"Smattering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came to assimilating Spanish, however, he did not appear to be so apt a pupil. He managed, after many trials, to acquire "buenos dias" and "buenos tardes," and "senorita" and "gracias," and a few other short terms. Dick was indeed eager to get a little smattering of Spanish, and perhaps he was not really quite so stupid as he pretended to be. It was delightful to be taught by a beautiful Spaniard who was so gracious and intense and magnetic of personality, and by a sweet American girl who moment by moment forgot her shyness. Gale ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... and racquet, with the gloves and Indian clubs, the nimblest quarter-back and dodger, the swiftest runner of his school, it must be owned that Mr. Sanford Ray was a most indifferent scholar. Of geography, history, and languages he had rather more than a smattering because of occasional tours abroad when still at an impressionable age. Yet Sandy "took more stock," as he expressed it, and "stawk," as he called it, in Sioux and the sign language than he did in French or ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... sweetness, increased light, increased life." The other common charge of dilettanteism, brought by such opponents as Professor Huxley and Mr. Frederic Harrison, deserves hardly more consideration. Arnold has made it sufficiently clear that he does not mean by culture "a smattering of Greek and Latin," but a deepening and strengthening of our whole spiritual nature by all the means at our command. No other ideal of the century is so satisfactory as this of Arnold's. The ideal of social democracy, as commonly followed, tends, as Arnold has pointed out, to exalt the average ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... false idea to suppose that everybody is competent to learn or to teach everything. Would our great artists have succeeded equally well in Greek or calculus? A smattering of everything is worth little. It is a fallacy to suppose that an encyclopaedic knowledge is desirable. The mind is made strong, not through much learning, but by the thorough possession ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... convent, the boy was in charge of the apothecary, and probably picked up more or less of the smattering of chemistry and physics which he afterwards used. His final offence was a ridiculous and characteristic one. He was a greedy and thievish fellow, and was by way of penalty set to read aloud about the ancient martyrs, those dry though ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... interested that her sadness departed, and the smile came back once more. For my own part, I was always rather quick at learning languages. I had a correct ear and a retentive memory; in my wanderings round the world I had picked up a smattering of many languages, such as French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, German, Hindoostanee, and a few others. The words which I learned from Almah had a remote resemblance to Arabic; and, in fact, my knowledge ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... with great names, though the meaning of the names escapes the vast majority. Now the earnest ones of the earth congregate in vast tea-gardens of the intellect, such as Chautauqua. Now the summer hotel is thought a fit place in which to pick up a smattering of literature or science; and there is an uneasy feeling abroad that what is commonly known as pleasure must not be unalloyed. The vice, unhappily, is not unknown in England. A country which had the ingenuity to call a penny reading "university extension," and to send its missionaries ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... him a card as I spoke, and suddenly addressing him in "pidgin," of which, fortunately, I had a smattering: ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... to make them slaves and bigots. They don't teach them what they teach their own sons. Look at the miserable smattering of general information—just enough to serve as sauce for their great first and last lesson of 'Obey the powers that be'—whatever they be; leave us alone in our comforts, and starve patiently; do, like good boys, for it's God's will. And then, if a boy does show talent in school, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... on to some other camp. The boys are pretty widely scattered in these forests. You'd never guess the distances I sometimes make. Even Labrador. But it doesn't much matter. I've a good smattering of physic, and the boys are always getting hurt one way and another. I'd hate to feel I couldn't go to them wherever they are. Maybe if I built a better house I'd not want to leave it. It would be hard getting on the move. You see, I get their ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... his people should go on, and at once they left him with us, and Owen bade me do reverence to Aldhelm, the abbot of Malmesbury, before whom we stood. And after that they talked long in Welsh, and that I could not follow, though indeed I knew a fair smattering of it by this time, seeing that Owen would have me learn from him, and we had used it a good deal in these few ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... ignorance crasse[Fr]; unfamiliarity, unacquaintance[obs3]; unconsciousness &c. adj.; darkness, blindness; incomprehension, inexperience, simplicity. unknown quantities, x, y, z. sealed book, terra incognita, virgin soil, unexplored ground; dark ages. [Imperfect knowledge] smattering, sciolism[obs3], glimmering, dilettantism; bewilderment &c. (uncertainty) 475; incapacity. [Affectation of knowledge] pedantry; charlatanry, charlatism[obs3]; Philister[obs3], Philistine. V. be ignorant &c. adj.; not know &c. 490; know not, know not what, know nothing of; have ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ruffled neck-cloths, tight white trousers, and pointed boots a size too small. They were the tradespeople of the village; in some cases the servants of the estates, although by far the greater number of the young women of humbler Nevis had received a smattering of education and were now too good to work. Their parents might get a living as best they could, huckstering or on the plantations, while the improved offspring, content to herd in one room on the scantiest fare, dreamed of gala days and a scrap of new finery. Nevertheless, ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... circumstance. In "Chaos Vanquished," the word monstruo, addressed to Gwynplaine, displeased Dea. Sometimes, with the smattering of Spanish which every one knew at the period, she took it into her head to replace it by quiero, which signifies, "I wish it." Ursus tolerated, although not without an expression of impatience, this alteration in his text. He might have said to Dea, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... opportunities of seeing more of the wonderful animals and plants of the Brazilian forests, in the studying of which he experienced great delight. Moreover, in the course of a few months he began to acquire a smattering of the Indian language, and was not compelled to live in constant silence, as had been the case at first. But he carefully avoided the formation of any friendships with the youths of the tribe, although many of them seemed to desire it, considering that his doing so might in some way or other interfere ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... a shapeless mass of a philosophical abstraction called matter, but a regular and beautiful building, composed of a great variety of matters. Was it so from eternity? No man who was ever in a quarry, or a gravel pit, will say so, much less one who has the least smattering of chemistry or geology. Do you assert the eternity of the fifty-seven single substances, either separate or combined in some other way than we now find them in the rocks, and rivers, and atmosphere of ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... priests of Celtic day, Ancient Druids, holding sway By smattering of Occult law And man's eternal sense of awe. Stonehenge They used Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain Reputed Prehistoric Fane; Note each megalithic boulder; No ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... these, in my opinion, classical education is a mistake; and it is for this reason that I am glad to see "mere literary education and instruction" shut out from the curriculum of Sir Josiah Mason's college, seeing that its inclusion would probably lead to the introduction of the ordinary smattering ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... consciousness. If we can cause people to think toward thoroughness rather than toward arithmetic or other school studies, we shall win the feeling that we are making progress. Thoroughness must be distinguished, of course, from a smattering knowledge of details that have no value. In the right sense thoroughness must be interpreted as the habit of mastery. We may well indulge the hope that the time will come when parents will invoke the aid ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... Beaufort knew little of affairs of moment but by hearsay and by what he had learned in the cabal of "The Importants," of whose jargon he had retained some smattering, which, together with some expressions he had perfectly acquired from Madame de Vendome, formed a language that would have puzzled a Cato. His speech was short and stupidly dull, and the more so because he obscured it by affectation. