltered and carried in goat-skins not too well cured. Yet the people are happy and the children apparently a gay set of youngsters. ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... rose to explore her environment. She was in one of those numerous public parks lining the Tiber and forming the city's playground for her less fortunate wards. Here and there were scattered a few people, mostly men, who had braved the heat of the streets in the hope of obtaining a breath of cool air near the water. At the river's edge a group of ragged urchins were romping noisily; and on ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... observed any teacher using the lesson in literature or history to cultivate the finer emotions? What emotions have you seen appealed to by a lesson in nature study? What emotions have you observed on the playground that needed restraint? Do you think that on the whole the emotional life of the child receives enough consideration in the school? In ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... have no other than a mechanical interest in its execution. The abrupt contrasts, the variety and mystery, characteristic of Gothic architecture, had been a direct and irresistible invitation to the carver, and the freest playground for his fancy. The formality of the classical design, on the other hand, necessarily confined such carving as it permitted to particular lines and spaces, following a recognized rule; and except in the case of bas-relief figure subjects and detached statues, demanded ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... cut much of a figure at the village school—though he did his best, and was fairly successful—but in the playground he reigned supreme. At football, cricket, gymnastics, and, ultimately, at swimming, no one could come near him. This was partly owing to his great physical strength, for, as time passed by he shot upwards and outwards in a way that surprised his companions and amazed his mother, who was a distinctly ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... practiced for a speech. A woman adjusts her stocking on the coping below the fence with the freedom of a country road. A street sweeper, patched to his office, tunes his slow work to fit the quiet surroundings. Boys skate by or cut swirls upon the pavement in the privilege of a playground. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... municipality from an artistic standpoint. When treated on broad lines, such areas become public parks, and afford open breathing places for the residents, and, if near centers of population, may well be equipped with playground facilities for the children. When thus developed they should have care, that the planting and equipment should not deteriorate and the last state ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... this uncommonly interesting playground, as a field of action, came, in the children's opinion, the "secret spot." There was a velvety stretch of ground in the Sawyer pasture which was full of fascinating hollows and hillocks, as well as verdant levels, on which ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... therefore retired a little way and, moving through the mists, came forward to points whence they could watch the church, well concealed on the wild plain, which here and there gave up a field to man but was mostly the playground of wild creatures whose ways were the bowmen's ways. ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... he was the son of a rich man. Such cases occur sometimes among American schoolboys, but generally they are too democratic and sensible to attach importance to social distinctions in the schoolroom, or in the playground. ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Guards' regiments stationed in the town furnish music. But not far away, in the less stately, more natural park surrounding the Alexander Palace, the property of the Crown Prince, lies the real paradise of the children of all classes. There is the playground, provided with gymnastic apparatus, laid out at the foot of a picturesque tower, one of the line of signal towers, now mostly demolished, which, before the introduction of the telegraph, flashed news from Warsaw to St. Petersburg in the then phenomenally ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... must be a number of boys, not less than eight or ten, and as many more as can be got together. To commence it, two semicircles are drawn against a wall or hedge at the opposite sides of the playground. These are called ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... words were placed there, Ernst heard, at the suggestion of the great Dutch scholar Erasmus, who was a friend of Dean Colet, and who, some years before, had visited London. Under the figure also were some lines in Latin, written by the same learned person. Behind the school was a playground surrounded by cloisters, where the pupils played in ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... go around that article of furniture, on his way from the clothes-rack, which was his tent when he camped out on rainy days, to the sink, which was his oasis in the desert of the basement floor. This kitchen was a favorite playground of The Boy, and about that kitchen-table centre many of the happiest of his early reminiscences. Ann Hughes, the cook, was very good to The Boy. She told him stories, and taught him riddles, all about a certain "Miss Netticoat," who wore a white petticoat, and who had a red nose, and about ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... was waiting in his friend's room, was sent for. He was introduced into the conclave assembled in the playground ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... a long watch till the carriages returned, and the same scene was enacted and repeated, when the single vehicle rolled away from the door; and the last mark of honor having been paid, the party dispersed over the large playground, each one in search of his own amusement. Louis wandered away by himself, and enjoyed a quiet hour unmolested, and tried, with the help of his little hymn-book, and thinking over old times, to bring back some of his former happy thoughts. There were ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... playground, under the bluest of blue skies, with a fresh, clover-perfumed breeze fanning their dripping brows, the boys of Willard's School were playing the third and deciding game of baseball with the nine of ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... by such affairs that contests are decided—on the playground or in strategy. Lord Roberts proceeded with his preparations undisturbed by the mosquito buzzings about his ears or on his trail. At last, when ready, a second long leap was made. The British army, leaving Bloemfontein on the 2nd of May, was ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... there, sheltered from the wind, would have been an ideal place for motorists to picnic. But the Duke did not picnic, therefore we must not. Following hard upon his heels we went on, up and up into the mountain world, still in the playground of vanished giants, winding along a road as wild as the way to Montenegro. Rising at regular intervals before us, on either side stood tall stone columns, sentinel-like, placed in pairs to guide wayfarers through white drifts in ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... growing streams, until at last they are all united just below the summer villa of his Kaiserly and Kingly Majesty, Francis Joseph, and flow away northward, through the rest of his game-preserve, into the Traunsee. It is an imperial playground, and such as I would consent to hunt the chamois in, if an inscrutable Providence had made me a kingly kaiser, or even a plain king or an unvarnished kaiser. But, failing this, I was perfectly content to spend a few idle days in fishing for trout and catching grayling, at such times and places ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... sails were taken in, as they were doing no good and the square canvas was drawing. This allowed the mizen-awning to be spread, making a pleasant place to sit in and a capital playground for the children, who scamper about all day long, and do not appear to ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... of John Leech's schoolboy days will be found in one of his illustrations to "Once a Week,"[126] which represents a schoolboy perched in the topmost branches of a tree overlooking the walls of the Carthusian playground. As the mail coaches bound to the north passed the Charterhouse walls in the old coaching days, the boys not seeing any just reason why they should be debarred from the exhilarating spectacle, notched the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... noble trees, the old mansion, built of brick that came from England in the days when the New World yet remained in ignorance of the wealth of her natural and industrial resources, stood in the middle of the spacious lawn which afforded a beautiful playground for little Francis Scott Key and his young sister, who lived here the ideal home life of love and happiness. Among the flowers of the terraced garden they learned the first lessons of beauty and sweetness and the triumph of growth and blossoming. At a short distance was ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... sides and elbows. The home in which our child finds himself, though a social institution, is not gregarious; it gives him only a limited contact, and as soon as he is able and self-reliant he seeks out a little herd, and on the streets, in the schoolroom and playground, he really becomes a happy ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson |
