"Tradition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... iron-smelting population of this region; he said many had died of famine, others had fled to the west of Nyassa: the famine is the usual effect of slave wars, and much death is thereby caused—probably much more than by the journey to the coast. He had never heard any tradition of stone hatchets having been used, nor of stone spear-heads or arrowheads of that material, nor had he heard of any being turned up by the women in hoeing. The Makonde, as we saw, use wooden spears where iron is scarce. I saw wooden hoes used for tilling the soil in the Bechuana ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... to say, that aught save thistledown must have been dashed to pieces in such a fall. But the river was swelled, and the remains of the unhappy youth were never seen. A varying tradition has assigned more than one supplement to the history. It is said by one account, that the young captain of Clan Quhele swam safe to shore, far below the Linns of Campsie; and that, wandering disconsolately in the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... and round they weave with circling heads Sphere within Sphere, and form their silken beds. —Say, did these fine volitions first commence From clear ideas of the tangent sense; From sires to sons by imitation caught, Or in dumb language by tradition taught? Or did they rise in some primeval site Of larva-gnat, or microscopic mite; And with instructive foresight still await On each vicissitude of insect-state?— 430 Wise to the present, nor to future blind, They link the reasoning reptile to ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... of the Southampton, though it stands on classic ground, and is connected by vocal tradition with the great names of the Elizabethan age. What a falling off is here I Our ancestors of that period seem not only to be older by two hundred years, and proportionably wiser and wittier than we, but hardly a trace of them is left, not even the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... where he spent most of his time, his eyes rested upon the battle-scenes of Matejks, the Polish artist, and the landscapes of Munkacsy, that painter of his own country, who took his name from the town of Munkacs, where tradition says that the Magyars settled when they came from the Orient, ages ago. Then a bitter longing took possession of him to breathe a different air, to fly from Paris, and place a wide distance between himself and Marsa; to take a trip around the world, where new scenes might soften his grief, or, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... simply a bit of self-adulation; it is distinctly the American tradition in the matter. The Nation has never attempted to draw its officers from a particular class. During World War II, thousands of men were commissioned in our forces who had enjoyed little opportunity in their earlier environments. They were sound men ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... wardenry, To fatten other kingdoms at our cost, Insults us grossly, and makes Europe clang With echoes of our wrongs. The little states Of this antique and homely German land Are severed from their blood-allies and kin— Hereto of one tradition, interest, hope— In calling lord this rank adventurer, Who'll thrust them as a sword against ourselves.— Surely Great Frederick ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... Common Law.—"The tradition of ages shall prevail," save when it runs counter to the opinions of a leader-writer ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... the former, was committed the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and who accordingly was the first to open the door of it to the Gentile world. He was the principal figure in the history of the early Christian Church, but was soon eclipsed by the overpowering presence and zeal of Paul. Tradition, indeed, has something to tell of him, but from it little of trustworthy can be gathered except that he finished his career by martyrdom in the city of Rome. This Apostle is represented in Christian art as an old ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... she wants her wedding clothes—all girls do," said Blossom, invoking tradition. "Are you coming in now. We're having ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Corinne, of a form of musical drama, somewhere between recitative opera and the spoken drama,—the art of the free word united with free music,—an art of which hardly any artist of to-day has a glimmering, an art also which the routine critics, imbued with the Wagnerian tradition, deny, as they deny every really new work: for it is not a matter of following in the footsteps of Beethoven, Weber, Schumann, Bizet, although they used the melodramatic form with genius: it is not a matter of yoking any sort of speaking ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... both of them, in dealing with the early history of the country beyond the Alleghanies, wrote about matters that had happened from thirty to fifty years before, and were obliged to base most of their statements on tradition or on what the pioneers remembered in their old age. The later historians, for the most part, merely follow these two. In consequence, the mass of original material, in the shape of official reports and contemporary letters, contained ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Jesus became the Messiah, he holds to be not capable of solution without the aid of intuition and esoteric tradition. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... therefore, and not influenced by the approval or disapproval of this vast dress circle, in whose existence we have no faith, let us take up these imaginary lines for a moment. It is unquestionable that, whether for good or evil, they have descended to us by tradition and custom as a legacy. They are sufficiently real to be of practical use, and they are used. It is by them that we set a time—alas, that we should have the necessity of doing it—to discard some vice, some sin, some weakness. We use them ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... Senora Coyotes, and the little muchacho coyotes had their home in the dark canada, and came out over these fields, yellow with wild oats and red with poppies, to seek their prey. They were happy. For why? They were the first; they had no history, you comprehend, no tradition. They married as they liked" (with a glance at Carroll), "nobody objected; they increased and multiplied. But the plains were fertile; the game was plentiful; it was not fit that it should be for the beasts alone. And so, in the course of time, an Indian chief, a heathen, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... in sinning, shall deny her first beginning, And think scorn of words which whisper how that all must pass away; Time's arrest and intermission shall account a vain tradition, And a dream, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... you, in your wisdom, stop? The book, you allow is inspired. How about the chapters? How about the verses? Do you stop at the verses, and not go on to the words? Or perhaps you enjoy a special tradition on this subject, and hold that Inspiration is a general, vague kind of thing,—here more, there less: strong, (to speak plainly,) where you make no objection to what is stated,—weak, when it runs ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the more tragically turned adulteries of the Parisian school which dominated the stage until Ibsen put them out of countenance and relegated them to their proper place as articles of commerce. Their continued vogue in that department maintains the tradition that adultery is the dramatic subject par excellence, and indeed that a play that is not about adultery is not a play at all. I was considered a heresiarch of the most extravagant kind when I expressed my opinion at the outset of my career ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... appreciation of shades of literary beauty, and his learning rather increased than impaired the faculty, giving to his thought an infinite range of highly-flavoured experiences to taste and compare. He belonged to the great French tradition of learned men, master writers from Buffon to Renan and Gaston Paris. Member of the Academy and of several Classes, his extended knowledge gave him a superiority, not only of pure and classic taste, but of a liberal modern spirit, over his colleagues, genuine ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... instructions given by Doctor Bell, Mr. Watson with his own hands had constructed the first telephone instruments and ran the first telephone wire. At that time all the knowledge of the telephone art was possessed exclusively by those two men. There was no experience to guide and no tradition to follow. The founders of the telephone, with remarkable foresight, recognized that success depended upon the highest scientific knowledge and technical skill, and at once organized an experimental and research department. They also sought the aid of university professors eminent for ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... lads these Ravenels, hard riders, hard drinkers, reckless in living and love-making, and held to have their way where women were concerned. Indeed, this tradition had ancient authority, for on the stone mount of the sundial in the lilac-walk there had been chiselled, in the year 1771, by some ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... have a tradition that a vast serpent once lived in the waters of the Mississippi, and that, taking a freak to visit the Great Lakes, he left his trail through the prairies, which, collecting the waters from the meadows and the rains of heaven as they fell, at ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... tradition that, having already conceived a lively interest in the ecclesiastical and agrarian problems of Ireland, Mr. Gladstone had set his affections on the Chief Secretaryship. But Sir Robert Peel, a consummate ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... "Running true to tradition," he observed, pleasantly enough. "I didn't think you would. See here, Mr. Carroll, I'm sorry that I laughed at your name. In fact, I didn't really laugh at your name at all. It was at something quite different which came into ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... storm is brewing they strike out straight for the nearest shore like scared children. The ocean currents and the monsoons have been greatly instrumental in driving different people through the seas into the Philippine net.[2] The Tagakola on the west coast of the Gulf of Davao, Mindanao, have a tradition that they are descendants of men cast on their present shores from a distant land and of the Manobo women of the territory. The Bagobo, also in the Gulf of Davao, claim they came to their present home in a few boats generations ago. They purposely ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... of the crowd for railsplitting! The log-cabin tradition! Genius and statesmanship have been set aside for a popular symbol, railsplitting. A party of moral ideas has reverted to claptrap. These are the bitter comments of Seward's beaten army. Then there are curses for Greeley. Greeley has avenged Seward's lifetime enmity. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... cried the countess. "How charming! Of course you will take up your abode in Paris now—that is the sacred tradition with all political exiles. Yes, yes—you must; beside, how horrid it would have been to part after a few weeks and go our separate ways—you to the right, I to the left—and with only the consoling prospect of meeting ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... regular intervals, and the fashion of these structures left no doubt in the mind that Warwick, in spite of foreign immigration, was still a stronghold of Puritanism. All suggestion of Romish or Episcopalian tradition was scrupulously avoided, even to the omission of the cross and the substitution of a weather-vane or gamecock. Only one church told a different story. At some distance north of the City Hall a gothic edifice in brown stone, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... believe are those revealed by God, received by us through a double agency, the written and the oral word, known as Scripture and Tradition. Scripture is contained in the two Testaments; Tradition is found in the bosom, the life of the Church of Christ, in the constant and universal ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... rather valuable book The Antient and Present State of the County of Kerry, by Charles Smith, 1756—the companion volumes dealing with Cork and Waterford are much less precious. Personally I always understood that the Husseys hailed from Normandy, as will be seen a few pages on, but tradition on such a point is ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the past, for his youth had been cast among those great ones of the earth whose memory had come down coupled with deeds so heroic and far-reaching, that even to the next generation the actors appeared half enveloped and magnified in the halo of tradition. His life had been one of high rectitude and dignity, to which habits of unusual studiousness and a great work on Executors had added a reputation for vast learning, and in his old age both in his manner and his habit he preserved ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... them romp and dance; free and easy, cynical, Rabelaisian, if I may use the expression, as such mongrel Frenchwomen are apt to grow with years; the nick-name which she gave to a member of a family where the tradition of her and her ways still persists, reveals a wealth of coarse fun which is rather strange in a woman who was once the Beatrice or Laura of a poet. She was active, mentally and bodily, never giving up her multifarious reading, her letter-writing; never foregoing ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... metrical tale is many generations older than the prose story; for prose writing is a refinement of the literary art which flourishes only when reading has become popular; while verse, being at first a kind of memoria technica used for the correct transmission of sacred texts and the heroic tradition, strikes the ear and fixes the recollection of an audience. The exploits of mighty warriors and the miracles of saints—love, fighting, and theology—form the subject matter of these stories in verse. They are, as Mr. Raleigh says, epical in spirit though not in form: 'they carry their hero ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... to that ambition as nature gave him in making him a lady-charmer. He had resolved to marry either Lottie Wright or Ruth Warham—Ruth preferred, because, while Lottie would have many times more money, her skin made her a stiff dose for a young man brought up to the American tradition that the face is the woman. But that morning Sinclair exerted his charms in vain. Ruth was in a hurry, was distinctly rude, cut short what in other circumstances would have been a prolonged and delightful flirtation by ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... the twisted skein of tradition is necessarily a very delicate and complicated one, and involves certain operations for which special scholarship is indispensable. Historical criticism is a comparatively modern science, and in its application to this, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... rich—had abandoned it to his bailiff, and built himself a lordly barrack on the ridge, commanding views that stretch from the moors to the sea. For this nine out of ten would commend him; but no true a Cleeve would ever have owned so much of audacity or disowned so much of tradition, and he has wasted a compliment on the perished family ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... we have been fortunate enough to be able to add to this store; and every existing MS. or tradition preserved by the family, of which we have any knowledge, has been ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... manual of their intense respectability. The old regime would not compromise with fashion in all its extravagant changes for the world. Moreover, it is their serene belief that they may dress exactly as they choose, and they choose to keep an old tradition alive. Are not English ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... experience of which Jeanne as yet had known nothing. She had been successful in assault, in the operations of the siege, but to meet the enemy hand to hand in battle was what she had never been required to do; and every tradition, every experience, was in favour of the English. From Agincourt to the Battle of the Herrings at Rouvray near Orleans, which had taken place in the beginning of the year (a fight so named because the field of battle had been covered with herrings, the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... English kings for several centuries claimed the power of curing scrofula, or king's evil; but they may not be so well acquainted with the fact that the French sovereigns were believed to enjoy the same miraculous power. Such, however, was the case; and tradition reported that a phial filled with holy oil was sent down from heaven to be used for the anointing of the kings at their coronation. We can illustrate this by an anecdote of Napoleon. Lafayette and the first Consul had a conversation one day on the government of the United States. Bonaparte ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... was well grown, his forehead large, and his nose aquiline, giving him altogether a bold, masculine look, that reminded people of the faces of Hercules in paintings and sculptures. It was, moreover, an ancient tradition, that the Antonys were descended from Hercules, by a son of his called Anton; and this opinion he thought to give credit to, by the similarity of his person just mentioned, and also by the fashion of his dress. For, whenever he had to appear before large numbers, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... stories and seeing plays, asserted Carol, she had found only two traditions of the American small town. The first tradition, repeated in scores of magazines every month, is that the American village remains the one sure abode of friendship, honesty, and clean sweet marriageable girls. Therefore all men who succeed in painting in Paris or in finance in New York at last become weary of smart ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... before that time still rule in Filipinas, in addition to the decrees and edicts of the governor-general. Of all this there is nothing, or very little, printed. The advocates generally know the laws in force by tradition and hear-say, but when they need any of the laws they have to look for it in the house of some friend, or, if not that, in the secretary's office of the government, whence very frequently it has disappeared, or in the office of the fiscal, or that of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... my love,' a heraldic bar sinister, but history reveals a reason for the birth among the willows far other than the sinister aspect of the name": these are the dark words of Mr. Cosmo Innes; but history or tradition, being interrogated, tells a somewhat tangled tale. The heir of Macgregor of Glenorchy, murdered about 1353 by the Argyll Campbells, appears to have been the original "Son of my love"; and his more loyal clansmen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... secretly as possible." The lawyer's cautious fear of too much haste now displayed itself. "The most we can hope to do is send to the state convention some men who will leaven that lump of ring politics. Party usage and tradition are so strong that we must renominate Governor Harwood, I suppose, for ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... tradition tells, the people of Atlantis were obedient to the laws and to the gods, and practised gentleness and wisdom in their intercourse with one another. They knew that they could only have the true use ...
— Critias • Plato
... better, or, rather, less ill, informed, in the case of the first Chaldee Empire. The fragments of Berosus give us some knowledge of its beginnings, so far, at least, as the story was preserved in the national traditions, and the remains by which tradition can be tested and corrected are more numerous than in ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... tradition throughout our history that I should express simply and directly the opinions which I hold concerning some of the matters of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... I would detract nothing from the glory of other sections of the country. I would minimize nothing of any State's accomplishment. Some of them have a record that is almost a synonym for patriotism. Their tradition is our inheritance; their achievement is our gain. Wisconsin cannot become a veritable workshop of social and economic experiment without the nation being the beneficiary. New England does not enrich her own literature without shedding luster ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... small retinue, in the Palazzo Verde, a handsome building (though not to be reckoned among the statelier palaces of the city), with a front on the Via Balbi, and a garden enclosed by high walls, around which ran the discreetest of vicoli. One of the Dorias, so tradition said, had built it to house a mistress, early in the seventeenth century. I doubt not the Prince Camillo found comfortable quarters there. For the rest, he had begun to enjoy himself after the fashion he had ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... made to rebuke him in the other world for thinking of any body after herself.[11] At any rate, he probably roused what was excitable in his wife's temper, with provocations from his own; for the nature of the latter is not to be doubted, whereas there is nothing but tradition to shew for the bitterness of hers. Foscolo is of opinion that the tradition itself arose simply from a rhetorical flourish of Boccaccio's, in his Life of Dante, against the marriages of men of letters; though Boccaccio himself expressly adds, that he knows nothing to the disadvantage of the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... about the General's public career until we've found out all we can about him. I intend to write to Dublin to-night for every book there is about Bolivia, which is the country he liberated. In the meanwhile we're fairly safe in working up any kind of local tradition we can think of. If that sort of thing is well done there's practically no risk of discovery. Even if the stories don't exactly fit in with what's known about the General's later life, it doesn't matter. The things that are told about the boyhood of great men are all invented afterwards. ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... however, is very far remote from what is called religion in this day. He has no patience with second-hand beliefs,—with articles of faith ready-made for the having. Whatsoever is accepted by men because it is the tradition of their fathers, and not a deep conviction arrived at by legitimate search, is to him of no avail; and all merely historical and intellectual faith, standing outside the man, and not absorbed in the life as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... that then he awoke to the perfect truth and declared: "All animated and inanimate beings are Enlightened at the same time." According to the tradition[FN17] of this sect Shakya Muni transmitted his mysterious doctrine from mind to mind to his oldest disciple Mahakacyapa at the assembly hold on the Mount of Holy Vulture, and the latter was acknowledged as the first ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... The monks have a tradition that the gospel was first preached in Paris about the year 250, by St. Denis, and that he suffered martyrdom at Montmartre. A chapel was early erected on the spot now occupied by Notre Dame. In 406 the northern barbarians made a descent upon the Roman provinces, and in 445 Paris ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... land of reserves and reticences. The half-informed American will tell you that this is put on for the misleading of foreigners. The informed know that it is an attitude shown to foreigners only because it is deeply engrained in the moral and social tradition of Japan; and that, if anything, the Japanese are more likely to be communicative—about many things at least—to a sympathetic foreigner, than to one another. The habit of reserve is so deeply embedded in all the etiquette, ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... confirmed his belief that the devil was at the bottom of the whole affair, and caused him to doubt whether even a flogging of about three hundred lashes, followed by a pimentade, were sufficient chastisement for the miserable black. Perhaps the tradition of this frightful whipping may have had something to do with the terror which still attaches to the name of the Dominican in Martinique. The legal ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... ages, then our contention is vain. That Text can be Traditional only if it goes back without break or intermission to the original autographs, because if through break or intermission it ceased or failed to exist, it loses the essential feature of genuine tradition. On the other hand, if it is proved to reach back in unbroken line to the time of the Evangelists, or to a period as near to them as surviving testimony can prove, then Dr. Hort's theory of a 'Syrian' text formed by recension ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... do much towards the making of history. All of them were generally too busy protecting their property or seizing that of their neighbors! But, at least, when they fought, they seem to have fought for the losing side, and, according to tradition, paid for it dearly. However, to change the subject, is it fair to hold any man responsible for his ancestors' shortcomings? They have gone back to the dust long ago, and it is the ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... by a direct tradition, orally conveyed from the lips of my ancestor, that no one could be more lucky than himself in the character of his master. This personage, who came, in time, to be my maternal grandfather, was one of those wary traders who encourage others ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Africa. It was the fear of yellow fever, perpetually dinned in his ears by his country friends, who but echoed the popular belief, that drove Wirt away. Such was Norfolk, not enveloped in the mists of tradition, but such as she was, when Mr. Tazewell came ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... had, in former days, been of no small consequence in that part of the country where he resided; but before his day, the numerous acres of land his forefathers had possessed owned other lords. All he inherited was the respect of the old people, and the tradition of former grandeur. His elder brother, of a more enterprising turn of mind, at their father's death had sold off the wrecks of a long train of mismanaged property, divided the proceeds between himself and my father, and, after ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... pub in Sydney that kept the Ninemile brand of whisky, and drank himself to death; the Wombat became a Sub-Inspector of Police; Sloper entered the Christian ministry; Dodge was elected to the Federal Parliament; and a vague tradition about "a bloke who came up here in the horrors, and drownded poor old O'Grady," is the only memory that remains of that wonderful ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... hereditarily subjected to the authority of the proprietors, on whom it was incumbent at the same time to provide for their welfare. The rights of the proprietors have been hitherto very extended and very imperfectly defined by the law, which has been supplied by tradition, custom, and the good pleasure of the proprietors. In the most favorable cases this state of things has established patriarchal relations founded upon a solicitude sincerely equitable and benevolent on the part of the proprietors, and on an affectionate submission ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... appeared from every part of the country, angry Trojans, tearful Trojans, indignant Trojans, important Trojans, poor-relation Trojans, and had, one and all, demanded that the name should remain, and that the headquarters of the Trojan tradition, of the Trojan power, should continue to be ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... domestication of the noble animal which is the symbol of Irish prosperity caused a remarkable change in primitive public opinion. The gratified savage, conscious of possessing pigs, no longer cast the anxious eye of the epicure upon his grandmother. Thus a disagreeable habit and a disagreeable tradition were abolished, and one more step was made in the direction of universal kindliness. But, while we are in some measure grateful to the first pig-tamer, we do not feel quite so sure about the first person who inveigled the cat into captivity. Mark that ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... question whether this "observed" of all the sons of men, from the days of Eden to those of Edinburgh, be inhabited by beings, like ourselves, of consciousness and curiosity, was left to the benevolent index of natural analogy, or to the severe tradition that the moon is tenanted only by the hoary solitaire, whom the criminal code of the nursery had banished thither for collecting fuel on the Sabbath-day.'[47] But the time had arrived when the great discovery ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... money which Mary had brought with her was exhausted, and Lady Dauntrey, who had raked in more than twenty louis, offered laughingly to lend her something to go on with. But Mary thanked her and refused, in spite of the tradition of the tables that borrowed money brings ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... something wild, irregular, and, as it were, unearthly, to his appearance, and reminded me involuntarily of the tales which Mabel used to tell of the old Picts who ravaged Northumberland in ancient times, who, according to her tradition, were a sort of half-goblin half-human beings, distinguished, like this man, for courage, cunning, ferocity, the length of their arms, and the squareness ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... number of the aged among us is surprising, and explains some phenomena otherwise strange. You will notice, for instance, that there are no posts before the houses in Oldport to which horses may be tied. Fashionable visitors might infer that every horse is supposed to be attended by a groom. Yet the tradition is, that there were once as many posts here as elsewhere, but that they were removed to get rid of the multitude of old men who leaned all day against them. It obstructed the passing. And these aged citizens, while permitted to linger at their ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... of but one printing press and one bookseller's shop. The feuds and wars of the wild islanders might have lived in the songs of the poet, but were little fit for the purposes of the historian. He who attempts to write the history of such a people is almost forced to accept tradition for fact, and to believe in their Arthurs and their Tells. The Corsicans are, indeed, from time to time found in one or other of the great tracks of European history. As Boswell says, their island had belonged to the Phoenicians, the Etruscans, the Carthaginians, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... Myths and Traditions and Some Ceremonies Based Upon Them The Emergence Myth and the Wu-wu-che-Ma Ceremony Some Migration Myths Flute Ceremony and Tradition Other Dances The Snake Myth and the Snake Dance ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... recover the spirit of song, and have done with invective. If we find music and joyousness in the old conception, it is not in the fashion of the time to explain it away in some "new theology," for he to whom it is not a fashion, but a vital thing, keeps his anchor by tradition. To him it is the shining light away in the mists of antiquity; it is the strong sun over the living world; it is the pillar of fire over the widening seas and worlds of the unknown; it is the expanse of infinity. When he is lost in its mystery he adverts ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... the Jewish tradition was the subject of much animated inquiry. The religious, ethical, and practical literature of the past was sifted and treasured, and fresh additions were made. But not much was written, for until the close of the second century the new literature of the Jews was oral. The Bible was written ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... power as being the idea of a disreputable foreign country. Indeed, Machiavelli was seen as a satanic figure who was known as 'Old Nick', a still-used reference to the devil, and the machiavel became a stock figure on the early modern stage, a tradition which the portrayal of the ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... might have found rest and retiredness in the waters of Lethe. Of her reception in the old New York Theater; the verdict of the phalanx of critics assembled in the Shakespeare box which, according to tradition, held more than two hundred souls; the gossip over confections or tea in the coffee room of the theater—it is unnecessary to dwell upon. But had not the player become a voluntary exile; had she not foregone her former life for the new; had she not found that joy sometimes begets the bitterest ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... Mr. Corbould, and others have continued the fox-hunting tradition, and provided those scenes which have become a necessity to the sporting ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... is designated in Hebrew by the opening word Echa, how. The unanimous voice of antiquity ascribes it to Jeremiah, and with this tradition agree its internal character and style. It was written in view of the desolation of Judah and Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, by an eye-witness of all the unutterable miseries connected with that catastrophe. While it laments, in strains of the deepest anguish, the desolation of Jerusalem ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... and a very handsome mosque of imposing size, crowned with a dome, and built in 1223 in great part from the materials of an ancient Hindu temple. The American Methodist mission maintains several girls' schools, and there is a high school for boys. According to tradition Budaun was founded about A.D. 905, and an inscription, probably of the 12th century, gives a list of twelve Rathor kings reigning at Budaun (called Vodamayuta). The first authentic historical event connected with it, however, is its capture by Kutb-ud-din ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... preservative is but an indifferent one; my reason for mentioning it is that it reminds me of a custom still observed in our own days, at least in my part of the country. Nothing is so long-lived as absurdity. Tradition has retained in a simplified form, the ancient defensive apparatus of which Pliny speaks. For the Horse's skull our people have substituted an egg-shell on the top of a switch stuck among the cabbages. It is easier to arrange; also it is quite as useful, that is to ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... the charming old tale, once indeed confirmed by the Court of King's Bench itself, that King Alfred founded University College in the High Street years before any other was suggested, is a myth. The men of "Univ" have at least the consolation that the tradition has existed, and if, in spite of hard facts, they cling to the romance, there will be few to blame them. It was Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England and Bishop of Rochester, who invented colleges ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... the dialogue to the various characters, therefore, offers scope for good acting, and gets it. Mr. Farren, in Sir Paladin Scruple, affords what tradition and social history assure us is a perfect portraiture of an old gentleman of the last century;—more than that, of a singular, peculiar old gentleman. And yet this excellent artist, in portraying the peculiarities of the individual, still preserves the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... ready? I'll lead you to the dining-room. Or would you prefer a little appetiser beforehand? The tap-room is right on the way. You mustn't call it the bar. Everybody in that little graveyard down the road would turn over completely if you did. Hallowed tradition, you know." ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... has taken a strong hold of the Christian imagination and given rise to all kinds of guesses. Tradition has handed down the name of Pilate's wife as Claudia Procula; and it is said that she was a proselyte of the Jewish religion; as high-toned heathen ladies in that age not infrequently became when circumstances ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... family life. It developed toward the Christian ideal. At first, polygamy was permitted; woman was the chattel of man and excluded from any part in the religious rites. But it included the ideal of monogamy in its tradition of the origin of the world, it denounced and punished adultery (Deut. 22: 22), and it gave especial attention to the training of the offspring. "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... calico shoes. And we issues a declaration of interference in which we guarantee that the fourth day of July shall be celebrated in Salvador with all the kinds of salutes, explosions, honours of war, oratory, and liquids known to tradition. Yes, neither me nor Jones breathed with soul so dead. There shall be rucuses in Salvador, we say, and the monkeys had better climb the tallest cocoanut trees and the fire department get out its red sashes ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Whenever any evidence of the words really spoken or written by the characters in their various situations was attainable, as close a paraphrase has been aimed at as was compatible with the form chosen. And in all cases outside the oral tradition, accessible scenery, and existing relics, my indebtedness for detail to the abundant pages of the historian, the biographer, and the journalist, English and Foreign, has been, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... distance; and the characteristics of places, ranks, habits of life, are transfigured for him, even now and in advance of time, by poetic light; justifying what some might condemn as mere sentimentality, in the effort to hand on unbroken the tradition of such fashion or accent. "The praise of beggars," "the cries of London," the traits of actors just grown "old," the spots in "town" where the country, its fresh green and fresh water, still lingered on, one after another, amidst the bustle; the quaint, dimmed, just played-out farces, he ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Slavery is older than tradition—older than authentic history, and doubtless antedates any organized form of human government. It had its origin in barbaric times. Uncivilized man never voluntarily performed labor even for his own comfort; he only struggled to gain a bare subsistence. He did not till the soil, but killed ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... that living Truth which is about us everywhere. He conceives of our mortal life as one eternal Quest of that living Truth, taking many phases and forms, yet ever at heart the same aspiration, to trace which he has made it his labor and joy to essay. Through all his pages he is following out the tradition of this Quest, in its myriad aspects, especially since the Christian era, disfigured though it has been at times by superstition, and distorted at others by bigotry, but still, in what guise soever, containing as its secret the meaning of the life of man from his ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... the reason of this; to discover why the church, though tower and belfry have always been waiting ready for them, has never had a peal of bells, we must seek instruction from another popular tradition, from a third legend of these legendary shores. Let us go down a little to the brink of the cliff, where the sea is rolling into a black, yawning, perpendicular pit of slate rock. The scene of our third story is the view over the waters from ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... all-important commencement of Genesis, which forms as it were the very basis of both the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures, was borrowed by the Jews from Babylon. And that it was in reality a Babylonian tradition or series of traditions of far older date than any writing of purely Jewish origin, has not only been amply proved by recent discoveries, but might indeed have been guessed from its reference to the Tower of Babel ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... another bureau, I am told, the answer to questions is, that, though it is true that an officer was kept abroad all his life, his name was not Nolan. A venerable friend of mine in Boston, who discredits all tradition, still recollects this "Nolan court-martial." One of the most accurate of my younger friends had noticed Nolan's death in the newspaper, but recollected "that it was in September, and not in August." A lady in Baltimore writes me, I believe in good faith, that Nolan has two widowed ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... There is a tradition that once when she had slapped Paula's pretty face, the odd child rubbed her cheek and said, with the droll calmness that rarely deserted her, "When you want to strike me again, mother, please ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the Thirty Years' War, in which at this time the young Frenchman was a soldier on the Roman Catholic side, that Descartes, sitting alone all day in a heated room of some German house, resolved to have done with outworn systems of thought and with tradition, and determined to make the search for truth the object of his life.[26] The new scientific method, which was the fruit of his reflections and experiments, and which has since been carried into every field of human research, does not now concern us. The feature of his philosophy which ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... ride at night with his troop to Quaker Hill, through Connecticut neighborhoods, which knew the sound of his passing. The Pepper family still relate the tradition of his riding up "Stony Hill," past the point where stands Coburn Meeting House, in the night, while they and their neighbors stayed discreetly indoors. This rendezvous was a place in the woods on Irish ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... Halpin it should be said that while in him were pretty faithfully reproduced most of the mental and moral characteristics ascribed by history and family tradition to the famous Colonial bard, his succession to the gift and faculty divine was purely inferential. Not only had he never been known to court the muse, but in truth he could not have written correctly a line of verse ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... addressed to man's senses and understandings (in a way no other religion ever did) everywhere destroyed the systems for which their votaries could only say that their fathers told them they were true. And yet this blind belief in such tradition, many advocates of Christianity would now enjoin us to imitate! It might have occurred to them, one would think, that, on their principles, Christianity never could have succeeded; for every mind must have been hopelessly pre-occupied against all examination of its claims. It is, indeed, incomparably ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... desirable book, especially when bound by Derome. The gist of the pious Prince Conti's strictures on the wickedness of comedy may be read in various literary histories, but it is natural to like his "Traite de la Comedie selon la tradition de l'Eglise, Tiree des Conciles et des saints Peres," published by Lovys Billaine in 1660, especially when the tract is a clean copy, arrayed ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... officers; the number of officers, in the service or retired, who had been trained at West Point, was immeasurably too small for the needs of the armies. Amateurs had to be called in, and not only so, but they had in some cases to be given very important commands. The not altogether unwholesome tradition that a self-reliant man can turn his hand to anything was of course very strong in America, and the short military annals of the country had been thought to have added some illustrious instances to the roll of men of peace who have distinguished themselves ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the rise, some day, of a new school of biography, which will not hesitate to discard the inessential, which will disdain to glorify its subject, whose first duty it will be to strip away the falsehoods of tradition and to show us the real man, not hiding his imperfections and yet giving them no more prominence than they really bore in his life; which will realize that to the man nothing was of importance except the growth of his spirit, and that to us nothing else concerning him is of any moment; ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... well for Lord Melcombe's memory, Horace Walpole remarks, 'if his fame had been suffered to rest on the tradition of his wit, and the evidence of his poetry.' And in the present day, that desirable result has come to pass. We remember Bubb Dodington chiefly as the courtier whose person, houses, and furniture were replete with costly ostentation, so as to provoke the satire ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... been such that had the time for collecting much of the material, both descriptive and illustrative, herein recorded, been delayed, it would have been lost forever. The passing of every old man or woman means the passing of some tradition, some knowledge of sacred rites possessed by no other; consequently the information that is to be gathered, for the benefit of future generations, respecting the mode of life of one of the great races of mankind, must be collected at once or the opportunity will be lost ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... hermitage was dissolved by the pious monarch, and masses ordered to be said daily in the parish church for the repose of the soul of the founder. Such was the legend attached to the little cell, and tradition went on to say that the anchoress broke her leg in crossing Whalley Nab, and limped ever afterwards; a just judgment on such a heinous offender. Both these little structures were picturesque objects, being overgrown with ivy and woodbine. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of the Spanish Fury it was one of the headquarters of the Inquisition and of the Spanish Army, and there is no town in Belgium upon which the Spanish occupation has left a greater mark. Since then, of no commercial or political importance, it has lived the life of a dull country town, and tradition says that there is plenty of solid wealth stored by its thrifty inhabitants behind the plain house-fronts which ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... a mixture of foreign and domestic entrepreneurship, government regulation and welfare measures, and village tradition. It is almost totally supported by exports of crude oil and natural gas, with revenues from the petroleum sector accounting for more than 40% of GDP. Per capita GDP is among the highest in the Third World, and substantial income from overseas investment ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... is, ships of 15,000 tons actually have little more gun-power than those of 10,000. Both results are deviations from the ideal of the battle-fleet already given. In the United States Navy the tendency to huge ships needs to be particularly watched, for we have a tradition in their favor, inherited from the successes of our heavy frigates in the early years of this century. It must be recalled, therefore, that those ships were meant to act singly, but that long experience has shown that for fleet operations a mean of size gives greater aggregate efficiency, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... would think of it. At the worst crisis and in the worst misconduct of the Bank, no such plea has been thought of: in 1825 when its till was empty, in 1837 when it had to ask aid from the Bank of France, no such idea was suggested. By irresistible tradition the English Government was obliged to deposit its money in the money market and to deposit with ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... had it of his father, which latter had it of HIS father, this last having in like manner had it of HIS father—and so on, back and still back, three hundred years and more, the fathers transmitting it to the sons and so preserving it. It may be history, it may be only a legend, a tradition. It may have happened, it may not have happened: but it COULD have happened. It may be that the wise and the learned believed it in the old days; it may be that only the unlearned and the simple loved it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to be those of King Solomon, in the neighborhood of Bethlehem. The friars show a fountain, which, they say, is the sealed fountain, to which the holy spouse in the Canticles is compared; and they pretend a tradition, that Solomon shut up these springs and put his signet upon the door, to keep them for his own ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... that he might as well endeavour to fashion sword-blades from leaden pipes as to make a fighting unit of his gang of essentially cowardly, peaceful, unreliable, feeble nondescripts. That their bodies were contemptible he would have regarded as merely deplorable, but there was no spirit, no soul, no tradition—nothing upon which he could work. "Broken-down tapsters and serving-men" indeed, in Cromwell's bitter words, and to be replaced by ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... for I am interested in this heredity stuff, 'perhaps the thing is going to be a regular family tradition, like you read about in books—a sort of Curse of the Mannering-Phippses, as it were. Perhaps each head of the family's going to marry into vaudeville for ever and ever. Unto the what-d'you-call-it generation, ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... heavy purple shadow indicated the deep basin through which ran the ill-famed Suburra, and the "Wicked-Street", so named from the tradition, that therein Tullia compelled her trembling charioteer to lash his reluctant steeds over the yet warm body of her murdered father. And beyond this again the lofty ridge of the Quirinal mount stood out in fair relief with all its gorgeous load of palaces and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... throne of France; and now—how did the heartless minister urge her to return? Hopeless, friendless, and powerless; with a name which had become a mockery, to a family wherein she would be a stranger. At Florence her existence was a mere tradition. All who had once loved her were dispersed or dead; no personal interest bound her to their survivors; and where long years previously she might have claimed affection, she could now only anticipate pity or dread contempt. The perpetual illnesses of the King, moreover, rendered her averse to such ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... have surrounded it with an emotional idea, as something to theorize and rhapsodize about, and have befogged themselves in that way with regard to its real power. Most people are not clear about it because of the tradition that has come to us through generations who have read it and heard it read in church, and never have thought of living it outside. We can have a great deal of church without any religion, but we cannot have religion ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... he could see these people accomplishing the same tasks from daylight to dark; he admired the well-defined circle of their interests and the calm security with which they spoke of the same things every evening, deepening the tradition of their country and of their own characters; and he conceived a sudden passion for tradition, and felt he would like to settle down in these grass lands in an eighteenth-century house, living always amid heavy mahogany furniture, sleeping every night in a mahogany four-post ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... Romance was suggested by the story of the Santon Barsisa, related in The Guardian.—The Bleeding Nun is a tradition still credited in many parts of Germany; and I have been told that the ruins of the Castle of Lauenstein, which She is supposed to haunt, may yet be seen upon the borders of Thuringia.—The Water-King, from the third to the twelfth stanza, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... will, to what portion soever of the earth, we shall find these mound evidences of his existence. In Asia, Europe, Africa, and all along the backbone of the American continent, he has established his record. Yet no one knows anything about him: all tradition even of him and of his works is lost. When Watkinson started from the middle of Asia to visit the newly acquired country of Russia—the beautiful, fruitful, invaluable country of the Amoor—he was confronted at the very outset by a cluster of seven of these very mounds, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through the tropical fervor of his soul, which burnt like a vehement rush-light in his bosom, inciting him to incessant broils and bickerings. Ancient tradition speaks much of his learning, and of the gallant inroads he had made into the dead languages, in which he had made captive a host of Greek nouns and Latin verbs, and brought off rich booty in ancient saws and apothegms, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... not a more beautiful, nor a more frequently applicable allegory than that of the famous Amreeta Cup—I know not whether devised by Southey, or borrowed by him from the rich store of instructive fable hidden in oriental tradition. It is long, long, since I read it; but yet every word is remembered whenever I see the different effect which scenes, circumstances, and events produce upon different characters. It is shown by the poet that the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... children. I do not believe in ghosts myself, and I never saw this one. But people used to think that the spirit of Hugo Montfort haunted one of the rooms. He died suddenly, in great trouble about some family papers that had been lost, and the family tradition is that he comes back from time to time to hunt once more through desks and drawers, in hope of finding them. He has never done so, I believe; but then, he has never been here since I came to Fernley. Your ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... There is a tradition that the spores will not germinate unless they pass through the alimentary canal of the horse or some animal. However this may be, it is found frequently where no trace of the horse can be found. It appears from July to September. I have found it in Fayette County, Ohio, in large rings, resembling ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... can easily be seen, is a tradition of the robbers who pretend to have been blessed by Christ. St. Peter is the hero of several stories, in which he plays anything but a dignified role. In one (Pitre, No. 122), he is sent to buy some wine, ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... ability was displayed by Heywood on the only occasion on which he introduced pastoral tradition into a Lord Mayor's pageant. The 'first show by land' of the Porta Pietatis, presented by the drapers in 1638 on the occasion of Sir Maurice Abbot's mayoralty, consisted of a speech by a shepherd, which is preceded in the printed copy by a short account of the properties, natural history, and general ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... "the letter of the law" is its literal meaning without going behind what is expressed by the letters on the page. Thus oral applies to that which is given by spoken words in distinction from that which is written or printed; as, oral tradition; an oral examination. By this rule we should in strictness speak of an oral contract or an oral message, but verbal contract and verbal message, as indicating that which is by spoken rather than by written words, have ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... equal excited no surprise then. They believed it without a thought that it had entered the mind of a fantastic recluse in the retirement of l'Hermitage, and, in obedience to that belief, they severed the ties of tradition and kindred, exposed their homes and the lives of those whose lives were dearer to them than their own to the rage of civil war, and placed all they hoped for and everything they loved upon the perilous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... arguments I have had with so-called wise men like Zabastes, concerning his style and method of versification. Everything he has written bears the impress of the same master-touch,—nevertheless garrulous controversialists hold that his famous work the 'Ruva-Kalama' descended by oral tradition from mouth to mouth till it came to us in its 'improved' present condition. 'Improved!'" and Sah-luma laughed disdainfully,—"As if the mumbling of an epic poem from grandsire to grandson could possibly improve it! ... it would rather be deteriorated, if not altogether ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... supposed by most archaeologists to stand upon its site. The Capitol, it may be remarked, was precisely similar to the moot-hill, or open-air court, which existed in our own country in primitive times, and where justice was administered at regular intervals. The tradition of this original use of it still clings to the place as a shadow from the past. The hill has always been appropriated for political purposes. It has continued from the earliest days to be a centre of secular as opposed to ecclesiastical ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... derived its name from the prominence given to the worship of Athena by its king Erechtheus. The inhabitants were previously called Cranai and Cecropidae, from Cecrops, who according to tradition, was the original founder of the city. This at first occupied only the hill or rock which afterwards became the ACROPOLIS; but gradually the buildings began to spread over the ground at the southern foot of this hill. It was not till the time of Pisistratus and his sons (B.C. 560-514) ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... the work of the Battalion with great interest. I know how well all ranks have done, what they have suffered, and that they will ever maintain the glorious tradition of ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... narrow, grassy way is the old road, which in the month of April, 1775, led to a bridge that crossed the stream at this spot. And upon the river's margin, upon the bridge and the shore beyond, took place the sharp struggle between the Middlesex farmers and the scarlet British soldiers known in tradition as "Concord fight". The small monument records the day and the event. When it was erected Emerson wrote the following hymn for ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... advantages of the study of old Norse or Icelandic literature is the insight given by it into the origin of world-wide superstitions. Norse tradition is transparent as glacier ice, and its ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Epic. The epic is a long poem celebrating in stately verse some important and heroic event of the past. It may be based either on history or tradition, though in our greatest epics there is a commingling of the two. The method of the epic is chiefly narrative and descriptive. The theme is generally stated in the beginning, and the narrative, frequently interspersed with episodes, ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... by the English poet Thomas Edward Brown (1830-1897), deserves to be classed with the most beautiful and artistic verse in our language. Students will notice the allusion to the biblical tradition that God walked in the Garden of Eden in the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... have parted with an oath, my uncle and I! That is how I have broken with the only relative I possess. It is now ten days since then. I now have five left in which to mend the broken thread of the family tradition, and become a lawyer. But nothing points to such conversion. On the contrary, I feel relieved of a heavy weight, pleased to be free, to have no profession. I feel the thrill of pleasure that a fugitive from justice feels on clearing the frontier. Perhaps I was ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... time that such a book were written. The most absorbing question of the day is the 'Woman Question.' The social problems of chiefest interest concern her. And nowhere are those problems more zealously studied than in America, which has thrown aside the trammels of tradition, and is training its free muscles with intent to grapple the untried possibilities of social life. Who can guide us in these experiments? What master, speaking as one having authority, can advise us? There is such a guide, such a master. The laws of woman's physical life shape her destiny ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... unfounded. Apart from the incident referred to, there were no cases of open rebellion against the authorities. As a matter of fact, even in Old-Constantine, the "mutiny" was of a nature little calculated to be dealt with by a court-martial. According to the local tradition, the Jewish residents, Hasidim almost to a man, were so profoundly stirred by the imperial ukase that they assembled in the synagogues, fasting and praying, and finally resolved to adopt "energetic" measures. A petition reciting their grievances against the ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... recoup, and Burr's representations were aglow with the promise of such rewards in the golden southwest as Cortes and Coronado sought. Blennerhassett's purse was opened to the enterprise of Burr; large sums were spent in boats and munitions, which were, tradition says, for a time hid in the bayou which, close by our camp, runs deep into the island forest. It has been filled in by the present proprietor, but its bold shore lines, all hung with giant sycamores, are still ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... persuasion, at appropriate time and place, must have clear support in public danger, actual or impending. Only the gravest abuses, endangering paramount interests, give occasion for permissible limitation. It is therefore in our tradition to allow the widest room for discussion, the narrowest range for its restriction, particularly when this right is exercised in conjunction with peaceable assembly. It was not by accident or coincidence that the rights to freedom in speech and press were coupled in a single ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... an entirely new board. This would insure continuity. Another plan for a county board would be to have the presidents of the district boards act as a county board of education. Such a board should be authorized—and indeed this tradition should be established—to select a county superintendent from applicants from outside as well as inside the county. They should be empowered to go anywhere in the country for a superintendent with a reputation in the teaching ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... the buried treasures of the soil filled the air with smoke, the valley where Liege lies was a lovely spot.[2] Tradition tells how, in the sixth century, Monulphe, Bishop of Tongres, as he made a progress through his diocese was attracted by the beauties of the site where a few hovels then clustered near the Meuse. After looking down from the heights to the river's ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Gardens that Shakespeare—relying, probably, on some old tradition which does not exist in print—has laid one of the scenes of his King Henry VI.—that, namely, in which the partisans of the rival houses of York and Lancaster first assume their distinctive badges of the white ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... baptized when only two or three days old. The poet's tomb states that Shakespeare was in his fifty-second year when he died, April 23, 1616. Accepting this as strictly true, we cannot place the poet's birthday earlier than April 23, 1564. There is a tradition, with no authority, that the poet died ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken |