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... there was no reading of papers as a regular habit by those who work with their hands. The papers were still in the main written for those who had leisure; those who for the most part had some travel, and those who had a smattering, ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... German, and Italian, as well as English: a smattering of Spanish too; yet they said modestly, when we exclaimed at their accomplishments, that it was nothing; hardly anybody would learn Dutch, so the Dutch must learn ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... deeds, thinking only of torturing for hidden treasure, or swilling southern wines; and they returned to Spain and to Germany, to persecutions of Moriscos and plundering of abbeys, as savage and as dull as they had arrived. A smattering of Italian literature, art, and manners was carried back to Spain and Germany by Spanish and German princes and governors, to be transmitted to a few courtiers and humanists; but the imagination of the lower classes of Spain and of Germany, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Something I have done, though by my profession a divine, yet turbine raptus ingenii, as [33]he said, out of a running wit, an unconstant, unsettled mind, I had a great desire (not able to attain to a superficial skill in any) to have some smattering in all, to be aliquis in omnibus, nullus in singulis, [34] which [35]Plato commends, out of him [36]Lipsius approves and furthers, "as fit to be imprinted in all curious wits, not to be a slave of one science, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... goes on in the older Universities. The classics are retained as a subject in which all must qualify; and the education provided for the ordinary passman is of a contemptible, smattering kind; it is really no education at all. It gives no grip, or vigour, or stimulus. Here again no one takes any interest in the average man. If the more liberal residents try to get rid of the intolerable tyranny of compulsory classics, a band of earnest, ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Kit had a smattering knowledge of Horace, gleaned from Billie. In the old days back home, when they had studied together, they had seemed to always get the personal side of the old heroes and people of fame. And just now the ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... amateur art—French plum-box art—is worse than worthless. However, I am glad you can amuse yourself somehow; and I daresay, if you have to turn governess by-and-by, that sort of thing will be useful. You have the usual smattering of languages, of course?" ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher; ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... as my recollection goes, the teachers were generally of a very inferior order, and rarely possessed more than a smattering of the rudiments of grammar and arithmetic. As the Governor points out, they were poorly paid, and "boarded around" the neighbourhood. But it is not improbable that they generally received all their services ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... have lifted the portieres of our own drawing rooms and shown us what is transpiring therein. Gail Hamilton says that to be "well-smattered" is next best to being deeply learned, and nowhere can a smattering of almost everything be better gained than from ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... the moment the Kaffir becomes efficient and picks up a smattering of education he begins to think about his position and unrest is fomented. It makes him unstable as an employee, as the constant desertions from work show. The only way that the gold and diamond mines keep their thousands ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... or what fell little short of a real gale, was not to be undertaken with twenty men, the extent of Daly's command; and he had recourse to the assistance of his enemies. A good natured, facetious Irishman, himself, with a smattering of French, he soon got forty or fifty of the prisoners in a sufficient humour to lend their aid, and the sail was set, though not without great risk of its splitting. From this moment, la Victoire was better off, as respected the gale and keeping a weatherly position, than any ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... imaginative fashion, a gathering of flowers, or what we, borrowing their word, call an anthology. So to those austere souls who regard anthologies as a labor-saving contrivance for the benefit of persons who like a smattering of knowledge and are never really learned, we can at least plead in mitigation that we have high and ancient authority for the practise. In any event no amount of scholarly deprecation has been able to turn mankind or ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... and some smattering of knowledge. She had read a good deal of French, and chattered it like the true granddaughter of a Normandy proprietaire. She sang, in a half-rude, half-melodious way, snatches of songs which sounded better than they really were, she sang them with so much heartiness and abandon. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the Tweed, that though "every man may have a mouthful, no one has a belly full;" but it still marks a degree of national refinement, that any attention whatever is bestowed upon such subjects. This smattering of knowledge, accompanied with the constant readiness to communicate it, is also agreeable to a stranger. Except in a few instances at Rouen, I never failed to find civility and attention among the French. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... smattering of knowledge you have, to assume any risk that might lead to serious results. Make the sufferer comfortable by giving him an abundance of fresh air and placing him in a restful position. Do all that is possible to keep back the crowd of curious lookers-on, whom a morbid curiosity has gathered ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... substance of it as well as she could. I found it was in French, by some words which she was obliged to repeat over and over, before, not perfectly understanding the language, she could be able to find a proper interpretation of. The abbess, who has a little smattering of it herself, sometimes helped her out, and between them both I soon found it came from monsieur du Plessis, and contained the most tender and compassionate complaint of your unkindness in not answering his letter;—that the symptoms ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... ministers had done a good work on the frontier, he was in no humor to relish the accounts of the religious condition of the West, which the missionaries from the East spread through the older States in their letters home. "They would come," says he, "with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of these sermons they had memorized, but in general they read them to the people. This way of reading ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... of their tongue. Then he tries them in Swahili. Ah! several of them have a smattering of that. They have come to his aid at a critical moment, he puts it—he is willing therefore to call them friends. Yet it was a pity they had. He had already killed two of his assailants and was prepared to kill them ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... bridge. Mrs. Kate did not approve of slang. Ford found himself carefully eliminating from his speech certain grammatical inaccuracies in her presence, and would not so much as split an infinitive if he remembered in time. It was trying, to be sure. Ford thanked God that he still retained a smattering of the rules he had reluctantly memorized in school, and that he was not married (at least, not uncomfortably so), and that he was not compelled to do more than eat his meals in the house. Mrs. Kate was a nice woman; Ford would tell any ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... preparation for the practice of economic geology there is no easy short-cut. Students sometimes think that a smattering of geological principles, combined with a little business and economic information, may be sufficient. Analysis of professional successes should make it clear that economic geologists are most effective and in most demand, not primarily because of business aptitude, ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... orders. "Dudley North tells me," he continues, "that he has the best character possible among those with whom he has always lived, that he is now working hard to qualify, and has not only Latin, but some smattering of Greek." It had its gracious amenities, that eighteenth century, for I do not believe that there is a man in the ranks of the present Government, or of the present Opposition, who would take all this trouble for a poor unknown who had appealed to him merely by two or three long ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... of the Virginia army, presented a peculiar if animated scene. With few exceptions, every man capable of serving in the field belonged either to the militia or the volunteers. Some of the companies had a smattering of drill, but the majority were absolutely untaught, and the whole were without the slightest conception of what was meant by discipline. And it was difficult to teach them. The non-commissioned officers and men of the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... foreigner; he is one who loves his country, and the language and literature of his country, and speaks up for each and all when there is occasion to do so. Now, what is the case with nine out of ten amongst those of the English who study foreign languages? No sooner have they picked up a smattering of this or that speech than they begin to abuse their own country and everything connected with it, more especially its language. This is particularly the case with those who call themselves German students. It is said, and the writer believes with truth, that when a woman falls ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... look on us as lawful, enlisted soldiers?" demanded one of the labourers, who had a sufficient smattering of the law, to understand the difference between a mercenary and a volunteer. "If I'm regimented, I should at least like to know in whose service ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the differential calculus young Tudor knew nothing, and pretended to know nothing. He told the chief clerk that he was utterly ignorant of all such matters, that his only acquirements were a tolerably correct knowledge of English, French, and German, with a smattering of Latin and Greek, and such an intimacy with the ordinary rules of arithmetic and with the first books of Euclid, as he had been able to pick up while acting as a tutor, rather than a scholar, in ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... disliked, was negligent; and he appears to have been subject to frequent attacks of ague, disposing him to casual recreation rather than to close study. He had also apparently the desire to acquire a smattering of many different things rather than to study hard at a few special subjects. 'I began to look on the rudiments of musick, in which I afterwards arriv'd to some formal knowledge though to small perfection of hand, because I was so frequently ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... consisted of the rudiments of trench warfare. Trenches had been dug, with barbed-wire entanglements, bombing saps, dug-outs, observation posts, and machine-gun emplacements. We were given a smattering of trench cooking, sanitation, bomb throwing, reconnoitering, listening posts, constructing and repairing barbed wire, "carrying in" parties, methods used in attack and defense, wiring parties, mass formation, and the procedure for ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... equally well? She could play fairly well, sing fairly well, paint fairly well, trim a hat so that it did not look obviously home-made, make a trifle or creams, though she was densely ignorant about boiling a potato. She possessed, in fact, a smattering of many things, but had not really mastered one which, if needs be, would be a staff ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lives of most people. All cannot be great linguists any more than all can be great inventors, and it were just as valuable and reasonable an expenditure of time to teach a child to be one as the other. Of what benefit is a smattering of foreign language, except to make people ridiculous? and that class is already sufficiently large; far better that they learned to speak and spell their mother tongue with a commendable degree of accuracy, or that they learn ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... part of his days greedily devouring all the books on which he could lay hand. In this desultory way the works of most of the English, French, and Italian poets came under his eyes, and he had a smattering of the Spanish tongue likewise, besides the ancient languages, of which, at least of Latin, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... horse-laugh, from which I could not refrain. I made him candidly confess that he knew nothing of medicine, more than having been servant to a doctor of some eminence at Padua, where he had picked up a smattering; and that, as all his patients were heretics and abominable Mussulmans, he never could feel any remorse for those which, during his practice, he had ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... friends for so long a time, and the weather seemed to me inexpressibly gloomy. I was also troubled with palpitation and pain about the heart, and like many a young ignorant man, especially one with a smattering of medical knowledge, was convinced that I had heart disease. I did not consult any doctor, as I fully expected to hear the verdict that I was not fit for the voyage, and I was resolved to ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... course she will," interrupted the elder lady; "people of Mrs. Anderton's class always think it is more genteel to have a smattering of foreign languages than to know their own mother tongue. We may get another German—and that I could ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... suddenly a cry rang through the air: "Holloa, you Englishmen! You come here!" It came from a "little squinting fellow" dressed in an English soldier's jacket, a messenger from the Chief of Bonney on the coast, buying slaves for his master. He had picked up a smattering of English from the Liverpool trading ships which came to Bonney for palm-oil from the river. There was no longer any doubt that the mouth of the Niger was not far off, and that the many-mouthed delta was well known to Europeans under the name of the "Oil Rivers" ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... spectacled eyes wavered. He was a savant by nature; he was a secret agent by choice. Who knows anything about rare butterflies appreciates the peril of the pursuit; one never picks the going and often stumbles. He was a hunter of butterflies by nature; but he possessed a something more than a mere smattering of other odd crafts. He was familiar with precious gems, marbles he knew and cameos; he could point out the weakness in a drawing, the false effort in a symphony; he was something of mutual interest to every man ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... the change which has been produced upon a boy of eight or nine years of age, upon being admitted into that school; how, from a pert young coxcomb, who thought that all knowledge was comprehended within his shallow brains, because a smattering of two or three languages and one or two sciences were stuffed into him by injudicious treatment at home, by a mixture with the wholesome society of so many school-fellows, in less time than I have spoken of, he has sunk to his own ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... says; but surely it is no unreasonable estimate; yet how far do we fall short of it? General culture is often deprecated because it is said that smatterings are useless. But there is all the difference in the world between having a smattering of, or being well grounded in, a subject. It is the latter which we advocate—to try to know, as Lord Brougham well said, "everything of something, ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... anarchists, who deluged the people with their productions. Every man jack of them was trying to unload his stock-in-trade. The most thriving of them were naturally the nostrum-mongers, the philosophical lecturers who ladled out general ideas, leavened with a few facts, a scientific smattering, ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... named Parracombe; and by that scapegrace hangs a tale. He was an old schoolfellow of his at Bideford, and son of a merchant in that town—one of those unlucky members who are "nobody's enemy but their own"—a handsome, idle, clever fellow, who used his scholarship, of which he had picked up some smattering, chiefly to justify his own escapades, and to string songs together. Having drunk all that he was worth at home, he had in a penitent fit forsworn liquor, and tormented Amyas into taking him to sea, where he afterwards made as good a sailor as any one else, but sorely scandalized John Brimblecombe ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... one Abdy Abokr, also of the Habr Gerhajis, a personage whom, from, his smattering of learning and his prodigious rascality, we call the Mulla "End of Time." [10] He is a man about forty, very old-looking for his age, with small, deep-set cunning eyes, placed close together, a hook nose, a thin beard, a bulging brow, scattered teeth, [11] and ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... who was just Helen Morrell's age, "school had become a bore." She had a smattering of French, knew how to drum nicely on the piano—she was still taking lessons in that polite accomplishment—had only a vague idea of the ordinary rules of English grammar, and couldn't write a decent letter, or spell words of more ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... money enough to buy a grammar and dictionary,—he commenced the study of another; after mastering the chief difficulties of which he began still another; and so he had gone on through life, with the most determined perseverance, gaining even more than a smattering of the tongues not only of Europe but of the Eastern world, though he could make no practical use ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... was the great Jewish labor leader. Most of his cronies were rampant atheists, disgusted with the commercialism of the believers. They were clever young artisans from Russia and Poland with a smattering of education, a feverish receptiveness for all the iconoclastic ideas that were in the London air, a hatred of capitalism and strong social sympathies. They wrote vigorous jargon for the Friend of Labor and compassed the extreme proverbial ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... juveniles. Hence, notwithstanding the names of "illustrious illustrators" to be found on their title-pages, no great injustice will be done if we leave this period and pass on to that which succeeded it. For the Great Exhibition fostered the idea that a smattering of knowledge of a thousand and one subjects was good. Hence the chastened gaiety of its mildly technical science, its popular manuals by Dr. Dionysius Lardner, and its return in another form to the earlier ideal that amusement should be combined with instruction. All sorts of attempts ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... but of nothing beyond that. Left young in the hands of a careless, happy-go-lucky father, who had always religiously applied the text of Scripture, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," what were they to do for themselves? Desmond could draw and paint; he had the usual smattering of knowledge to be obtained in an ordinary school. Beyond these accomplishments and his father's gift for writing, the big, handsome, curly-haired fellow, half man and half boy, had nothing ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... is meant the emancipation of men of talent from traditional morality, and the notion that any man might do anything which would win success for his purposes. There was no grinding of men down to an average.[2237] This code was very widely applied in statecraft and social struggles. A smattering knowledge of Plutarch, Plato, and Virgil furnished heroic examples which could justify anything.[2238] Machiavelli's Prince was only a text-book of this school of action for statesmen. Given the existing conditions ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Kirillovitch thought it necessary to describe the personality of Smerdyakov, "who had cut short his life in a fit of insanity." He depicted him as a man of weak intellect, with a smattering of education, who had been thrown off his balance by philosophical ideas above his level and certain modern theories of duty, which he learnt in practice from the reckless life of his master, who was also perhaps his father—Fyodor ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... furniture in comparison with that of Mrs. Over-the-Road. She struck the lyre and awoke a louder and loftier strain on the splendour of its proportions and symmetry—"heaps of room here to swing a cat"—and her rapture and inspiration swelled as she turned herself to the smattering price charged for it. On this theme she chanted long and lovingly and a hundred coloured, senescent imageries leaped ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... be superior to the vulgar; but in all else he will belong to it. If we add to this that neglect of the ancient languages, which is now-a-days on the increase and is doing away with all general education in the humanities—for a mere smattering of Latin and Greek is of no use—we shall come to have men of learning who outside their own subject display an ignorance ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... doctor his experience with the people among whom his father worked in his East Side chapel had given him a smattering of many languages and he was able to make out from Mrs. Tsanoff, although her fright and fatigue had made her forget almost all the English she knew, what had terrified her companion. They had gone to the stationery shop ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... gentlemanly vices, he might dissipate his energies in hunting, gambling, and cockfighting. He would almost certainly make the grand tour of Europe, and, if he had little Latin and less Greek, he was pretty certain to have some familiarity with Paris and a smattering of French. The eighteenth century was a period of magnificent living in England. The great landowner, then, as now, the magnate of his neighborhood, was likely to rear, if he did not inherit, one of those vast palaces which are today burdens so costly to the heirs of their builders. At the beginning ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... that so many satires on poets, and censures of their writings, fly abroad. Men of pleasant conversation, (at least esteemed so) and endued with a trifling kind of fancy, perhaps helped out with some smattering of Latin, are ambitious to distinguish themselves from the herd ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... moral,—Health and Power! Thy talents, such as they were,—and they were the talents of a man of the world,—misled rather than guided thee, for they gave thy mind that demi-philosophy, that indifference to exalted motives, which is generally found in a clever rake. Thy education was wretched; thou hadst a smattering of Horace, but thou couldst not write English, and thy letters betray that thou went wofully ignorant of logic. The fineness of thy taste has been exaggerated; thou wert unacquainted with the nobleness of simplicity; thy idea of a whole was grotesque and overloaded, and ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the curious ruined temple of Bhanyar. The building consists of a rectangular wall, cloistered on two sides of the interior and surrounding a small temple approached by a dilapidated flight of stone steps. I regret to be obliged to own that I know but a mere smattering of architecture. I do not feel competent therefore to discuss this, the first Kashmiri temple I have seen, upon its architectural merits. I only know that it struck me as being extremely small, and principally interesting ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... to whom Amherst was attracted by the fact that he was one of the few men of Bessy's circle who knew what was going on in the outer world. Throughout an existence which one divined to have been both dependent and desultory, he had preserved a sense of wider relations and acquired a smattering of information to which he applied his only independent faculty, that of clear thought. He could talk intelligently and not too inaccurately of the larger questions which Lynbrook ignored, and a gay indifference to the importance of money seemed the crowning ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... sallied forth that afternoon. They send very fine boys nowadays to our great high schools in the United States, and to Rugby and Eaton and Harrow in England, but never went forth a finer pair to learn things. No smattering of letters or lore of any printed sort had these rugged youths, but their eyes were piercing as those of the eagle, the grip of their hands was strong, their pace was swift when they ran upon the ground and their course almost as rapid when they swung along the treetops. They were self-possessed ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... scientific idea was rampant, and during that period it is probable that the worst voice teaching in the history of the world was done. Large numbers of people with neither musicianship nor musical instincts acquired a smattering of anatomy and a few mechanical rules and advertised themselves as teachers of scientific voice production. The great body of vocal students, anxious to learn to sing in the shortest possible time, having no way of telling the ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... secretly employed all his spare hours in composing five-act tragedies, and who, by dint of carrying to and going for his manuscripts at the Odeon, ended by marrying the stagedoor-keeper's daughter. In the seventh grade Amedee groaned under the tyranny of M. Prudhommod, a man from the country, with a smattering of Latin and a terribly violent temper, throwing at the pupils the insults of a plowboy. Now he had entered the sixth grade, under M. Bance, an unfortunate fellow about twenty years old, ugly, lame, and foolishly timid, whom M. Batifol ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... reasons. The Bengali is the Indian who most readily takes to European learning. Rabindranath Tagore is probably the most widely known member of the race. They go to Calcutta University and learn a smattering of English and absorb a certain amount of undigested general knowledge and theory. These partially educated Bengalis form the Babu class, and many are employed in the railways. They delight in complicated phraseology, ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... suppose I shall either," said Mr. Gibson, with a gravity which was intended to convey some smattering of rebuke. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Alcides had a smattering of botany, which was a great danger to the company. He knew, he thought, the uses, medicinal or otherwise, of all plants, herbs and fruit, wild or not wild. This, in addition to the greediness of the men—who, although actually gorged with food, were always willing to devour anything ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... college career—I didn't. We'll master here these records of the world's life. We'll seek wisdom in the history and experience of man. What do you know of the treasures buried in those big volumes? Our young men go to school and plunge into life with a mere smattering. Do you know the history of your own country, how it was discovered, how its colonies grew, how its battles were fought against overwhelming and impossible odds? How its great Constitution grew in the hands of inspired leaders, who builded better than ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... say for himself that literature was the only path open to him. His father was collector of salt duties at Aldborough, a position, as one may imagine, of no very great emolument. He had, however, given his son the chance of acquiring a smattering of 'scholarship,' in the sense in which that word is used by the less educated lower classes. To the slender store of learning acquired in a cheap country school, the lad managed to add such medical training as ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the St. Lawrence, not far from Montreal. With these Indians he lived for several years, and having a natural taste for languages, acquired, during this time, a fair knowledge of the tongues of most of the Northern tribes, as well as a smattering of French. He also became well versed in woodcraft, and so thoroughly Indian in appearance and habit that when he was again captured by a marauding party of Maquas, or Mohawks, it was not detected that he was ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... and steal for a square meal and a pair of trousers; it would have been more exciting if I had. But what a place! Napoleon couldn't stand it, you remember, but he held on longer than I did. I put in a few weeks in their infernal mines, simply to pick up a smattering of Italian; then got across to the mainland in a little wooden timber-tramp; and ungratefully glad I was to leave Elba blazing in just such another sunset as the one ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... etc., but what does the ordinary musician know of these ancient Greek, Egyptian, or Celtic tunes that are fast being forgotten, or of Japanese, Indian, or Burmese intricacies? Sir Arthur Sullivan did study Burmese music, but was not that quite exceptional? Writers too, generally have a smattering of some dead languages, and even advocate the study to-day, ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... given her a smattering of Latin—She took pen and ink, and wrote. You'll see, chevalier, the very great purity of her thoughts, by what she omitted, and what she chose, from the Canticles. Velut unguentum ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... remember a young gentleman of moderate understanding, but great vivacity, who, by dipping into many authors of this nature, had got a little smattering of knowledge, just enough to make an atheist or a free thinker, but not a philosopher or a man of sense. With these accomplishments, he went to visit his father in the country, who was a plain, rough, honest man, and wise though not learned. The son, who ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... up in Bristol at 4 a.m. yesterday, my lord. Simmonds made out that that there Frenchman, Monsieur Marinny" (Dale prided himself on a smattering of French), "had pitched a fine ole tale about you. In fact, the bearings got so hot at Symon's Yat that Simmonds chucked his job till Mr. Vanrenen sort ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... had dropped the word charity. Had the tribe of Israel cultivated a smattering of respect for physiology or any other useful science instead of fussing about supernatural pedigrees, they would have been more cautious as to their diet. Had they been careful in the matter of dietary, their sacred writings would never have seen the light of day. Those writings, a monument ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... gentlemen of Siam and Laos, who had acquired such a smattering of English as qualified them to assist the prince in his scientific diversions. Opposite the armory stood a pretty little cottage, quite English-looking, lighted with glass windows, and equipped with European furniture. Over the entrance to this quaint tenement ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... practice, and becoming general, until success cannot be surely had by any more honorable means?—the result being a State ruled and ruined by ignorant and shallow mediocrity, pert self-conceit, the greenness of unripe intellect, vain of a school-boy's smattering of knowledge. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... of his opportunity, and, by a diligent perusal of Miss Sarah's eyes, and an attentive study of Miss Nasarah's dimple, managed to acquire a smattering of Arabic in a far shorter time than would have been required in the most assiduous turning over of dictionaries and grammars. But our school-boy days can't last for ever—and, ere a fortnight elapsed, an order arrived from England for the hopeful scholar to be placed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the first families ever entered. What or how they were taught, her aunt never inquired. She felt quite sure that the lady principal would resent, as indeed she ought, any such inquiry. Hence Maimie came to have a smattering of the English poets, could talk in conversation-book French, and could dash off most of the notes of a few waltzes and marches from the best composers, her piece de resistance, however, being "La Priere d'une Vierge." She ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... in a very superior manner, it is recommendable to enter into some acquaintance, at least, with the principles of the serious or grave dances, with a naturally genteel person, a superficial knowledge of the steps, and a smattering of the rules, any one almost may soon be made to acquit himself tolerably of a minuet; but to make a distinguished figure, some notion of the depths and refinements of the art, illustrated by ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... could understand a syllable. There were several of his priests and lawyers present (as I conjectured by their habits), who were commanded to address themselves to me; and I spoke to them in as many languages as I had the least smattering of, which were, High and Low Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Lingua Franca;[15] but ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... neither of us could understand a syllable. There were several of his priests and lawyers present (as I conjectured by their habit), who were commanded to address themselves to me, and I spoke to them in as many languages as I had the least smattering of, which were High and Low Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Lingua Franca,[6] but ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... a fresh attack of convulsions, and as all present knew that these attacks usually indicated that the performance was about to end, they withdrew, making very merry over a devil who knew neither Hebrew nor Gaelic, and whose smattering of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... over six feet six) should be exceedingly rare, or that the human race is not of all possible heights from three inches to thirty feet? Can it be doubted that in this case, as in the last, the wrong answer would be given? He would defend himself, probably, if he had a smattering of science, by saying that experience teaches us that Nature works by 'invariable laws'; by which he would mean, usually unbroken customs; and that he has, therefore, a right to be astonished if they are broken. But ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... moral and social idealism which is advocated. I agree that the atheological moral idea is superior to the mere performance of religious ceremonial. But I cannot admire the reasoning or the intelligence of those who use a smattering of science as evidence of the decay of religion. There is something almost comical in the solemnity with which they contrast the commonplaces of scientific observation with the vast mysteries of religion, to the detriment of the latter. "These marvellous researches of the human eye," writes Sir ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... the workshop were a quiet Dane who spoke German, and a young Frenchman, whom I will call Alcibiade, who had been in London, and acquired a smattering of English. We worked twelve hours a day, commencing at six o'clock in the morning—the whole city was up and busy at that hour—and kept on till seven in the evening. Thirteen hours were thus spent in the workshop, one of which was given to meals. The ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... of knowledge in that town, and then proceeded to study philosophy alone at Rimini. There was no man-servant or academy in his case. He was far too plebeian and too free. The boy lodged with a merchant, and got some smattering of Thomas Aquinas and the Peripatetics into his small brain, while he contrived to form a friendship with an acting company. They were on the wing for Venice in a coasting boat, which would touch at Chiozza, where Goldoni's mother then resided. The boy ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... from a musical society in Magdeburg, asking him to give a concert there. He hesitated for a long while, and then agreed to accede to their wish. Outwardly it could not be called an unusually successful evening, but his auditors felt his power. People with the thinnest smattering of music forgot themselves and became infatuated with his arms and his eyes. An uncertain, undetermined happiness which he brought to the hearts of real musicians carried him further along on his career. For two successive ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... sufficient number, the militia might be drafted to supply the deficiencies, but only to serve until December, and not to be marched out of the province. In this case, said he, before they have entered upon service, or got the least smattering of duty, they will claim a discharge; if they are pursuing an enemy who has committed the most unheard-of cruelties, he has only to step across the Potomac, and he is safe. Then as to the limits of service, they might just ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... loose report that Death had claimed the general factor, through fear of any rival in activity. The postman did not put it so, because his education was too good for long words to enter into it; but he put his meaning in a shorter form than a smattering of distant tongues leaves to us. The butcher (having doubt of death, unless by man administered) kicked the postman out of his expiring shop, where large hooks now had no sheep for bait; and Widow Tapsy, filled ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... until mature life, when a month of application will give a comprehension of a subject which years would have been wasted in trying to impart to a youth. It is our idea, so far as possible, to postpone the serious study of such branches to the post-graduate schools. Young people must get a smattering of things in general, but really theirs is not the time of life for ardent and effective study. If you would see enthusiastic students to whom the pursuit of knowledge is the greatest joy of life you must seek them among the middle-aged fathers and ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... wonderingly at this burly cattle dealer who would pay so much money for giving his son a smattering knowledge of the trade. But he consented, and at the half-year's end The Lifter came out, prepared, as he said with an oily ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... other resents more or less openly the discrimination against his race, and this resentment may range from impertinence to sullenness and even to dreams of social equality imposed by force. Some have a smattering of education while others, who have been subjected to little training or discipline, are indolent and shiftless. The thoughtless, however, are likely to include in this classification the industrious, intelligent ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... almost exclusively to the staff or executive business of the regiment. Further than making the necessary details of officers and men for picket duty, I had never had anything to do with that branch of the service. I had, therefore, only a smattering knowledge of the theory of this duty. It may well be judged, therefore, that I felt very keenly this lack, when I received my order to report for duty as division field-officer of the day, the following morning. Here I was suddenly confronted with the responsibility of the ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... forth in the chapter I intended to quote. Then I mastered the columns of statistics, touching the advance of population; and pored over them, as I used to do over my multiplication-table. For I was determined to make the whole subject my own; and not be content with a mere smattering of the thing, as is too much the custom with most students of guide-books. Then I perused one by one the elaborate descriptions of public edifices, and scrupulously compared the text with the corresponding engraving, to see whether they corroborated each other. For be it known that, including the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... eastern language, knock an Asiatic down because he thought the man was a fool, whereas he himself was ignorant of what was going on. The message the coolie was bringing was misunderstood by the conceited assistant, and as a result of having just this smattering of the vernacular, he ran his firm in for a loss ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... all of what he used to regard as culture in the old Eastern life, the jargon of the colleges, the smattering of things talked about, the tricks and turns of trained motions and emotions; but there was a difference. There was no pretence. There was none of the fire-proof self-complacency—Self-sufficiency, she had, but ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... sheep's head at the tender age of nine years, before I was allowed to venture on the humane countenance,)—I say, being thus curtailed and cut off in my classical learning, I must confess I managed to pick up a pretty smattering of genteel information from that treasury of all sorts of knowledge; at least sufficient to make me a match in learning for all the noblemen and gentlemen who came to our house. Well, on looking over the Flare-up notices to correspondents, I read, one day ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ambitious boys An inkling of these pleasures, too— A little smattering of the joys Their dead and buried fathers knew; And let them sing—while glorying that Their sires so sang, long years ago— The songs "amo, amas, amat" And "Zoa ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... undertaking the arduous task of guiding others in their intellectual pursuits, one should make sure that he is himself so well-grounded in learning that he can find the way in which to guide them. To do this, he must indispensably have something more than a smattering of the knowledge that lies at the foundation of his profession. He must be, if not widely read, at least carefully grounded in history, science, literature, and art. While he may not, like Lord Bacon, take all knowledge to be his province, because he is not a Lord Bacon, nor if he ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... increased steadily, though the possibility of its realization had seemed remote. Stark poverty demanded that he remain to coax a scant living from the soil for his mother. Yet, his determination was fixed. He got some smattering of education, along with Plutina, from a kindly Quaker who came among the "Boomers" of the Blue Ridge as a missionary school-teacher. Thus, Zeke learned surprisingly much. His thirsty brain took up knowledge as a sponge ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... to than formerly; yet they are still reckoned a frivolous sex, and ridiculed or pitied by the writers who endeavour by satire or instruction to improve them. It is acknowledged that they spend many of the first years of their lives in acquiring a smattering of accomplishments: meanwhile, strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty, to the desire of establishing themselves, the only way women can rise in the world—by marriage. And this desire making mere animals of them, when they marry, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... it was outside. Neat, compact, and efficient. The control room—if such it could be called—was like no control room I'd ever seen before. Just an acceleration couch and observation instruments. Midguard explained that it wasn't necessary to be a pilot to run the ship; any person who knew a smattering of astronavigation could get to his destination by simply telling the ship what he ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... smack in the eye," and he spat contemptuously. Presently he had the pleasure of expressing his mind more freely to a French signaler of artillery who was on duty at an observing post in this forward fire trench. The Frenchman had a sufficient smattering of English to ask awkward questions as to why men were allowed to strike in England in war time, but unfortunately not enough to follow Robinson's lengthy and agonized explanations that these men ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... the boys had half expected, there came a smattering volley from amid the cars on the sidings behind them. The body of their assailants had reached the ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... large, and Jeremy Diddler generally, took up his quarters in Philadelphia, years ago, and putting himself upon his dignity, he managed for a time, sans l'argent, to live like a prince. Buck was what the world would call a devilish clever fellow; he was something of a scholar, with the smattering of a gentleman; good at off-hand dinner table oratory, good looking, and what never fails to take down the ladies, he wore hair enough about his countenance to establish two Italian grand dukes. Buck ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the only safe and sure way of rising is to fear God and keep his commandments; and so has really done more to civilize and refine them—to make them truly civilized men and gentlemen, and not vulgar savages—than if they had known a smattering of a dozen sciences. I say that the Bible is the book which civilizes and refines, and ennobles rich and poor, high and low, and has been doing so for fifteen hundred years; and that any man who tries to shake our faith in ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... self-seeking, which have hitherto been the plague of the present generation. We have become more practical and knowing than our forefathers, but not so wise. We are now a "fast people;" but we miss the true goal of life—that is, sober happiness. Fast to smattering; fast to outward, isolated show; fast to bankruptcy; fast to suicide; fast to some finale of enormous and dreadful infamy. Bah! rather the plain, honest, homely life of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... usually assumed that it was here that Shakespeare got the elements of his education. Though he was in no sense a classical scholar, he undoubtedly had an elementary knowledge of Latin, and may possibly, in later years, have acquired a smattering of Greek. George Chapman accuses Shakespeare of spreading the report that his alleged translations of Homer from the original Greek were, in fact, made from Latin versions. Whatever truth there may have been in Chapman's accusation against Shakespeare ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... and habitual indigestion. I hate everybody, and, with the exception of gin-and-water, everything. I know every language, both in the known and unknown worlds; I am profoundly ignorant of history, or indeed of any other useful science, but have a smattering of all. I am excellently qualified to judge and lash the vices of the age, having experienced, I may almost say, every one of them in my own person. The immortal and immoral Goethe, that celebrated sage of Germany, has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... we were marched out to what would be the Germans' orderly room. A Canadian who had picked up a smattering of German acted as interpreter. He did what he could for us, which was ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... establishment of charity schools has had an effect of the same kind, though not so universally, because the establishment is not so universal. If, in those little schools, the books by which the children are taught to read, were a little more instructive than they commonly are; and if, instead of a little smattering in Latin, which the children of the common people are sometimes taught there, and which can scarce ever be of any use to them, they were instructed in the elementary parts of geometry and mechanics; the literary education of this rank of people would, perhaps, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... my berth to entertain me with his conversation, and treated me with excellent remedies, which I accepted with security. Himself commented on the circumstance. "You see," says he, "you begin to know me better. A very little while ago, upon this lonely ship, where no one but myself has any smattering of science, you would have made sure I had designs upon your life. And, observe, it is since I found you had designs upon my own that I have shown you most respect. You will tell me if this speaks of a small mind." I found little to reply. In so far as regarded myself, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Movement by which he was so profoundly influenced, the Oxford of the friends and fellow-scholars of his youth. But with no one were young students more thoroughly at home, from no one did they receive more keen sympathy, more generous recognition, or more friendly help. He did not like a mere smattering of literary chatter; he did not like to be called a pedant; but he knew, if any man did, what literature was and what was knowledge. He was eager to welcome good work in every field, however far it ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... was devoted to penmanship and a sorry smattering of Russian, the cost of tuition and writing-materials being paid by a ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... children to acquire a smattering of Irish, it cannot be said that so far the efforts of the League as to the language have been very successful; for the census returns show that the proportion of the population who could speak Irish in 1891 ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... a mile off, there was a village of Kickapoo Indians, who lived on the most friendly terms with the white people. The boys often intermingled with those of the white village, and practised shooting with the bow and arrow—an accomplishment which I acquired with the rest, together with a little smattering of the Indian language, which I forgot on leaving ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... people where it grows; or it may change them, or change the vision of the people of its adoption. Yet Ruth must not look too foreign in the alien corn, or her values will get wrong. When an English artist airs his foreign accent and his smattering of French pigment his work has no permanent significance. Even Professor Legros unconsciously assimilated British subjectivity: his Latin rein has been slackened; his experiments ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... his experience as trader and agent among the Indians, Captain Reynolds had picked up quite a smattering of several Indian tongues, which now enabled him to understand perfectly what the chief was saying. Even had he not been possessed of this knowledge, he could have readily followed the drift of the speaker's words ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... good deal to say about these agents of humanity presently. I will only say here that no prisoner who cares whether he lives or dies, or who possesses common sense or the smallest smattering of experience of prison affairs, ever is so reckless as to impart any facts to the persons in question. If he accuses any guard or other official of cruelty, the entire force of prison keepers can and will be at need marshaled to deny point-blank that any such thing ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... contemporaries, he employed the facts of animal and vegetable life to point a moral or to help out a sermon. The arguments he used appear to us puerile in their old-world dress, and yet similar ones are to be heard to-day in every pulpit where a smattering of science is used to eke out a poverty of theology. And, to be fair, such reasoning is not confined to pulpits. Even so eminent a writer as Mr Edward Carpenter has been known to moralize on the habits of the wild mustard, irresistibly reminding us of the "Camomill which the more ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... to be all the English that he knew. Beresford tried him in French and discovered he had a smattering of it. After a good many attempts, the soldier found that he had seen no white man with a dog-train in many moons. The Cree lived there alone, it appeared, and trapped for a living. Why he was separated from all his kin and tribal relations the young Canadian could ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... an indirect attack on the fountain from which that authority flowed. Such was the moral atmosphere in which young Alexander Nicolaevich grew up to manhood. He received the education commonly given to young Russians of good family at that time—a smattering of a great many subjects, and a good practical acquaintance with the chief modern European languages. Like so many of his countryman he displayed great linguistic ability, and his quick ear caught up even peculiarities ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... learnt to read French with fluency, as he certainly made himself familiar with the great works of the eighteenth century; but he spoke it with so little ease or accuracy that the fact was always a stumbling-block to his meeting Frenchmen abroad. Of German he had a mere smattering. Italian was the only language, besides his own, of which he was ever a master. But the extent and variety of his general reading was remarkable. His list of books, drawn up in 1807, includes more history and ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... these Belgians, who nearly all possess a smattering of English, under their very noses!" continued Paul, angrily. "'Quite nice and respectable,' indeed! As she and her mother were in a fix I was bound, as a man, to offer my services; but I ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... capable, but socially indifferent person who responded to the name of Adelbert P. Gibney. Mr. Gibney had spent part of an adventurous life in the United States Navy, where he had applied himself and acquired a fair smattering of navigation. Prior to entering the Navy he had been a foremast hand in clipper ships and had held a second mate's berth. Following his discharge from the Navy he had sailed coastwise on steam schooners, and after attending a navigation school for two ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... vision and to bias the judgment. This applies to the very highest and most conscientious of Fortune-tellers—persons really adept at foreseeing the future when no taint of monetary reward intervenes. The greater number, however, of so-called Fortune-tellers are but charlatans, with the merest smattering of partly-assimilated knowledge of some form of divination or 'character-reading'; whether by the cards, coins, dice, dominoes, hands, crystal, or in any other pretended way. With these, the taint of the money ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... alone which had prompted her to acquire a smattering of education—and with the quick, adaptive faculty of a monkey she had been able to use this to its utmost limits, as well as her histrionic talent—no mean one—to gain her ends. She was now playing the role of a lady, and playing it brilliantly ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... their livelihood with their hands and eyes and ears, and not solely with their brains; they therefore require title most practical education imaginable. They need intellectual tools to work with, and not a smattering of science, botany, drawing and political philosophy to forget as soon as possible. Pure culture studies are not a practical gain for them, while the time consumed in pursuing these is so much taken away from a thorough training in the essentials. Lectures on science, elementary experiments ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... unusual amount of courage for a Catholic writer at this late day to parade his Church as the mother and protectress of religious liberty and tolerance. Any person who has but a smattering knowledge of the history of the world during the last four centuries will smile at this claim. The old Rome of the days of the Inquisition and the auto da fes may seem tolerant in our days, but she is so from sheer necessity, not from any voluntary ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau |
